Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.
This week saw SZA’s sophomore album finally, actually drop and Lana Del Rey continue her recent run of productivity. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.
For more music recommendations, check out our Listen To This section, as well as our Indie Mixtape and Pop Life newsletters. Also find our Uproxx HQ Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly with the best new music, at the end of this post.
SZA — “Nobody Gets Me”
SZA has brought some life to a mostly uneventful December (in terms of new music) with SOS, her long-awaited sophomore album. Shortly after the project dropped, SZA also shared a video for “Nobody Gets Me,” an example of the genre-spanning nature of the LP as it’s a vulnerable acoustic pop ballad.
Lana Del Rey — “Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd”
To reiterate a bit: For December, last week was surprisingly busy when it came to worthwhile new music. Aside from SZA, Lana Del Rey went ahead and announced a new album, Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd. Yes, that’s a mouthful, but now you have to say it twice because she dropped a new song also called “Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd.” By the way: Yes, there is actually a tunnel under Ocean Boulevard.
Caroline Polachek — “Welcome To My Island”
Polachek has been dropping standalone singles here and there for the past 18 months or so, and now they’re about to have an album home: Last week, Polachek announced Desire, I Want To Turn Into You, which is set to drop next Valentine’s Day. With that news came another new tune in “Welcome To My Island,” an airy pop anthem.
Gorillaz — “Skinny Ape”
Gorillaz have Cracker Island dropping next February, and they previewed it last week with “Skinny Ape,” a laid back tune with a subtle groove… until it drastically kicks up the energy in the song’s final quarter. Furthermore, the Damon Albarn group is also planning performances of the song in New York and London that promise to be “immersive experiences.”
Paramore — “The News”
As Paramore inches towards their forthcoming 2023 album This Is Why, they shared some thoughts about journalism on “The News.” Uproxx’s Danielle Chelosky described the tune as a “spunky, frustrated anthem” and Hayley Williams called it “a happy medium between classic Paramore angst and bringing in some influences we’ve always had but never exploited.”
Polo G — “My All”
Polo G has an album set to drop in 2023, although we don’t know a ton about it yet. What we do know, though, is that we can expect last week’s “My All” to appear on it. Uproxx’s Lexi Lane notes of the track’s subject matter, “Struggling with trust issues and women, Polo G decides he just wants to live in the moment as the melody fades out.”
YG and Lil Wayne — “Miss My Dawgs”
There have been a lot of hip-hop deaths in the past few years that have cut deep. While YG and Lil Wayne don’t address anybody by name on last week’s “Miss My Dawgs,” the album does get at themes of a longing for people who have left your life in one way or another. YG raps, for example, on the chorus, “Man, I miss my dawgs / The ones I pick up for, ain’t never missed a call / Plottin’ to get it poppin’, we had plans to get it all / Wishin’ you was here, dawg, to ride these foreign cars.”
Dove Cameron — “Girl Like Me”
Cameron hopped in the wayback machine for “Girl Like Me,” her new single: it features an interpolation of Edwyn Collins’ “A Girl Like You,” which Cameron was inspired to utilize after hearing it in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. She explained, “I was like, ‘Oh my god, it would be so fun to cover on tour.’ And we were like, ‘What if we just flip the narrative? What if we just said, ‘You’ve ever met a girl like me before’?”
Blxst — “Keep Calling” Feat. Larry June
Blxst had a huge 2022, dropping his debut album and featuring on Kendrick Lamar’s top-5 Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers track “Die Hard.” Instead of just fading away into the new year, he came through with one more single, a self-laudatory new collaboration with Larry June titled “Keep Calling.”
Sparklehorse — “It Will Never Stop”
Sparklehorse leader Mark Linkous died in 2010, which meant the end of a group that still had plenty in the tank. That’s also true of the vault, as the band’s label Anti- dropped “It Will Never Stop” last week. Uproxx’s Danielle Chelosky notes of the tune, “At only a minute and a half, the song captures the special eccentricity of Sparklehorse, soaked in fuzzy reverb with a shockingly buoyant rhythm beneath such sad words.”
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. .
