AILSA CHANG, HOST:
All right, everybody, we made it. It is Friday, which means our friends at NPR Music are back with their weekly roundup of new music out today. This week, we turn it over to Sheldon Pearce and Daoud Tyler-Ameen, who start with a song called "Ground" from Khalid's new album "Sincere."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GROUND")
KHALID: (Singing) Cotton candy-colored skies even put a smile on my broken muse. Somethin' 'bout the sunset pleases me and brings out the best in you.
SHELDON PEARCE, BYLINE: I've always sort of been struck by Khalid's voice. It's not one that you can run from, and it doesn't really fit into, like, the traditional cast of pop characters.
DAOUD TYLER-AMEEN, BYLINE: No, he's not a crooner. He's not a rapper, either, but he sort of mumble raps the lines (ph).
PEARCE: (Laughter) I don't know what to sort of make of his sound. He says that he wrote this song in particular years ago through moments of uncertainty when he wasn't really sure what his purpose as an artist was. I think a lot of his music is sort of focused on, like, uncertainty, naivete. When he was younger, a lot of it was obviously wrapped up in being young and dumb and not knowing which way to go. Now it seems like he's turned that sincerity inward and is looking at himself as a creator, as somebody who makes music. What did you make of this song, Daoud?
TYLER-AMEEN: I mean, I kept thinking about a piece that you wrote earlier this year about the sort of state of the R&B showman tied to Usher's performance at the Super Bowl and how Khalid is somebody who's maybe not really in a place to take up that mantle just because he is so interior. He's not about being a showman. He's not about sort of, like, you know, flexing shirtless. Like, it's - everything that he's saying is sort of, like, ricocheting off the walls of his mind.
PEARCE: There's nothing really forward about him.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
PEARCE: He is constantly sort of thinking about not just himself but his most quiet moments, the more intimate moments that he shares with very small groups of people, the idea of, like, being grounded amid the highs of celebrity.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "GROUND")
KHALID: (Singing) I'll be right here on the ground. My feet, feet don't fail me now. I'll be right here on the ground. My feet, feet don't fail me now.
TYLER-AMEEN: That is the new album from Khalid, "Sincere." I'm going to take us to a more colorful place with the new album from Orville Peck titled "Stampede."
(SOUNDBITE OF ORVILLE PECK & BECK SONG, "DEATH VALLEY HIGH")
TYLER-AMEEN: Orville Peck's bio kind of feels to me like a pop culture Mad Lib (laughter).
PEARCE: Yeah.
TYLER-AMEEN: He is a South African country musician raised in musical theater.
PEARCE: Yeah.
TYLER-AMEEN: He becomes a queer icon, you know, guest judge on "Drag Race." And, by the way, he wears a mask and never shows his face in public.
PEARCE: Right. There is something very whimsical about his whole thing. It's those theater kid roots.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
PEARCE: It's bigger, larger than life, in your face, which I think you hear in the song from his new record "Death Valley High" with Beck.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DEATH VALLEY HIGH")
ORVILLE PECK: (Singing) Sin City lights, spin the wheel around and roll the dice. Death Valley high, gonna let it run like the devil's son tonight.
TYLER-AMEEN: So we should say "Stampede" is his third album, and it is an album of duets.
PEARCE: Duets.
TYLER-AMEEN: You've got Beck here on "Death Valley High," kind of in his "Play That Funky Music White Boy" mode from the '90s.
PEARCE: (Laughter) Yeah.
TYLER-AMEEN: He even gets to rap again. You've also got - Willie Nelson is here, Kylie Minogue, Margo Price. A duet album - I mean, he's in his mid-30s. That's usually a move that you pull...
PEARCE: Yeah.
TYLER-AMEEN: ...When you're, like, 50-plus, like, doing the sort of, like, career reboot thing.
PEARCE: Right.
TYLER-AMEEN: But I don't know. I mean, at the same thing, it's like, how different is it from, like, a hip-hop album that's covered in features? Like, maybe it's a weirdly savvy move.
PEARCE: I - there is something that seems to specifically work for him. You can hear it in this Beck song. It is such a good time. And it's got this sort of, like, rip-roaring down the Vegas Strip energy. They sound like two bachelors just, like, on a losing streak, but they don't care because they're having such a good time. And it's infectious. Like...
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
PEARCE: ...It really just sort of washes over you.
(SOUNDBITE OF ORVILLE PECK & BECK SONG, "DEATH VALLEY HIGH")
TYLER-AMEEN: OK, up next, Maren Morris - her new EP is called "Intermission." This song, "I Hope I Never Fall In Love," feels like a tone-setter for this project. I don't want to put words in her mouth, but she got divorced recently.
PEARCE: Yeah.
TYLER-AMEEN: Seems like she's in an intense transitional spot.
PEARCE: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I HOPE I NEVER FALL IN LOVE")
MAREN MORRIS: (Singing) I hope I never fall in love, I hope I never fall in love again. And I'm not taking it back.
PEARCE: I'm a bit of a sucker for a song where it seems like the artist is trying to convince themselves of something and not the audience.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
PEARCE: And it feels like on this song, we are sort of swept up in an internal monologue.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
PEARCE: Like, she has decided for herself romance is out. Like (laughter), I've been there. I've done that. And the language is so definitive - you can hold me to that. I'm not taking it back. I'm a woman of my word. God as my witness, that was the last time.
TYLER-AMEEN: (Laughter) Yeah.
PEARCE: It feels like she's, like, giving herself a pep talk.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
PEARCE: Like, she's pushing herself through everything that she's experienced and trying to come out on the other side whole - because, I mean, the way that the song is structured, to me, it doesn't feel like a real acknowledgment that there will never be love in her life again, right?
TYLER-AMEEN: No.
PEARCE: It feels more about the past than about the future.
TYLER-AMEEN: Totally, yeah. I mean, even the title of the project, "Intermission," really feels like a boxer who's just - who, like, got...
PEARCE: Yeah (laughter).
TYLER-AMEEN: ...They got swung on a little hard in the last round, and they're being, like, just give me a second.
PEARCE: They took an eight count.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
PEARCE: They took a standing eight count, and now it's time to regroup.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I HOPE I NEVER FALL IN LOVE")
MORRIS: (Singing) God as my witness, that was the last time.
TYLER-AMEEN: Just a couple more records coming out today in brief, Smashing Pumpkins have a new record called "Aghori Mhori Mei." David Lynch - yes, that David Lynch - is back in the studio, as he sometimes is. He has a new project with the singer/songwriter Chrystabell called "Cellophane Memories." And finally, Killer Mike with a record called "Songs For Sinners & Saints" - Sheldon, you've written a lot lately about how rappers confront middle age. Killer Mike has been running at that task with abandon, I would say.
PEARCE: Yeah, you know, Killer Mike is coming off a Grammy sweep for his 2023 album, "Michael," which really sort of seemed to change the perception around his music...
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
PEARCE: ...Which is interesting. That doesn't often happen for rappers in middle age.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
PEARCE: "Songs For Sinners & Saints" is billed as an epilogue to "Michael." It seems like in all the positive success that he's seen from this record, he is not quite ready to let it go. And I think there is still ideas to mind in that record.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
PEARCE: And I think people should look forward to it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HUMBLE ME")
KILLER MIKE: (Rapping) I won at the Grammys for spitting my grammar - did that for Atlanta, did that for Atlanta, bruh. Swept up like a janitor, got sent to the slammer, bruh. Treat me like an animal...
CHANG: That was Sheldon Pearce and Daoud Tyler-Ameen from NPR Music, and you can hear full episodes of New Music Friday wherever you get your podcasts.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HUMBLE ME")
KILLER MIKE: (Rapping) ...With my head up in handcuffs with pride 'cause all of my heroes wore handcuffs. The FBI shot... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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