By Jason Lipshutz
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Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday’s most essential releases — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond.
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This week, Ed Sheeran is ready to Play, Drake showcases a surprising guest and Twenty One Pilots conclude another story. Check out all of this week’s picks below:
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Ed Sheeran, Play
Following a pair of somber albums in 2023, Ed Sheeran returns to brightly lit pop with Play, which combines explorations of global sounds (the upbeat singles “Azizam” and “Sapphire”), wistful reflections (“Old Phone” and “Heaven”) and more fodder for wedding playlists (“The Vow,” a touching ode to his marriage which actually sounds primed for your vow-renewal gatherings).
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Drake feat. Yeat & Julia Wolf, “Dog House”
Although Drake and Yeat spend the majority of “Dog House” trading bars about money, sex and power — with Drizzy even quoting his own No. 1 smash “One Dance” at one point — the surprise star here is indie singer-songwriter Julia Wolf, who provides a jolt of energy on the song’s introduction before the zapped beat, and Drake’s chest-thumping boasts, are crashed in.
Twenty One Pilots, Breach
If 2024’s Clancy didn’t exactly end the multi-album narrative arc that Twenty One Pilots had been crafting for years, then new full-length Breach places a period on this particular journey — while also offering some of the long-running alt-rock duo’s most bruising riffs and immediate hooks to date, climaxing with the five-and-a-half minute centerpiece “Downstairs” in the middle of the track list.
Kali Uchis feat. Ravyn Lenae, “Cry About It!”
A few years after Kali Uchis successfully transcended a viral hit to set up a sturdy mainstream career, Ravyn Lenae is attempting to do the same as “Love Me Not” continues racking up streams by the million; together, the singer-songwriters spin gold together on the hypnotic “Cry About It!,” which pairs Uchis’ sighing harmonies with Lenae’s probing tone, and lets the swaying chorus contain both of their colorful personalities.
John Summit feat. Inéz, “Crystallized”
Few dance artists have enjoyed multi-year runs as explosive as John Summit in the first half of the 2020s, and the producer continues that success with “Crystallized,” a surprisingly emotional banger in which a propulsive beat and laser-beam synths coalesce around singer Inéz’s vulnerabilities, resulting in some delectable late-summer beat drops.
Editor’s Pick: JADE, That’s Showbiz Baby!
Although Jade Thirlwall spent over a decade as a member of the great UK girl group Little Mix, That’s Showbiz Baby!, her debut solo album as JADE, is easily the boldest, most forward-thinking project of her career: pre-release singles like “Angel of My Dreams” and “IT Girl” still dazzle in a full-length setting, while deeper cuts like the futuristic R&B track “Glitch” and the disco-adjacent ode to her mother, “Unconditional,” show the breath of JADE’s pop artistry.
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