Billboard's Friday Music Guide is your handy guide to the biggest songs releasing this Friday — the big songs everyone's talking about today, and the songs that will dominate playlists this weekend and beyond.
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Check out the latest videos, charts and news
Check out the latest videos, charts and news
This week we're introducing the long-awaited new album from Charlie XCX, the even more long-awaited debut album from Thames, a musical turn from Sabrina Carpenter, and a feature film from Ray. Check out all of this week's picks below.
Sabrina Carpenter “Please Please Please”
If you've been seduced by Sabrina Carpenter's last few great disco-pop smashes, “Please Please Please” might come as a bit of a surprise. It still has plenty of the dance-floor-inducing elements of “Feather” and “Espresso,” down to the guitar chops and handclaps on the chorus, as well as the clever, crisp lyrics (“Broken hearts are one thing, my ego is another/Please don't embarrass me, you motherfucker”). But the unpredictability of the melody is at work here, and the country-tinged twang of the guitar picking and Carpenter's yearning vocals make “Please” a truly charming and unexpected song. “Espresso” is unlikely to be nominated for Song of the Summer, but it might just make you more excited for her full-length album, Short and Sweet, due in August. (And rumored real-life boyfriend Barry Keoghan appears in the music video.)
Thames Born in the Wild
Temmes has already been a major player in the pop world over the past few years, with guest appearances on global smash hits by Wizkid and Future, as well as her own solo material like “Free Mind” and this year's “Love Me Jeje,” so it can be tough to remember that she has yet to release a full-length solo album. Her debut album, the 18-track Born in the Wild, drops this week, and it's safe to say it's been worth the wait. The album is packed with the blissful grooves, sharp lyrics, and heart-melting melodies that fans have come to expect from the Nigerian singer-songwriter, and also features special guest appearances from fellow Afrobeat hitmaker Asake and American star rapper J. Cole.
Charlie XCX, Brat
Charli has been teasing the release of her album, Brat, for years, building up excitement with singles like “Von Dutch” and “360,” but now the full set is finally here. The best-received album of her acclaimed career, Brat blazes through 15 songs, encompassing future club bangers, emotive synth-pop ballads, and countless shades in between. Fun, flirty, often wicked, and at times incredibly moving, it feels like an album Charli XCX has been crafting for the better part of the last decade.
Rey “Genesis”
It turns out that the meandering, cinematic five-minute drama of RAYE's 2023 hit “Escapism” featuring 070 Shake was just the beginning. Born and raised singer-songwriter Rachel Agatha Keene's new song “Genesis” is a seven-minute, three-part epic produced by R&B legend Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins that unfolds from a masochistic orchestral intro to a dark, decadent R&B shuffle to a swinging, scatting (and almost optimistic-sounding) big band outro. It's a lot, and each one is unexpected, so it may not have the pop appeal of “Escapism,” but it will undoubtedly find an audience, and for many, it will be a revelation.
Zach Bryan feat. Noeline Hoffman, “Purple Gas”
Just one week after “Pink Skies” debuted at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, Zach Bryan is back with a new duet. Noeline Hoffman may not have the name recognition of her former partners Maggie Rogers and Kacey Musgraves. The 20-year-old singer-songwriter, who wrote “Purple Gas” and originally recorded it solo as The Belting Bronco, has no other songs officially available on Spotify. But the sharpness and clarity of her Emmylou Harris-esque delivery, combined with Bryan's gruff, understated voice, make for one of the most beautiful harmony blends ever.
“When I first heard this song it brought me to tears so it meant so much to me that Noeline gave me the opportunity to sing it with her,” Brian wrote on Instagram. “I've never covered anyone on an album before and I've been waiting for someone to write a song like this. To me, Noeline has a Gillian Welch kind of appeal. Gillian is one of my favorite musicians that's ever lived and now Noeline is too.”
Jungkook “Never Let Go”
Having become a global solo star in his own right in 2023 with three top-five Hot 100 hits—”Standing Next to You,” the Jack Harlow collab “3D,” and the Ratt-featuring (and chart-topper) “Seven”—BTS alum Jungkook is back with a new single that might promise similar pop success: “Never Let Go.” The song has a bit of an Afrobeat vibe, with melody borrowed from The 1975 and even the snap that underscores the writing on Tame Impala's “New Person, Same Ol Mistakes,” as Jungkook sings clear-eyed and sentimental, “And when the days get longer/You fill my world with wonder.”
Gracie Abrams: “Close to You”
Abrams has long been your favorite pop singer-songwriter's favorite pop singer-songwriter, and for much of the 2020s, she's seemed on the brink of a mainstream breakthrough. “Close to You” feels like her attempt to complete that crossover. A fierce, synth-driven declaration of love and lust, it's reminiscent of Pure Heroine-era Lorde's 1989 Taylor Swift cover, with all the radio-friendly connotations woven into it. Chart-topping or not, the song should set the stage nicely for her new album, The Secret of Us, due out in just two weeks (June 21).