POP/ROCK

Nina Simone, "Mississippi Goddam"

Just a week after performing at the historically Black Tougaloo College in Jackson, Miss., supporting James Meredith's March Against Fear, Simone was on fire as she strode onstage to play for a very different audience at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 2, 1966. Her interactions with the bourgeois New Englanders at Newport were hardly warm: In the middle of an acid-rinsed version of "Blues for Mama," she dismisses them — "I guess you ain't ready for that" — and later she hushes them: "Shut up, shut up."

But she pours every ounce of vitriol she's got into the performance, especially on "Mississippi Goddam." She'd first released the song in 1964, and two years later it felt as topical as ever. Meredith had just been shot while marching across Mississippi, and unrest was overtaking redlined Black neighborhoods across the country. At Newport, she amends one of the verses to address the oppression of Los Angeles' Black community: "Alabama's got me so upset/And Watts has made me lose my rest/Everybody knows about Mississippi, goddamn!"

The entire Newport performance is now available for the first time as an album titled "You've Got to Learn." It's spellbinding, heartbreaking stuff, reminding us just how much Simone would still be lamenting today.

GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO, New York Times

Travis Scott, Bad Bunny and the Weeknd, "K-Pop"

One beat, three big names and an SEO-optimized title are the makings of "K-Pop," a calculated round of boasting and come-ons from this trio of stars. The track, produced by behind-the-scenes hitmakers — Bynx, Boi-1da, Illangelo and Jahaan Sweet — hints at crisp Nigerian Afrobeats, and it spurs three distinct top-line strategies. Travis Scott is quick, percussive and melodically narrow; Big Bunny leaps and groans; the Weeknd is sustained, moody and on brand, crooning "Mix the drugs with the pain" and promising vigorous, alienated sex. As in K-pop, hooks are flaunted, then tossed aside when a new one arrives.

JON PARELES, New York Times

Blur, "The Ballad"

"I just looked into my life and all I saw was that you're not coming back," an exquisitely mopey Damon Albarn sings at the beginning of this highlight from Blur's new album, "The Ballad of Darren." Lush backing vocals from guitarist Graham Coxon and punchy percussion from drummer Dave Rowntree provide a buoyancy, and layers of sonic details give "The Ballad" a kind of dreamy, weightless atmosphere.

LINDSAY ZOLADZ, New York Times

New releases

  • Post Malone, "Austin"
  • Travis Scott, "Utopia"
  • Joni Mitchell, "Joni Mitchell at Newport"
  • Bethany Cosentino, "Natural Disaster"