POP/ROCK
Olivia Rodrigo, "Bad Idea Right?"
The 20-year-old pop phenom extends her winning streak on this single, the latest reason to be very excited about her second album, "Guts," due Sept. 8. Departing from the sound of the album's first single, the rock-operatic "Vampire," "Bad Idea Right?" is a bright, kaleidoscopic head-rush of a pop song that inhales a dizzying array of influences — the chatty call-and-response hooks of '60s girl groups, the gum-smacking sass of Toni Basil's "Mickey," the chugging guitars and elastic bass lines of early aughts pop-punk — and spits them all out in Rodrigo's singularly conversational voice.
"Seeing you tonight," she sings of an ex, "It's a bad idea, right?" Then she shrugs, mutters an expletive with sharp comic timing, and dives back into the mess. It's a playful track, but there's also something invitingly intimate about the way Rodrigo puts the rush of her own internal thoughts and feelings on display here. ("My brain goes 'ahhhhh,'" sings a multi-tracked chorus of Rodrigos.) A girl's got to make her own mistakes, after all. But if the listener is able to eavesdrop on her internal dialogue, she's never completely alone.
LINDSAY ZOLADZ, New York Times
R&B/HIP-HOP
Miguel featuring Lil Yachty, "Number 9"
Miguel builds a monumental enigma in "Number 9." Over a stark but triumphal electronic march, he overdubs his voice into antiphonal choirs, trading lyrics like "In the gun a kiss/Let it blow your mind/Till the dust returns/To the number nine." Lil Yachty arrives midway through to announce "I am the grim reaper." Neither one sounds daunted by mortality.
