Music

If you’ll recall, Katy Perry is having a baby girl. We first learned this via her music video for “Never Worn White,” an ode to her fiancé, Orlando Bloom, which dropped in March — and back then, Perry promised it was going to be a “jam packed summer.” She made good on that by dropping “Daisies,” a vibey new track, at midnight (May 15). On it, Perry’s blissed out, though the production suggests a slight return to her clubby hits of the early 2000s. There’s a cool moment at the end of the chorus where she sings the title word three times, and on the final turn, her voice crackles into a blur of electronic echoes. What’s missing is a massive backbeat — but that’s replaced here by an overall empowering feeling, made good by the ...

On April 6, Charli XCX announced her intention to try an experiment. Over the course of the next five weeks, she’d create a brand-new album — including meeting the demands of music videos and promotion — all entirely from scratch while self-isolating. The end result of that period of creativity is finally here: As promised, it’s called How I’m Feeling Now, and it’s simply a vision. The album comes loaded with the singles “Claws,” “Forever,” and “I Finally Understand,” all trademark future-pop looks at her life in quarantine that also saw her embracing more stream-of-consciousness lyrics she shared with fans in real time as she was making them. The other eight songs here range from insanely catchy (“7 Years”) and sugary...