music

These days, good disco pop doesn’t need much: a clean four-on-the-floor, some funky guitar, and jazzy synths. And great disco pop can match that sound with blissful chants that channel love, lust, or freedom. But the best disco pop — Whitney, Robyn, Dua, Carly — warps the sound’s very essence. Classics like “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” and “Dancing on My Own” lyrically pull from our most deepest fears: that no one will love us, that we’ll always be alone. That you don’t realize how painfully sad the words are is the whole point. “Kissing Strangers” fits this mold, an infectious dance-floor number wherein Vetta Borne regrets a breakup that she initiated. “I swear I really loved her,” she mourns, but maybe she’s smiling the whole time; for all the shame and hurt, the sound refuses to let yo...

As it pops up near the end of The Weeknd‘s moody fourth LP After Hours, synthpop ballad “Save Your Tears” feels perhaps the most appropriate to the album’s title of any of its tunes. It’s more hangover than party, though its gorgeous, funky sonics (and eventual robotic vocalizations) create the kind of pop turn producer Max Martin has made a career out of. It makes sense, then, for Ariana Grande to hop on the remix, out today (April 23), and for her contributions to leave the song even more dazzling. What’s more surprising is the song’s accompanying new animated video, which finds an animated Weeknd creating his own Grande out of spare parts in an underground lair. The clip, directed by Jack Brown and produced by London animation studio Blinkink, f...