music

Halfway through Super One, the first full-length studio album from the South Korean band SuperM, something unexpected happens. After the breakout single “Tiger Inside,” a fearsome composition of guttural growls and clapping beats, cools off, its fiery sound gives way to the twinkling piano keys of the group’s first ballad, “Better Days.” It’s a hopeful song about overcoming hard times collectively, and with its slow-burning, ‘90s-tinged nostalgia, it seems at once outside the group’s typically boisterous sound and perfectly placed. The dichotomous arrangement of the two tracks resonates as the sonic equivalent of reaching the peak of a mountain, then looking out over a cloudy expanse, off to “better days, better days, better days” — and toward forever. You realize the world is so small. “T...

A day after announcing that he and Gigi Hadid have welcomed a baby daughter into the world, Zayn has welcomed another creation into this earthly realm: his latest single, “Better,” a lovely slice of R&B pop anchored by Z’s massive, massive voice. The breezy, endearing song debuted alongside a sparse but stately video, where the heavily tattooed new daddy Zaddy dresses himself in fine menswear and stares moodily out the window of a nice house — all while he’s being spied on. Like a celebrity. Or an actual spy. As Zayn sings with red highlighted hair, “Your dad probably loves me more than he ever did now / ‘Cause I finally got out / Yeah, we finally knocked down,” there’s a palpable air of second chances throughout “Better,” and...

Every now and then, I get this itch to drop everything, change my hair, and become a dancing gay Brooklyn bartender à la Coyote Ugly, never mind the fact that I can’t dance. I thought I might be alone in my disputatious daydreams until I heard Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club.” The rising pop starlet has been charting her takeover since signing with Atlantic Records as a teen, and the dusty yet decadent single is a promising sign of what’s to come. In a rhinestone cowboy hat, Roan starts off slow with visions of “a special place where boys and girls can all be queens every single day,” letting the soft keys give way to a triumphant electronic chorus reminiscent of Kacey Musgraves’s “High Horse.” Her voice reads as hallowed as the halls she sings about, and there’s a palpable electricity in ...