Lizzo, ‘Love in Real Life’
“It’s been a while,” Lizzo sings in “Love in Real Life,” after more than a year of commotion involving her social media, her weight and lawsuits from employees. The video (though not the song itself) opens with Lizzo saying she needs “no views, no likes, real love in real life.” Backed by a swinging beat and rock guitars, Lizzo heads out for a drunken night at a dance club, with a chorus topped by a Prince-like scream. For a few minutes, pleasure solves everything.
JON PARELES, New York Times
Benson Boone, ‘Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else’
The back-flipping upstart Boone runs into a former flame who upends his current relationship on the lively new single “Sorry I’m Here for Someone Else.” Amid driving percussion, pulsating synths and an escalating sense of urgency, Boone unfurls a satisfying narrative of love lost and regained in a sudden moment of clarity. The only problem is that he has to break another girl’s heart in the process. “Benny, don’t do it, Benny don’t do it!” he tells himself — but he does it, and lets her down easy with that classic line, “It’s not personal.”
LINDSAY ZOLADZ, New York Times
J. Cole, ‘Clouds’
Even the title — “loud” embedded in “Clouds” — speaks to the verbal ambitions of a grown-up J. Cole as he faces his own “gray hairs” and a rapidly changing world. The track is a two-chord vamp topped with electric piano improvisations, while Cole’s rhymes confront the confounding mess that is 2025. He has to brag: “The planet’ll shake when I’m performing.” But he’s also worried about “billionaires who don’t care the world’s gonna break / as long as they make money off it, pain brings profit” and about songs “generated by the latest of A.I. regimes” that will make some people ask, “What happened to human beings?” He can’t answer that question.
