Tina Turner, ‘Hot for You Baby’
“Hot for You Baby” was recorded at the sessions for Turner’s blockbuster 1984 album, “Private Dancer”; it will be part of an expanded boxed set released in March. It’s clear why it stayed in the vault; it was far more simplistic than the songs that would redefine Turner as a solo performer. But four decades later, it’s fun to hear a very 1980s studio band whacking its cowbell and cymbals and cranking up its electric guitars, while that indomitable voice barks and yowls about “sweating up a storm” for someone who’s “driving me wild.”
JON PARELES, New York Times
Teddy Swims, ‘Guilty’
Swims had a megahit in 2024 with “Lose Control,” and his new album, “I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part 2),” leans into his strengths: songs that hark back to the storytelling of 1960s and 1970s Southern soul, a voice that conveys heartache and drama with its raspy edge, and production that builds from lean and retro into 21st-century arena-country crescendos. The verses of “Guilty” are lists of lines starting with “of,” like “Of needing you at the end of the night”; the chorus proclaims, “I’m guilty, baby!” The ascent from quiet guitar picking to soul backbeat to power chords feels inevitable but satisfying.
JON PARELES, New York Times
Kane Brown and Jelly Roll, ‘Haunted’
“They say I’m a superstar / But oh, I still got this feeling in my bones,” Brown sings, going on to admit that success has pushed him nearly too far: “I wanted too many times to jump off the edge / Thinkin’ I was better off dead.” Jelly Roll replies with similar sentiments, in triplets: “I think I was happier when I couldn’t pay the bills.” The music escalates from banjo picking to hard rock with a shredding lead guitar, as the woes of fame scale up.
