Review: Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves bring contrasting voices to wrenching duet

COUNTRY

Zach Bryan featuring Kacey Musgraves, "I Remember Everything"

The contrasting textures of Bryan's ragged croak and Musgraves' opalescent trill bring a tension to this wrenching duet from Bryan's new self-titled release. The imagery is as vivid as a series of Polaroids — a beach towel drying on a clothesline; a beat-up old Ford; a ratty basement sofa — while the emotion that these two singers bring to the tale makes the song downright haunting.

LINDSAY ZOLADZ, New York Times

POP/ROCK

Doja Cat, "Demons"

A brash, blown-speaker quality animates the latest single from Doja Cat's upcoming album, "Scarlet." "How my demons look now that my pockets full?" she shouts with a defiant rasp, before switching to a lighter and more viciously humorous register on the verses. ("Who are you, and what are those? You are gross!") "Demons" also features a horror movie-inspired video, which stars Christina Ricci and features a very creepy Doja slithering around like a red-eyed monster. Other pop stars merely tune out their haters; Doja exorcises them.

Peter Gabriel, "Love Can Heal"

An expansive sound design — with bell-toned ostinatos, throaty cellos and multidirectional echoes — underlines Gabriel's troubled but determined optimism in a new track from his gradually accruing album "I/O." His vocal sets aside his usual grizzled hoarseness for a modest tenor; a choir joins him, yet the song stays fragile.

JON PARELES, New York Times

Al Green, "Perfect Day"

Here is the 77-year-old's first single in five years: a sumptuous reimagining of Lou Reed's 1972 classic "Perfect Day." Green's rendition is gently jubilant, smoothing out the prickly edges of Reed's delivery and changing a lyric about sangria to "drink wiiiiine in the park." Al Green: no fan of sangria, apparently.

HIP-HOP/R&B

Nicki Minaj, "Last Time I Saw You"

Minaj doesn't usually admit to any regrets or second thoughts. But she does in this song that seesaws between guitar-flecked ballad and rueful rapping. "I wish I remembered to say I'd do anything for you/Maybe I pushed you away because I thought that I'd bore you," she sings, confessing that she was the one in the wrong.

JON PARELES, New York Times

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