NPR Music - New Music Friday: The best albums out Aug. 23

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

NPR Music's Stephen Thompson and Sheldon Pearce are your guides to seven anticipated albums out Aug. 23. During the second half of the episode, the two dig into the mercurial nature of the album format in 2024.Featured albums:- Sabrina Carpenter, 'Short n' Sweet'- Lainey Wilson, 'Whirlwind'- Illuminati hotties, 'POWER'- Fontaines D.C., 'Romance'- Heems, 'Veena'- Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, 'Woodland'- Magdalena Bay, 'Imaginal Disk'See the longer list of albums out August 23 and stream our New Music Friday playlist at https://npr.org/music.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Just a quick note, this podcast contains explicit language. Hey, everyone, it's New Music Friday from NPR Music, here to talk about the best and most discussion-worthy albums out today, August 23rd. I'm Stephen Thompson here with NPR Music Editor and columnist Sheldon Peer. Say Sheldon. Hey, Stephen. So the kind of biggest album release of the week is Sabrina Carpenter's short and sweet. Sabrina Carpenter has been one of the big stories of music in 2024. She's had these two gigantic hits with espresso and please, please, please, please. In case those songs aren't already stuck in your head, let's hear a little bit of espresso.

So espresso was this gigantic hit starting in the spring. That led into Please, Please, Please, which had a very notable video starring Sabrina Carpenter's partner, Barry Keoghan. So now Short and Sweet is out. We were not sent advanced copies of this album, but I think it's safe to. to say Sheldon that there is a fair bit of interest in what Sabrina Carpenter does next. Yeah, just a little bit of excitement behind this artist. Uh, perhaps. Yeah, it feels like she is sort of stepped into her moment right now. It'll be interesting to see if this record can capitalize on that.

I've seen a lot of people sort of, there are narrative reasons to pit her directly against Olivia Rodriguez. But there is also this sort of funny thing where people are thinking about them as like direct heirs apparent to Taylor Swift. Olivia obviously has been very vocal about the way that her music is influenced by Taylor and you can hear it in like the sort of confessional songwriting. Obviously Sabrina opened for Taylor on the ERAs tour has sort of like captured that knack for like earwormy melodies that stay with. you, especially in like the back half of the Taylor career. I think that she has really found something about like a sense of personality in her music that forms across those two singles in particular. Sort of cheeky, a very fun, very like clever, but also sort of like simple in its own way.

People like talk about the nonsense lyric at the. core of espresso. But I think this is sort of the time to see whether or not she can sustain that personality in any meaningful way, that like builds out a very serious career as a pop star. Well, one thing that I think all the artists you mentioned have in common is they, their songs have a way of not just singing two audiences, but kind of conversing with them. You mentioned a little bit of a wink in Sabrina Carpenter's delivery. And if you watch her videos, you really get a sense of somebody who is like making eye contact with the camera in a way that sort of says, you know what I'm doing. And there's a slight meta quality.

There's even almost like a speak singing quality sometimes that comes through in all the artists that you mention. And it's interesting you talk about Sabrina Carpenter kind of feeling like she's in conversation with Olivia Rodrigo. I kind of hear a little bit of a sense that Sabrina Carpenter is in conversation with an artist who kind of came up in part touring with Olivia Rodrigo, Chapel Rhone. You know, Chapel Rhone and Sabrina Carpenter have been two of the biggest success stories of 2024. And in the run-up to the release of this album, I thought it was really interesting that Sabrina Carpenter released a cover of Chapel Rone's Good Luck, Babe. that was a very loving tribute to the song. They are friends in real life, their label mates in real life.

And I think it's a very smart way of diffusing this sense sometimes that when two artists are kind of coming up simultaneously and kind of dominating the cultural landscape, there's this idea I think a lot of people have to put them in competition. And I thought it was a really clever way of diffusing any stand competition that might be happening, you know, between fans of one and fans of another. And so I'm very, like you said, I'm very intrigued, you know, to hear what she's able to do next. Because I think when espresso popped, there was this sense of like, this is this fun, frothy song.

But this isn't, this doesn't feel like a sustainable career, right? Right. But she has then moved on to release another gigantic hit. And it's worth noting that she is not, she did not come out of nowhere. Sabrina Carpenter has been around for a really long time. Short and Sweet is her sixth album. She came up on the Disney Channel. She's a lifer. You know, so I think she's going to meet this moment. Yeah, with all the talk of like sustainability in pop, the inability to build pop stars, she, to your point about Chapel Rhone seems particularly geared toward being in this position. I'm curious to see. how this album matches that energy. Me too. So that is Sabrina Carpenter. Her new album is called Short and Sweet.

Next up in our roundup of albums we're excited about that are out today, the country singer Lainey Wilson has a new album called Whirlwind. Let's hear a little bit of the song, Hang Tight Honey. Lainey Wilson, like Sabrina Carpenter, has been around a lot longer than I people think she has. She started out kind of coming up from absolutely, the ground floor, like, early in her career, she worked as a Hannah Montana impersonator. She's gone on to release now five full-length albums. She won Best Country Album at this year's Grammys. She's on the Twisters soundtrack.

She's really becoming, like, a major, major kind of headlining country star. And this record really feels like it is cementing that position. Yeah, I mean, thinking specifically about hang tight honey as, like, the opener into this record, the entry point. It's so easy to get swept up in like the rip-roaring excitement of that song. It carries like all this like pent-up elation of knowing you'll see someone you miss dearly soon and the eagerness of wanting to knock down the door on the way. I think so much of the music on this record is full of like very like sharp feeling.

They almost prickle out of these songs. She is such a bright and beaming personality. Yeah, she really is. And she really captures so much of what I love about the best country music. If you listen to a lot of mainstream country, sometimes it's easy to get frustrated by a sense that a lot of big mainstream country songs are just checking boxes. Here is a list of things I like.

But the best country music is tapping into universally held emotions. And you know, you mentioned that. with Hang Tight Honey of just like capturing that feeling and putting it into a song that conveys that, that's just an awesome thing to be able to do. And this record is such a nice survey of her sound. You know, you've got these big, you know, bangers, but you've also got soft ballads. You've also got a song I really wanted to mention called Ring Finger. Then he picked me up when the big day came. The courthouse is just about a mile away. Song a long black hair on a short bench seat. I said that there. It's a song to me that is going to bring down the house at live shows.

It's hard to tell. It's not particularly straightforward country. I'm curious as to how much commercial potential it has as like a radio hit. But I hear a song where the chorus goes, I got the ring, you got the finger. And I'm like, how has that not already, how is that not already a gigantic kind of? country hit. You know, how did somebody not already write that song? Yeah, I mean, this one, I'm glad you brought it up. It really caught me off guard. I mean, the opening with that big sort of cascading rock riff. And then it's almost like she starts rapping in these verses.

I didn't know she could get down like that. It's such a funky, like, groove-oriented song. And then it's like full of the most charming, like, sour but sweet depiction. of like literally not even making it to the altar. Like we were so short lived that I'm, she's at the bar calling her mom to cancel the shower. But she's managing because it's happy hour. It's such a great fun song about like maybe the most devastating moment in a person's life. But I think that is part of the appeal of her music to your point about universality.

she is able to poke at these like just core emotional states of being that everyone has. And even in like the most particular situations, like hang tight honey is a song about being on the road and being away from somebody for a long time and then having to come back, which is not something that a lot of people experience. But in the context of the distance of the separation of being reunited, she was. makes this very particular story one that can connect to anybody. You know, and she really taps into a theme of what we've been talking about with several artists on this week's show. Is this idea of meeting your moment? Is this idea that becoming an overnight success, you know, becoming like a giant star and there's this idea that it happens very quickly and it can happen very quickly. But it happens because you've put in work for years and

years and years. And I mean, she's been putting out albums for years and years. This is her fifth album. Now she's kind of stepped into a moment to kind of kick it into another gear. You know, she's also an actress. She acted in season five of Yellowstone. She's been laying a lot of groundwork for a bunch of years. And it feels like this record is pouring rocket fuel on that success. That's the funny thing about all the talk of virality. I mean, Chaparone is another person who has obviously been boosted by like a very in the moment kind of success to like the average casual observer. But these viral moments are like built over time. There are years in the making. Yes. Careful, careful career management, careful artistic

growth that goes into like sort of having the opportunity to go viral. And it all comes from like this sustained work that is put in. Yeah, the sustained incremental work of figuring out who you are a little bit more each day. Absolutely. It's a metaphor for life, man. Well, that's Laney Wilson. Her new album is called Whirlwind. You know, speaking of people who've been perfecting their craft for a while now and are kind of meeting their moment, give us your next pick. So my pick is by Illuminati Hotties. It's an album called Power. The band created and and fronted by the producer Sarah Tudson, who has worked on records for Boy Genius,

Wise Blood, Cloud Nothings, and Speedy Ortiz. I think the band's third album is the best yet, the first made since Tudson was able to write songs after losing her mother to cancer. Let's hear a little bit of the song rock. We talked about the single from this record can't be still on all songs, And I mentioned then that the song is about the busyness of avoidance, fidgetiness that feels specifically in service of trying to prevent oneself from having to stop and dwell on everything that's going wrong in their life.

In the context of the rest of power, it feels even more about trying not to stew in grief too long, knowing the story behind the record. But I think the entire record has a way of like ringing clarity out of the mundane. game. It is so great about sort of like swinging from blist out poppy punk to like sleepier indie rock. Both modes really sort of making use of her, I don't want to call it jaded, but there is something like. Oh yeah, she's a little jaded. Yeah, yeah. Off at a distance about her delivery. And I think of rot as being sort of perfect, a perfect encapsulation of that. She has a way of making a way of making her writing feel almost like it's carrying the energy of the thing she's singing about. It can't be still. It's like a restless motion. And then in this song, there's a sense of

like corrosion and deflation that accompanies loss that is sort of like permeating this. Are you feeling that kind of thing too here? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think she's an extremely skilled and successful producer. Right. But she's also, I think, very interested in finding and exploring and reveling in, kind of the slightly uglier and scrappier side of her sound. Like, she's confident enough

to express that and express those emotions and, like, express that in her sound in ways that I think make the sunniest moments shine that much more. It's interesting. You're kind of talking about the arc of this band's career.

I was a little bit nervous about the fate of Illuminati Hotties because they broke out a few years ago. They put out this, you know, that fantastic record. And then, like, they kind of ran into some label issues, and they put out this record that was kind of designed to fill a contract. And then, like, she went off and produced the Boy Genius record and ended up winning a Grammy. You know, she was nominated for three Grammys. Like, all of a sudden, she went from this kind of scrappy underground, pop punk adjacent indie rock band to, you know, she was nominated for,

you know, holding a Grammy statuette. And I had this feeling like, oh, no, she's going to be the new hot producer, which great for her. You got to make a living. But I didn't want Illuminati Hotties to go away because I think she has such a distinct and funny and clever songwriting voice. And what I'm hearing on this record is a culmination of not only the kind of stuff she was doing before, but she's also learned all these production tricks. She keeps becoming a more and more and more sophisticated and successful producer, and she's bringing that bag of tricks to her own music. Yeah, it really does feel like the dynamic values of this record are like dialed up a few

degrees of magnitude, even from the last one, to your point about balancing the ugly with the bright. there is like this perfect like sway happening across this record. It moves from one to the other so seamlessly. I think you can even hear that in rot because the vocal performance on that is so light. It's so airy. But then you like, you sort of lean in and listen to the lyrics and it's like covered in fog, carrying on.

It's impossible to carry it all when I'm dropping. the ball, living is optional. Like, that is, that is a very tough sentiment, but also like the, the flow of it lyrically is very, very beautiful. So this sort of ability to capture the tough, the difficult, the raw, the emotional, but also the light, the airy, the free, the liberated aspects of her. personality and her sound really come to the four on this record. Yeah, it's fantastic. That's Illuminati Hotties. Their new album is called Power. We've got some more picks we are very excited

about, but first we're going to take a quick break. It's New Music Friday from All Songs Considered. We are rounding up some of the best new albums out today, August 23rd. Next up, we've got a new record by the Irish band Fontaine's DC. Their new album is called Romance. Let's hear a little bit of the song, Here's the Thing. In the previous segment, Sheldon, you were talking about Illuminati Hotties, kind of finding ways to swirl a lot of emotions and genres into a sound that you think is going to be one thing. Fontaine's DC has really come into their own doing that same sort of thing. They're a band from Ireland.

They're a post-punk band. They came out a few years ago with records that just really had that kind of these like blurts of aggression. Songs with this thundering, chanting quality to them. And I got a sense when I heard their first album, like, okay, I know what this band is. This band is very good at this kind of chugging, urgent, like, just a certain kind of very specific sound. And when you listen to this album, Romance, you're hearing them swirl in so many other influences. You hear a song like the title track, and it sounds a little bit like Alt J. It's like strange and atmospheric.

You hear, you know, here's the thing. The track that we just heard has this like almost swooning quality to it. Little bits of pop woven into that sound. There are other songs that tap into the feel of like shoegaze music. But at the same time, it all still sounds like Fontaine's DC. It all still, it still feels of a piece with the sound they started out with. they're just more confident and more versatile. Yeah, this record is very sort of texturally dense in a way that maybe the previous Fontaine's DC records haven't been,

but it does sort of still have that sort of heavy, like, in your face quality about it. Even thinking about here's the thing, there's something about that riff that just like scratches my brain just right. I mean, I don't know why. It reminds me of like the sound of a zipper, like, particularly when you're trying to tug on a coat before it like whizzes open, that buzz, that little hiss of noise. And I think it really builds on the sense of vexation in that song for me as he performs over it. There's something really interesting about the exchange of that song, wanting to be on the same page but not quite being able to get there. It was inspired by a little squabble between bandmates, but I think of lyric like to be anesthetized and crave emotion so beautiful to hurt so well, it sort of captures the idea that sometimes you have to hash things out to move forward.

Yeah. I mean, tension and friction are so integral to this band sound and to a lot of the themes of this record. To me, this feels like a very, very confident record, you know, by a band that knows who they are and are still looking to expand it. Absolutely. I mean, Grean Chatton said of writing the single Starburster that the experience was one of listening to yourself as opposed to expressing something. I thought that was a very interesting way to put it. This record really does feel like they are, like, directly channeling who they are. They're not out to, like, push any specific idea of what their sound is.

They are just listening to who they have become as a band. And I think they have sort of fully realized the best version of themselves with this record. I agree. That's Romance. It's the new album from the Irish band Fontaine's, D.C. Sheldon, hit us with your next pick. Yeah, the next one for me is from the Queens rapper Heems. It's called Vina LP. Heems, perhaps best known for breaking through in the early 2010s as a member of the alt-rap group Das Racist, and then later teaming up with actor Riz Ahmed for sweatshop boys. In 2015, he released the album Eat, Pray, Thug, which sort of considered the Indian American experience. post 9-11.

And its follow-up didn't come until earlier this year. La Fonder, a collaboration with the producer, Guar of Nepgal, which was sort of free-flowing, mixtapey, very loose in its energy. I guess the hiatus truly is over because only six months later, he's back with this new record, which is named for his mother and sort of features voicemails from Riz and No Doubt's Tony Kanaal and Arouj Aftab and Hassan Minaj. I think Vina is maybe the most team's record ever. It feels like a merger of the Das Racist in Eat Prethug modes.

It's as entrenched in New York City rap as it is sort of like representative of the Indian diaspora and it's full of both humor and pathos. Let's listen to a little bit of Monto. I feel behind broken homes and hawks like his porcelain, a board of divorce and a soul that it's sources, a nation divided, my people they riot. I feel like this song finds Hems in his most effective mode, sort of considering generational trauma and Indian identity with his pointedness and poignancy, thinking specifically about those in his family who survived the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947.

The verses are performed over melancholy keys from Vijay Eyre. It is just such a, like, sweeping, thoughtful, introspective song that is also empathic. I mean, there is so much swirling around in its sonics. Yeah, I mean, he really captures such a mix of cleverness as you kind of hear, even if you're not familiar with him and you're just hearing song and album titles, you know, eat prey thug. You know, you get a sense of like, and a lot of the collaborators, you get a sense, like, this is a clever guy. He's adjacent to comedy.

He's adjacent to, you know, Hollywood. He's got his feet in a lot of different spaces. But there's also, like you said, there's real emotion behind it. There's something really, really thoughtful and reflective about what he's doing at the same time. And I think that makes the humor hit that much harder. Yeah, I mean, he comes from a satire background. Anyone who's heard Das Races knows that, like, the joky quality is always an undertone of what he does. But I think something that has stood out about his solo work is his ability to match that sense of humor with a sort of, like, sharp, inward-looking perspective.

I mean, I think about Manto as a song. I'm most moved by his delivery. Like, when it seems like he's almost struggling to get the words out because they're weighing on him so heavily, something he talks about as having PTSD for something he didn't witness. And it's like that, that's a very, that turn of phrase is to your point about cleverness. Like, he is not just using that wit towards, like, joking. ends. There is also a real sense of purpose in his music. And I think this record finds the perfect sort of middle ground between like providing the humor that he is known for, but also like

digging beneath the surface and thinking about his community and how he is representative of it. Yeah. That's Heems. His new album is called Vena LP. Next up, something a little different. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are back with a new album called Woodland. This is their 10th studio album. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings have been around for ages, but this is their first album of new original music since 2017. They did put out a record in 2020 called All the Good Times, which is kind of a set of covers and classic folk songs. It ended up winning them a Grammy. Their last major national exposure, actually they performed at the 2019 Oscars. when they did a song from Buster Scruggs. But these two, you know, these two have been around for decades, just making this beautiful, warm, thoughtful, gentle roots music that still has a sense of underlying tension to it. Let's hear a little bit of the song, North Country.

So Welch and Rawlings, their chemistry, their harmonies are so unbelievably on point. I remember they performed a tiny desk concert years and years ago, and they just swept in and they were like co-mares of the room that they were in. They just had so much kind of personal chemistry together and their music. Everything is just so locked in. Their voices mesh absolutely perfectly. Yeah, there's just, I mean, you know exactly what you're going to get with this duo, right?

But there's just something so powerful about the way that they move in tandem. The voices mixing for those harmonies, it really lends itself to even the most uninvolved songs and makes them feel perceptive and gripping. I always feel like they are like seeing things that I'm not and I can only figure out what by scooching in closer. I think about the single empty trainload of sky. Yeah, that's a great song. It's really beautiful, folksy, familiar. But there's this image of the boxcar blue showing daylight clear. And it's such a simple image,

but it seems to prompt questions both benign and existential, as pressing as they are fleeting. And you get this sense of how, transitory this like moment is but how transitory life can feel and it all just wells up it's big and emotional and there are their voices right there in harmony as if like moving through all of that together it's such a beautiful beautiful sound yeah i don't even have anything to add to that i mean that's just perfectly put i'm so glad they're back i can't wait for more i continue to always and forever hang on their every word. So that's Woodland, the new record from Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.

We've got one more record in our lightning round. Sheldon hit us. Yeah, last but not least is the new record from Magdalena Bay. It's called Imaginaldisk. The synth pop duo of writer-producers Mika Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin broke through on TikTok by being very in touch with its sort of niche community and eventually a slowed version of the group song Killed Shot, which they eventually re-released because it got so popular, went viral on the platform, sort of soundtracking any number of like anime vids. The group capitalized on that success in 2021 with Mercurial World, which is like very retro as in touch with like the VHS.

era as it is with life very much on social media. Now they've returned for a new album. The first on mom and pop, there is like a captivating retro-futuristic sheen to the duo's best music.

And I think this record sort of improves upon the last one in nearly every way. It can be dreamy. It can be slightly scuzzy. It is often sort of like just a bit askew. But it also feel self-contained within like a little snow globe like imagining its own world let's hear a little

bit of image this song is like such a marvelous example to me of how their songs move there is like a sort of dream logic to them uh they seem to like bring the static interference of old box televisions to like to the doom scrolling era and i and i think singer mika's voice is like so ethereal and almost surreal at points across this record. They'd do a really good job of making every song feel like it's beamed from like an old videotape. Yeah. You know?

And if you watch their videos, they really managed to convey that. It's like it could have been found on a lost VHS tape from 1998. Like it was found on some camcorder somewhere. Very grainy. Even like the backgrounds and the characters in them or feel like they're thrown from like a 90s, like, TV show or something. Yeah, and it's funny. Like, I've seen with this band as they've come up,

and, you know, this is another band where it might feel like an overnight success, but they've been toiling for quite some time. You know, I've seen comparisons to, like, Charlie X, CX and people like that, who are kind of playing with a certain amount of retro futurism. But there's a dreamier, kind of gauzyer quality to their music, where it really feels like it's emanating from a bunch of different eras at once. And I think that works really, really well for them. Yeah, it really does feel like channeling the old broadband connection

directly into your veins in a certain sense. It is like pulling information. from across eras and repackaging them as something that feels very current. I mean, even in all the nostalgia, they do not lose

the like sort of contemporary pop focus that I think drives a lot of their songs. And also, there is like a real sleekness to their music that feels like perfectly produced. It's not doing too much.

And it has, like always a little element that makes you sort of turn your head and go, huh, that's, that's interesting. I wasn't expecting that. A very sort of interesting twist on alternative pop that I think has really found its footing with this record. I think they were still tinkering with Mercurial World. This record sounds like a group that has discovered exactly what they want their songs to do and how to get them to do it. Yeah, that's Magdalena Bay. Their new album is called Imaginaldisc.

When we come back, we're going to have a little discussion about the state of the album in 2024, so stick around. We are back. This is New Music Friday from All Songs Considered. So, Sheldon, I wanted to talk to you about something that I think we've all kind of noticed in 2024, and as we've watched the rollout of a lot of different records. Do you get the sense that there is a less clear definition than ever of what makes an album? Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of artists are sort of thinking about the way that they release music differently. Part of it or a lot of it having to do with the infrastructure of streaming, the way that it works, the way that it reaches listeners. but there's also sort of an uptick in like add-ons,

like thinking about the album after the album or the EP after the album, how the next thing is already a part of the thing you're doing. A lot of it dealing in pop and rap specifically. There's a sense that being an artist is now an act of continuous maintenance. And so releasing music is like, the latest iOS update. You have to stay new and top of mind. So it tracks that now that the tech companies run music,

there is a desire to see music as content with near constant software overhauls. So now you've got artists sort of like packaging, repackaging and packaging and repackaging their albums, adding deluxe albums the week after, sometimes the same day. Oh, my gosh. We've seen this phenomenon already this year. Taylor Swift released the tortured poets department in April. It was supposed to be 16 songs. And then boom, surprise, it was 31 songs. Post Malone released his album F1 trillion last week. It was already kind of an epic record. And then, surprise, there were nine solo songs added on to this collection of country duets.

And so we've seen it happen where you think you're going to get one kind of supersized, record and then it comes out as a super duper sized drive. There is this sense that I think these days there is no penalty to releasing more music and there is an almost infrastructural encouragement of inflation. Yeah, and now I think we should note that that is true, I think, primarily for major stars. Right. I think for up-and-coming artists, if you release too much music, it all gets lost. But once you've reached the pay grade of a Taylor Swift or a post Malone, there are so many structural advantages to putting out an album with as many songs on it as possible because that boosts your streaming numbers.

All of a sudden you're setting milestones like when Taylor Swift landed 31 songs on the Hot 100 simultaneously. There are a lot of structural advantages for artists kind of flooding the market with material. But I wanted to back up a few years to Taylor Swift's nemesis, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who famously put out an album, kind of, called The Life of Pablo, released it to streaming and then kind of kept tinkering with it, kept changing it, and like wouldn't put out a physical album that would stand as like the one official, canonical version of it. the record. Yeah, I mean, Kanye does feel like the genesis for a lot of these ideas. You do see people sort of like going back into the app and changing things, which this is a thing that is only made possible by the digital sphere, right? I mean, in the past, the album goes out, it's out. And that version is in the world forever. And it is the version that people know and love. But now you can change and remix and revamp as much as you want. Sometimes that means

like literally going in and switching things around, but sometimes it means taking songs that already exist and creating many different versions of them as you often see with the remix EPs that, I mean, there was a release of the Barbie movie collaboration Barbie World, with Nikki Minaj and Ice Spice packaged together as an extended version, a sped-up version, a slowed-down version, an instrumental in a video. And it's like all of that is to your point in service of gaming the system and getting as many streams as possible per play, trying to add up the total sum of, like, scrap parts essentially.

Well, and, I mean, you use the phrase gaming the system. We should speak to the fact that a lot of this is, in fact, an effort to kind of, RIG is a very strong word, but game the charts. And one of the reasons we're talking about this is that this week, the Billboard 200, the big Billboard Albums chart dropped, and Taylor Swift's album, The Tortured Poets Department, just scored its 15th week at number one. And for the last couple of weeks,

Taylor Swift has released a lot of digital variant editions of her album, heavily discounted on her website. You can download the first 16 songs on the Tortured Poets Department with this exclusive bonus track. But then there will be different versions of the album that come with different bonus tracks. And it's not necessarily to muddy the waters of what is the tortured poets department, or to have people actually think of it as if it is a bunch of different albums at once. the idea is to keep the album at number one on the Billboard charts. And specifically, she really leaned into that task a couple weeks ago when what she was clearly trying to do was not only stay at number one, but keep Kanye West out of that number one spot. Yee released an album with Thai Dala sign called Fultures 2.

And it was very clear that Taylor Swift did not want that album to fit number one. And so she kind of released all these different versions and sort of encouraging. her fans like, give me $499 to help me destroy my nemesis, which is just a very Taylor Swift thing to do. And we should note, Taylor Swift is not the only person who is releasing variant additions. I mean, there are variant additions of Yay and Tidalasian's album Vultures too. And lots of artists have kind of come to release remixed versions of singles from their album as a way to kind of keep the excitement around the album going. Charlie X-C-X has released very, like, remixed versions of songs from Brat

that have brought in ringers and giant guest stars, people like Billy Elish and Lord, have popped up on these remixed Charlie X-C-X songs. You know, Brat is still the same record, but it is constantly morphing and shifting as new remixes from it are taking shape. Yeah, I mean, Taylor has become, a master of these tactics. I think of the alternate vinyl versions of midnights turning into a

clock sort of like asking listeners to collect as many versions as possible to essentially like boost. To collect their albums like Pokemon cards. Right. Turning it into this sort of aesthetic value, which like that's some of K-pop culture invading the top 40, like making investment into an artist into like an act of collectibles. But to your point about Charlie X-E-X, like I think there is an aspect of this that can feel refreshing too. There is something about the Charlie X-EX post-brat collabs

that feel like quite self-aware and in touch with what the album was and like the way that it is reaching its audience, working with Lord for Girls So Confusing, and guests with Billy Eilish. Those are moves done with intention that don't necessarily feel like they are geared to rig the system, as you said, so much as like play with the discourse that is surrounding the record already. I think about Post Malone too in this sense because at least his longbed version feels like some kind of, there's some kind of creative principle behind it. The original tracks all have features.

the long bed tracks are just post by himself. I think that shows that there is still a space for like purposeful extension, if you will. It just feels like a double album split into two. And while that does play directly into the way that the charts function these days, there is an artistic purpose behind some of these moves. Yeah, and I think that's when it works best. I mean, I think the Charlie X, CX example is what really jumps out there, where you mentioned Girl So Confusing with Lord,

where the Brat version of Girl So Confusing is Charlie X, CX, kind of contemplating her curdled friendship with Lord, having that song come out, there's a conversation, who's she talking about? I think she's talking about Lord. And then releasing a version of it where Lord comes in and provides a response,

and then they come together and their friendship is renewed, it's a sense of an album as not just a statement but a conversation. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think there's also, it's important to note that with these albums, with these add-ons, there is a sense that the listener gets to pick what they want out of this music. In the playlist economy, there is a certain kind of person who is like, just give me all the songs. And I'll make sense of what it means,

what it is. I think personally for me about the Drake for All the Dog's Scary Hours version that came out after the original version being significantly better than the first version, that being the version of the album that I know and the other version completely not existing in my mind. So it's like there is in this current sort of like playlist driven, a listener-driven, scroller-focused culture, like of value in just an artist being like, hey, I've got a lot of songs.

Maybe you'll like some of them. Maybe you won't, but you get to make sense of what it is. Exactly. Choose your own Sonic Adventure. All right. Well, that will do it for New Music Friday. Sheldon Pierce,

thanks so much for joining me. Thanks so much for having me, Stephen. So we'd love to know what you think of New Music Friday and All Songs Considered, please send your feedback at all songs at NPR.org. If you do like the show, please tell your friends. Please leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Don't forget, as always, to subscribe to the NPR Music Newsletter at NPR.org slash music newsletter.

It's written by an assortment of great minds at NPR Music, as well as me personally. Please remember that if you want to listen to this show, sponsor-free, you can support our work by joining NPR Music Plus. Just go to plus.npr.org slash NPR music or search for NPR music and Apple Podcasts. This podcast was produced by Alejandra Marcus Hansa, and we had editorial support from Saraya Mohamed. I'm Stephen Thompson here with the great and good Sheldon Pierce. Thank you so much for listening, and we will see you next week.