New Music Friday: Alan Walker & Sophia Somajo! Robyn!! Lady Gaga twice!!! Etc!!!!

Notes on this week’s new releases:

• The shoddily Photoshopped image at the top of this page exists to commemorate the release of Alan Walker and Sophia Somajo‘s Diamond Heart. This is the big song she was talking about in our interview last week and it is, indeed, quite big. Alan Walker still sounds like an estate agent but this song is a belter.
• Honey by Robyn is pretty good.
• It’s quite funny listening through New Zealand band Openside‘s releases on Spotify — they started off in 2015 as a sort of Paramoreish rock band now three years later Character Flaws is a balls-out electropop beast. This definitely feels like they’re doing things the right way round — certainly a lot better than starting off doing electronic pop and ending up bogged down in outdated notions of authenticity.
• Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper‘s Shallow is out now!!
• Jaguar Dreams bill themselves as “a New York indie-rock band that you can dance to” but wait, come back — Behind Those Clothes is actually worth several listens.
• One By One is Rationale’s best song yet. Well done Rationale!
• St Vincent‘s Slow Disco got a Fast Slow Disco rework a few months ago; today we have Slow Slow Disco. Ordinarily there’s no space for Acoustic Versions on the Popjustice New Music Friday playlist but this sneaks in for reasons relating to the glory of the high concept single release. Perhaps this is what the ‘tringle’, a format attempted by JoJo a couple of years back, should have been?
• The Nile Rodgers/Chic album could have been lots of things. Sadly it’s the thing that’s been released today, a messily A&Rd album that struggles to ten tracks, two of which are the same song. The whole project should probably have been shelved the moment LunchMoney Lewis delivered Do You Wanna Party, a song to which the only is response is, sadly, “not like this”.

Subscribe to the playlist on Spotify