Pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on notable new songs and videos.
◼️ Stevie Wonder featuring Rapsody, Cordae, Chika and Busta Rhymes, "Can't Put It in the Hands of Fate." Stevie Wonder has lost patience with the lack of progress toward racial justice in America, and "Can't Put It in the Hands of Fate" brings new specifics to the sentiments he sang about in "You Haven't Done Nothin'" back in 1974. "You say you're sick and tired of us protesting/I say, not tired enough to make a change," Wonder sings. "You say just to hold on/I say no way." Soon afterward, he lets loose a profanity. The beat is go-go, the tenacious, percussion-happy style from Washington, while Wonder's perpetual tunefulness comes through in a jaunty harmonica lick and ever-climbing melodies. But he puts rappers upfront before he sings his first verse, and he fades out the song with a righteous chant: "Ain't nobody got time to wait."
— JON PARELES
◼️ Lana Del Rey, "Let Me Love You Like a Woman." Though Lana Del Rey has teased her forthcoming album, "Chemtrails Over the Country Club," as an aesthetic departure — "it was like, 'Is this the new folk? Oh, God, are we going country?'" she recently mused in Interview — the first song she has released from it, "Let Me Love You Like a Woman," is standard Lana fare. The piano-driven arrangement is muted and sparse, placing all the emphasis on Del Rey's breathy, crooning romanticism ("Let me hold you like a baby") and casual mass-cultural references ("Let me shine like a diamond," "We could get lost in the purple rain.") Perhaps, though, "Let Me Love You Like a Woman" is just the point of departure for "Chemtrails," which she has described as "Midwestern-sounding," as she beckons in the verse "I'm ready to leave LA and I want you to come."
— LINDSAY ZOLADZ
◼️ Demi Lovato, "Commander in Chief." In July 2016, Demi Lovato sang her brassy anthem "Confident" — a playlist staple at many a Hillary Clinton event, and a superior alternative to Rachel Platten's "Fight Song" — on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention. Four years later, on the cusp of another election, Lovato has released a much more somber song for the occasion: the protest piano ballad "Commander in Chief," which she debuted Oct. 14 during the Billboard Music Awards. Though she never mentions him by name, the song — with sparse production from Billie Eilish's brother, Finneas — is a direct address to President Donald Trump, delivered in a voice both quavering and undaunted. The song's best moment is its sickest burn: "Won't give up, stand our ground," Lovato sings, "we'll be in the streets while you're bunkering down."
— LINDSAY ZOLADZ
◼️ Kristeen Young featuring David Bowie, "American Landfill." It's eerie to hear David Bowie singing, "We can rise up from this grave" in "American Landfill," which arrives suddenly on "The Turning: Kate's Diary," a spinoff EP from the soundtrack to "The Turning." Bowie's voice and imprint are heard throughout the song, which is a ferocious reworking of Kristeen Young's "Saviour," a duet with Bowie that she wrote and originally released in 2004, made with Bowie's longtime producer, Tony Visconti. Radically reshaped now by Young and producer Justin Raisen, it veers from jagged, dissonant verses — with electronic percussion and Young's own dissonant piano — to heroic, glam-anthem choruses and a lofty, string-backed near-finale that comes crashing back down at the end. She's less hopeful than ever that "You could be my saviour."
— JON PARELES
◼️ Justin Bieber and Benny Blanco, "Lonely." "Everybody knows my past now, like my house was always made of glass," Justin Bieber sings on a raw, aching new song with producer Benny Blanco, "Maybe that's the price you pay for the money and fame at an early age." Though Bieber has spoken plenty about the toll his childhood stardom took on his mental health (most recently in the YouTube series "Justin Bieber: Seasons"), he has never sung about it quite as candidly as he does here. "I'm so lonely," he sings on the chorus, stretching that last word out into a broken yodel that conjures young Mason Ramsey in the aisles of Walmart. It's a particularly loaded word for Bieber, though, given that one of his earliest hits — from the purple-hoodie era that actor Jacob Tremblay so eerily conjures in the music video — promised "One Less Lonely Girl."
— LINDSAY ZOLADZ