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Khalid growing up, dealing with fame

Khalid's newest album is Free Spirit. Photo via Associated Press
Khalid's newest album is Free Spirit. Photo via Associated Press

B+ Khalid

Free Spirit

Right Hand/RCA

With his 2017 debut, American Teen, Khalid arrived as a teenager speaking for fellow teens — a little proud, a little humble and dazedly matter-of-fact. With his long-breathed croon floating over unassuming low-fi production, he sang about circumscribed but smartphone-connected lives, misfiring romances and looming life choices. The immediacy of his melodies, the "Everyteen" sensibility of his lyrics and the direct yearning in his voice quickly found a wide audience.

Khalid's second full-length album grapples with a more isolated experience: coming to terms with fame, wealth, broader horizons and lingering insecurity. "Is this heaven or Armageddon?" he wonders in "Free Spirit."

The music cushions his unease. The album rolls along smoothly for nearly an hour, one leisurely midtempo groove after another, while Khalid's voice conveys far more longing than agitation. Khalid embraces a fuller sound that often recalls the 1980s and 1990s, with pillowy synthesizers, tickling guitars and layers of his vocal harmonies.

In "Twenty One" — his current age — Khalid woos someone while he confesses his own turmoil: "I'm in pain/ But I'm to blame/ To end this fight/ I have to change."

"Talk," produced and co-written by the English duo Disclosure, is a male analog of Janet Jackson's "Let's Wait Awhile," telling an eager partner that slowing things down will bring them closer.

"Bad Luck" glides along on gently ticking drums and a lacework of guitars, distantly suggesting Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing," yet it's anything but reassuring. All Khalid sees around him is shallowness and duplicity: "No one really means it when they're wishing you well/ I got no one to call, no one/ and people only love you when they're needing your wealth," he sings.

He doesn't conquer those demons; nor does he succumb to them. He suspends them in melody and rhythm, recognizing them and staring them down. He is a young man alone, trying to get through life with some honest grace.

Hot tracks: "Bad Luck," "Twenty One," "Talk," "Free Spirit"

— JON PARELES

The New York Times

Rated PG is the new album by Peter Gabriel. Photo via Associated Press
Rated PG is the new album by Peter Gabriel. Photo via Associated Press

B Peter Gabriel

Rated PG

Real World

You probably know Peter Gabriel for his popular hits "Sledgehammer" and "Big Time" and maybe a classics such as "Games Without Frontiers." Rated PG is a collection of 10 songs heb has supplied for films.

Some are well-known, such as "In Your Eyes," which is familiar thanks to John Cusack blasting it from a boombox in Say Anything ..., or the anthemic "Down to Earth" from Wall-E. Others are welcome reminders of gems trapped in celluloid, like the frightening duet with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan on "Taboo" from Natural Born Killers or the addictive "Walk Through the Fire" from Against All Odds.

Rated PG also resurrects lost tracks that outshined their films, like "This Is Party Man" from the forgettable 1995 Denzel Washington flick Virtuosity or the dark and slinky, previously unreleased "Noctural" from 2001's Les Morsures de l'Aube.

So rich is Gabriel's catalog that he hasn't added tracks from his own soundtracks, like the ones he did for Alan Parker's Birdy or Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ.

Each song on Rated PG is rich and complex with world beats or cleverly constructed synths. Each functions as a big, special cornerstone, like music playing as the credits roll, which is what they often did in the films they graced.

Hot tracks: "Taboo," "Down to Earth," "In Your Eyes"

— MARK KENNEDY

The Associated Press

SINGLES

• Kelly Clarkson, "Broken & Beautiful"

Kelly Clarkson and Pink have been working in parallel for almost two decades. In 2017, when both artists had new albums (Meaning of Life and Beautiful Trauma) they teamed for a cover of R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts" at the American Music Awards. Now they've collaborated — along with Marshmello and Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" team of Johnny McDaid and Steve Mac — on a classic empowerment anthem either of them could have sung. It's from the animated movie UglyDolls, in which Clarkson plays a plush toy seeking self-acceptance. Perhaps in the future these two powerhouse vocalists will seek a co-headlining arena tour.

— CARYN GANZ

The New York Times

• Better Oblivion Community Center, "Shallow"

It's more important that this version of the Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga hit from A Star Is Born exists than that it's great. That said, it's almost great. Conor Oberst takes the Jackson Maine part and aggressively deflates it — he turns the searching lyrics morose, and you sense he wants to yank the cadence down into the mud but doesn't let himself. Perhaps that's because Phoebe Bridgers is on deck, and she's in ferocious form. If Oberst is stubbing the song out, she's lifting it over her head in triumph.

— JON CARAMANICA

The New York Times

• Sky Ferreira, "Downhill Lullaby"

The first original song Sky Ferreira has released since 2013 veers sharply away from the armor-clad pop that filled her first album. But in a way, it's a segue from that record's ominous (and atypical) title song, Night Time, My Time, by way of the latter-day Twin Peaks; she produced the song with the music supervisor for Twin Peaks, Dean Hurley. A full minute of a dirgelike string-section instrumental — keening and quivering above, pulsating below — opens "Downhill Lullaby" before Ferreira comes in, singing a chantlike verse in a low, ragged voice: "You leave me open when you hit me/ No one can hear you, then you hurt me."

— JON PARELES

The New York Times

Style on 04/16/2019

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