We typically are blessed with one Friday each year that releases a significant amount of sensational music. Last year, it was March 7th. This year, 385 days later, March 27th has blessed us with a near bottomless amount of sensational records across a number of genres. There’s enough to listen to just from last Friday the entire listening calendar of the year could be full.

Enjoy my thoughts and grappling with this auditory assault, made by artists new and old, pushing and pulling our very notions of what a ‘New Music Friday’ is and can be. This list is ordered, from my most to least favorite albums from the day!

No frills. I’ll say it with my whole chest: this is one of the best pop albums ever released. There is no way to underscore this release as anything less than placing it near the pinnacle of the genre. If you want comparisons, I would describe WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA as Britney Spears raised on warehouse raves. Production throughout the record drives the experience, and it’s unparalleled for a major label to release a project this rave-inspired. BEAT UP CHANEL$ is one of the best pop songs I’ve heard in a decade, CRANK screeches over a jersey club beat, and $T. LOSER is so emphatically catchy I’ve hummed it since I heard it.

A post-Brat world is full of gauche imitators, yet Slayyyter’s the our next pop it-girl that will force you to dance until you’re sweating the liquor you’re drinking. Bass lines are brutal, synths are heavy, and the lyrics are meant to be screamed in the fog of the club. Do money, drugs, chains, cigarettes, designer brands, dancing, flashing lights, double vodka sodas, skin-tight clothes, or over stimulation sound fun to you? Choose quick, because our next generation of pop stars is here and it’s up to you to determine if you’re here with them.

Listen if you like: cigarettes, dancing, the good songs on Brat, hard bass in pop songs, throwing your hair while dancing

Famously, I am not a classical pop fan. I do not like Olivia Dean, I do not like Gaga’s ballroom stuff, and I’ve been anemic to Florence + The Machine for over a decade. If I am writing about RAYE, it’s because the dial has been turned so far maximalist that I cannot ignore the pull. THIS MUSIC MAY CONTAIN HOPE. is a grand shot at a masterpiece layered like a 4-act theatrical performance. It’s albums like this that win ‘Album of the Year’ at award shows and everyone collectively says: ‘Well yeah, that makes sense.’ A few moments are a bit uninspired, The WhatsApp Shakespeare. is gawky — maximalist dramaticism that would make even Lin Manuel Miranda bite his lip and look away. Tunes like I Hate the Way I Look Today. are all-telling but blushed under big band tongue-and-cheek humor that would be welcome in a Tom and Jerry™ skit. A few of the songs on here overstay their welcome, I Know You’re Hurting., but every one of these songs is so cinematic you will never wish they end. If you need a hint for how grandiose the experience is, Hans Zimmer is a credited feature on one of the least interesting songs on the record. If you listened to any 30 second segment picked at random, it could be titled ‘climax of the experience.’ My pick, for the grandest moment is the storytelling, lead up, and introduction to the one and only Al Green. It’s not all great, as I feel the 4th act falls pretty flat — to the point I’d describe as “feeling like semicolon tattoos.”

Contrasting to Dave’s most recent album, which borderline embraced defeatism in the wake of the grand atrocities of our time, RAYE broadens her vision of what hope is and can be. Spoken word sermons are littered throughout the experience, and by the end of the experience you might even find the darkest holes of your pessimistic heart believing a better world is possible. In a world where algorithms, technology, and advertising drive our every second, your grandest act of resistance is embracing light and welcoming your own emotion. A lifetime of achievement is packed into these 74 minutes.

Listen if you like: big ambitions, persisting, orchestral instrumentals

Potentially my most documented artist, smokedope2016’s trilogy is officially complete. You’ll know immediately if this is for you: full blown autotuned soundcloud rap over blown out spacey beats. If it’s your cup of tea it’ll be the best cup of the year. I’ll save some sentences and dodge writing about the many songs where absurdity is the point, and instead point you to Flocc. Unique in smokedope2016’s discography, it’s the first song of his leaning more in the dance camp instead of rap. lil fitted cap borderline made a house beat while smokedope2016 finds many different ways to say ’16 and explaining how cinema his life is. There’s also tunes like Be My Zombie, which has a chorus as funny as the existence of your hometown suburban rapper’s career.

lil fitted cap is a once in a generation producer. Will he ever produce for anyone not named smokedope2016? Who knows. I cannot fathom something like Killstation over a cap beat. There’s a world where glaive, yeat, lean, or any of the new wave cloud rappers skid over these beats. I don’t know if it’s the world we’re in.

Listen if you like: ridiculous spaced out instrumentals and vocal stims about random things teenagers think about

ADL is the first Yeat album I’ve made it all the way through in one sitting. Does that make it good? Absolutely not. He somehow packed 62 minutes and 21 songs on here, which is probably 30 minutes and 10 songs too much for me to actually care. The features are genuinely absurd: YoungBoy Never Broke Again, Grimes, Elton John, Don Toliver, Julia Wolf, King Kylie (Kylie Jenner), Kid Cudi, 070 Shake, Swizz Beats, and Joji all make appearances. You would never believe me unless you heard it too, but Kylie Jenner’s song is the best one out of the bunch. Griddlë is my favorite song off here, entirely because the chorus became a new repetition for me to do pushups to.

I don’t believe Yeat will ever get better than this, but I also don’t think he’ll ever get worse; that’s far more praise than I can give to 80% of artists. I’ve started to look at his catalogue like Future’s: pick my 3-4 favorites off each album and that’s it. I’d recommend you do the same.

Listen if you like: Yeat

I know we all stopped listening to Kanye after he added 8 paragraphs to the “Public Image” portion of his Wikipedia page, but this is his first project since Donda that has a modicum of effort put into it. Will I ever relisten to the entire album? No. Is it good? Also no. Are there 3 songs I like? Yes: ALL THE LOVE, BULLY, PREACHER MAN.

Listen if you like: auditory self-harm

The Twilight Sad are straight out of Scotland and have been around for 20 years. If you need your fix of good indie-rock that’s dance-punk adjacent, you’ll get a few great replays out of this. Moments might lean a bit gothic, and many of the song-lengths will run into the dramatic territory. I’ve found a few songs to be quite memorable, especially in the second half, and I may end up revisiting a cute romp like this throughout the year.

Listen if you like: dance punk songs from the early 2000s but with a Scottish accent

I hated this. I found it mundane, boring, and offensive. An excruciatingly long 28 minutes, the experience never peaks and never gets good. It’s a marathon of monotony. A lot of people like it though, so if you want stripped down dance pop out of the NYC underground, have at it.

Fcukers have gotten insane amounts of press for a duo with ~10 songs. It’s a grand statement of how starved Americans are for dance music made by Americans, and how unquenchable the thirst is to party. If something this under-cooked can make headlines, imagine what actual good music made by New Yorkers or Chicago natives would do.

Listen if you like: telling people you party but what you really mean is go out until 10pm and then get sleepy

Few people are putting out more music in the ‘rage’ space than ezcodylee. I’ve lost track with the amount of releases he’s got at this point, across EPs, albums, and mixtapes. He is trying something new, combining metal/nu-metal with rage rap. It seems impossible (it is), and on more than one occasion it’ll be jarring (it is). Tons of artists have attempted to blend rage with guitars – ISOxo @ kidsgonemad in SD, and Playboi Carti everytime he headlines Rolling Loud stand out. However, seeing an artist fully embrace the ‘rage is to rap what punk is to rock’ ethos is interesting even though it comes across half-baked. While this isn’t my favorite release of the day, there are legions of teenagers that will have this as their favorite of the year. I also cannot fathom what music like this would sound like live.

Listen if you like: jumping up and down while recording a video on your phone with the flash on

Other Releases I Don’t Want to Write About

• Robyn – Sexistential: I hated this, but it feels like her Erotica.
• Snail Mail – Ricochet: Mixed like mud, she should fire her audio engineers
• Hellripper – Coronach: Incredible guitar work from a one-man metal band, gets monotonous by the end but the 1st song and a few in the second half were cool
• DON BROCO – Nightmare Tripping: The ballads were horrible but the heavy songs (including the Nickelback song) were cool
• Fetty Wap – Zavier: I had no thoughts through this entire listen