Dua Lipa – ‘Houdini’
“Come here closer, are you reading my lips?” Dua Lipa asks on ‘Houdini’, her big first preview of DL3. Lean in and focus and what you’ll hear her saying is: make like a cringe Tinder bio and embrace that ‘here for a good time, not for a long time’ spirit. “I’m not here for long / Catch me or I go, Houdini,” she advises between sci-fi synth drones and a lowkey but insistent beat. A slinky, sultry return.
aespa – ‘Drama’
Like the savage sister to Taylor Swift’s “It’s me, hi / I’m the problem, it’s me”, K-pop baddies aespa are owning up to something on ‘Drama’. There’s no ounce of shame or regret here, though. “I’m the drama,” Winter declares confidently in the fierce track’s opening lines, her bandmates backing her up come the chorus: “I bring drama-ma-ma-ma / With my girls in the back […] It starts with me, drama.”
Tierra Whack – ‘Chanel Pit’
For a while, Tierra Whack was dominating hip-hop with her lurid, vibrant bars. In the last two years – since her ‘Pop?’, ‘Rap?’ And ‘R&B?’ releases in December 2021 – we’ve gone through something of a drought. Thankfully, that’s now over with the unveiling of ‘Chanel Pit’, a typically fun cut that bounces through speaker-shaking bass and twinkling melodies as Whack pays tribute to her signature scent. “Mosh pit smell like Chanel,” she notes. “What is that shit I smell? / Me, I am that shit you smell.”
Uche Yara – ‘Sophie’
“Sophie, you’re so mean!” Austrian-born, Berlin-based multi-instrumentalist Uche Yara opens one half of her new double a-side single, stepping into the shoes of a lover who feels hard done by. With scratchy, coarse guitars and Yara’s enthralling voice, it’s the perfect song to turn to next one a partner pisses you off.
Flowerovlove – ‘a girl like me’
In relationships, it’s often the early days we romanticise – the moments when we’re not quite sure how the other person feels; where the unknown can be anxiety-ridden but also blows things wide open for giddy daydreams. It’s a feeling that flowerovlove captures perfectly on her latest single, ‘a girl like me’, narrating the dizzying first steps over a shuffling, sweet soundtrack. “Would a boy like you like a girl like me?” she questions. “Doesn’t matter if we don’t know where this leads.”
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