Chipperest Take on the Death of Everything: Charly Bliss, “Blown to Bits”



May you greet every day of this rotting century with the aplomb of the power-pop band Charly Bliss. In the tone of a joyful cultist, the singer Eva Hendricks lists little everythings that give life texture: “karate lessons,” “reality shows,” “feeling so sure you’re waking up tomorrow,” and so on. Her band makes like the Death Star warming up its laser canon, and Hendricks fires: “It’s gonna break my heart to see it blown to bits!” Whether the apocalypse she’s referring to is environmental, political, or existential, you can dance in the debris all the same. — S.K.

Finally, a Song to Unseat “Boo’d Up” as the Official Crush Anthem: Snoh Aalegra, “I Want You Around”



If the British singer Ella Mai owned 2018 with the cloying feeeeelings of the impossibly earnest “Boo’d Up,” then the Swedish musician Snoh Aalegra is taking a far more subdued approach to the art of the crush bop. “I Want You Around” is the best song on -Ugh, Those Feels Again, her August album. Warm and atmospheric, the song’s production mirrors its tentative lyrics: “I try not to show how I feel about you / Thinkin’ we should wait, but we don’t really want to.” The words suggest a desire for a love interest’s attention, even as they stop short of promising a commitment to much more. Sometimes that’s enough. — H.G.

Science-Fiction Story of the Year: Lil Nas X, “Old Town Road”

The job of critics is to help sort the evolutionary from the disruptive, and there’s been plenty of continuity-spotting with regard to the No. 1 song of the year. Yes, “Old Town Road” is another novelty track and another look for the black cowboy. But there’s almost nothing relevantly familiar about a gay Atlanta meme maker buying a beat from a Dutch teen who’d added trap rumble to a decade-old open-source banjo loop by a ’90s industrial band, thereby forcing controversy about the definition of “country music,” capitalizing on an emerging video platform, breaking Mariah Carey’s most cherished chart record, and popularizing the term yee yee juice. Truly, we have ridden somewhere new. — S.K.

Rookie of the Year Matchup: Koffee featuring Gunna, “W”



Koffee, the 19-year-old reggae phenom, came into 2019 like, well, a Rapture. Her EP, a pulsing and compact sampling of her vocal styles, announced her as an artist to watch. The Atlanta rapper Gunna, whose debut album Drip or Drown 2 was one of the year’s best, joins Koffee on this ecstatic song. In its music video, the two guide a choir, anticipate an incoming storm, and rhyme circles around some of their more seasoned peers. The contrast between their lyrics is particularly amusing: Koffee gives thanks and extols the virtues of hard work; Gunna leans into romance. — H.G.

The Lemonade Owning Your Rumors Memorial Award: Miley Cyrus, “Slide Away”



The very next New Music Friday after Miley Cyrus announced her separation from the actor Liam Hemsworth, this bittersweet symphony reasserted the human behind the TMZ headlines. The strings read as stately, but the producer Mike Will Made-It’s chopped-and-screwed touches conjure the ghost of Cyrus’s younger, twerkier years. Cyrus, meanwhile, completed her long-awaited molting into an arena-rock phoenix. When nasty rumors about her relationship’s dissolution emerged, she issued an incredible series of tweets elaborating on the song’s concise explanation for what really happened: “You say that everything changed / You’re right, we’re grown now.” — S.K.