In a swirl of harplike arpeggios over a stubborn beat, Matty Healy rails at hypocrisy and disinformation, complaining “Modernity has failed us,” and admits to individual ambition despite it all: a millennial’s plight.

2. Sade, ‘The Big Unknown’

Desolate lost love haunts the verses before determined self-preservation lifts the choruses, all at a tempo so slow only a singer like Sade would dare it.

3. Rosanne Cash featuring Sam Phillips, ‘She Remembers Everything’

Roots rock goes noir, with tolling piano and reverbed guitar, in a ballad about a lasting trauma, unnamed but inescapable.

4. Jorja Smith, ‘Blue Lights’

Over mournful electric-piano chords, Jorja Smith warns that in a rough neighborhood, panic can be deadly, counseling, “Don’t you run when you hear the sirens coming.”