Review: Morgan Wallen portrays crazy drug dealer in new single

Morgan Wallen, ’I’m a Little Crazy’

“I’m a little crazy, but the world’s insane,” the disturbed narrator of country megastar Wallen’s new single contends. His character is a drug dealer who keeps a loaded gun nearby. He’s sustaining himself “on antidepressants and lukewarm beers” and yelling at his TV, “but the news don’t change.” Over steadfast acoustic guitar picking and lightly brushed drums, Wallen sings with chilling, sociopathic calm.

JON PARELES, New York Times

Jack Harlow featuring Doja Cat, ’Just Us’

Harlow and Doja exchange flirty verses on “Just Us,” a fast-paced track that forgoes catchy pop choruses and focuses instead on dexterous flows and winking wordplay. “I know it sounds like Zack and Cody, this life’s sweet,” Harlow raps, showing his age with a reference to a mid-2000s Disney Channel show. Corny? Maybe, but Doja’s into it: “You a softy, marshmallows and black coffee,” she counters affectionately. The video is full of celebrity cameos that prove how many people will pick up the phone when Harlow calls: Matt Damon, PinkPantheress, John Mayer and Nicholas Braun. Zack and Cody, alas, are nowhere to be found.

LINDSAY ZOLADZ, New York Times

Japanese Breakfast, ’Here Is Someone’

Plucked string tones from all directions create a magical, shimmering cascade around Michelle Zauner’s voice in “Here Is Someone” from the new album by Japanese Breakfast, “For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women).” The lyrics hint at tensions and anxieties, but the track radiates anticipation: “Life is sad, but here is someone,” Zauner concludes.

JON PARELES, New York Times

Marianne Faithfull, ’Burning Moonlight’

Faithfull, who died in January at 78, kept recording almost to the end. She brought every bit of her scratchy, ravaged, tenacious voice to “Burning Moonlight,” a song she co-wrote that holds one of her last manifestoes: “Burning moonlight to survive / Walking in fire is my life.” Acoustic guitars and tambourine connect the music to the 1960s, when she got her start; her singing holds all the decades of experience that followed.

JON PARELES, New York Times

The Waterboys featuring Fiona Apple, ’Letter From an Unknown Girlfriend’

“Letter From an Unknown Girlfriend” is from the Waterboys album due April 4, “Life, Death and Dennis Hopper,” and was written by Mike Scott. But it is sung and played by Apple, alone at the piano, delivering a remembrance of an abusive boyfriend: “I used to say no man would ever strike me,” it begins, “And no man ever did ‘til I met you.” She admits to the charm of the “satyr running wild in you,” but her voice rises to a bitter, primal rasp as she recalls the worst. It’s a stark, harrowing performance.

JON PARELES, New York Times

Deerhoof, ’Immigrant Songs’

The long-running indie-rock band Deerhoof can be coy or oblique, but it’s neither in “Immigrant Songs,” a response to America’s sudden, brutal xenophobia. Satomi Matsuzaki gives voice to unrecognized immigrant labor — drivers, cooks, entertainers — over guitars and drums that lilt and intertwine behind her. But for the second half of this seven-minute track, the instruments just scream. There’s no more arguing or persuasion left.

JON PARELES, New York Times

New releases

Mumford & Sons, “Rushmere”

Lucy Dacus, “Forever Is a Feeling”

Will Smith, “Based on a True Story”

Perfume Genius, “Glory”

The Darkness, “Dreams on Toast”