Friday Music Guide: New Music From Tate McRae, Selena Gomez & Benny Blanco, JENNIE with Doechii & More

Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday’s most essential releases — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond. 

This week, Tate McRae seizes her moment, Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco find healing with Gracie Abrams, and JENNIE and Doechii run the world for the girls. Check out all of this week’s picks below:

Tate McRae, So Close to What 

Tate McRae’s success story is one of perseverance: the Canadian pop star has spent grinding out singles and projects, honing her sound and point of view, and collecting enough crossover hits to build palpable buzz around her latest full-length. So Close to What doesn’t deviate too much from McRae’s proven aesthetic — the 15 tracks rarely exceed the three-minute mark — but also features a more mature perspective, as McRae asserts her fears and desires within each slick hook.

Selena Gomez & Benny Blanco with Gracie Abrams, “Call Me When You Break Up” 

Longtime Selena Gomez fans understand the appeal of her stream-of-consciousness pop — verses blurted out, vulnerabilities on full display — and Gomez (alongside fiancee Benny Blanco and her pal Gracie Abrams) releases a winner in that template with “Call Me When You Break Up,” as she and Abrams play ride-or-die friends and emotional foils.

JENNIE feat. Doechii, “ExtraL” 

While the latest preview of JENNIE’s forthcoming solo album Ruby features a delightfully aggressive performance from the BLACKPINK star and a bullet-time guest verse by Doechii, the female empowerment anthem is highlighted by a refrain peppered throughout the song, and sure to elicit shout-alongs at clubs in the coming months: “Do my ladies run this?”

Don Toliver & Speedy feat. J-Hope & Pharrell Willams, “LV Bag” 

“LV Bag,” which premiered at Pharrell Williams’ menswear show during Paris Fashion Week, boasts a stacked lineup — Don Toliver headlines the affair, and he corrals J-Hope of BTS to navigate the opulent opening verse — but the melody that snakes throughout the track is a classic Williams earworm, as undeniably catchy as some of his early Neptunes smashes.

Coco Jones, “Taste” 

Ahead of her newly announced debut album, Why Not More?, which is due out in April, Coco Jones has established herself as an effortlessly talented star in the R&B world — but new single “Taste,” which is built around a sample of Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” serves a nice reminder of her pop panache as well.

Sam Fender, People Watching 

The title People Watching should be taken literally — for Sam Fender’s third studio album, the British rock star shifts his perspective toward his family and friends as well as strangers, perceiving the world (and himself) as they might — but the songwriting exercise yields some of Fender’s most accessible tracks yet, including standouts like “Little Bit Closer,” “Nostalgia’s Lie” and the title track.

Burna Boy, “Update” 

A few months after Kendrick Lamar sampled the club classic “When I Hear Music” on “Squabble Up,” Burna Boy has returned, ahead of upcoming eighth studio album No Sign of Weakness, with a similar approach on “Update,” re-contextualizing Soul II Soul’s “Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)” as the foundation of a effervescent Afrobeats track.

Editor’s Pick: Anxious, Bambi 

If Anxious’ 2022 debut Little Green House sounded like a breath of fresh air from the punk-leaning emo scene, the Connecticut quintet’s follow-up represents an exciting artist achieving greatness: Bambi sharpens the band’s formula in every conceivable way, with songs like opener “Never Said” fine-tuning the band’s defiant cries, “Some Girls” and “Next Big Star” offering spectacular pop hooks, and the entirety of the project’s lyrics capturing the growing pains leading up to this moment.