SZA’s ‘Ctrl’ bonus and 8 more new songs

A way to satiate fans who have been begging for your long-delayed next album: just keep adding new material to the album they already love! Five years ago this week, SZA released her widely acclaimed debut ‘Ctrl’ and while she’s since released a handful of singles and made a number of acclaimed feature films (including her Grammy-winning Doja Cat collaboration ‘Kiss Me More’), she’s yet to follow it with a full length. As a stopgap though, SZA this week offered fans seven previously unreleased tracks on a deluxe edition of “Ctrl.” The best of them is “Jodie” – already a fan favorite, since a demo version leaked last year. “Stuck with just weed and no friends,” she laments on the lavish track, which balances a confessional note with self-mockery. Her singing is melodically lithe but endearingly off-the-cuff, as if you’re hearing an animated conversation she’s having with herself. LINDSAY ZOLADZ

Or the lavish horns deployed on Saucy Santana’s “Booty” are sampled from Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” or “Are You My Woman? (Tell Me So)” by the Chi-Lites (which is the original sample for “Crazy in Love”) doesn’t matter – it’s pure cheat code anyway. “Booty” functions as a kind of conceptual bootleg remix of the Beyoncé classic, a way of trumpeting an alliance that can be factual, virtual, or theoretical. Most listeners won’t parse it. Consider it a clever blow from Saucy Santana, whose “Material Girl” was the best kind of TikTok breakout — a catchphrase that was basically associated with an outsized personality. “Booty” is his first major label single, and it has a number of other borrowings as well: a stream of J-Kwon’s “Tipsy,” a nod to Bubba Sparxxx’s “Ms. New Booty.” But above all, this one-off make-up artist enjoys himself in the shrinking space between fan and star. JON CARAMANICA

Lizzo, ‘Grrrls’

Another entry in the 2022 free remake sweepstakes: Lizzo rediscovers the Beastie Boys’ hypercrass “Girls” as a celebration of female friendship: “That’s my girl, we’re co-dependent / If she’s in it, them I’m in it.” CARAMANICA

“Someone will fathom us,” Lili Trifilio sings with invigorating confidence, “and I hope they do, because I’m falling for you.” The hopelessly catchy opening track from Chicago pop-rock band Beach Bunny’s upcoming sophomore album, “Emotional Creature,” is all about caution in the wind and going out to the public with a clandestine romance. There’s an appropriate clarity to the song’s production and arrangement: gleaming guitars, steady percussion, and Trifilio’s vocals to the fore as she sings such candid lyrics as “I wanna kiss you when everyone’s watching.” ZOLADZ

Demi Lovato — the child star turned adult hitmaker who survived a drug overdose in 2018 and emerged as non-binary — takes advantage of fame and a throwback to fierce punk pop with “Skin of My Teeth.” It’s an armored confession that begins with “Demi Leaving Rehab Again” and rides on seismic drums, cranked guitars, and an “ooh-woo-hoo” pophook to claim solidarity with anyone struggling with addiction. “I can’t believe I’m not dead,” they say, adding, “I’m just trying to keep my head above water.” JON PARELES

Joyce Manor, ‘You’re Not Famous Anymore’

“40 oz. to Fresno’, the new album from the Torrance, California, rock band Joyce Manor, is a relentlessly melodic 17-minute collection of devastating, non-filling power pop. An obvious highlight is the snappy “You’re Not Famous Anymore,” which sounds like something that would have gotten a lot of attention on mid-’90s alternative rock radio — the kind of song that would have seemed just a novelty hit. until it lingered in your head for weeks. “You were a child star on methamphetamines,” sings frontman Barry Johnson, “who knows what you are, ’cause you’re nothing.” Accompanied by head-bopping percussion and a surfy guitar, Johnson’s arch-acidic delivery cuts through the rest of the song’s mock-breezy vibe. ZOLADZ

Joji, ‘Glimpse of Us’

A beautiful and striking piano ballad by the Japanese-American singer Joji, who finds a middle ground between the soft rock of the seventies and James Blake. His singing is slightly unsteady, mixing a nerve-racking sadness with a better-knowing resilience. CARAMANICA

The 23-year-old pianist and multi-instrumentalist Julius Rodriguez has amazed audiences in New York clubs for more than half of his young life. In a story that has already become part of 21st century jazz history, his father drove him from White Plains to Smalls to participate in jam sessions from the time Rodriguez was 11 years old. Cats was floored from day 1. The other major part of his musical education took place in church, starting even younger as a drummer, and those two major influences are echoed in “Let Sound Tell All”, Rodriguez’s highly anticipated debut album. On “In Heaven,” an invocation written by Darlene Andrews and first recorded by Gregory Porter, Rodriguez joins another rising star, singer Samara Joy. He accompanies her molasses-rich vocals with fanned out harmonies, channeled by Kenny Barron and Hank Jones, from heavy clusters of notes to threads of crystal clear clarity. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO

Sonic Liberation Front and the Sonic Liberation Singers with Oliver Lake, ‘Ain’t Nothin’ Real But Love’

“Love is an emotion in action,” eminent saxophonist, poet and visual artist Oliver Lake, 79, recites over the interrupted, open-vowel harmonies of the Sonic Liberation Singers. “Ain’t nothing real but love / It moves independently of our fears and desires.” Lake recently played a series of farewell shows with Trio 3, the avant-garde supergroup he’s played in for over three decades – but it should come as no surprise that as he closes one chapter, the ever-prolific Lake has opened up another: “Justice.” , on which this song appears, is Lake’s first LP with vocal compositions. At times wild and purifying, the album is also full of moments like these: poised, stubbornly hopeful, rooted in Lake’s memories of a more revolutionary era and trying to rekindle that energy. RUSSELLO