What Is It?

Every Friday, the internet is swarmed with new tracks (even 1.4 million on Spotify), each promising to define your weekend mood. But which ones actually deliver? Welcome (or welcome back) to the weekly Arts & Culture column of Ongaku Magazine, New Music Friday Reviews! Step inside this section of Ongaku Magazine to a world where music is discussed as the key to representing our modern-day culture, that is, like music, arguably evolving with every passing minute. Covering genres of music from Pop, Hip-Hop, R&B, Rap, Jazz, Alternative, Rock, and so much more, the goal of this column is to provide insight not only on how masterful today’s top-emerging art is, but to give you, as the reader, the deliberate declaration to an everlasting question with any song: is this worth the listen?

So, yes, while as a reader, you may be currently intrigued in discovering which music is truly the zeitgeist of the week, month, year, or era, you must be wondering; what even is “a” New Music Friday? You might have seen the Spotify or Apple Music algorithm recommending this New Music Friday playlist to you, but are these playlists solely several new songs released on the day before a restful weekend? While cursorily, this may be the case, the act of publishing new music on a Friday has been the official global standard since 2015 (and the reason why you’ve never heard of a New Music Tuesday: “ball out to the new, say, The Weeknd album while unwinding, getting ready for sleep, prepping for a meeting, and being ravenously joyful to survive yet another ‘Hump Day’ at school tomorrow!”) In addition, since the releasing of music on Friday also limits international piracy, boosts chart performance, sales, and aligns with the start of the weekend, the international music industry generally came to the consensus that Friday was the unanimous music-release day. And the rest becomes history.

To preserve what has been made of this largely positive history, though, this column aims to highlight the essence of genuinely good (or bad) music through critical analysis and a one-to-ten point ranking system of top New Music Friday songs from a list of categories: Most Streamed, Lyrical Standout, Sonic Standout, Hidden Gem, and Personal Feature (this one is dependent on if I find songs that I’d like to highlight). Where the song selected for each category will be evaluated by the rubric provided below, the song selections and the responding commentaries will be parallel with the most recent New Music Friday releases. Together with me, I encourage–and hope–that you’ll follow me on my weekly endeavors to discover the best music and harshly criticize and inquire the pools of music, or even my critiques!