New Music Friday: The best albums out Sept. 4
NPR Music
NPR Music's New Music Friday features a deep dive into five standout albums released on September 4th, hosted by Stephen Thompson with contr
Key takeaways
- Rebecca Black's 'Age of the Exhibitionist' reclaims her viral past with confident, queer-positive dance-pop that blends hedonism and self-awareness.
Main topics
- New album releases
- Rebecca Black's artistic evolution
Notable quotes
"Just made a million off my so-called mediocrity." – Rebecca Black, reflecting on her viral past.
Conclusion
The episode celebrates music that embraces vulnerability, identity, an
Transcript preview
Speaker 7 (0:00) As the political landscape shifts beneath our feet, we're all vulnerable to a well-funded distraction economy determined to take our eye off the ball. Our weekly politics series, If You Can Keep It, is here to help, where our focus is not the horse race, but the state. We tackle the big political stories of the day and why they matter for our democracy. Join me, Todd Zwilich. And me, Jen White, on the 1A Podcast from WAMU and NPR. Speaker 5 (0:26) You know I hate sleeping alone, but you said... Speaker 1 (0:32) Happy Friday, everyone. It's New Music Friday from NPR Music. I am your host, Stephen Thompson. And on this Labor Day weekend edition of New Music Friday, we're going to catch up with three of our favorite people in the NPR Music Network. KQED arts reporter Nastia Voinovskaya from San Francisco, Marfa Public Radio's Julie B. from the heart of West Texas, and WJSU music director Deshaun Nance in Jackson, Mississippi. Together and separately, we are going to break down five great albums out today, September 4th, unofficially the final Friday of summer 2026. But first, yes, you are hearing Beyonce in the background. Her 20th anniversary edition of 2006's B-Day is out today. And Nastia Voinovskaya from KQED with me right now. Beyonce doesn't do anything. part way. She Speaker 3 (1:22) certainly does not. I can't believe it's been 20 years since B-Day came out and really set Beyonce apart as a solo act. And this is a pretty perfect pop album. It has production from Neptunes and Swizz Beatz. It has that pop sound straddling hip hop and R &B from the 2000s that still goes off in clubs today. Yeah. Speaker 1 (1:44) And Beyonce, like she does not put garbage out into the world. Everything is extremely meticulous, extremely stage managed. This reissue includes Spanish versions of some of her songs. If you are a Beyonce person, this is a big day. It Speaker 3 (2:03) most definitely is. It's a Beyonce holiday. Speaker 1 (2:19) Well, I'm going to make the natural segue from Beyonce to Rebecca Black. It is Friday. Rebecca Black has a new album out. It is called Age of the Exhibitionist. Speaker 3 (3:36) So a lot of people know Rebecca Black as the singer of Friday, which went viral for all the wrong reasons in 2011. It's a kind of corny pop song. She was only 13 years old when she made it. And unfortunately, she was bullied mercilessly for that song. But she persevered. She kind of holed up in her room. became an alternative Tumblr girl and from that internet milieu has blossomed into a very interesting quirky sex positive queer pop star that's kind of between these two worlds of underground club music and big Gaga-esque pop. Speaker 1 (4:20) And it's a great spot for her. I mean, I think it's very telling that Rebecca Black is playing the All Things Go Festival later this month, which is definitely a festival that also likes to straddle those worlds. And, you know, over time, people have come to really think about Rebecca Black, I think, a different way than they did 15 years ago. She was kind of an early internet cautionary tale, in a way, of like, kind of be careful what you put out on the internet because it could go wildly viral and come to define you. And, you know, we were talking, Nastia, before we started taping about just like what would have happened if something we had done at age 13 had come to define us for the rest of our lives. And just how grossly unfair that would be, because at 13, I was a gigantic dork, basically from 13 to the present day. Speaker 3 (5:11) I too was a gigantic dork, but I took myself super seriously when I was 13. So yeah, no, I don't want anything I did at that age to define me. Speaker 1 (5:20) Absolutely. And you know, that moment continues to come up sometimes in her music. She is obviously extremely self-aware. How could you not be with that kind of upbringing? You know, there's a track here called Washesalan. I hope I'm not wildly mispronouncing that. that includes the line, just made a million off my so-called mediocrity. And like, that is a way of kind of nodding at her roots, but at the same time, the songs here are legit bangers. Speaker 3 (6:21) I completely agree. Rebecca Black is really painting these scenes where she's taking you into these fantasy, hedonistic nightclubs. And yeah, I think this album really embraces pleasure and sexual taboos. And it has these very thumping, fat synths too that really take you there. I can see DJs remixing these tracks for sure. You can really hear the influence of... queer club icons like Sophie in Speaker 1 (6:52) these Speaker 3 (6:52) tracks and the production. And it's just a lot of fun. Like you can see this as a 3am dance floor banger. Yeah. Speaker 1 (7:00) And there's still, there are still textures here. It's not going hard at the exact same pace every single step of the way. And, you know, we've tossed out a few different reference points, but I want to toss out one more, which is Carly Rae Jepsen. And if you are a Carly Rae Jepsen stan, you know, somebody who also blew up about 15 years ago with a song that was widely perceived as a novelty song, but then an artist who turned out to be extraordinarily smart and talented and prolific, I hear Carly Rae Jepsen's influence on some of these songs, particularly in tracks like Michael, you know, which is kind of a sleek, dreamy, kind of dancey pop song that is on extremely sure footing. Speaker 3 (8:00) I really like how Rebecca Black kind of paints these narratives about queer desire. On Michael, she's speaking to a woman and saying, you know, like, what if your love interest, Michael, could actually be me? And it's in this kind of beautifully poetic way where first she kind of, she references even the biblical origins of the name Michael, but then twists it into being something completely different. Speaker 1 (8:44) So that is Rebecca Black. Rebecca Black's new album is called Age of the Exhibitionist. Next up, Paris Paloma. Paris Paloma's new album is called The Fatal Flaw. Speaker 6 (9:29) I can swim in with the fishes immersed in it. But now I'm looking back, I think I was just gazing down on the surface. There's somewhere that I cannot go. Speaker 3 (9:49) Paris Paloma is a young British singer-songwriter that went viral in 2023 with a track called Labor that women used in all kinds of TikToks and social media posts where they called out misogyny in their own lives. And the song went platinum, which earned her opening performance spots with Stevie Nicks and Florence and the Machine. And Paris Paloma expands on that theme with very smart and evocative chamber pop that invites us into her rich emotional world on this new album. Speaker 1 (10:23) Yeah, I mean, one of the least surprising things about Paris Paloma, as I was reading up on this record, is that she is a fine arts major. She drops tons of references in her music to Greek mythology, to painting, to literature. multiple references to art in the song titles on this record, from Miyazaki to Rothko to Pre-Raphaelite to the closing track, I Cry in Front of Paintings. So, you know, you kind of get a sense. Like, on one hand, she has this kind of Florence and the Machine-inspired grandeur, but you also have something kind of more delicate, more arty, these kind of softer reflections. She's able to kind of put these soft soft painterly shadings on these songs where she's not just like hitting power note after power note after power note. Speaker 3 (11:17) Yeah, absolutely. And there's a really literary quality to the songwriting on the opening track Miyazaki. it comes off almost like a manifesto or that you're meeting the main character of a novel and you're about to dive into this person's mind and it's almost like a declaration of her her desire to go out into the world and just experience life and love and to create and it has this determination that's really powered by these big drums and the production and then