Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to New Music Friday’s most essential releases each week — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond.
Last week, we featured Noah Kahan, Victoria Monét, Drake and Miranda Lambert.
This week, Troye Sivan’s anticipated fourth album is out; Slayyyyter drops another preview of her upcoming companion LP, and Remi Wolf’s Mud arrives … plus much more. Check out all of this week’s picks below:
Troye Sivan, She’s the Best
The sung-spoken delivery, gauzy production and lurching beat of She’s the Best‘s title track and advance single set up Troye Sivan‘s fourth album to be something of a swerve within his catalog — and further surprises lay ahead in the album, including a lift of ’90s one-hit wonders Forest for the Trees on the psych-leaning “I Do This for You,” and a dreamy acoustic shuffle on the Beabadoobee-like “Embarrassingly.” But for those who hoped for more four-on-the-floor sweat from one of the past decade’s greatest dance-pop purveyors, Sivan’s got plenty of that, too, including on the lusty, vocoder-assisted “Canada Dry,” the location-hopping (and Madonna-interpolating) “Party” and the skittering, PinkPantheress-esque “Troye Meets World.”
Slayyyyter, “I Think He’s Got a Girl”
Earlier this week, WOR$T MAN IN AMERICA — the long-teased companion set to Slayyyyter‘s breakthrough 2026 album WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA — was officially announced for this December. Two tracks from the new mini-LP had already been released in “Brand New Chanel$” and “Crank 2,” and this Friday they’re joined by a third: “I Think He’s Got a Girl,” a midtempo grunge-pop lament over a likely stepping-out lover. “You’re quiet on the phone/ What time you coming home?/ I hope it doesn’t mean what I know it means,” Slayyyter moans over the tenderly pulsing track, before making the titular chorus observation. It should make for another live highlight, as if she was still lacking for any of those.
Remi Wolf, Mud
Long championed by the pop faithful, Remi Wolf has spent much of the 2020s seemingly on the verge of a major breakout — most recently earning a big look as a featured performer on the first episode of the hit Amazon college romance series Off Campus. Hopefully third album Mud will finally be the set to put her over the top; certainly, the collection of alt-pop gems is strong enough to merit the crossover attention — from the lacerating acoustic heartbreak of “Twiggy” to the sweetly frustrated power-pop of “Burn Me Blue” and the John Mayer-assisted soft-rock ache of “Moon So High.” Sadly, it’s not a sure bet — as Wolf herself admits on partial title track “Covered in Mud,” “Nothing I write sounds like all the hits on the radio” — but top 40 would undoubtedly be a more interesting place if it would meet her halfway.
Gunna, “Pop It”
We haven’t gone a full calendar year without a new Gunna album since 2021, so even though we don’t have an official release date for it, it’s no surprise that a new album — Splurge, announced in September — is likely on the horizon. For now, fans awaiting the full project will have to suffice with a new single: “Pop It,” a short blast with regal horns and the rapper’s typical sing-song staccato (“She out her panties/ She call me ‘Daddy’/ Bulletproof Caddy/ Who having static?”) It’s another likely hit for one of the most commercially consistent rappers of the decade.
Girl in Red, “Blue”
It’s officially Marie Ulven’s time, as the leaves change color, the weather gets a bit nippy, and Girl in Red‘s seasonal perennial “We Fell in Love in October” begins its annual trek up the streaming charts. Ulven’s not wasting any time making the most of her signature month this year, as she releases “Blue,” an atmospheric heart-racer with rushing acoustic guitars and evocative, Swiftian lyrics like “I can tell time has passed by the wash of your denim/ The blue never lasts but it doesn’t fade for me.” Perhaps this winner will extend Girl in Red season into at least November this year.
Pitbull, PITCOIN
The latest full-length from the man born Armando Christian Pérez is another globetrotting (and musical spectrum-spanning) set, with features from artists as far-ranging as crunk pioneer Lil Jon, Dutch DJ (and Pitbull‘s old “Give Me Everything” partner) Afrojack, hitmaking Cuban reggaetón duo Gente de Zona and a pair of Rock and Roll Hall of Famer bands n KISS and Bon Jovi. “His music connects people,” the latter band’s frontman Jon Bon Jovi told Billboard of Mr. Worldwide in our cover story earlier this week. “He doesn’t care if you’re a rocker or a rapper, if you are Black or white, Republican or Democrat. The key is that he is spreading the universal theme of hope and optimism.”
