Fridays can be overwhelming for pop fans. Every week you're bombarded with a glut of new music, which can lead to ear candy falling through the cracks. I'm hoping to avoid that tragic scenario with The Drop — a cheat sheet of sorts to get you through New Music Friday. By now, you have probably heard Lana Del Rey's blissful cover of Sublime's "Doin' Time" and possibly bopped along to Halsey's "Nightmare."...

Carly Rae Jepsen treats pop with the reverence it deserves. The Canadian superstar spent three, long years chipping away at the followup to 2015's universally-loved Emotion. Along the way, she went through a breakup, traveled the world and fell in love again — and captured those highs (and lows) with remarkable clarity on 200 songs. Of those, 15 made the final cut of Dedicated. And each and every...

Madonna is nothing if not a versatile Queen. So far this era, the living legend has delivered a reggaeton banger, a soaring ballad and a hip-hop bop. The sexy 60-year-old now serves up a dancehall-tinged anthem called "Future." As with M's previous collaboration with Quavo (the iconic "Champagne Rosé"), this is something of an acquired taste. In that it veers very far from the dance-pop we're used...

Lana Del Rey and Sublime turns out to be an extremely heady mix. The "Venice Bitch" icon delivers a summery cover of the California band's 1996 classic, "Doin Time." She stays faithful to the original, not changing a word or pronoun. "Summertime, and the livin's easy," Lana croons on the chorus over Happy Perez and watt's hazy production. "Bradley's on the microphone with Ras MG, all people in the...

Halsey holds nothing back on "Nightmare." Anticipation has been high for the 24-year-old's latest single since it was announced during a show last week. A series of teasers and a fairly direct statement on Twitter made it clear the song would be an aggressive, timely anthem. And it definitely lives up to expectations on that front. "I tasted blood and it is sweet," she sings over a throbbing production...

In this franchise, we look back on singles that deserved a little more love and attention.Katy Perry's history-making streak of 20 consecutive top 40 hits, stretching back all the way to 2008's "I Kissed A Girl," came to a screeching halt in 2017 when "Bon Appétit" stalled at number 59 on the Billboard Hot 100. The unforgivable irony is that it's one of the pop star's best singles. Featuring Migos...

One of the most exciting trends of 2019 is the increasingly blurred line between country music and other genres. At the forefront of this movement is Kane Brown. The 25-year-old recently lent his gentle twang to a remix of Khalid's "Saturday Nights" and then brushed up on his Spanish for a reggaeton remix of "Lost In The Middle Of Nowhere" with Becky G. His refusal to be confined by tradition really...

Sofía Reyes has a gift for blending languages and cultures within the confines of an extremely catchy pop song. The 23-year-old first displayed the talent on "1, 2, 3" — a Spanglish collaboration with Jason Derulo and De La Ghetto — and then perfected it on "R.I.P.." The latter, a fiery female empowerment anthem featuring Anitta and Rita Ora, has already racked up more than 50 million streams...

Since emerging as a bubblegum-haired rebel on 2000's Can't Take Me Home, Pink has cobbled together one of the best discographies in pop. She first reinvented herself on Missundaztood and then kept evolving on standout albums like I'm Not Dead and Funhouse. On her last record, however, the 39-year-old struggled to find a place in the streaming-dominated pop world. 2017's Beautiful Trauma still appealed...

K-Pop Queens Red Velvet have their eyes set on global domination this year. The group has been extending their reign with some serious bangers since launching in 2014. Last year, they unleashed a slew of content including their most recent mini-album RBB. The project contained their second all-English track "RBB (Really Bad Boy)" and hit the number 2 spot on Billboard's World Albums chart. In 2019,...

Hozier joined the ranks of Ireland's musical elite (U2, Van Morrison, The Cranberries and so many others) when "Take Me To Church" stormed the charts in 2014 and 2015. The 29-year-old backed it up with a mega-selling, critically-adored debut LP and then spent the next two and half years on the road. Instead of rushing back into the studio, the breakout star found a bungalow in the Irish countryside...

With K-Pop Kings BTS breaking records with each new release and US outfits like Why Don't We and PRETTYMUCH exploding in popularity, boy bands are taking over the world. Joining them at the forefront is CNCO. Recent singles "Reggaetón Lento" and "Hey DJ" racked up more than one billion streams between them and spawned star-studded remixes. Those collaborations gave Erick Brian Colón, Christopher...