20 Summer Albums We Need to Hear ASAP

The Aces is The 1975 for people who relearned how to remain open-hearted in their 20s instead of turning cynical. With big pop hooks and effervescent melodies, the band’s third album is a breezy listen if you want it to be: one part love letter to our teenage selves, the other to those who love us through the mess, romantic interest or otherwise (“Always Get This Way”). But belying the swoon-worthiness of the title track, it’s the latter that fuels I’ve Loved You For So Long: the relationship between members Cristal and Alisa Ramirez, Katie Henderson, and McKenna Petty — sisters and childhood friends who grew up queer and closeted under the Mormon church in Provo, Utah, and loved each other to survive.

Out June 2.

The Ghanaian American artist Ama Serwah Genfi commands her music with a cloud-soft soprano, even as an up-tempo base of lush Afropop and R&B keeps it moving. Amaarae has built a sleek, cosmopolitan world in her songs, celebrating Black femininity and sensuality like on “Co-Star” and “Reckless & Sweet,” with misty beats that flutter with the excitement of queuing at the club with your girls. In a press release for the latter song, Amaarae wrote “young Black women and men…we’re bringing love and romance back!” so it’s really no wonder she’s already collaborated with love potion princess, Kali Uchis on “Sad Girlz Luv Money.”

Out June 9.

The literary imagination of French pop auteur Chris has somehow gotten even grander on his fourth album: a brooding, 20-track synth-rock opera processing the loss of his mother, who died in the week between his two Coachella performances in 2019. If last year’s prologue, Redcar Les Adorables Étoiles, was cool and dense with poetry, Paranoïa, Angels, True Love is freer to stretch its wings, taking further thematic inspiration from Tony Kushner’s Angels in America and working through grief in its three distinct chapters. Inviting another producer into the fold for the first time with Mike Dean, Chris sounds straight-up mystical, purging his soul in single vocal takes in the early dawn, his crystalline voice soaring into the heavens.

Out June 9.

During the last Janelle Monaé album press cycle, they dropped an instantly iconic coming-out phrase (self-identifying as a “free-ass motherfucker”), introduced the world to pussy pants, and queered the whole year. No one’s figured out anything as quippy as “20-bi-teen” for 2023 but they’ve got her own new mantra to steer us into summer: “Titties out for the next 15 years.” If their last album, Dirty Computer, was testament to Black joy as an act of resistance to authoritarian rule, The Age of Pleasure promises to be less futuristic, more hedonistic, led by the glorious pool party excess of “Lipstick Lover.” As Monaé told Zane Lowe: “If the songs can't work at the party, they're not going on the album.”

Out June 9.

Jenny Lewis takes us to Margaritaville and a mid-life crisis in the first verse of the single “Puppy and a Truck,” singing: “​​My 40s are kicking my ass / And handing them to me in a margarita glass.” Five albums into her solo career outside Rilo Kiley and getting wryer every year, Lewis is like your cool aunt whose aphorisms don't sink in until after she's already slipped away to refill her drink and mingle elsewhere. A chunk of the songs on Joy’all stem from a week-long songwriting workshop overseen by Beck, whom she’ll be touring with this summer, and its various daily challenges; her new album is a reminder that she’s the queen of one-liners.

Out June 9.

Texan Americana singer Jess Williamson lit up last year’s collaborative album with Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield with her sparkling harmonies and sun-blinding spots of wisdom. On her fifth album, she dissects the memories and dissolution of a relationship, from reading Raymond Carver aloud by the pool bar to all the ways a break-up can make you feel small and worthless. “Are my love songs lies now that the love is gone?” she sings on “Chasing Spirits,” but Williamson searches for meaning with grace and a delicate sense of humor.

Out June 9.

In her slow-burning single “Jealous,” R&B artist Kiana Ledé’s head and heart are at war, knowing she can’t make her lover’s choices for them, but torn in two being just one of any number of girls. Posting the claustrophobic, camera-laden album cover with the tagline “Sometimes you gotta face yourself” on Instagram, duality, reflections, and scrutiny loom as major themes for her Gemini season release. (With a song titled “Gemini Slander” in the track list, Ledé may be an Ares, but she’s also an ally.) Grudges promises to be an album full of capriciousness and soaring hooks, following in the footsteps of her great 2020 debut, KIKI.

Out June 16.

Named as part of XXL’s 2021 Freshman Class, rapper Coi Leray is running the route for pop-crossover with her brand of 2-minute, interpolation-heavy tracks. From Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party” (sampled in “My Body”) to Haddaway’s "What Is Love" (in “Baby Don’t Hurt Me”) to Technotronic's "Pump Up the Jam" (in the unreleased “Make My Day”), Leray takes ubiquitous staples for ’90s kids and refreshes them with confident, catchphrase-laden verses. The Grandmaster Flash-sampling “Players” earned her a Billboard Top 10 hit earlier this year; her second album, with anticipated guest appearances from David Guetta, Saucy Santana, and Lola Brooke, probably has more where that came from.

Out June 23.

“Having chemistry with someone is an incredible, and overwhelming, feeling,” Kelly Clarkson wrote in the announcement for her first album of new music in six years. “It’s like you have no choice in the matter. This can be good and bad.” The gift-and-a-curse tone of that post characterizes her much-anticipated divorce album, which she marked with a pair of power ballad singles: the what-goes-around-comes-around break-up song “mine” and the gospel choir-backed personal reclamation, “me.” Clarkson tearing through everyone’s songs during her talk show is peak TV, but it’s even better to hear her rise through the rafters on her own.

Out June 23.

The German pop and electronic artist makes a bid for pop stardom without the producer who put her name on the map. (R.I.P. SOPHIE, whose musical influence is just now bubbling up in American pop.) Kim Petras faces skeptical audiences on multiple fronts: a conservative establishment hellbent on wiping out trans people’s existence; the LGBTQ club kid audience who find her music a little too vanilla for a night out; and everyone aghast that artists are still working with Dr. Luke. Regardless, there will be eyeballs on Kim Petras as she releases her major label debut, which is stuffed with singles like “brrr” and the Nicki Minaj team-up, “Alone.”

Out June 23.

Country shuffle, blues rock, gospel-folk: Long before critics started shrugging and calling the last several years of music “genre-blending, “genre-busting,” and the unfortunate “genre-less,” Lucinda Williams made a case for what musical traditions could accomplish in conversation with each other. In 2020, she proved to have a few more surprises up her sleeve as she made a go of “Southern protest singer” with the acerbic Good Souls Better Angels. But on Stories From a Rock n Roll Heart she puts that pickled anger back in the jar to address the effort of recovering from a stroke (“New York Comeback”) and reminisce about old friends like Tom Petty (“Stolen Moments”) in a perfect companion to her recently release memoir, Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You.

Out June 30.

“Lesbians, in general, live in the yearn,” Jill Gutowitz writes in her book Girls Can Kiss Now, continuing later on that “it’s not about the destination. It’s about the spark, the yearn and the roadblocks that exacerbate the yearn.” On her second album, Amber Bain puts this ethos into effect; only yearning, for her, isn’t a stasis but an ever-spinning circle. Whether it’s self-realization, the beginning of romantic love or its end, In The End It Always Does cycles through the stretch between desire and reality, like on “Boyhood” when she sings “I used to be somebody else and I'm still out looking for me,” her voice a slow-moving shimmer of memory. Bain continues her creative partnership with producer George Daniel of The 1975, giving these songs a humid funk and a deep-rooted sense of melody, the kind that sinks into your mind and repeats on loop.

Out June 30.

With the general aura of a yoga instructor telling you in soothing tones, “aaaand exhale,” folk singer Julie Byrne makes what my friend, NPR’s Stephen Thompson, calls "blood-slowing music." On her first album in six years, she crafts an immaculate tableau of loss, mourning the sudden death of her songwriting partner and producer, Eric Littmann, who died in the middle of the album’s construction. Synth drones and harp join Byrne’s deftly fingerpicked melodies as she wrestles with moving forward: “Name my grief to let it sing,” she says on the title track. Byrne’s music has always felt timeless and weightless, but more than ever, The Greater Wings is an album about what happens when the earth keeps spinning when you desperately want it to stop.

Out July 7.

Taylor Lautner is praying for John Mayer but I’m not. Man reapeth what he soweth. After sneaking the best track on Midnights into the 3AM version, Taylor Swift revisits the era and relationship that inspired “Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve” with the third album in her re-recording project: her third studio release from 2010. Speak Now is a delightful work of contradictions, the director’s eye that paints every moment of a new crush with fireworks and Hollywood excess (“Sparks Fly,” “Enchanted”) butting up against a new, lingering sadness of missed chances (“Back to December,” “Last Kiss”), and surprising clarity in the aftermath of getting mixed up in some real shit (“Dear John”). The new, popular narrative is that Red set the stage for Pop Star Taylor, but the boundlessness of her melodies began to transcend the genre of country music way before that.

Out July 7.

Not as loud or grunge-leaning as their previous work, Boston DIY scene vet El Kempner’s fourth album as Palehound still boasts riffs and burnt edges. Written in the disorienting aftermath of a sour entanglement and an uncanny cross-country roadtrip home when the pandemic hit, a sense of unease permeates Eye on the Bat, with Kempner rendering interpersonal details in minute detail. But there’s lightness, too, in the album’s rollicking title track and existential odysseys like “Independence Day.” Palehound’s latest is going to be best enjoyed driving on a summer’s day with the windows down, slanted sun rays tanning your left side and enough space to scream it all out.

Out July 14.

I imagine being a pop artist and not getting tapped for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie soundtrack is like being a British actor cast in neither Game of Thrones nor Harry Potter. Helmed by Mark Ronson and previewed with the disco-pop hors d'oeuvre “Dance the Night” by Dua Lipa, this thing is a tasting menu of who’s who. Sure there’s Lizzo and Charli XCX, but also viral remix royalty PinkPantheress, Latin star Karol G, and soft rock summer aesthetes HAIM. Kali, whose song “Area Codes” is sitting pretty on the Billboard Hot 100, will team up with rookie K-pop girl group FIFTY FIFTY, whose song “Cupid” also took over the charts. And yes, Nicki Minaj finally gets her claws on Aqua’s “Barbie Girl.” Let Barbie summer commence.

Out July 21.

The English electronic artist and producer Georgia Barnes made an ethnomusicological study of the dancefloor on songs like “Started Out” and “About Work The Dancefloor” from her last album, 2020’s Mercury Prize-nominated Seeking Thrills. In the interim, trading remix credits with prominent artists in the U.K. dance scene like Shygirl, Danny L Harle, Jessie Ware, and Mura Masa put her on indie superproducer Rostam’s radar, who slid into her DMs to collaborate on her third album. Working together, Euphoric is a brighter, smoother record for those given to dancing in the daytime.

Out July 28.

It was a "where were you” moment except, for most of us, the answer was “agonizingly far away.” Last summer, one of our greatest living songwriters returned to the Newport Folk Festival for the first time in over 60 years and performed for the first time in two decades—completely unannounced. Shepherded through a set by Brandi Carlile, the Gaga to her Bennett, Joni Mitchell sang from an upholstered armchair, cheery, good-humored, and slightly baffled by her hysterical reception. Eleven of the 13 songs from that performance are coming as a live album. To hear Mitchell sing “So many things I would have done / But clouds got in my way,” her sparrow-like soprano barrel-aged with time, or how a lyric like “I’ve looked at life from both sides now” transforms with the weight of the years, is to understand what an important document this is.

Out July 28.

One of the last times Noname hopped on the mic, she bodied J.Cole so hard the man hasn’t been seen in years. (I jest, he was resurrected recently by j-hope.) Out of Chicago’s thriving, cross-pollinating hip-hop and poetry scenes, the patron saint of big-brained, activism-infused rap is set to return with her first album in five years since 2018's Room 25. Cool, collected, and ruthless, Noname rapped “My pussy teachin’ ninth-grade English / My pussy wrote a thesis on colonialism” and then put it into practice, spending the last few years establishing a book club centered on reading and supporting works by authors of color. But Noname’s music sparkles whether you read the bibliography or not; serving intellectual disses, knocking hypocrites down a peg, and passion for the world you want to build never go out of style.

Out July TBD.

The violinist, arranger, and composer of the contemporary classical ensemble yMusic has been a secret weapon on the indie circuit in the last two decades, appearing on albums from Sufjan Stevens, The National, Phoebe Bridgers, and many, many more—seven already in 2023, including tracks from Miley Cyrus and Ed Sheeran. (He got a bit of a profile boost playing on a little record called folklore in 2020.) Bridgers returns the favor on his solo EP with “Wasted,” along with several other big-voiced artists and former collaborators—Brittany Howard, Sara Bareilles, Emily King—for a restrained and elegant set of pop ballads.

Out August 11.