What I'm Listening to This Week: Banks, Blood Orange, Ed Sheeran, and Claire Laffut
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In this edition of What I'm Listening to This Week, Blood Orange drops a mixtape, Ed Sheeran has bars, and Banks is back with a new slew of songs about your f*ckboy ex. I'm also having a bit of a French pop moment, so there's a fun little bop about sending nudes en français included as well. Here's what you should slam the play button on this week and why.
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No. 6 Collaborations Project by Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran really delivered on his latest project, which features collabs with Khalid, Cardi B, Chance the Rapper, H.E.R., and many more. The English singer even spits a few rhymes on the Stormzy-featured track "Take Me Back to London" — which I was not at all ready for but truly delighted by — and really sent my millennial heart racing with "Remember the Name," which gets an early-2000s jolt from Eminem and 50 Cent.
Standout track: "Antisocial," because the beat bangs, and I can't resist a Travis Scott assist.
Angel's Pulse by Blood Orange
The latest dreamy mixtape offering from English singer, songwriter, and producer Devonté Hynes is perfect for listening to on a warm Summer evening, with a joint in one hand and an Aperol spritz in the other. Thank me later!
Standout track: "Tuesday Feeling (Choose to Stay," because it's the ideal breezy beach day song.
"Nudes" by Claire Laffut feat. Yseult
This fun French bop is (surprise!) all about sending sexy snaps to your object of desire; the chorus loosely translates to "We send nudes all Summer / Capture the moment in slow-mo on the beach." Claire Laffut, the 25-year-old Belgian model, singer, and painter behind the track, has described her music as "childish; sweet like a lemon tart with a meringue topping," which is pretty much all you need to know.
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III by Banks
Warmer weather tends to bring the elusive f*ckboy out of its dark, wet cave, so Banks's third album couldn't have come at a better time. If you're in the mood for pulsating guitar riffs and tortured-yet-phlegmatic lyrics, this is an album you'll enjoy all the way through. Banks's music always makes me feel like it's the witching hour — and I mean that in the best way possible.
Standout track: "Stroke," because as a friend so beautifully put it, "I didn't know how much I needed a song about dating a narcissist."