ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
It's Friday, which means new music. Our colleagues at NPR Music are back with a roundup of this week's albums, which includes the soundtrack from the movie "Twisters," which is taking some cues from Blockbuster films past. But first, music editor and correspondent Daoud Tyler-Ameen and music writer Stephen Thompson have a lightning round of today's new releases, featuring another onscreen star.
DAOUD TYLER-AMEEN, BYLINE: So why don't we start with the Man of the hour, Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino, and his new album, "Bando Stone & The New World"?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "LITHONIA")
CHILDISH GAMBINO: (Singing) Happy, liberated, over-medicated - it was already there, what you want, I could tell by the look on your face (ph).
TYLER-AMEEN: This is ostensibly the final Childish Gambino album. I've heard that claim...
STEPHEN THOMPSON, BYLINE: Sure.
TYLER-AMEEN: ...From rap artists at the top of their game before. But the funny thing here is I really wonder how to define the stakes for this guy now because he sort of is Mr. Brand Synergy. He started out as this weird, you know, curiosity. It's - oh, the guy from "Community" is rapping, how cute.
THOMPSON: Right.
TYLER-AMEEN: But a couple years later, he had an acclaimed TV series. He was in a "Star Wars" movie, and he was nominated in all of the top categories of the Grammys in the same year.
THOMPSON: Yeah, and it's hard to tell even what his ambitions are right now. He still has huge artistic ambitions, right? Like, he is still prone to take a big artistic swing. And if you listen to that song back-to-back with "Lithonia," the most recent single from this record, it's like a three-minute prog-emo (ph) pocket epic where it's - it feel - in a way, as you're listening to it, you feel like this song contains so much ambition, it must be eight minutes long.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
THOMPSON: And yet it's just three. So he is still - you asked the question of, like, what are the stakes for him now? It's hard to tell commercially...
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
THOMPSON: ...What they are, but artistically, they're very, very high.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah. Now for something completely different. Glass Animals has a new record, whose name I cannot say on the air, so I will call it, "I Love You So F-ing Much."
THOMPSON: I have an interesting relationship with this band (laughter). They - for those who don't know, Glass Animals had one of the most inescapable songs of the last five years...
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
THOMPSON: ...With a song called "Heat Waves," which came out in 2020, then charted in 2021, then hit No. 1 in 2022.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HEAT WAVES")
GLASS ANIMALS: (Singing) Sometimes, all I think about is you, late nights in the middle of June. Heat waves been fakin' me out...
THOMPSON: This is a song that just would not die.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
THOMPSON: And I have to say, I can testify that this song wouldn't die because I kept trying to kill it.
(LAUGHTER)
THOMPSON: It would not go away. And at the same time, I have to tip my hat to it because it's so catchy. It's got such a smooth glide to it. And listening to "Creatures In Heaven," a single from this record, I caught some of those same vibes.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
THOMPSON: I didn't find it as annoying. But I still understood, like, oh, this is very catchy.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CREATURES IN HEAVEN")
GLASS ANIMALS: (Singing) What you think about when you think about love? I'm dumbstruck when you're tender, but it's 3 in the morning. Be in the moment...
TYLER-AMEEN: And, in a preview of coming attractions, "Twisters: The Album," the soundtrack from the new legacy sequel...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "AIN'T NO LOVE IN OKLAHOMA")
LUKE COMBS: (Singing) Ain't no love in Oklahoma, just the whistle of a long, black train. You'll know when it's coming for ya...
TYLER-AMEEN: ...What do we got here?
THOMPSON: Well, what we have here is the longest album I've heard since "The Tortured Poets Department."
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
THOMPSON: It is 29 songs. And this record really gives you an interesting kind of scene report on interesting artists in that field. You've got - Lainey Wilson pops up very prominently. Luke Combs sings the song at the top - as well as some really interesting up and coming names, people like Tanner Adell, whose song, "Too Easy," I can say is very prominently placed in the film. It really jumps out among this sea of songs that are deployed in that film.
TYLER-AMEEN: Well that's it for "Twisters: The Album," a jam-packed new film soundtrack. But before we go, we wanted to share a few thoughts on the state of movie music in general. And Stephen, I feel like we should start with you because you are the one in the room who has actually seen "Twisters." So having heard the music on its own and then in context, how does your experience compare to the sort of music-heavy movies that may have touched your life in the past?
THOMPSON: Well, one thing that "Twisters" does that I think a lot of recent films haven't done as much is it integrates a lot of new songs. That's something that "Twisters" kind of picks up from a very, very different film that came out last summer, "Barbie"...
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
THOMPSON: ...A film that, you know, very famously had a blockbuster soundtrack full of new songs by major artists...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "PINK")
LIZZO: (Singing) When I wake up in my own pink world, I get up out of bed and wave to my home girl.
THOMPSON: ...And integrated those songs, as well as songs that were written specifically to play out as musical numbers in the film.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
THOMPSON: I mean, "Barbie" is a more well-rounded, fully integrated soundtrack than "Twisters." I'm actually surprised that there are no points in "Twisters" where you see any of these artists, like, at a roadhouse performing...
TYLER-AMEEN: Sure.
THOMPSON: ...These songs and then a tornado strikes.
TYLER-AMEEN: Yeah.
THOMPSON: There's nothing like that. But to me, this album and the way this movie integrates this album - it does a really nice job really mixing in these songs to juice up the action in the film, of which there is a lot.
TYLER-AMEEN: One thing that "Twisters" does not have, at least not yet, that "Barbie" managed to pull off, though, is a sort of "theme from" - in quotes - a song that becomes really iconically linked with it. And I'm thinking of sort of the classic sort of, like, those high-concept movies that get these major theme songs. You've got "My Heart Will Go On," obviously, from "Titanic."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MY HEART WILL GO ON")
CELINE DION: (Singing) You're here. There's nothing I fear...
TYLER-AMEEN: You've got "Danger Zone" from "Top Gun"...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DANGER ZONE")
KENNY LOGGINS: (Singing) Highway to the danger zone...
TYLER-AMEEN: ..."I Will Always Love You," the Whitney version from "The Bodyguard"...
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU")
WHITNEY HOUSTON: (Singing) And I will always love you.
TYLER-AMEEN: ..."Maniac" from "Flashdance." I have wondered a lot...
THOMPSON: "Footloose" from "Footloose."
TYLER-AMEEN: "Footloose" from "Footloose" - there's so many of these. And then after a certain point, they sort of start dropping off. Part of me has to suspect it's just because of the kinds of movies that have become the most popular in the 21st century. Like, the 2010s were so defined by these gigantic franchises and these interconnected universes, and having a pop needle drop sneak into a "Star Wars" movie or, you know, a "Harry Potter" movie...
THOMPSON: "Avengers."
TYLER-AMEEN: ...Or even a Marvel movie, which tried it a couple of times. Like, it just feels like a weirder fit. It feels incongruous with the world that those movies are trying to create.
SHAPIRO: That was Daoud Tyler-Ameen and Stephen Thompson from NPR Music. And you can hear more in their full episode of New Music Friday from the podcast All Songs Considered.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "OUT OF OKLAHOMA")
LAINEY WILSON: (Singing) Can't take the home out of Oklahoma. It's where my soul... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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