Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday’s most essential releases — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond.
This week: Megan Thee Stallion returns with a song for the lovers, Leon Thomas and Daniel Caesar hold it town for tactile, live-feeling R&B and Bruce Springsteen revisits the same era on record probed by a brand-new Boss biopic.
Megan Thee Stallion, “LOVER GIRL”
It’s been a relatively quiet 2025 for Megan Thee Stallion, but the rap star is back this week with the loved-up anthem “LOVER GIRL.” Riding an always-appropriate sample of ’90s R&B group Total’s swooning love song “Kissin’ You,” Megan makes plenty kissy sounds of her own, while spitting about how your guy and hers are not the same: “Your n—a fantasy/ My man reality.” It’s a little bit early for Valentine’s Day — especially for Megan donning Cupid’s bow and arrow on the single cover — but if you’re in need of a cuffing-season anthem, it might just be right on time.
Leon Thomas, Pholks
It’s already been a triumphant 2025 for Leon Thomas, with a viral NPR Tiny Desk set, a big breakout win and performance at the BET Awards, and a huge crossover hit with the Billboard Hot 100 top 20 smash “Mutt.” Now, he’s capping his year with the seven-track Pholks EP, showing off even more of what he can do — including the pinched, almost D’Angelo-esque funk of “5MoreMinutes,” the woozy, early-Tame-Impala-like psych-rock of “Trapped” and the jazzy, frenetic garage rock of “Baccarat.” Wherever the music goes, it feels like it’s just spilling out of Thomas at this point, as he sets himself further apart from the R&B pack with each new release.
Daniel Caesar, Son of Spergy
Between Thomas and Daniel Caesar, it’s a big week for lush, organic-sounding new releases from R&B singer-songwriters. Caesar’s Son of Spergy (Spergy being his father’s nickname) is his first release since 2023’s Never Enough, and ranges from the delicate, pleading soul of “Have a Baby (With Me)” to the grungy fuzz-rock of “Call on Me” to the gentle, insecure acoustic balladry of “Who Knows.” Alt-folk stalwart Bon Iver shows up to bless a couple tracks, the dreamy “Moon” and the swirling, piano-led “Sins of the Father.”
Demi Lovato, It’s Not That Deep
Coming three years after her stellar rock detour set Holy Fvck, Demi Lovato‘s latest set It’s Not That Deep doesn’t take long to establish that she’s changed direction yet again: The pulsing beat and hedonistic lyrics of “Fast” showcase her once again driving in the turbo-pop lane, and sounding like she’s having a blast doing so. This isn’t an early-’10s top 40 throwback though — the rollerskating synths and tense vocals of “Here All Night” are pure Flashdance synth-rock, while “Frequency” and “Kiss” approximate the winking sung-spoken club energy of Period-era Kesha and “Sorry to Myself” is pure cathartic, Robyn-dancefloor release.
Megan Moroney, “Beautiful Things”
Megan Moroney taking on one of the biggest pop-rock hits of the decade with her own spin on Benson Boone’s breakout smash “Beautiful Things”? Not this time: The country hitmaker wrote her acoustic ballad of the same name as a note of comfort to her newborn niece, warning her: “Lies can break a fragile heart, and doubt can crush your dreams/ But honey, just take it from me/ The world is hard on beautiful things.” But Moroney ultimately tells her on the bridge not to despair: “Shine/ It’s gonna be all right/ You’re gonna all right.” It certainly feels like a future live set staple for the rising Georgia star.
Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska ’82
If you’ve been counting the days until the release this Friday of the Jeremy Allen White-starring Bruce Springsteen quasi-biopic Deliver Me From Nowhere, you likely also went straight to Nebraska ’82 on your streamer of choice today. The deluxe reissue of Springsteen’s classic stripped-down swerve features not just live and bonus tracks — including an unrecognizably barebones demo version of his later chest-beating protest song “Born in the U.S.A.” — but an entire “Electric Nebraska” disc, featuring plugged-in versions of beloved era highlights like “Atlantic City,” “Johnny 99” and another, even more electric version of “U.S.A.” The whole thing is certainly a better advertisement for the early-’80s-set Nowhere than any of the film’s actual trailers.
