The Best New Music of May 2026: Drake, Madonna and Sabrina Carpenter, Kacey Musgraves, Isaiah Rashad, Charli xcx and Six More

May was dominated by one man for a week and then immediately corrected by everyone else. Drake dropped three albums in a night, and then the underground answered: fakemink and JPEGMAFIA both put out records within a week of him, and Lucki’s own release landed on the same Friday and still made the Billboard 200 top 10. Around them were a Coachella duet turned single, a country star in an armadillo costume, two of pop’s biggest names rolling out new albums, and one of rap’s most honest records in years. These are the 11 releases from the month most worth your time, in the order they arrived. Every entry comes with something to press play on.

Madonna and Sabrina Carpenter, “Bring Your Love”

The song began as a Coachella surprise, when Madonna joined Sabrina Carpenter’s weekend-two set, and arrived as a record on May 1. Made with Stuart Price, it builds a fragment of Inner City’s “Good Life” into what Pitchfork calls “a constantly peaking staircase of a beat,” and it is the second single from Confessions II, due July 3. Pitchfork finds the lyrics “extremely vague and nonsensical—but damn if it isn’t fun.” The shade is the hook: “I know where the bodies are buried,” Madonna sings, and Carpenter answers, “Don’t try to distract me with numbers.” (Our full story.)

Bring Your LoveMadonna & Sabrina CarpenterListen on Apple Music

Kacey Musgraves, Middle of Nowhere

Musgraves’ seventh album is the frisky follow-up to the more inward-looking Deeper Well, per Billboard, with Willie Nelson on “Uncertain, TX,” Miranda Lambert on “Horses & Divorces” and Billy Strings on “Everybody Wants to Be a Cowboy.” The playful single “Dry Spell” is a spare country-pop lament about nearly a year of not getting any, in which she sings, “I’m so lonely, lonely with a capital H.” Billboard also caught her promoting it in a giant armadillo costume, wandering a big-box store asking whether the album was in stock. An employee’s answer: “I don’t recognize that name.” Rolling Stone’s weekly rundown hears her sending “a burning letter to an avoidant lover.”

Middle of NowhereKacey MusgravesListen on Apple Music

Isaiah Rashad, It’s Been Awful

Five years after The House Is Burning, Rashad’s third album is a patient, hazy 16 tracks about addiction, family and sexuality, made with producers like Keem the Cipher and Julian Sintonia. “Boy in Red,” a duet with SZA, borrows its chorus mood from Prince’s “If I Was Your Girlfriend,” per Rolling Stone, and “Act Normal” is the record’s hinge. Pitchfork says Rashad “renders even the most harrowing scenes with levity and warmth.” (Read our feature.)

IT’S BEEN AWFULIsaiah RashadListen on Apple Music

Charli xcx, “Rock Music”

Two minutes of stuttering guitar riff and Auto-Tune, plus a black-and-white video of Charli smoking and mosh-pitting around New York. The hook, “I think the dance floor is dead / So now we’re making rock music,” is a joke she insists on explaining: it is “not actually rock music.” Louder hears something between Hole’s “Celebrity Skin” and Elastica’s “Connection.” The FADER says simply that “it rips.” (Our story.)

Rock Music (official video)Charli xcxWatch on YouTube

Drake, Iceman

Three albums, 43 songs and a Michael Jackson record, all inside two weeks. Drake’s Iceman is the bar-heavy, beef-obsessed rap record; Habibti is the R&B one and Maid of Honour the club one. Iceman opened with 463,000 units, and the trio swept the top three spots on the Billboard 200. “Janice STFU” debuted at No. 1, making him the solo male artist with the most Hot 100 No. 1s. Complex calls Iceman the best of the three, “what 1 vs. 20 sounds like as an album.” (The release, the charts and who he’s mad at.)

ICEMANDrakeListen on Apple Music

Lucki, Dr*gs R Bad

The Chicago rapper picked the same Friday as Drake and held his own. Dr*gs R Bad debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard 200 with 51,000 units, Lucki’s first top 10 and his biggest week yet, with guests including Lil Yachty, Lil Baby and Veeze. The hazy, melodic style that made his name is on every track, and Ratings Game Music’s reviewer heard more range than usual: “I think this song proves he’s more versatile than people give him credit for,” he wrote of “Roundtripski.”

Dr*gs R BadLuckiListen on Apple Music

JPEGMAFIA, Experimental Rap

A 25-track, self-produced album with a title that picked a fight. Peggy told Pigeons & Planes he was “laying claim to something I already had,” Earl Sweatshirt answered in the comments, and the music is as abrasive as promised: Complex hears “pretty melodies one moment to bursts of harsh noise the next.” NME calls it “ferocious but formulaic.” (Read the feature.)

Experimental RapJPEGMAFIAListen on Apple Music

Olivia Rodrigo, “The Cure”

The second single from You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love (June 12) is an acoustic-led confession that explodes at the end. Rolling Stone says the video casts Rodrigo as a nurse looking for a cure for broken hearts. The title shares a name with the band, and Robert Smith has told British Vogue he and Rodrigo keep in close contact. Rodrigo calls the song the thesis statement of the album. (Tracklist story.)

the cureOlivia RodrigoListen on Apple Music

Lola Young, “From Down Here”

Her first new song since she stepped back from her career in September, made with James Blake the day after her Grammy win. The FADER hears a vulnerable, raspy vocal over warped electric piano chords and a haunting chopped drum loop. “I am rewriting the next chapter of my story,” she says. (Full story.)

From Down HereLola YoungListen on Apple Music

fakemink, Terrified

Where Drake went big, Hypebeast writes, the Essex rapper-producer “went home,” with a lo-fi, David Lynch-inflected rollout and hometown shows. The result, out May 22, is a 19-track descent. He told Zane Lowe he produced it “from scratch” aside from two sampled songs, and he sequenced the album from hell to heaven, with the bottom end burning away until the closer “Etna” arrives with no drums at all. Signed Trade’s review gives it 8 out of 10, calling it “a near fully self-produced horror film scored in a basement.”

Night, Blooming Jasmine (official video)fakeminkWatch on YouTube

Ariana Grande, “Hate That I Made You Love Me”

The lead single from Petal (July 31) arrived May 29 with a comic-book lyric video and a promise that it is “a little feral.” It was written and produced by Grande, Ilya and Max Martin, and it ushers in a first big tour in years. (Our story.)

hate that i made you love meAriana GrandeListen on Apple Music

What’s next: Olivia Rodrigo’s album lands June 12, Madonna’s Confessions II on July 3 and Ariana Grande’s Petal on July 31. Jay-Z, fresh from his Roots Picnic freestyle, plays Yankee Stadium in July.

Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.