September's new music came in three heavy Fridays: Sept. 18 brought Miley, Carly Rae Jepsen, beabadoobee, Beck and AZ Chike in the same 24 hours, and Sept. 25 answered with Tinashe, Julia Jacklin, M83, Jae Stephens and Taylor Swift's bonus tracks. These are 10 releases from those drops that earned a spot in this month's rotation. Every entry comes with something to press play on, and a few rising names are mixed in with the headliners.
Miley, Bass Persuades
The first album from “just Miley,” and her Atlantic debut, rechristens the pop star as a club kid and a hopeless romantic in the same breath. Billboard says the lead single and title track is a full-on dance-pop banger while the second single, “Let’s Get Married,” slows down to sing about wedding her fiancé, Maxx Morando. Pitchfork notes the grimier side, “Different Religion,” which owes a lot to Model/Actriz. It's her 10th studio album.
Bass PersuadesMileyListen on Apple Music
Carly Rae Jepsen, Day and Night
A 24-song double album, split between “daytime” songs that spotlight songwriting and a sundown half of pure dance-pop, per Billboard. Pitchfork says Jepsen “is having more fun than everyone,” on themes that range from marrying her husband to traveling Europe to having a baby, with a scrapbooked travelogue in “Versailles,” a Gainsbourg homage on “Blue Skies” and the bubbly “Amalfi Coast.” (She has since announced a 2027 tour.)
Versailles (official video)Carly Rae JepsenWatch on YouTube
beabadoobee, Pylon
After a more acoustic turn on 2024's This Is How Tomorrow Moves, Bea Kristi chops her hair and leans back into the grunge, emo and '90s FM rock of her debut. Pitchfork calls it a blown-out tour diary, with guests from Hayley Williams to Turnstile's Brendan Yates and Title Fight's Shane Moran, and Matty Healy and George Daniel producing “Write Me a Letter.” “Whether or not Beabadoobee believes the dance floor to be dead,” the review says, “one thing’s for certain on her new album Pylon: she’s making rock music.”
PylonbeabadoobeeListen on Apple Music
AZ Chike, No Rest for the Wicked
The Los Angeles rapper's major-label debut arrives two years after he stole “Peekaboo” on Kendrick Lamar's GNX. Pitchfork says the horn-and-808 beats would fit on a Lamar record, but that Chike's flow and West Coast street politics keep it his own, especially on “Look Like My Mama” with Tyler, the Creator. “This is me carving my way into hip-hop history,” he told Billboard. (Full story here.)
No Rest for the WickedAZ ChikeListen on Apple Music
Beck, Ride Lonesome
Feeling low has long been Beck's fertile territory, and for this one he reconvened the band behind Mutations, Sea Change and Morning Phase: Smokey Hormel, Joey Waronker, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Roger Joseph Manning Jr. and Jason Falkner. Pitchfork hears a windswept mix of folk, country and alt-rock, and says that songs like the title track and “Disappearing Act” are proper power ballads.
Ride LonesomeBeckListen on Apple Music
Tinashe, Popstar
Her eighth album, and per Billboard her poppiest yet, follows 2024's Quantum Baby and its “Nasty,” her first solo Hot 100 hit. Pitchfork says it is half-recreation, half-reimagining of the last decade's biggest pop blockbusters, including a rock&b ballad, an acoustic closer and a dalliance with stadium country in “Nobody Wanna Dance Anymore.” Billboard's Kyle Denis writes that Popstar “is sneakily sarcastic and gloriously sassy, but Tinashe, unlike quite a few of her contemporaries, can actually commit — and back it up.” (She and Charli xcx then debuted that song live.)
PopstarTinasheListen on Apple Music
Taylor Swift, The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore
Four new songs, “Patient Zero,” “Cleveland!,” “Pink Clouding” and “Babylon,” written in Sweden with Max Martin and Shellback and attached to last year's record-setting album. Billboard says “Patient Zero” opens with country-inspired strings that fade behind more expected pop production, a midtempo that connects where Swift has been to where she's headed next. (Our full report.)
The Life of a Showgirl: The EncoreTaylor SwiftListen on Apple Music
Julia Jacklin, The Gem
Julia Jacklin's 4AD debut takes its name from a real Melbourne pub that gave her solace when she moved to the city in 2017 knowing no one. She recorded in a room above the bar and tested songs downstairs, with co-production from Robert Muinos's Rat Pack Studios. Pitchfork says the album, made in a period of transition between labels, managers and styles, “moves remarkably like a turtle, carrying home comfortably on its back.”
The GemJulia JacklinListen on Apple Music
Jae Stephens, Audacity
The debut from the Issa Rae-cosigned pop writer is a Coyote Ugly-style fantasy land with the best of '00s rhythmic pop, Billboard says, with Dallas Caton, MNEK and PinkPantheress on board. “I have the audacity to take up as much space as I feel I deserve, and this album is exploring that,” she says. Pitchfork calls it a “stellar major label debut.” (More in our rising artists feature.)
AUDACITYJae StephensListen on Apple Music
M83, I Wrote You a Letter
Anthony Gonzalez is wistful for his own back catalog: Pitchfork hears the spiritual successor to 2008's Saturdays=Youth, and a relatively subdued M83 record that lets big sounds carry big feelings, from dueling choirs and saxophones on “Siren Behold... Beasts” to a string quartet on “Soldiers of Lust.”
I Wrote You a LetterM83Listen on Apple Music
Also on our radar
Leon Bridges's Happiness Anytime (Sept. 25), which Billboard says travels from cumbia to reggae; Empress Of's Dream House (Sept. 18), written after her family home burned in the Eaton Fire; Gilla Band's Pugnello (Sept. 25); Team Dresch's Furthermore (Sept. 18); and Blondshell's Violins (Sept. 25).
Sources
Added to the High Grailed archive on October 12, 2026.
