Say You, Say Knee Lionel Richie has postponed a35-date tour with Mariah Carey until this summer due toa knee injury.•Ladies FeistCanadian songstress
Feist will release her first album in six years this spring.NOTEWORTHY7 | FUTURE FEAT. THE WEEKND
“COMIN OUT STRONG”“They take my kindness for
weakness/Still comin’ out strong,”
the Weeknd warns on this silky,
atmospheric guest spot, laying his
late-night lothario vibes over the
Atlanta rapper’s woozy verses.8 | BEBE REXHA FEAT. G-EAZY “F.F.F.”Hollywood isn’t just one big party
in the USA; there are plenty of
snakes and social climbers lurking
in those golden hills. So say the
“Me, Myself & I” hitmakers who
reunite for this fizzy middle finger
to “fake friends.” (One guess what
the firstF stands for.)9 | KYGO FEAT. SELENA GOMEZ“IT AIN’T ME”
Selena plays Cher to dance-floor
don Kygo’s Sonny, sorting through
the wreckage of a bad romance
and saying goodbye to all that with
an airy, strobe-lit anthem.10 | CASHMERE CAT FEAT.
CAMILA CABELLO“LOVE INCREDIBLE”The newest offering from the freshly
emancipated queen of dis-Harmony
is her most adventurous yet: With
the help of Weeknd collaborator
Cashmere Cat, her voice climaxes
in a flurry of vocoders that would
make even Daft Punk jealous.11 |^ JAY SOM“BAYBEE”
Multi-instrumentalist Melina
Duterte folds breathy new-wave
vocals and slinky synths into an
intoxicating swirl of indie-rock bliss.12 | STORMZY FEAT. MNEK
“BLINDED BY YOUR GRACE, PT. 2”Adored by both Katy Perry and
Adele, the British grime rapper
takes it to church on this sprawling,
gospel-inspired rave-up, a collabo-
ration with top-tier producer
MNEK. Call it England’s answer to
Kanye’s “Ultralight Beam.”
( From left )
Selena Gomez;
the Weeknd;
Future; Lana Del
Rey; Ed SheeranMORE ON EW.COM
Hear these songs online atew.com/almostspring17 MARCH 10, 2017 EW.COM 65Khalid’s
Teenage Dream
How a kid fresh out of high school dropped a pin on the Hot
100 with his addictive breakout single, “Location.”BY NOLAN FEENEYWhen Khalid first posted
his effervescent R&B plea
“Location” to SoundCloud
last spring, the now 19-year-old
had one thing on his mind: becom-
ing his El Paso high school’s prom
king. He got the crown—and a lot
more. The single landed him
a major-label deal with RCA and
has racked up more than 45 million
streams on Spotify, thanks to its
#MillennialProblems message
about connecting face-to-face in
the era of subtweets and smart-
phones. (Some love from Kylie Jen-
ner’s Snapchat didn’t hurt either.)
The Georgia-born artist’s back-
ground has helped make him a sort
of de facto expert on the struggles
of young people: As a military brat—
he spent his formative years bounc-
ing all over the South before stints
in Germany, New York, and Texas—
he learned to endure that intermi-
nableDegrassi episode called
adolescence the hard way. “We
forget that when you grow up,
there are a lot of people who are in
the same position as you,” he says.
“The reason we forget is because
there’s not really a true voice that
talks from the perspective of youth.”
Khalid is trying to be that voice.
His debut album,American Teen
(out now), covers everything fromspacey soul to synth-pop, but his
textured voice and boyish ennui
tie it all together. “A lot of my songs
are about loneliness and losing
relationships,” he says. “Even the
ones that are happy, there’s a lonely
undertone to them.”
Tales of digital-age romance
aside, the growing pains Khalid
addresses are mostly classic ones:
“My car still smells like marijuana/
My mom is gonna kill me,” he
croons on the groovy “8TEEN.”
Songs like the ’80s-tinged title
track and the woozy, trap-flavored
“Young Dumb & Broke” also offer
snapshots of disaffected kids who
yearn for independence but still
don’t know where their lives are
headed. Khalid hopes his record
can guide them. “The album is a
compilation of my youth,” he says,
already sounding like an old soul.
“The mistakes I’ve made, the heart-
breaks I went through, the love that
I got, and all the love that I lost.”GOMEZ, DEL REY: C FLANIGAN/WIREIMAGE (2); THE WEEKND: SAMIR HUSSEIN/WIREIMAGE; FUTURE: PARAS GRIFFIN/WIREIMAGE; SHEERAN: GREG WILLIAMS;KHALID: JOHNNY NUNEZ/WIREIMAGE