The Radar: This Week's Tunes You Need To Know – July 21

The Music breaks down the top performers and the breaking new music you need to be across. 

Hear the big new tunes of the week now on The Music Hit List.

DSPs

This week, Spotify’s New Music Friday playlist is stacked with local heavy-hitters. The Kid LAROI tops the list with his Barbie soundtrack inclusion Forever & Again, followed by Tones And I and Royel Otis with Bring It On (a collaborative effort with BIA and Diarra Sylla) and Adored, respectively. A little further down the list, too, we find HP Boyz’ Reminder and Budjerah’s Video Game both ranked highly.

Songs from the Barbie soundtrack continue to dominate – unsurprising, given it’s the most star-studded film tie-in to land in recent memory – with a particular highlight being Tame Impala’s Journey To The Real World. Elsewhere, new songs from Beabadoobee (The Way Things Go), Big Thief (Vampire Empire) and Cigarettes After Sex (Bubblegum) add some indie flair to the Top 20, while the usual hip-hop hit comes courtesy of Stormzy and RAYE (The Weekend), A$AP Rocky and Pharrell Williams (RIOT), and CHAII (Drippin’ In Gold).

Things are pretty similar on Apple Music, but their New Music Daily playlist gives higher ranking to ZAYN’s new solo effort Love Like This – in case you forgot, Zayn Malik is a former member of One Direction (timely sidenote: another ex-Directioner, Louis Tomlinson, just announced an Australian tour) – and rounds the Top Ten out with new songs by Chris Young (Young Love & Saturday Nights), The Velvet Club (On Your Own), Dolly Ave (Honda) and the genre-bending power trio of Diplo, Jessie Murph and Polo G (Heartbroken).

RADIO

NOVA made waves yesterday (July 20) when at 8am, every station on its national network was synced to air Ricki-Lee’s new single Point Of No Return, coinciding with its global premiere across DSPs and streaming services. It was a unique move from the radio giant, echoing the days of old when radio premieres were one of the biggest tools for artists to get new songs out into the mainstream consensus. Elsewhere on the NOVA Network, top new adds include Taylor Swift’s I Can See You (Taylor’s Version), Ed Sheeran and Luke Combs’ Life Goes On, and Troye Sivan’s Rush. The lattermost entry caught Sivan some flak over its risqué music video.

The Hit Network are still frothing over Olivia Rodrigo’s newest banger, Vampire – as are we – as it’s been added across the board to its national drive programs. The same goes for Popular, the latest hit from HBO’s The Idol (which may be one of the worst shows to debut in the past decade, but does have one hell of a soundtrack) co-headlined by The Weeknd, Madonna and Playboi Carti. Rush, too, has been added across the board on Melbourne’s FOX FM. KIIS have added just one new song across the board, being Popular.

This week’s Radio Monitor Hot 50 has a few key standouts, like the Top Ten debut for Rodrigo and Vampire (sliding in at #8), a boost up to #1 for Combs’ Fast Car cover (which has been absolutely dominating the charts since it was made a single at the start of last month), and chart debuts for Life Goes On (#40) and Rush (#48) – both thanks in no short part to the recent pile-on from all the major networks. Sheeran’s track Eyes Closed also swapped places with Fast Car, sitting at #2 this week. Taylor Swift has both the next two songs in the Top Five – Karma and Cruel Summer at #3 and #4, respectively – and Post Malone rounds it out with Chemical.

The Rions reign as the most-played artist on triple j for the moment, thanks to their recent hit Minivan, while G Flip follows straight behind with The Worst Person Alive. The station are also just as obsessed with Vampire, rounding out its Top Three, and other favourites played heavily this week include It Goes Like (Nanana) by Peggy Gou, Lookin’ Out by King Stingray and It’s Cool To Be In Love by Greta Stanley.

COUNTRY

Hear the big new country tunes of the week on the Countrytown Hot Country Hits Playlist.

Once again, Jelly Roll tops the Countrytown Hot 50 airplay chart with Need A Favour, while Luke Combs and Casey Barnes round the Top Three out with Fast Car and Boys Like Me, respectively. We see a decent boost for the Wolf Bros with their song Love Like That (featuring The Shires), though, jumping up from #7 to #4. The same goes for Country Proud by Taylor Moss, leaping four places from #9 to round out the Top Five. Inversely, Morgan Evans’ Hey Little Mama has dropped out of the Top Five, sliding down from #4 to #6.

Hudson Rose and Jeremy Turner have both seen some pretty major upticks in popularity – the former’s song Rules Of Breaking Up has soared from #271 to #44 in this week’s chart, while the latter’s track She Keep’s Comin’ Round has been bumped from #188 to #39.

Over on Spotify, new favourites include White Horse by Chris Stapleton, When You Walked Into The Room by Bryce Sainty, Want You More by OKay and Moving Away by Salt Tree. There’s also a big country slant to the new track from The Gaslight Anthem (History Books), which features none other than Bruce Springsteen.

Apple Music, on the other hand, shines the spotlight on the Post Malone-assisted Dial Drunk by Noah Kahan, Hometownless by Chloe Styler, See You Around by Ashley Cooke and Nate Smith, and Boxes by Rosie Darling. Also highlighted are the new tunes from Rhinestoned (Livin’ The Low Life), Sons Of Atticus (Liar) and Sunsoli (Time And Place) – in addition to that lucrative Top Ten placing for Chris Young.