If you’ve been wondering why our newsletters have been hitting your inbox less frequently, it’s because (1) music releases tend to slow down towards the end of the year, and (2) we really needed a break. That being said, we’ll be back once more before the end of the year to share our favorite new music from 2022, and then we’ll return to our normal coverage in January, we promise.

If you’re looking for some content to hold you over in the meantime, If These Walls Could Sing, a documentary about Abbey Roads Studios, premieres this Friday, December 16; Mariah Carey’s two-hour Christmas special, Merry Christmas to All, will air on December 20; and the Whitney Houston biopic, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, will hit theaters on December 23.

Click here for a Spotify playlist with the songs mentioned in this email.

BIGGEST Songs of the Week 📈

It’s felt like an eternity since SZA dropped her seminal debut, Ctrl, an R&B tour de force that propelled her to the upper echelon of popstars. Ctrl opened the floodgates for a new wave of R&B categorized by alternative and trap experimentation. The five-time Grammy-nominated, triple-platinum record has not once left the Billboard 200 in the 287 weeks since its release.