Usher’s ‘I Cry’ and more new tunes

Pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on notable new songs and videos.

■ Usher, ‘I Cry’: “I usually don’t show my emotions,” Usher sings, not entirely factually. Through his extensive career, he has lavished emotions on romance: prospective, blissful, lost. “I Cry,” and its literally tearful video clip, is directed beyond himself, reflecting nationwide protests over systemic racism: “I’ve seen struggle, I’ve seen pain, I’ve seen beyond the mess we’ve made,” he sings, soon adding, “I’ll fight for the future we’re making.” With gospelly piano, cascading guitar lines and Usher’s determined, longbreathed croon, the song carries Marvin Gaye’s legacy into the era of Black Lives Matter.

■ Gerard Way featuring Judith Hill, ‘Here Comes the End’: “We’ll all get through this,” insists Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance, in a song that directly connects surging punk guitars to the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” complete with Judith Hill’s soul-charged backing vocals — “Can you feel it?” she wails. Much of what he sings, over handclaps and a two-chord stomp, isn’t so optimistic.

■ The Rolling Stones, ‘Criss Cross’: It’s obvious why “Criss Cross” didn’t make the original cut for the Rolling Stones’ 1973 album, “Goats Head Soup,” which will be reissued as a vastly expanded set. It’s not much of a song, and what there is sounds a lot like a reshuffled “Brown Sugar.” But it’s utterly enjoyable for the sheer cluttered enthusiasm of the performance: the studio pileup of cowbell, clavinet, saxophone and the core band behind a multitracked Mick Jagger, who’s leering with all his might.

■ Katy Perry, ‘Smile’: In the 10 (!) years since her era-defining “Teenage Dream,” fortuitous timing has not exactly been one of Katy Perry’s superpowers. Her 2017 album “Witness” became a pop punchline not so much because it was a sonic disaster — there are some good songs buried in there; I will die on this hill if I have to! — but because its too-earnest promise of “purposeful pop” felt like a tone-deaf offering in the chaos of the Trump era. Some crises are just too big to be solved with a three-minute pop song — a fact that’s only more apparent in 2020, a year into which Perry has chosen to release an album called, of all things, “Smile.” Those who rolled their eyes at the bombastic agenda of “Witness” will find plenty to say about the image of Perry donning a literal clown suit in the midst of a global catastrophe. But anyone willing to take the title track on the surface level will find its brassy grooves and uplifting chorus to be something of a return to form for Perry, if yet another instance of unfortunate timing.

■ Sofi Tukker, ‘House Arrest’: Someone had to equate the pandemic’s stayhome guidelines with house arrest, then link the phrase to a house beat. That would be Sofi Tukker, a New York duo that has been doing daily D J livestreams, abetted on this track by English production duo Gorgon City. “This won’t last forever/Treat your sadness with a smile,” Sophie Hawley-Weld sings as the beat thumps, the keyboards bounce and the drumbeats ratchet up. “We can’t have what’s next till we hang inside for a while.” The new video, released as cases surge in the United States, compiles fans dancing as they isolate at home.

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