Sam Ryder is no one-hit wonder, SZA channels Princess Diana – the week’s best albums

Sam Ryder, There’s Nothing But Space, Man! ★★★★☆

Sam Ryder has been one of the unlikeliest British music success stories of 2022. A 33-year-old former builder and wedding singer, he rose to online fame during the pandemic by belting out cover versions on short-attention-span social media site TikTok. Cannily selected to represent Britain at Eurovision (where the UK has floundered since Katrina and The Waves’s victory in 1997), Ryder ended 25 years of hurt by coming a popular second to Ukraine’s politically driven victory. He did it with a big smile, a huge voice, and a monster pop song, Space Man, written with top professional songwriters Amy Wadge (a frequent Ed Sheeran collaborator) and Max Wolfgang (Celine Dion, Paloma Faith).

It gave us ABBA, but it has been a very long time since the much-derided television song contest launched a substantial pop career, with Celine Dion in 1988 probably the last big star to emerge from its cheesy tableau. It’s developed a toxic reputation in the UK as a place where careers go to die in abject humiliation. But in a rapidly changing pop landscape, the love and care lavished on Ryder’s excellent debut album, There’s Nothing But Space, Man!, should give him a shot at reaching escape velocity.

The distinctive Ryder may even benefit from not fitting into the contemporary pop scene. He is an old-fashioned talent, and not just because he has a shaggy beard, long hair and dresses like he should be presenting a wacky children’s TV show in the 1970s. His flexible multi-octave voice is driven by big chested lungpower, with barely a hint of the understated softness, chatty intimacy or slangy inflections so prevalent in modern pop.

His sensibility is pure rock and soul, delivered full blast and far too melodious to require recourse to autotune. His biggest influences are obvious from opening track Deep Blue Doubt, where his voice floats weightlessly over sonorous piano with lots of Freddie Mercury-style inflections, before electric guitars charge up and it turns into something resembling Bryan Adams and Elton John concocting the ultimate Disney empowerment anthem.

If it is all shamelessly over-the-top, that’s a space in which Ryder’s old-school vocal prowess can shine. He has a fantastic falsetto, full and powerful rather than the tremulous squeaky thing heard when so many contemporary singers push themselves to the edge of their range. He can roar like a heavy rocker on steroids too, and standout tracks Tiny Riot and Whirlwind make use of both modes, fluid verses giving way to choruses where he sounds like he’s back on a building site trying to make himself heard over the jackhammers. There’s a lot of top co-writing talent at work, and every song offers some catchy hook or twist, albeit the lyrics essay the over-earnestness of a motivational Instagram guru.

There is nothing particularly original or surprising here, yet in a pop market that is all interesting edges, self-enclosed scenes and leftfield genres, Ryder offers a hearty return to the reassuringly obvious, pitched straight into the mainstream. A star is born. Neil McCormick

SZA, SOS ★★★★★

The artwork for SZA’s long-anticipated second album, SOS, shows the 33-year-old artist sitting on a white diving board, surrounded by blue ocean. It’s inspired by the iconic 1997 photograph of Princess Diana on a yacht in Portofino, a lonely image taken days before her death.  “I pulled the Diana reference”, SZA has said, “[because] I just loved how isolated she felt, and that was what I wanted to convey the most.” 

SOS, the follow up to 2017’s Ctrl, the triple-platinum, four-time Grammy nominated debut that propelled SZA to popstar status, is, she says, an album “about heartbreak, it’s about being lost, it's about being pissed”. It’s an expansion of her wonderfully experimental R&B, with all the candour listeners expect from this masterful songwriter, who was born Solána Imani Rowe in St. Louis.

Over the course of 23 tracks, which for a lesser artist would be far too many, SZA ruminates on the fame she feels ill-equipped to deal with, but this is first and foremost a break-up record. On the groovy stalker lullaby Kill Bill, she sings sweetly, “I might kill my ex/Not the best idea”. The Radiohead-style Special is a lament to the ex who made her feel like a loser, and on F2F, a humorous, pop-punk rock song she screams, “I hate me enough for the two of us… I f--- him ‘cause I miss you”.

The featured artists serve to enhance SOS rather than just bulk it out. The ethereal Phoebe Bridgers collaboration Ghost in the Machine is an electronica ear-worm, while Forgiveless combines a celestial Björk sample with the gruff voice of the late Wu-Tang Clan rapper Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

What it comes down to, however, is SZA’s celestial singing voice. Her vocals luxuriate in the lilt of jazz, sliding seamlessly from the rapping of the titular opener SOS, to the belting of R&B ballad Gone Girl. She is an artist of spectacular range, whose efforts to redefine R&B rightfully place her in the canon alongside heroes like Frank Ocean. It may have been five years in the making, but SOS is well worth the wait. Kathleen Johnston

Pedro Vian & Mana, Cascades ★★★★☆

Barcelona-born, Amsterdam-based artist/producer Pedro Vian has established a reputation for dreamy electronica that feels born of club culture, but also drifts beyond it. Vian earned particular acclaim for the richly reflective techno of his 2016 album, Beautiful Things You Left Us For Memories. He has also proved a keen collaborator, and latest LP Cascades stems from the creative sparks from his first studio meet with Turin composer/sound designer Daniele Mana, around a year ago.

“Immersive” has become a buzzword, but with this collection – first presented through live audio-visual festival sets (at Sonar in Barcelona and C2C in Turin) – the term feels apt. Vian and Mana’s chill-out soundtracks seem to envelope you with their wintry moods and gorgeously glacial edges.

According to Vian, one of the inspirations behind Cascades was Dante’s Inferno. The theme isn’t immediately obvious when you listen to these electronic instrumentals, although they do elegantly unfold across movements: from the tremulous intro, into the simply titled Cascades I – IX.

The duo’s use of field recordings and modular synths lend intricate details to the melodic haze, evoking cinema scores, 1970s ambient music pioneers such as Tangerine Dream and pulses of contemporary club culture (although you definitely won’t find any conventional dancefloor bangers here). Glimmers of strings, shimmering synths and mesmerising vocal clips emerge from the mix, as the track-listing progresses towards its haunting outro. Cascades glides seamlessly through genres, including downtempo electro and neo-classical. Ad that’s the key to this record: the experience is most captivating when you go with the flow. Arwa Haider

Nina Hagen, Unity ★★★☆☆

Countless artists struggle to exude rebel attitude; Nina Hagen has naturally embodied it for decades. From her upbringing in former East Berlin, via her rise through the 1970s and 80s rock and new wave scenes as well as theatre and film, Hagen is a self-styled “godmother of punk” and pop culture provocateur. Her expressions have been boldly catchy and anti-establishment; they’ve also seized mainstream attention and respect – even former German chancellor Angela Merkel turned out to be a Hagen fan, choosing one of her songs to soundtrack her leaving ceremony in 2021. Now Hagen, 67, releases Unity: her 14^th solo album, and her first since 2011’s Volksbeat.

From the snappy electro-rock riffs of opening number Shadrack, Unity is a blast of spiky wit, fiery outbursts and spiritual soul, piled high with influences from punk and reggae to gospel and jazz. Her vocals remain powerful: from soaring operatic drama to persuasive pop melody and an ominous snarl; it doesn’t sound like she’ll take “nein” for an answer on the spacey synths of Gib mir deine Liebe. On the English-language tracks, her lyrics sometimes sound gauche, but the sentiments ring true, and her guest-list is enjoyably far-ranging. US funk legend George Clinton joins Hagen on Unity’s dubby title track, which pays homage to the BLM movement. United Women of the World features guest vocals from Jamaican-British singer-songwriter Liz Mitchell (formerly of Boney M) and Hagen’s long-time collaborator Lene Lovich.

Hagen has regularly incorporated cover versions into her work. On Unity, she effectively serves classic protest songs as modern statements, including her takes on Merle Travis’s 1947 classic 16 Tons, a reworking of Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind, and Sheryl Crow’s 1996 anti-war cry Redemption Day. There’s a chaotic energy to the album’s disparate strands, but Hagen exuberantly brings it all together. Arwa Haider

A Boogie Wit da Hoodie, Me vs. Myself ★★★☆☆

Known for his auto-tuned, sing-rap take on trap, R&B hooks and big, bassy beats, Bronx rapper A Boogie Wit da Hoodie (aka 27-year-old Julius Dubose) is one of New York’s most beloved artists, with 6.4 million followers on Instagram and three top five albums under his belt. His 2018 No1 Hoodie SZN made headlines for representing the ever-shifting gap between streaming numbers and the old-fashioned business of physical sales, after it hit the top spot with the least amount of physical sales of any Billboard No1 ever (823, vs 83 million streams).

Like Hoodie SZN, Me vs. Myself is another prototypical rap record, somewhat bloated at 22 tracks, which are divided between his alter egos Artist and A Boogie. On the latter side, Dubose (whose stage name is a reference to a character in the 2022 film Paid in Full), reunites with Kodak Black on Water (Drowning Pt. 2), a sequel to their 2017, 7x platinum-certified hit. It’s one of the strongest tracks on the album, and one of many collaborations, ranging from Lil Durk to H.E.R.

The Roddy Ricch feature B.R.O (Better Ride Out), the album’s second single, stands out as one of its finest efforts, with a head-bopping bass and production that is made more interesting by an acoustic piano element. Come Here is another highlight, thanks to a subtle echo on Dubose’s voice that sounds far less contrived than the usual autotune.

Most of the songs here do somewhat merge into one, long, party soundtrack that is enjoyable to listen to and yet entirely forgettable. This is not a record that moves the needle on artistry, but it is sure to wrack up considerable streaming numbers in the rap-obsessed States in particular, helped along the way by strategic decisions such as big-name features and extended track list. Dubose knows his blueprint – hoods off to him. Kathleen Johnston