If I ever get arthritis, I’m blaming Drake. My heart sank when I woke up on the morning of May 15 to find that he had not just dropped Iceman, the album we were expecting, but also two whole surprise albums – all of which I needed to listen to by midday. While it goes without saying that the vast majority of these 42 new songs are entirely skippable, there were a handful of bangers in the new triple-drop. 

And I’m not just blaming Drake, I’m also blaming fakemink and Bladee, who both dropped deeply conceptual albums that sent both of their cultlike fanbases into overdrive last week – Dante’s Inferno-inspired Terrified and the endlessly esoteric Sulfur Surfer.

Speaking of fanbase chatter: Charli xcx is back, this month releasing not one but two pot-stirring singles which declare that both “The dancefloor is dead” and that “Nothing’s gonna save us, not music, fashion or film.” Suffice to say, it’s been an epic month for music, and a terrible month for my joint health. 

But even amid this star-studded lineup, some songs have been particular mainstays in our headphones this month. Below, we break down our five favourite tracks from May 2026 (and, when you’re done, check out our full playlist of this month’s musical highlights above). 

“THE CURE” – OLIVIA RODRIGO

With tens of billions of streams and multiple Disney acting roles under her belt, Olivia Rodrigo has no business dropping music this raw and vulnerable – she’s already gone clear. But “the cure” is an emotional gut-punch of the highest degree, following up her lovestruck previous single “drop dead” with the illusion-shattering reality following a break-up. “But it don’t matter how your love feels anymore / It’ll never be the cure,” she sings on the chorus, reckoning with the universal urge to seek external validation for internal trauma. It’s up there with her best music yet. 

“JANICE STFU” – DRAKE

I regret to inform you that Drake has just dropped another summer anthem – this time in the form of auto-tune-heavy rage cut “Janice STFU”. With lyrics either urging a partner to “blow on me like some green tea” or delivering two-years-too-late comebacks to Kendrick Lamar (“White kids listen to you ‘cause they feel some guilt and that’s how your soul gets fulfilled”), listeners should file this track as far away from conscious hip hop as possible. But there’s still something undeniably earwormy about the track, sampling both Lykke Li’s 2011 pop track “I Follow Rivers” and a vocal snippet from The Sopranos (which is allegedly a dig at Universal Music’s Head of Brand Partnerships, Janice Jose). It’s so ear-wormy in fact, that, two weeks out from release, it’s currently becoming somewhat of a sleeper hit from Iceman. 

“LINKNB” – KELELA

Released alongside the announcement of her upcoming third album, Avatar, “Linknb” marks a new chapter in Kelela’s career. Gone are the sprawling, yearning three-chorus-plus-bridge alt-R&B tracks that made her previous album, 2023’s Raven, such an emotional powerhouse. This new track hits fast and hard: set to a rapidly looping post-punk guitar line, driving metal drums and, crucially, just one 16-bar verse. It’s not surprising, then, that the queen of short songs herself, PinkPantheress, is the only feature on the upcoming album – we’ll be bumping “linknb” on repeat until that drops. 

“FORREDUCI” – TR GOBRAZY

I was in the crowd when TR Gobrazy previewed this single at the Lauzzaview event two weeks ago. There seemed to be a malfunction on the venue screen, causing the “Forreduci” music video to play no fewer than four times on repeat before cutting to black. It’s a huge testament to this track, then, that no one moved an inch until the fourth iteration. TR Gobrazy’s signature UK Ug sound, featuring constant beat-switches and hyper-compressed baritone rap vocals, just keeps getting better with each release – this time incorporating faint vocal melodies in the track’s closing moments. 

“R.I.P. PEACE” – LIIM

Zohran Mamdani is great – but, in my mind, Liim is the real mayor of New York City. His releases have long delivered a street-level tour of the city, from Harlem 125th right down to the beach, and this latest release is no exception. With lyrics like “Just missed the M103, I'm tryna get back to the girl I need / 125 to the Lower East, I guess this girl really got a hold on me,” “R.I.P. Peace” paints such a vivid picture of adolescence in the city that I almost feel as if I can picture these places (I can’t; I haven’t visited New York in over 20 years). It speaks to an irrepressible youthfulness that makes Liim such an exciting presence in music, disregarding the traditional boundaries of genre and tuning to create a sonic universe that feels profoundly lived in.