--- title: John Mayer, Joey Bada$$, Sofi Tukker: New Music AUDIO description: From John Mayer to Joey Bada$$ and some hypnotic new pop tunes, here are some new finds for your weekend playlist. canonical: https://time.com/4641330/5-songs-listen/ author: Raisa Bruner article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-01-20T21:11:59.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:40:20.270Z og:title: The 5 Best Songs You Need to Hear This Week og:description: A new John Mayer ballad and a political rap from Joey Bada$$ for your playlist. og:url: https://time.com/4641330/5-songs-listen/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The 5 Best Songs You Need to Hear This Week twitter:description: A new John Mayer ballad and a political rap from Joey Bada$$ for your playlist. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # 5 Songs You Need to Listen to This Week (20 Jan 2017) > Sponsored content. 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Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-brief-2026q3/newsletters?i=521988a0-b2ae-400e-94ec-92a67e175c88&cr=time-nl-brief-2026q3-v1)  by [Raisa Bruner](https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner Jan 20, 2017 9:11 PM UTC  by [Raisa Bruner](https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner Jan 20, 2017 9:11 PM UTC Here are five new [songs](http://time.com/4575319/top-10-best-songs-2016/) to take you into the weekend, including a smoothly political rap from Joey Bada$$, the latest ballad from guitar crooner John Mayer’s comeback project, a hypnotic electro-pop track from Grammy-nominated artist Sofi Tukker, the fiery rock-rap hybrid of watt and Post Malone, and a soaring new single from singer B.Miles. ### “Land of the Free,” Joey Bada$$ Tap into the political spirit with rapper Joey Bada$$’s “Land of the Free,” a song with a resistance theme. While his rhymes are biting—”In the land of the free, it’s for the free loaders / leave us dead in the street then be your organ donors / they disorganized my people, made us all loners / still got the last names of our slave owners” — the song itself goes down easy. Although, with lines like “Donald Trump is not equipped to take this country over,” some listeners won’t be here for Bada$$’s vibe. ### “Burning Man,” watt feat. Post Malone Or let politics take a backseat to the burning rock of watt, a guitarist and singer-songwriter whose new single “Burning Man,” featuring rapper Post Malone for a few hypnotic verses, has the searing guitar solos and easy beat of an old-school acid rock favorite. (It will also appear on the soundtrack of the new Vin Diesel movie, so consider this one a bad-boy action-hero anthem.) ### “You’re Gonna Live Forever in Me,” John Mayer Smooth-strumming songwriter Mayer has finally released what he’s calling “Wave One” of his new album _The Search for Everything_, a first handful of his songs on this return project after a handful or years of relative silence. “Wave One” delivers some satisfying guitar tunes. “You’re Gonna Live Forever In Me,” though, is Mayer at his softest: it’s sweetly, tenderly melodic, a healing ballad about love and loss that shows the rock star’s vulnerabilities. “This is the first time in my life as a singer that I’m in a state of emotion,” he [told _Rolling Stone_](http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/john-mayer-details-origin-inspiration-behind-four-new-songs-w462012) about recording this song, and you can feel it. ### “Johny,” Sofi Tukker Sofi Tukker’s dark, genre-bending “Johny” switches seamlessly from Brazilian poetry to English lyrics, from spare hand-clapping rhythms to haunting electronic layers. The Grammy-nominated indie duo from New York—up for Best Dance Recording—get under your skin a little, in a good way. “Johny, can you hear me?” vocalist Sophie Hawley-Weld keeps repeating, a searching plea that you somehow still want to dance to. ### “Running,” B.Miles Fresh face B.Miles’s debut EP isn’t out until March, but in “Running” we get a taste of the crossover pop that the L.A.-based artist—whose debut single made it into Hype Machine’s popular charts and Spotify’s Viral 50—will be working with. With confident, breathy vocals over a pleasantly infectious electropop track, “Running” is poised for a breakthrough. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4641330/5-songs-listen/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4641330/5-songs-listen/"},"headline":"5 Songs You Need to Listen to This Week (20 Jan 2017)","datePublished":"2017-01-20T21:11:59.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:40:20.270Z","description":"John Mayer is back in full ballad form","url":"https://time.com/4641330/5-songs-listen/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Entertainment","Music"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Raisa Bruner","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4641330/5-songs-listen/","name":"5 Songs You Need to Listen to This Week (20 Jan 2017)"}}]}] ```