Song words preceding "his kiss" / FRI 1-26-24 / Release of a new product to a limited audience / High-value ones are called "unicorns" / Passage that might be a mess after a rainstorm / Bilingual girl of TV and film / Work through seven stages, say / Like holographic Pokémon cards

Constructor: Sarah Sinclair and Rafael Musa

Relative difficulty: Medium (slightly north of Medium, for me)

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: Skara BRAE (22D: Skara ___, Scottish site of Europe's most complete Neolithic village) —

Skara Brae /ˈskærə ˈbreɪ/ is a stone-built Neolithic settlement, located on the Bay of Skaill on the west coast of Mainland, the largest island in the Orkney archipelago of Scotland. It consisted of ten clustered houses, made of flagstones, in earthen dams that provided support for the walls; the houses included stone hearths, beds, and cupboards. A primitive sewer system, with "toilets" and drains in each house, included water used to flush waste into a drain and out to the ocean.

The site was occupied from roughly 3180 BC to about 2500 BC and is Europe's most complete Neolithic village. Skara Brae gained UNESCO World Heritage Site status as one of four sites making up "The Heart of Neolithic Orkney". Older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Giza, it has been called the "Scottish Pompeii" because of its excellent preservation. (wikipedia)

Lots of lovely stuff here, though this was not on my wavelength, much of the time. Too many times (for my comfort / ego) I stared at beginnings of answers I couldn't get endings for, or otherwise struggled to finish off answers that were largely filled in from crosses. Most of this trouble was concentrated in the broader SW, where I came down out of the NW, got the first four (4!) letters of both the long Downs in the SW, and then promptly ... stopped. Cold. UNSU- suggested nothing to me at 24D: Pandemic health worker, say. It's been a long time since this country gave a damn about pandemic workers or the pandemic in general (those were a lovely cooperative four weeks or so, weren't they?), so the whole "They're heroes!" phenomenon was nowhere near the top of my brain. I was just looking for some profession (some kind of nurse?). Couldn't parse it, and then thought the "UN" at the front was going to be something to do with the U.N. Ugh. As for BALLERINA, well, when you've got a "?" clue like that (25D: Ones whose careers have turning points?), and you've got "careers" and "turning," and then you've got BALL up front ... well, what it suggested to me was some kind of professional BALLPLAYER, which fit, but which I didn't write in because I could feel it wasn't right. So UNSU- and BALL- just hung there a while. Getting into that corner from the other direction wasn't much easier, as LEDTVS proved an unparsable yikes for a good chunk of time (30D: Some Best Buy offerings). Had the LED- and ... no clue. Another no-clue: YELLED, yeesh, I needed every cross for that one (44D: Gave a hoot). The phrasing is obviously misdirective (suggesting caring, not yelling), but ... yeah, I don't like the "hoot" / "yell" equivalency. Owls hoot. They do not yell. Screech, maybe, but not yell. I guess there's the phrase "hooting and hollering," which suggests a lot of noises, one of which might be yelling. Anyway, more stuckness for me down there. Even GRIEVE and CHILLS didn't come easily (GRIEVE should've been a gimme, but with almost no crosses because of the above whiffing ... I just couldn't get it). So that corner played very much like a standard Saturday for me. The rest of the grid was normal Friday, but not whoosh-whoosh easy by any means. Just ... Friday. And a good Friday, for the most part.