pop report #11

on today’s top tier, & tomorrow’s rainbows

Hello & welcome to the third JACKALS! ‘pop report’ since our relocation to these Sub-urbs, though we’ve fixed the numbers in order to throw some light on (and love at) the tumblr reports — some of them proud pieces never to resurface, as pop reports are too of-the-moment to be reprinted (which is why this Globe item will remain on its home planet). For example: here’s another Friday. The Year of the Fascist is fast fading from fashion, or so we’re manifesting, and [t]oday’s [t]op [h]its are still a hazy brew, dancing and crashing out in haphazard alternation in the face/as a result of forces from above. There’s always good pop, and half the time it’s good for us, but society? That’s ours to clean up, though we’ve all got a shot at cutting the gems that’ll shift the collective ass. “Not everyone wants to be a pop star,” complains a great cultural critic about Spotify’s inborn pop machinery, and it’s true — Nirvana didn’t, nor did Oliver Anthony Music.

Perhaps I should feel some shame at revisiting ol’ Spotty’s TTH, my late bff’s pref over Billboard aside, as my breeze through Liz Pelly’s commendable polemic Mood Machine is at least constantly reminding me that Spot doesn’t help the artists one goddamn bit. Where I’m less than persuaded is that it isn’t an improvable model — though I feel the same way about capitalism, so what the fuck do I know. I’ve never seen a (RIP) penny from my streams, but I’m not convinced the 12 extra cents some faded relic is getting from my repeat plays vs. the zero from some throwback pilgrimage to a used record shop can’t be ballooned into actual benefits should somebody who cares get a hold of the reins of power. That last part is the problem, but I’m not sure the algorithms are entirely defeating democratic influence just yet, the way that it’s technically our fault we[term used advisedly]’re getting reamed by authoritarians at this specific moment.

So what are we banging to get through it, to whatever degree Big Brother is telling us to? That’s banging or vibing to — the latter is what we’ve mostly been up to since the beleaguered, bedeviled late 2010s. The sudden appearance of one Olivia Dean, a star so smooth she slid quickly into my father’s favor (dad’s hip to what’s cookin’, but he’s not much for spicy dishes), suggests our global appetite for delectable relaxants. She’s not the pernicious passive listening Pelly decries — and yes, some robot’s deep sleep drone made it onto my traditionally exasperating personal pop charts — but c’mere, we’re all so tired, play something sweet, something mellow, something I can sink my teeth into like you guessed it. Everything’s fresh from the factory these days anyway. What I find most interesting is the possible relationship between Dean and Bieber’s “Daisies” (#7); last summer, Mk.gee’s guitar was an unusually chill signature, but was it a harbinger?

Topping today’s top hits — see, we don’t need to worry about her — is great straight gay ambassador Sabrina Carpenter, licking her lips over someone she shat on in high school’s finally being worthy of her favor. The trick it turns is this pink pony’s biggest one: reappropriating toxically gendered tropes in service of belittling men, who still all deserve it. We don’t get any history after Abigail ditches Sabreen to flash her eyes and bite her bottom lip, but she does check down the roster of is dick big, can man lift big thing. Lest I sound chagrined in an MRA way, I’ll say that I’m far too impressed by SC as a performer (and writers like Amy Allen’s way with words; “it’s thickening the plot” is one more nakedly well-turned twist) to suspect she’s anything but a force for good. She’s mean like a mean gay, mean for (mostly) justice. I can see her savvily surviving the days after Unpretty Liberation, when she’ll have to move like Marie Antoinette.

Of course, the best thing about “When Did You Get Hot” is its sinuous, ersatz-R&B music, for which Carpenter and Allen were aided by Jack-of-all-trades Antonoff and One Direction accomplice John Ryan. As pastiche goes, it’s Adam Schlesinger-worthy, but though it’s never been my thing to police, it’s one of several signs of a diminished Black presence on our pop charts (which doesn’t exactly make up for the diminished male presence). Yet here is the aforementioned Olivia Dean at #2, with her irresistible “Man I Need”. Dean’s mother is Jamaican-Guyanese — which means roughly as much as whatever your mother’s heritage does — while her musical DNA may feature a dose of ‘80s artists like Anita Baker, stars when soul was so slickly curated its very name felt misleading. “Man I Need”’s soulfulness is heavier than the current pop crop, & dig its skeletal delicacy, or its teardrop-pitter 12/8. But what it signifies, we’ve yet to witness.

What I’ve learned since last writing about sombr — if you’re not on TikTok, it’s useful to date or closely befriend someone who is, which probably isn’t hard — is that he’s a little twerp, i.e. a piece of work miles under 25. I can come up with six, seven reasons his current success is not promising, but the one reason it is is the one that keeps me satistfied while “back to friends” is on. His sound is unique right now, drawing with no interest in experimentation on sources like my bloody valentine and the Jesus and Mary Chain (maybe one of which baby br has heard of — skill issue), for an effect that can’t possibly be as banal as the song it’s alluringly burying. I don’t think I’ll ever like him more than this hit and his album title (lol), but there’ve been worse pop footnotes: Daniel Powter, etc. Its sun-dazzled drizzle heals you harder than that of “Opalite”, the only song on Life of a Showgirl where Taylor is actively trying to be everybody’s friend.

The next hit here, by Kehlani, kicks off with a frou-frou flourish, a decorous smear of strings. Then a mellow yet insistent beat keeps you there; this is actual R&B, so maybe trends are promising. “Folded” is not an especially inventive kissoff ballad, but its mix of ice-cold (and -firm) stance and seductive slow-jam groove makes for an appealingly two-toned small-time triumph. Then, another person of color whose producers have craftily repurposed soul elements, elements that might even be honestly absorbed (#6): RAYE’s rave-up “WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!”, a class-act burlesque of a spitting wire, worthy of its all-caps styling*. I wrote about RAYE in an early pop report, and haven’t thought about her since. “HUSBAND”’s brass is a touch too anachronistic to rest easy it isn’t another one-shot — but if RAYE can rise again, she doesn’t strike me as the kind of artist who’ll fold as easy as a scrub’s wardrobe. Look! Reasons to be cheerful.

KATSEYE is a multiracial, international (“global” is just such a nicer word, isn’t it?) girl group organized by HYBE — the current iteration of the corporation behind BTS, which is why we might be able to trust them, though distrusting the machines behind idols still feels humane. And demographically, they’re all the right moves for a new try at world domination, with the singles having pretty well delivered. After the righteous amelodic grind of “Gnarly”, its smash sequel “Gabriela” hits like a compromise: Latin R&B with unstoppable thrust, but also the easiest listen in the world. Yet this “Jolene” update is scarcely at its halfway point before the narrator starts entertaining the same heathenish thoughts about its subject as the man she came to protect, even if it zooms by them. These KATs are Carpenterishly catholic; “Debut” was an onyx seat-throbber, while “Touch” sported NewJeansy liquidity. Their best is almost certainly yet to come.

Another nonpareil pop luxury follows — Tyla’s “Chanel”, not quite Frank Ocean’s, but much like the lost auteur’s best work, a palace of aural wonders you sit in to marvel at. The familiar (welcome, by now) ampiano beat is tricked up by filters; shall I compare it to earplug-softened turntable scratches, stretched-out glitches, flurries of TV static? Like most modern pop music, its sounds have a quality undiscoverable anywhere else. The production’s amplified mechanicality and ethereality pull off the magic trick of making a bye-boy bop not much deeper than “Folded” seem unaccountably profound. So far this is a heartening list, but at no point more so for this listener than at #10, the unvanquishable “Love Me Not”. Spotify Wrapped is, at best, a means of pointing out personal pathologies, and the fact that this Ravyn Lanae crush-rush wasn’t my top hit amounts to me playing myself. (I was busy trying to make Destroyer happen; typical.)

Then another name I heard on the wind: Madison Beer, who despite this name sounds nothing like Morgan Wallen (more like Maggie Rogers enlivened with a bracing jolt of electropop, or Gracie Abrams after she ditches her hometown’s rolling hills for the ice castle, or maybe a lucky-charms Sabrina for Lola Young’s unimpeachably sour Olivia). “Bittersweet” is a bit in-the-box under a sharper focus, but I suspect it’ll join decades of passing hits which illuminate predictable sentiments just unpredictably enough to catch you off guard that one time in the car it needs to to stay a favorite. In any case, its random returns will be a lot more welcome than those of “Ordinary”, and the fact that I hear neither the Lumineers nor Imagine Dragons much in department stores anymore means that today’s #12 might not be a part of ordinary life for much longer. One day, Alex Warren’s reign will be the same long-gone inconvenience as Trump’s.

“The Fate of Ophelia” doesn’t light me up much more; for one of pop’s most casually brilliant writers, Swift sure isn’t great at picking singles or openers. Its earworm of a titular cadence is perfectly commendable, and as a piece of kratfwerk, it’s likely to age better than “Welcome to New York”. But already it elicits the same “ah, well here’s a signpost of better things to follow” grimace. Not sure if or for how long Daddy Swift swallowed this chart, or if that’s just the deal she made with Whitburn’s ghost, but I heard “Elizabeth Taylor” earlier today and it was delicious; where’s that? Or “Wood”, which would’ve lasted longer had the central cock not been quite so specific, or “Ruin the Friendship”, which both she and Rob Sheffield missed as Showgirl’s heartfelt coup? In any case, “Tears” washes all the bad taste out, as might “Golden”, the heartfelt coup of its own sliver-too-slight, shade-too-shallow opus re: fame’s trials and tribulations.

Then a change of pace from fastest-action-this-side-of-the-Delaware-water-gap Tate McRae, the first that’s made me sit up and take notice since she cautioned the man to whose gaze she’s catering not to get greedy, and not because it’s anywhere close to her most exciting song. Clipping along at a steady march (feat. woozy swoons of sampled violins) rather than the usual breakneck, this seems to be McRae’s “Moment 4 Life” or something, the victory lap from the precipice of real success, her big takeaway “I sure ain’t missing no man from up here.” As usual, attention fleshes out how much is going on — her music is as crucially percussive as Jerry Lee Lewis’ — with McRae’s hip-hop-influenced delivery (maybe that’s why her duet with Wallen made sense — unless that was the other Rae) especially noteworthy here. This is exactly where you’d have hoped this career ended up — see: Tame Impala, riding a gay Gothic groove to his goldmine.

Three repeats round out the twenty, one of them sombr (passionate vocal atop sweaty mirrorball hustle, still a gleaming surge like ca. 2000 U2 would kill for, though as hook images go “12 to 12” is 20,000 leagues under “eight days a week” and as meaningful as “six seven”). Then Olivia D again — that’s a breath of horns in aptly-named “So Easy”’s intro, over a bossa-novaish acoustic strum. It’s been high time for a long time to break the stranglehold artifice has on pop music, though I’d hope some of the guitars in that army come plugged in and cranked up. That may be one thing Olivia deigns to change in her time at the top, or at least sway her way. We’ll see — soulful Brits have flashed and flamed out in our pan before. It was awfully easy to fall in love with her, though. While McRae and all the pretty pink-poppers fight for the world to pony up the tat it owes them, Dean might be more willing to come to us, or the sugar in the right palm.

*(& exclamation point, which we appreciate around here even more than ampersands)