pop report #10

Today’s Top Twenty is your JACKALS! #21

Welcome back to JACKALS! — a blog whose sole reliable characteristic is that I (Ryan Maffei) am writing it. It’s a little over a third of a year in, and we’ve already exceeded the tumblr iteration’s content by a whole seven entries. Granted, all but seven of these were previously written items, compiled for this instant portfolio just seconds before they lose their freshness (in theory), though all of them have been revised, and one is exclusively publicly available here. Once I run out, I’ll really be in for it. I suppose the point of a “newsletter” is to provide ephemeral periodicals, to be balled up and tossed into history’s dustbin after scanning. But if several talented friends are racking up the sort of stuff you preserve to sell in bulk for a fortune in your old age, why can’t I try?

So feel free to revisit my Beatles song-by-song quartet, my Nourallah Brothers deep dive slash interview, my woozy stab at a Frank Ocean exegesis, proud pieces from the OG blog about Ziggy and Zimmy, spiffed-up Rock & Roll Globe articles about Prince, Billy Joel, Neil Young, John Winston Ono Lennon, Steely Dan, Fountains of Wayne, Miley Cyrus, and Dinosaur Jr, plus interviews with Too Much Joy and Elliott Murphy, and the last (and first, for the blog’s Substack edition) pop report. Even if it’s 2028! And yes, before you ask, I’m abashed at how few of these entries concern artists of color or women, pop’s most reliable engines historically. Write What You Know only gets you so far. Happily, it’s time for another pop report, i.e. a chance to celebrate such artists.

Depending. My boomer-ass millennial ass has spent way more time with his head up the ‘60s and ‘70s’ clouds than could possibly be healthy, and I have some blind spots when it comes to how we got here from there. So I’m forced into (slightly) slighting modern artists like Tyler, the Creator — who has a new single out today, one which instantly topped Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits, likely owing to the aptly named “Sticky”’s tenacity. My first impression of Tyler as obnoxiously aggressive has yet to be properly quelled; Jerrod Carmichael certainly didn’t convince me he was worth falling in love with. But his admirers are too smart and copious to roll eye at, and I’ve assumed from a distance it has something to do with the complexity of both his soundscapes and his tone — as well as maybe the juxtaposition of both, and how that blend has matured.

Tyler is both gay and pop, which means however he comes on, he’s definitionally at least as Gay Pop as Jojo Siwa, if not Chappell Roan. The ebullient-as-fuck late night drunk dial “Ring Ring Ring” leans farther into this than I’ve ever heard from Tyler, a man whose albums I have mostly not played, with supple bass and a jet-stream swath of disco strings. This shit purrs and ripples, and Tyler mines his basso profondo for ultimate seductive effect. I’m not sure if the insistent but restrained hook will prove bop enough to match “Sticky”, which was a lot more idiosyncratic. But this is hardly “Dance the Night”’s inferior, transcending pastiche with a delight that bubbles over.

I have tuned-in friends who’ve been credibly pessimistic about the beleaguered Mr. Bieber, who’s only standing on business insofar as he can keep upright. I put on the opening track of his latest album, tellingly entitled “All I Can Take”, as well as the skit where he tries to get the better of his embarrassing yet iconic little paparazzi run-in. (I’m not sure I’d quite call Druski’s efforts on SWAG ‘valiant’, though I’m glad he can buy a new house.) Between its so-synthetic-it’s-extraterrestrial air and the apparent distance of its focal point, SWAG is at best Bieber’s Blackout, a stab at smothering a genuinely unsettling situation in something that feels like but maybe isn’t entirely cutting-edge pop. Today’s second-biggest Top Hit is “Daisies”, which intriguingly employs strings — that is, guitar + bass ones — for its reverbed prefab. The vocal is good, gently soulful like he is at his best, the lyric a dash of unusual. A vibe for sure.

The on-scene paucity of last year’s titans is inevitable — they’re hard at work on tour, if not getting married, and at least Chappell dropped a fun post-Cowboy Carter hit and is teasing finally releasing “The Subway”. The quadrennial return of Lorde, personally ever-interesting and musically always a little boring, doesn’t quite suffice, and in any case she’s nowhere to be found on today’s chart. That Sabrina Carpenter is the last gal standing of 2024’s Great Girlypop Quartet chagrins me a little; “Busy Woman” flirted with heteronormativity in a dispiriting way, and you wish one of the actually gay ones felt like they won the pink pony race. But Carpenter is still doing important feminist work, and still hiring excellent song doctors. Others have pointed out that “Manchild” kicks off like it’s hungry for “Good Luck Babe” numbers. Yet further in, a dose of real guitar is used for sharper ends than Morgan Wallen’s latest 37, and those intra-chorus bursts of bombast are an interesting twist. Unlike “Busy Woman”, its abundant ideas amount to tasty complexity, and too many manchildren abound to toss shade anyway.

Ah, but if I had my druthers, Ravyn Lenae would be leading the girlypop pack. Genres are bullshit slippery slopes and always have been, but if we separate SZA for a headily deliberate pace (very R&B) and Doechii for a radio-exploding verbal intricacy (very hip hop), then Lanae is the great Black, femme pure-popper in the running. Granted, all I’ve heard is the single, but “Love Me Not” is the smoothest, tastiest, sugar-rushiest new piece of candy I’ve encountered all year. And maybe the main problem with the Great Girlypop Quartet was a discomfiting dearth of color — accounting for Charli’s Indian ancestry. Anyway, enough wading through subjects I should restrain my white cishet fingers from. “Love Me Not” is a sunshower, wet with iridescent twitterpation. It’s got a singsong melody that doesn’t quit, expert dynamics and interlocking bits, a build that starts from midway through a climax, and best of all, one of those just-off-center hooks that makes you shake your head and go “goddamn”: “I miss you, c’mere”.

Then suddenly we run smack into the year’s great straightfaced menace, the return of something not just male and white but, uhh, sombr. Alex Warren is as pop a name as Jonathan Edwards; unlike Noah Kahan, whom I’m beginning to miss, his music is just ordinary enough to match. He’s a symptom of the same ‘00s indie nostalgia that swept Kahan to the top, but of the ilk that couldn’t tell the Postal Service from Owl City. I’m not sure what act Warren most resembles, though the waltz-time-under-vaguely-butt-rock-vocals recalls Imagine Dragons, while the male-chorus chorus also echoes fun.’s misguided “We Are Young” and a few other depressing things. Warren is as serious as Benson Boone or Teddy Swims and a lot less galvanizing. The fast-pan-over-the-ocean pound of his hit’s chorus makes you yearn to return to the treacly cliché of the verse’s lullaby pluck. I don’t believe pop radio needs a light dusting of disgusting for context.

Next up is… sombr!, whom I’ve seen on this chart while waiting for it to seem riveting enough to write about, but have only heard for the first time today. “back to friends” is more like it — the tired lyric and très-sentimental vocal swell around the refrain can’t defeat an alluring overdriven vocal filter, echoed by a U2-ish sunbeam of coruscating guitars. It’s a bit of the old Jesus and Mary Chain trick, smoothed out for an age where even “Just Like Honey” wouldn’t make it out of the bottle onto the radio: if all you’ve got is an ordinary song, crank it up and smear it with effects. Also keep the title (and your artist name) all lowercase to bolster the idea that you’re artier than you are. If I drove and this came on the radio I would turn it up every time, and ride into the sun.

At #7, Tate McRae, the full-calorie-Pepsi Rae, contributes a sputtering club jam (“Just Keep Watching”) to a Brad Pitt movie about Formula 1 racing. Appropriately, it’s over in 2:22; fast endings are a preference of hers, at least musically. It doesn’t distinguish itself much from her other hits: same doomy vibe, same influx of tech, same degree of “mostly good”. When BLACKPINK jump in with “Jump”, it weirdly makes Rae sound less alive and more authentic. K-Pop prides itself on prefab, and this variation of their insistently metallic sound is very exciting, with a noise on the chorus like horn charts scratching to get in. The pace is fairly Formula 1, and while the diffident insertion of “spice up your life” makes you wonder how good this really is, it’s hella functional — the solo records are where the four PINK ladies really get to fuck with their formula.

I’m 38, so “who is WizTheMC?” is a fair question for me in July 2025. Said TheMC is a Capetown-born Berliner, cute and about a decade and change my junior, as so many pop stars are these days. And though I’m not (figuratively or otherwise) well-traveled enough to know one Afrobeat from another, Wikipedia confirms for me that his single “Show Me Love” is “ampiano-inflected” — a lot more folks know about ampiano now. For me, this mainly means there’s a lilt to its persistence, though that’s how it is with a lot of Afrobeats (incl. Afrobeat), in fact. The rhythm is only so significant here, though this is not the first recent Afrobeat-inflected hit concocted in part by producers from Europe (bees & honey). “Show Me Love” is dreamy, mildly uplifting, and likable, and as distinctive as its title. Wiz might work up some real magic one day; only time will tell.

The top ten closes out with Gracie Abrams’ already-classic post-Taylor smash “That’s So True”, all tumble and rush and trumped-up naiveté, while the second ten kicks off with Teddy Swims’ “Bad Dreams”, in which he exerts control for contrast rather than setting a self-imitative fire. For me, this song, built around what sounds like doubled and muffled ukuleles, is like if “Too Sweet” were boring. If it were raining and I were in a car, I’d sit through the whole thing, but at this point the following entry, midyear pop champion “Die With a Smile”, risks putting me to sleep at the wheel. #13 is “Birds of a Feather”, by now a deserving standard, and #14 is “luther”, same. I don’t feel quite so sure about #15’s ubiquity-to-durability to pipeline, but “Messy” will probably show up welcomely in stupid movie trailers for decades to come — or at least one can hope.

Benson Boone appears at #16, boasting his own Chappell ‘n’ Carpenter-hungry synth intro, and we can breathe a sigh of relief that “Beautiful Things” and “Lose Control” have slipped out of at least this top twenty. “Mystical Magical”, it’s called, which is his first mistake, and once again we hear a comely, scruffy fuckgentleman in the market for a chunk of Hozier cheddar. That said, the pre-chorus features a frilly touch of — can it be? — Queen, which spills into the hook. And it’s so heightened, so casually (if insufficiently) camp, I have to admit that it sweeps me into the single’s current, and opens me up to the rest of Boone’s deal, which means I won’t play the album but I’ll entertain that he’s less sincere than his hit and my friends who like him aren’t crazy.

After that pleasant surprise comes drawly ol’ Morgan Wallen, whose whole bit seems to be leaning into how terrible he is, title of his new album aside. I’m sure he’s better than his audience (though I have no proof), but I’m also sure he’s playing the catering-to-the-deplorables game on which an even shittier grifter twice rose to power. What Tate McRae is doing duetting with him on “What I Want” is less clear — claiming a paycheck?, reminding us she’s white?, these are good guesses. Whatever it is, it’s atop Morg’s typical hip-hop-derived beat; if we wanna fire up the ol’ cultural appropriation convo, here’s a fine fellow to pillory. If you’re curious what he wants, it’s a messy girl. Maybe Lola Young could show him a few writing tricks before leaving him for dead.

Here’s where I discover that Alex Warren has a second eight-letter hit that ends in “y”, one whose doleful organ-and-baritone opening makes you wanna rush to put on Scott Walker, the way Scott Walker makes you wanna rush to put on Little Richard. I hate everything about this person’s music — the irrelevance of his lyrics, the sodden self-seriousness of his melodies, the unbearable self-importance of those quick-escalation dramatic choruses, the way trying to imagine him smiling breaks your brain. I hope he’s a Republican, and that the millions falling for him realize they deserve better. I can’t convey how lovely it felt when #19, “Pink Pony Club”, trampled its traces away.

On her excellent You’re Wrong About appearance, re: Paul Reubens — great HBO doc btw — Jamie Loftus discusses the perception vs. the burden of research. As in, how much people think you really know about a subject vs. how much work you’ve put into learning it. I like to hide behind my “autodidact impressionist” identity to justify how much smarter or more informed I don’t get as I age. But every time I make a cultural observation, cross- or otherwise, I feel like a baby with a gun. This induces a special anxiety when I’m talking about race, and maybe every sentence is otiose-to-obtuse (I mean every sentence). But along comes old friend Ed Sheeran at #20, keeping old foe Drake’s new single down at #21, with something called “Azizam”. So what can I say? Besides noting that it’s a rush, over which Ed sprinkles his trademark semi-savvy?

“Azizam” is a Persian term of endearment, and the song takes musical cues from Iran — you know, that country we just bombed — with cred provided by Iranian-Swedish producer Ilya Salmanzadeh, whose big breakout was Ariana’s “Problem” (and our gift). I don’t really go for that cultural appropriation talk; love and theft are distinct things. “Azizam” is more of a Peter Gabriel deal, a well-meaning English bloke getting some international kicks from the source, while providing a platform for musicians whose credits may not yet include A-pop. It might not say much more than “I love you.” But I think it’s OK to acknowledge thrill and significance in just the choice to elevate the music of a country much of this one still demonizes, whatever my straw man tells me. Either way, the song is pretty good — most of Sheeran’s work is pretty good at least.

Anyway, while I was writing all this, Madison, a white femme like ten years my junior who knows much more about 21st century hip-hop than I do, texted back about Tyler. “I’ve been a fan on and off since the OFWGKTA era — since Goblin,” she wrote me. “I appreciate that he’s not married to one style; he transcends genre where he wants and he can’t be bothered by what anyone says. His problematic misogynistic/homophobic lyrics to [the] soft side we all got to meet with Flowerboy… it’s all a part of him, and he seems not beholden to any past version of him[self]. He’s versatile but he’s honest. He contains multitudes, and you hear it in his music. His voice has a lot of bass in it, but his placement is often forward, bordering on nasality when he plays with it. The sheer volume of quality content he’s put out over decades shows that this is what his calling truly is. I can always feel that in someone’s performance.” Thanks for the take, Mad.

“He makes the music he wants when he wants to,” she concludes — and that’s all we ask of any artist, even Alex Warren. But of course, any critic, however self-styled (and aren’t we all self-styled, as self-styled as musicians, even more so in the Substack era?), is here to figure out how good [x] is for as broad an audience as possible. What I love about pop is the higher the sugar quotient, the better it often is for you. And today, Tyler has dropped new jawbreaker in an ocean of sound that’s bound to turn it neon pink. Next time you’re low, call that trouble boy up for the remedy. Ring ring ring ring…