Tag Archives: pop

Five Pop Albums from 2025

3 Aug

PinkPantheress – Fancy That

Fame suits PinkPantheress well. Fancy That demonstrates more personality, more experience and more confidence than her earlier work. She’s comfortable now. This fame lets her build on her established sounds and to surprise you with their evolutions, especially in her lead single “Illegal”. It also lets her be much more flirtatious than before and the playfulness is excellent.

It never quite becomes a statement album though. It’s more of a stretch than a flex. It is simply a smart, fun pop album from a very likable artist.

KATSEYE – BEAUTIFUL CHAOS

I come to KATSEYE pretty fresh. I have not watched the reality show that brought them together. I don’t follow any of them on social media. I didn’t track their singles. This album is exciting enough without any of that.

“Gabriela” is the best expression of what makes them so interesting. When your K-pop group is international, it makes possible a section where your Latina member can have a Spanish verse. It’s a natural fit, especially when you consider how much new Latin musics like reggaeton and corridos draw from the same well as K-pop. It’s still a breathtaking innovation and one done perfectly. Le Sserafim delving into afrobeats seemed like the forerunner of a new space in K-Pop and this is a welcome development there.

Having said that, I never see the point of reimagining “Jolene.” The rewrites are always scared of the honesty of the original. I do appreciate the homoeroticism in “Gabriela” though, even as I could have done with much more of it.

I also really like the blending in of hyperpop through the album. “Gnarly” works very well as the aggressive edge to it and “M.I.A” on the other side of the album shows its more dancefloor while remaining dense and layered.

They do well in traditional K-Pop as well. “Gameboy” is fairly standard and it’s done well. It has a great, light tone and a catchy hook. “Mean Girls” is perfectly acceptable slow pop even as they do much better for more energy.

The manufactory is inextricable from KATSEYE, as it should be for a pop group. They are exciting, not despite it, but through it. This is the natural meeting point of the reality TV music group, the emergence of hyperpop and the internationalization of K-pop. This is exactly what all three should be in this moment.

Addison Rae – Addison

I’ll be the first to admit that Addison has some great pop. I really liked “Obsessed” and the narcissism of its hook even as it had the worst music video of all time. Addison starts out strong too. “New York” is glittering modern pop with a good pace and a story that it sells.

It’s a tired story though. The back story of a small town girl longing for a big city was hackneyed in the 1930s and Addison does nothing to update it. Popstars need hooks every bit as badly as pop songs and all of Addison’s hooks are too blunt to snag me.

I have yet to like a single one of her looks. I don’t understand how a TikTok star has such abysmal choreography. I think the grindset philosophy is poorly considered.

So, we get to a song like “In The Rain” that has interesting parts but ones that she repeats rather than develops. There’s neither sophistication nor subtlety in her songcrafting. The constant repetition shows a lack of respect. It positions me as a follower rather than a fan and when I’m treated like this, I find that I’m neither one.

So much of the album falls into filler this way. “High Fashion” and “Diet Pepsi” both could have been quite good had they developed their themes further. “Aquamarine” is better but is overlong and every maneuver in the song is predictable, particularly the boring spoken word interlude. “Times Like These” is too trite to make any impact. “Summer Forever”, like “High Fashion”, are very LDR but without the edge that made Born to Die so interesting. Also, Lana has moved a lot in the past decade. I don’t see a reason to return to 2015.

For all of that, she can still make good pop. None of these songs are music that you would object to hearing at a mall. However, it’s all too serious and too manufactured. Some play and some fun would be undeniable music given her strong ear but it’s clear that’s not why she’s here.

Selena Gomez – I Said I Love You First

I don’t think Selena Gomez gets enough credit as one of the great chameleons of our time. She has done than dabble, she has defining hits in both reggaeton and in afrobeats and her KPop excursion is still infectious.

She tries classic Hollywood for much of I Said I Love You First and it works both visually and musically. “Sunset Blvd” and “You Said You Were Sorry” both work well. “How Does It Feel To Be Forgotten” does well in LDR’s space and “Cowboy” is another standout like this.

Some of her other experiments here don’t do as well. I’m a big fan of the Charli sound but “Bluest Flame” doesn’t do anything interesting with Selena. The Charli chorus is fun but it’s insufficient without Selena adding something of her own. The 80s synths of “Don’t Wanna Cry” are fine but uninteresting. “Do You Wanna Be Perfect” is unbelievably trite and highlights how inchoate the album is.

The stronger vein is what the album promises from the jump; the Selena Gomez / Benny Blanco relationship. It’s easy to feel happy for them and you can feel it in “Scared of Loving You” strongly enough to lift it above the shallow lyrics. “I Can’t Get Enough” is both of them in their comfort zone and so one of the strongest songs in the album

I’m not very well versed in Selena lore myself. I don’t understand anything in “Call Me When You Break Up” for instance. However, their very public engagement has consistently been a very positive spectacle and this album may not be the best pop around but it’s still another successful maneuver in what I hope ends up a total success.

Justin Bieber – SWAG

On the plus side, “YUKON” is an excellent song. There is some interesting R&B in this album. “BUTTERFLIES” also works well as does the opener “ALL I CAN TAKE.”

On the negative side, the album is stuffed with boring music. “GO BABY GO” is a putrid ballad, “DAISIES” is uninteresting throwback pop, “SWEET SPOT” is a paint-by-number Sexyy Red cut.

On the disgusting side, the skits in the album and the social media filth as a rollout campaign.

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Lady Gaga – MAYHEM

16 Mar

New Lady Gaga music is inherently exciting and MAYHEM starts strong. “Disease” and “Abracadabra” open the album with plenty of energy. Maybe fittingly, she delves deeply into nostalgic sounds for the album. Her pastiche goes pleasingly broad as well. She draws from alt-rock in the standout “Perfect Stranger” and from Prince and Bowie in the strong “Killah.”

This nostalgia undercuts the album though. There’s not enough of interest here and so it overstays its welcome. Where other necromancers like Rina Sawayama add new texture to the space, Gaga plays it very straight and so the album’s rewarming of stale sounds loses pace. It’s still overall a fun album but never much more than a diversion.

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The Weeknd – Hurry Up Tomorrow

10 Feb

The Weeknd is unfortunately anodyne as a massive pop star. The sound is too well defined, the look is too safe and the edges are all gone. This is still the greatest male vocalist of all time and he is bigger now than he ever was and yet the music just doesn’t have the impact it once had.

His spectacular talent is enough to carry the occasional chunk of the album. He uses his voice to great effect in “Cry For Me” and in “Open Hearts,” songs that highlight his vocal range while simultaneously maintaining propulsion. He does very well in “Timeless” and uses Playboy Carti for an interesting wrinkle.

However, at no point does he muster the memorable images and lines from his earlier work and much of the music here is just pastiche of his better music. “Opening Night” is well in his comfort zone, it’s just uninteresting. “Sao Paolo” brings in new sounds but moves too slowly to be much better.

A few singles can’t really make up for a padded album and the singles aren’t as strong as they once were. I want more from superstars than this.

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FKA Twigs – EUSEXUA

3 Feb

I’m glad that FKA Twigs’ best work is also the one in which she has the most fun. She tends to be a little too serious and a little too high-art in her music and EUSEXUA could have very easily been another album of that nature.

This starts with the production. It’s absolutely good enough to carry curveballs like “Drums of Death” even before Twigs’ voice kicks it up to the next level. It’s also more playful than usual. The obvious one is the excellent “Childlike Things” but “Sticky” also feels like the best bit of an indie DJ set at a local club. It reminds me of Rockit in that the use of surprise in the beats is practically jazz fusion.

There are some weaknesses in the album, particularly “Wanderlust.” The ballad is a poor fit and uninteresting musically, as is unfortunately the case with the title track. However, the rest is bold and superb. Going from the already fantastic “Childlike Things” into the equally excellent but very different “Striptease” is a tremendous choice and the kind of flair that defines the album and makes it entirely unmissable.

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Charli XCX – brat but it’s completely different but also still brat

19 Oct

This is the best victory lap that I’ve ever seen. brat was the success that Charli has chased for years while also being her best and most personal album yet. She had the frontrunner for the US presidential election channel her. She deserves the celebration of her success but she didn’t need to be so generous with it.

Every song gets a full rework in this album. She gets everyone in pop to come on to one song or another and they all get a brand new take on the material. We get some really fun moments like Yung Lean taking a spin on the chorus in “360” and Ari getting a little space to sing in “sympathy is a knife”.

Some of the guest spots stand out less simply because, while it’s nice to see so many of the pop girls in one spot, they can start to sound the same. Nevertheless, Addison Rae does well in the “von dutch” remix, but a lot of that is just how good the original is. This issue also plagues the album; the originals are just very good music.

That’s what makes this album so interesting though. Charli doesn’t settle for obvious remixes. “von dutch” is still recognizably “von dutch” but the transformation is thorough. These songs all get totally reworked and it demonstrates just how much space is left in this sound. It’s particularly good to see A. G. Cook get the space on a couple of songs to stretch out the production.

Even the songs that hew closer to the originals do well for the guest spots. Tinashe brings out a very fun double entendre for “b2b” and Troye Sivan gets to be burlier than I’ve ever seen him before. in “talk talk.” It’s a good look for him.

Julian Casablancas gets a complete reimagination of “mean girls” though and it’s a good pick for him. The Lorde remix works much better in the context of the album than as a single, as does the Billie song which provides a welcome aggressive horniness. The bon iver remix of “i think about it all the time” is an interesting change, but one that makes you wish for the old Kanye, who would have been very welcome here.

I’m just glad for Charli that she got to a place where she can break out her rolodex and throw herself a party like this and it’s not every artist that would choose to make something so innovative with it.

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Sabrina Carpenter – Short n’ Sweet

18 Sep

Sabrina Carpenter has charisma that can only be measured in gigawatts. You expect a pop star to be likable, Carpenter is exceptional. There are few flaws that such tremendous personality cannot paper over and Short n’ Sweet does nothing to really test that.

I didn’t like “Espresso” the first time I heard it. It’s not the most interesting pop nor is it the most well done. It’s a decent KPop song done by a white singer, but the current crop of KPop is exceptional and it’s hard to put “Espresso” best to “Super Shy” and not have it suffer.

It’s just so easy to like Sabrina though. She always looks like she’s having fun. She plays very well with the camera. I really enjoy the “Death Becomes Her”-styled video for the quite fun “Taste”.

The music does let her down a bit though. She tries a lot of things and does none of them well. “Bad Chem” also tries KPop but doesn’t even manage the standard of “Espresso.” “Good Graces” takes from some of the better Grimes, “Dumb and Poetic” is a bad Taylor song, “Slim Pickins” is weak country and “Nonsense” is a weak Ari song and a terrible rap showcase.

Sabrina Carpenter clearly has the DNA for superstardom and is always worth watching. Her music needs to catch up with her though and until she picks a lane, it’s hard to see how it will.

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Camilla Cabello – C,XOXO

8 Jul

We have Charli XCX at home.

We have Drake at home.

We have Lana Del Rey at home.

We have Megan thee Stallion at home.

We have FKA Twigs at home.

We seem to be out of Camilla Cabello though. That’s a shame. I like her.

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Charli XCX – brat

16 Jun

There has always been a contradiction at the core of Charli and at the core of why we love her; she has always wanted to be both a pop megastar and indie cool. Traditionally, she has resolved that by alternating albums – one for the masses and one for herself. brat has broken that mold, but not through the compromise you would expect, but instead by being her best music yet from either perspective.

The pop here is otherworldly. The beat of “B2b” is busted. Her ear for music is freer than it has ever been and these songs are absolutely bursting at the seams with fishhooks to pull you somewhere new. The single “Von dutch” is propulsive and cinematic. The switch in “365” blew me away and her reworking of the opener “360” into something new for the closer is fun, not just for the device, but for how it gives us two classic pop songs.

She’s got good variety and good pace changes song-to-song as well. Flipping the slower, more FKA “everything is romantic” to the peppier “Rewind” works well and the whiplash of moving from motherhood in “I think about it all the time” to the cocaine of “365” is an excellent jolt.

brat has Charli committing much more to storytelling than before. The metagame of pop is parasocial at the moment and Charli has never been so open as she is here. The honesty is devastating in “So I,” her song for her long time collaborator SOPHIE who died in 2021.

“Girl, so confusing” might have Lorde references meant for internet detectives but the introspection grounds the album as a whole and it’s compelling to hear her go through her vulnerabilities. It’s also just absurdly good pop. Similarly, “I think about it all the time” does a lot to feed the fanbase but it’s also very clever music and I love the shifting of the word baby. Some of the lyrics really hit even if I feel that we all deserve better than someone from The 1975 though. She’s a little out of her element in the storytelling of “Mean girls” but everything is forgiven of truly great pop.

She also makes the pop star positioning into explicit text throughout the album, especially in the overwrought video for “360.” The song has some great pop rap from her though and some True Romance fragments that I loved to see.

Seeing her in this and in “Von dutch” really bring home just how far Charli has come though. She has dramatically matured from the time of “SuperLove” or even “Boom Clap” and yet brat is not about Charli bending herself to fit the world, as so many of her weaker ventures seemed to be. This is instead the moment where the world has finally begun to catch up with Charli.

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Beyoncé – COWBOY CARTER (Nikhil’s Review)

18 Apr

Cowboy Carter starts on the wrong foot with “AMERIICAN REQUIEM”. I have never come across a music trend I dislike as much as pop music’s current fascination with mining out old hits. It made the last Ariana album unlistenable. There’s nothing clever about recognizing some of the most famous music of the past few decades and I’m insulted by pop musicians who think so little of me.

It’s further weakened by how thoughtless the samples are. If Beyoncé wanted to make an arena rock album, I would have found that exciting but the best thing I can say about adding Who samples to an ostensibly country album is that they just don’t fit.

This is the first question I run into when I try to be charitable to this album and I really want to be charitable to this album. I think Southern Beyoncé is her best version. I love “FORMATION”, I love her leaning into this identity, I love a lot of those pieces that come through in this album, even as I struggle with my dislike of the album as a whole.

This question is whether to approach the album as a country album or a Beyoncé album. I was really hoping for the former. I wanted her to further the shake-up of a moving but reactionary genre. I’m not going to fault her for choosing the latter though, especially when some of her Beyoncé music here is very good.

She sings well in “BODYGUARD” and the languorousness is so skillful. There’s no country in the track but good music is good music. “TYRANT” also doesn’t really fit in but is great pop. The beat is propulsive and giddy-up is a great call. it reminds me of “Savage” and I’d love to see her do more of this.

But even in her comfort zone, we start to see how overstuffed this album is. “II HANDS II HEAVEN” is too standard a ballad. “SPAGHETII” tries for a grit and menace that I know that Beyoncé has but cannot seem to bring to bear here. “LEVIIS JEANS” has just a touch of country but it’s too light to be interesting and the Post Malone feature is subpar and doesn’t fit with the album at all.

Too much of the country doesn’t hold up as well. “DESERT EAGLE” starts with a fantastic muddy blues guitar but it’s not allowed to grow over the course of the song and Beyoncé puts nothing interesting or fitting over it. The two parts don’t work together at all. It transitions very well into “RIIVERDANCE” though, which in turn takes an interesting concept but then doesn’t really do anything much with it. I needed less repetition from it. It’s fun guitar work but then the pop overwhelms it. Even ”16 CARRIAGES” is weak. It could have been interesting with Beyoncé’s voice over some simple instrumentation, it could have been what this album promised but there’s no evolution and so it runs out. She gets a lot of emotion into the ballad though

I really appreciate bringing Willie Jones in for “JUST FOR FUN”, but I would have liked him to have more space. It’s a good country track but his fragment stands out for being normal. I would have liked Beyoncé to try a bit of country singing herself. She was excellent in “Savage” for really leaning into triple-time and the album would have done better for a bit of the same here. This results in Miley outsinging her a bit on “II MOST WANTED”. Country always does well for some roughness in the vocals and Beyoncé is too smooth. I would like this track but the two voices jar against each other. I would have preferred just Miley on this.

There’s some solid music in the country turn though. “PROTECTOR” is what the album should have been, country elevated by Beyoncé many skills and a personal track to boot. It’s a great track and you feel the South in it. The rhyme of protector and projector is too flat but that’s a minor burr in a great song.

“DAUGHTER” is also quite good I really like the folk strings in the background and the personal story. Her flow is great and when she accelerates a minute in, that works very well. I see the opera turn as a poorly integrated swerve but the song does a lot of things well.

I also like the country twanging in “ALLIGATOR TEARS”. This is more of the sound that I was hoping for. She brings herself into it. The result is less modern than I expected, it feels like something off a Prince album more than anything, but that’s interesting in itself.

“TEXAS HOLD EM” is a standout and a great choice for a single. It’s a fun, modern take on country. It uses her voice very well. It’s not very complicated but it’s fun enough to forgive that and that fun is most of what is missing from this album. Early Beyoncé used to be fun and I really miss that. This album is largely far too serious and doesn’t justify it.

I’m glad then that she highlights “YA YA.” It rocks a lot more than the majority of the filler in this album. It’s unfortunate then that it’s music that Janelle Monáe did a decade earlier and did better. It’s a good song but overlong and overstuffed and the “Good Vibrations” interlude is unnecessary garbage.

This mining of music is at its worst in the two covers. “BLACKBIIRD” might have been something interesting when you take the civil rights history of the song and the collective singing but honestly the Beatles’ politics were always shallow and Beyoncé’s branded politics are not much deeper. More fatally though, she’s overproduced and overworked it. It’s a gentle song, it needs to be handled with delicacy and Beyoncé is clearly not in the mood for that with this album. Also, I still have no idea why there’s so much British rock in this album.

It’s “JOLENE” that’s unforgivable though. I hate “JOLENE” enough to ruin the whole album. To reframe the song in this manner is incredibly disrespectful and just incredibly dumb. The original was startling in its sincerity and its vulnerability. To convert it in the most trite girl-power framing possible is to miss the point. It would be unbelievable from the maker of the “Run the World (Girls)”, the pinnacle of the girl-power statement, were it not for the cynicism of the rest of this album.

Beyoncé’s goal with this album is not to push herself sonically or tune into her Southern roots or even to make great music. It is to consume country music with a look both to her legacy and to her bottom line. That’s why there’s a discourse-feeder like “JOLENE,” that’s why the Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton interludes are here, that’s why the album is overstuffed enough to game the charts and most damningly that’s why the album isn’t fun.

It largely succeeded at the goal too. It made a splash, it charted well and it might define an era for her. There’s even some solid music scattered here and there. I’d just like it if the music were the goal next time instead of merely the means to such an empty end.

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LE SSERAFIM – UNFORGIVEN

28 Nov

LE SSERAFIM is quite comfortably my favorite thing in K-Pop right now. Their fashion and choreography are immaculate, their attitude is fully on-point and their pop is just so much more experimental than anyone else in the space. You see this in their K-Pop cuts. “Eve, Psyche & The Bluebeard’s Wife” and “UNFORGIVEN” are K-Pop chartbusters and rightfully so but you can see how omnivorous their taste is. The tracks constantly surprise with unexpected beats and breaks and they pull from a ton of influences.

They’re even willing to play out of K-Pop outright. “Blue Flame” is very “American Boy” and the strong “FEARNOT” could be a Taylor track. Their ear is evident across the album. Like Seo Taiji, it’s not just that they take many inspirations but that their ear for good music is impeccable and their ability to consume and integrate many sources is incredible. That they can do all of this and package it with the best K-Pop visuals that I have ever seen is absurd. There’s still a lot of roughness to this album and it’s somewhat of a loose bag but this is as exciting of a statement as you’ll get.

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