Video and Audio: Biological? Didn't bother

Heirs of nothing in particular

Jade: “Angel of My Dreams”

No, not that Jade, not that one either, the one from Little Mix, whom I mostly remember for being a huge underwhelment as Taylor’s special guests in Santa Clara in 2015 (we did get Julia Roberts later though.) The sudden tempo changes have the Singles Jukebox people pulling out their Xenomania references out of storage, though if your expectations are at that level, note that 2005 Girls Aloud wouldn’t have stood for their writers being too lazy to write more than four bars of really great melody. What this does have is a grandness of ambition worthy of filling Levi’s Stadium.

DJ Kawest, T-Gui, T-Will: “Konpa Paradise”

If you haven’t heard this yet, listen to the most lovable first ten seconds of a song this year before you read spoilers. Guadaloupean Kawest and Martinican T-Gui, both ensconced in Paris, make “Afro-Konpa” for the TikTok attention span. The ungooglable T-Will doesn’t have to say much apart from telling you the guitar is coming; it then comes.

Juan Luis Guerra 4.40: “Mambo 23”

Are we still only up to 23? At this rate, we’ll be lucky to get to Mambo No. 40 in my lifetime. Anyway, this one (out last year, unnoticed by me until Guerra got his usual bunch of Latin Grammy noms) is a fun slice of barrio nightlife: there are muchachos, iPhones, speed syllables and sax, high denomination bills, and at the end Jesus comes.

Sabrina Carpenter: “Juno”

Clear silver medalist on Short n’ Sweet. It’s a sellout-era Liz Phair song with a great verse-to-chorus transition. Then when the chorus itself repeats “You make me wanna make you fall in love”, I’d expect that same transition to be mirrored, but instead that’s the chorus’s end. Subtle subversion of expectations or stunning incompetence? I’ve got until I review the album to work that out.

Thakzin, Hyenah, Simmy: “Ithuba (Thakzin Perspective)”

Something of a Eurofication of 3-step (or maybe a Cayman Islandsification, as there’s where RA says Hyenah’s from.) That isn’t exactly an improvement, but it gives undervalued singer Simmy some sound effects to nestle against, sighing through the prechoruses and giving moderate life to the choruses, none of which overshadow the drum patterns that are the genre’s raison d’être.

Various Ari Falcão singles

Frank Kogan’s funk cause celebre of the moment. Falcão has a bit of roughness in her voice—dig if you will the harshness of her r-roll at 1:12 above—that plays well against the blown-out bass and oddball synth hooks you hope for from the genre. Her charisma is similar to sometime collaborator/past cause celebre MC Pipokinha’s, but she’s better at traditional singing, which matters on, for example, “Ampulheta”.

FKA Twigs: “Eusexua”

As a “some FKA Twigs music has been good and some hasn’t” take haver, I’m tentatively putting this in the “good” pile. The first part has an actual beat to wobble around, the second part has her upper-register voice which even if she hasn’t become the singer some of us hoped for is still a striking instrument, the video is well-choreographed, the lyrics might well say something interesting about contemporary erotics if I read them but the risk of “eusexua” turning to just be a play on “euphoria” is a bit too high.

Halsey: “Ego”

The video wants to wear a million influences at once and doesn’t really work (if you want to do Wong Kar-wai then just do Wong Kar-wai). The song is simpler: a revival of 2000s popularizations of 1990s angst-rock, which does require very good musicianship, but fortunately this is very much within Greg Kurstin’s skill set. Hopefully the narrative makes more sense in the context of the album.

Awa Gambia: “Douma Daw”

I need to put more time into contemporary mbalax. This is rhythmically complex and tuneful and all, and there’s been no point in complaining about bastardization of the genre since Peter Gabriel got involved. My only problem is that the majority of the hours I’ve spent listening to mbalax have featured the best singer of the last half century, so I need to revise my vocal expectations down.

Isabel LaRosa: “Favorite”

Attempt número cinco milliones to make genuinely poppy pop-reggaeton happen, this time by giving it a prestige TV video (complete with an actual if minor prestige TV star performing pointless violence), and it’s been more successful than most previous attempts. LaRosa’s bilingual whisper-singing is effective, and there’s some sense of edginess even if it dissipates as soon as you’re away from a screen.

SZA: “Saturn”

I ignored this all year after being low on SOS, but I choose to take the title as astronomical with a “nom”, and now that we’re past Peak Mush her singing is easier to take. The “I don’t want to live on this planet anymore” words aren’t deep, but they’re part of an essential pop tradition of self-involved whining. She might as well have thrown an “I am human and I need to be luh-uh-uved” in there; I’m sure she’d make something out of the melisma.

Citizen Deep, Nia Pearl, Bontle Smith: “Nomvula”

This harkens back to Afrotronica of the golden age (three years ago) in that when every new sound comes in I think “yeah, he must’ve thought about that”, and adds innovation (starting the process of melodicizing the 3-step donks, the natural next step for the genre.) I also appreciate that it’s a very sensible four and half minutes.

Camilo, Carin León: “Una Vida Pasada”

Colombia’s Camilo and Mexico’s León meet up to do trombone-and-timbales pop-salsa. León is having a heck of a year under the Anglophone radar (Maluma’s “Según Quién”, on which he guests, has been on the streaming charts all year, plus he got Edgar’s big oompah ballad “Cuandro La Vida Sea Trago” for himself), while Camilo’s great strength is you just want to see how he looks standing next to other Latin stars—the two of them look like they’re having a jolly night out before launching a disastrously inept invasion of the Bay of Pigs.

Kacey Musgraves: “Dinner with Friends”

I guess she just wants to be a 1970s singer-songwriter—sophisticated melodies, more-rosé arrangements, lyrics that are too precious unless you were in the tank for her at at least one past moment—and I should just get used to that. Seems suboptimal for someone who really did transform country music to end up making high-end James Taylor album tracks, but maybe it’ll inspire the Taylor Swift of the 2060s.