The Purge 2025: A fast casual Thanksgiving

Bourgeois chimeras and populist goslings

Every year there are releases I’m obliged to review either in my position as America’s Only Poptimist (Albums Division) or as a historian of critical acclaim, but sometimes I get writer’s-blocked or simply dread putting my fingers on the keyboard and the record in my ears. To get through these, I let myself be meaner than usual (and use more adverbs), trying to only be really mean to those making undeserved money, which in the music biz takes some doing these days.

Alex Warren: You’ll Be Alright, Kid

“NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., July 15, 2025 -- Chipotle Mexican Grill (NYSE: CMG) today announced it is teaming up with singer-songwriter and brand superfan Alex Warren to host a first-of-its-kind listening party for his new album, You’ll Be Alright, Kid, this Thursday, July 17. In one of the biggest and most unique listening parties in music history, Warren will become the first artist to premiere a new album at nearly 4,000 Chipotle locations across the U.S., Canada, UK and France.”

Grade: D PLUS

Addendum: I’ll allege, however, that Warren’s being screwed by Billboard. “Ordinary” is near-certain to end up the most popular hit of 2025 by the Hot 100’s metrics, except Billboard’s decided a year begins and ends in mid-October, so it’s going to be stuck behind half a dozen 2024 or 2023 releases in their year-end. That presumptive winner “Die with a Smile” is a good song and “Ordinary” is lawful evil is immaterial; pop justice is pop justice.

Bad Bunny: Debí Tirar Más Fotos

None of the reviews that dutifully listed all the Puerto Rican subgenres Benito was gentrifying revitalizing seemed interested in whether he was any good at singing styles where it would be nice to hit the notes. Yet his immense charisma makes one want to give him a pass for his pitchiness, save for the times he brings out his serious voice to present a lecture on behalf of Los Millonarios Contra la Gentrificación, which again, isn’t as often as the reviews would have you believe. Still, I can’t say I don’t feel some relief when the Aldarondo siblings of the group Chuwi commandeer the mic and Bunny can just make kissy faces.

Grade: B (“Baile Inolvidable”, “Ketu Tecré”, “Weltita”)

BigXThaPlug: I Hope You’re Happy

Finally, a young rapper finding chart and radio success doing something unmistakably 2025… wait, is that monkey’s paw holding a MAGA hat? I might’ve see-no-eviled if BigX’s rapping was as fluent as it was on his guest spot for fellow Trump-curious Southerner Lil Wayne, but here he’s corny (“this music shit was for me” gets rhymed with “my fans truly adore me”), which is unpalatable when the production makes it sound like individual kernels of corn are being glued on to the year’s most phoned-in hooks. Centrist uncle trying to save Thanksgiving Luke Combs excepted, country star after country star shows that, huh, maybe Morgan Wallen is good at what he does. If it’s understandable that Ella Langley has no fjucking idea what’s going on, what’s Jelly Roll’s excuse? As for BigX’s right turn: at least Weezy got a pardon out of his.

Grade: C (“Pray Hard”)

Billy Woods: Golliwog

When this came out I thought this was a lowering of his ambitions to merely be the greatest spoken-word artist alive. Upon reflection: they’re not that much lower. His verse construction dazzles when I pay attention, and if there’s no sonic through-line besides him telling the big name beatmakers not to have fun, Kenny Segal and The Alchemist haven’t turned incompetent. This peaks at the beginning, as “Jumpscare” arcs from Cecil Rhodes to Deng Xiaoping; if you’re wondering how to get from A to B, the unfortunate answer is a lot of violence, not disproportionately against the guilty. After that, the problem for those of us trying to reduce to a half-hour of prime Billy is the best music and the best words often don’t coincide—Segal’s shiny “Misery” gets a played-out quasi-horror narrative, while when Woods does his personal-to-historical trauma trick on “Waterproof Mascara”, Preservation accompanies it with, surprise, played-out quasi-horror. Woods certainly uses multilingualism better than [no spoilers please], and I’m glad he has an opus he can hawk to art foundations. I hope he makes one for the more demanding audience of rap fans next time.

Grade: B PLUS (“Jumpscare”, “Golgotha”, “Born Alone”)

Dijon: Baby

If you’ve read my previous purges, or really almost anything I’ve ever written, you will not be surprised that if you scroll further down you’ll find I prefer Dijon’s production subjected to the discipline of pop structures and pop singing. Yet this has enough innovation—some of the chorus effects are genuinely startling—and cool sounds for me to hang on to the majority of the time. This is most valuable when it has songs Bieber’d nix—on “My Man” (not about a romantic partner but Biebz wouldn’t risk it), Dijon shreds his voice, and he and Andrew Sarlo turn the fact that his voice isn’t amenable to shredding into an effect in itself. Quite plausible I’ll like his next album more than any Bieber joint.

Grade: B PLUS (“My Man”, “Another Baby!”, “Higher!”)

FKA Twigs: Eusexua

Unfortunately, and despite telling myself not to when I praised the single, when I first played this I Googled whether the title was just a portmanteau of “sex” and “euphoria” and, upon finding out, punted the record a clear eight months. Now that it’s crashed on my Thanksgiving table, I can acknowledge its uses—not as sex music, my god, but as a commentary on sex and music that demonstrates experience and plausible facility with each. While Koreless isn’t an innovative producer, he’s functional enough, and if we still haven’t seen Twigs show the Bowie/Bush self-awareness that makes inherent absurdity signify, I understand it’s a clubbier world if we assume she will one day.

Grade: B PLUS (“Eusexua”, “Drums of Death”, “Girl Feels Good”)

Except… putting Kanye’s tween kid on your sex album is kinda problematic? I’m sure Twigs was thinking that if, as a tween, she got to be on a sex album, she would’ve thought it was awesome, but N. West has unique vulnerabilities as a public figure. Even if she didn’t: while pandering to what tweens want is generally a sound pop strategy, sometimes you have to be the grown-up.

Revised grade: B

Geese: Getting Killed

The singing’s on purpose. The fact that the Head Goose holds long notes steady when he feels like it shows that like Dangerous-era Morgan Wallen, he’s making an anti-bourgeois choice to be annoying. In fact, Goosekopf’s playing much the same character: he’s antisocial, he doesn’t pay his taxes, he’s fucked up sexually in ways it’d require Freud and his Pornhub search history to unravel. Wallen is of course more dangerous for closing the distance between himself and his character, whereas Tête de Goose is, for now, a Brooklyn kid slumming in the musical backwoods who won’t even consider voting for a Republican unless Ivanka runs. Yet he and the Goslings have the great Brooklyn gift/curse of taste, which means their shambling art-punk holds together no matter how bad they pretend to be at their instruments. Definitely interesting, definitely could use horizon-broadening if not in East Nashville then in, like, Silver Lake.

Grade: B PLUS (“Getting Killed”, “Taxes”, “Cobra”)

Haim: I Quit

Sure, these minor pros deliver some minor pleasures, but often this just sounds off. Getting Dave Fridmann to mix them makes no more sense than getting him to rejig Rumours would, and their tune-writing has never reattained the sheer correctness of Days Are Gone—the “Relationships” chorus jumping up for “don’t they all end up the same” is as misjudged in terms of the melody as it is in terms of Danielle’s vocal instrument, and that’s the single. As for the relationships themselves: “Try to Feel My Pain” is about feeling one’s own pain? I quit.

Grade: B (“Take Me Back”, “Everybody’s Trying to Figure Me Out”)

Justin Bieber: Swag

While I haven’t heard all of his previous albums, I’ve listened to the three about which apparent adults said “this is good, honest.” They weren’t and this is. Dijon gets credit for helping out on the lead singles, but he’s not around as much as Meghan Trainor trainer Eddie Benjamin, Tony! Toni! Toné! crony Sir Dylan, and SZA sizzla Carter Lang, rumored to be the real auteur. Yet I like this more than SOS, because JB can sing and they let him. He isn’t stretched emotionally: he’s in love and or lust, if he’s upset it’s for no longer than a verse or so, and he wants you to know he’s a sensitive guy without having to offer evidence. It’s all easy for him, and thus he sounds so at ease amidst the gauze-beats it’s easy to get lost in them yourself. Only the revenue-extending skits in which Biebz shows such indifference to comedy that Druski’s the funny one remind us that maybe we want to limit our exposure to the guy, and/or send our regrets that we’re skipping Swag II.

Grade: A MINUS (“Daisies”, “Go Baby”, “Way It Is”)

KPop Demon Hunters: Soundtrack from the Netflix Film

Look, I’m sure this all works well in the context of a cartoon I’ll watch if you DM me a Netflix password sharing workaround, but let’s not push our luck. “Golden” is the only feel-good story in American-funded megapop this year, “Your Idol” (rhymes with “going viral”) is above average by mostly harmless K-boyband standards, and it’s funny that the streaming millions, me included, are having to learn about Korean folk. As a musical unit, however, Twice takes down the fictional groups, and when “Strategy” came out before the movie I paid it the token attention it deserved.

Grade: B MINUS (“Golden”, “Your Idol”)

Lady Gaga: Mayhem

She’s no longer pushing the boundaries of good taste: the industrial/schlock/Bowie moments and something called “Zombieboy” are delivered with the professional theatricality of someone whose most coveted EGOT component is the T. Revisiting the ones endorsed by Monster streams—especially “How Bad Do U Want Me”, definitely the best Swift-Martin-Shellback throwback on any album in this column—was plenty of fun, however. And if last year’s Bruno ballad doesn’t deserve to be the biggest hit of this year, it shows there’s still no one, not even the Martian, who can code-switch between organic life form and seasonal animatronic like she can.

Grade: B PLUS (“How Bad Do U Want Me”, “Die with a Smile”, “Abracadabra”)

Lil Baby: Wham (Extended Version)

While the alleged death (again) of commercial rap has been overblown, it’s true that beyond Kendrick, Drake, and loss leader Travis Scott, male rappers show minimal interest in hits. Wham has no official singles and made no real play for radio, and yet the stream counts imply a profit. It’s all competent and even varied if you sit down and differentiate between flows, but it’d be impractical to pick out high (or low) spots if it weren’t for the guests. So the ones with Young Thug/Future, GloRilla, and fellow single-skeptic if worse person Playboi Carti are the most interesting, the one with Travis Scott’s a loss leader, and you can add three or four more at random for a solid EP.

Grade: B (“Dum, Dumb, and Dumber”, “Outfit”, “Redbone”)

Lola Young: I’m Only F**king Myself

Positioning her on the cool-cringe continuum is as awkward as those asterisks. That’s to say she’s in a position many young women are in, disproportionately including those trying to do right by multiple ethnic heritages. She does so while indulging her old school urges by lurking in the blind spots of pop retrodom—“Spiders” sounds like something that got a New Zealand on Air grant in 1995. As she tries out all her recently discovered voices to walk, tiptoe, or stomp on exes, the music’s eager to abet, with jangle and McVie-Nicks harmonies and some strategic organ. If this sounds all over the place, well, she told you she was messy. Maybe a better word for those who evade the cool-cringe continuum by putting themselves at stake: punk.

Grade: B PLUS (“Spiders”, “Not Like That Anymore”, “Walk All Over You”)

Lorde: Virgin

Her best, even if that isn’t quite saying as much as I might’ve hoped when she was sixteen. She’s never been especially interested in music per se, and she lacks the desperation for megastardom to pay Dan Nigro to shine up the whole thing. So we get one big (and shiny) single, “What Was That”, and a bunch of other tracks that reward parsing if you can be bothered. And you should, because she’s turned out as singular as you might’ve hoped from someone with strong countercultural tendencies who became a major pop character on a historical fluke—hard to imagine any megastar besides Chappell Roan pissing all over the gender binary the way Lorde does on “Hammer”. And somehow I don’t think Chappell is going to be writing songs about the joy of a negative pregnancy test anytime soon.

Grade: A MINUS (“What Was That”, “Favourite Daughter”, “Hammer”)

PartyNextDoor & Drake: Some Sexy Songs 4 U

I’m required to review a Drake album once a decade to keep my poptimist license, and I’m due because I killed a Certified Lover Boy blurb ending “Fuck all concerned” for being too mean; of course it was nothing compared to, you know. So I’ll stay positive: although the lesson Drake learned from going full-assed for the first time in years on “Family Matters” was to never try, the OVO Sound house production team is such a well-oiled machine that 40 can be absent doing his (actually good) activism, they take more structural risks than the few artists in this column with comparable streaming numbers, and I don’t remember anything egregiously bad from PartyNextDoor and within moments of typing that I heard “Meet me outside, por favor/Without you my heart’s in dolor.” So fuck all concerned ❤️

Grade: C PLUS (“Crying in Chanel”)

Rosalía: Lux

A classical record? If only: as someone who grouches about operatic singing, hearing Rosalía bring pop naturalism to the aria-shaped “Mio Cristo Piange Diamanti” creates some schlock-frisson. That’s followed by “Berghain”, more typical of the album in that it’s a sewn-together chimera that even Dr. Moreau would be moved to put out of its misery—Rosalía vocalizing like she’s been entrusted with soundtracking a Warcraft raid sponsored by UEFA is the sole part that might get away with mere burial. When the bridge theologizes that “The only way to save us is through divine intervention”, it’s the first time I’ve ever wished Björk had a sense of shame. I assume the purpose of all the languages is so monoglots will only realize how shallow a fourteenth of the lyrics are.

Grade: C PLUS (“Mio Cristo Piange Diamanti”)

Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band: New Threats from the Soul

Whilst indie press acclaim for Americana with pitchy singing has become a cottage industry, it’s novel to focus praise exclusively on the songwriting when the songwriting isn’t that great. He’s clever, sure, and cramming in references to as many songs as he can think of in the opener is something I’d do to amuse myself, but when an epic begins “Oh, the Spanish moss, it weeps in mourning of not only personal but also planetary loss” for the second time, I wish he’d run his work through Mutilation Falls in lieu of an editor. In an interview, Davis said he doesn’t feel pressure to write better songs than Jake Lenderman or Cameron Winter. Believe me that it’s because he has talent that I stress there are much higher standards he could refuse to hold himself to.

Grade: B MINUS (“New Threats from the Soul”)

Taylor Swift: The Life of a Showgirl

To the extent that this is a failure, it’s primarily on Max Martin and Shellback. Even the 1989-scale hooks on “Opalite” are brittle plastic, programmed to break right after the 30-day return period expires. Since the Swedes have no interest in line edits, the lyrics are as Pure Taylor as we’ve ever got since the early days, for sillier or just meaner. To the extent that this isn’t a failure, then, it’s on her singing: there’s clear upper register work I wasn’t sure she still had in her, and the way her bitterness leaks all over her rhinestones saves “Actually Romantic”. Though not “Cancelled!”; maybe only Judy Garland could salvage that one.

Grade: B (“Ruin the Friendship”, “Actually Romantic”, “Wood”)

Turnstile: Never Enough

“Turnstile, whose previous album Glow On hit #1 on the Billboard Top Hard Rock Albums chart, combine their love for music and Taco Bell’s creative menu to introduce their latest soundscape to fans. Their new album will be played at participating Taco Bell restaurants from 5 pm to 8 pm local time on Thursday, June 5. Additionally, fans who order the Turnstile Luxe Cravings Box on the Taco Bell app, TacoBell.com or TacoBell.ca and use the promo code “NEVERENOUGH” on Thursday, July 5 from 5 pm to 8 pm local time will be entered to win an autographed Never Enough vinyl album.”

Grade: B MINUS (“I Care”)

Wet Leg: Moisturizer

The historical life expectancy for “not a joke act, just hard to distinguish from one” is short. So it makes sense that Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers would decide to turn their duo into a real band, yet that still required them to swallow their pride, not to mention accept splitting the royalties five ways. Having done this, their second LP is much more musical than their first, with more consistent guitar hooking and sounder structures rather than songs that end up where they end up. Teasdale’s discovered additional freedom, finding it easier to shit-talk shitheads with a posse behind her, regardless of gender, as well as to express her sexual preference for those who look like Calamity Jane, again regardless of gender. The danger was that Chambers might get lost in the noise, but she steps up to the mic to coo that keeping affairs in house is legit too. Bands: there’s hope for them yet.

Grade: A MINUS (“Pillow Talk”, “Catch These Fists”, “Pokemon”)