Video & Audio: Do you have to? Do you have to

The donk proliferates, on horse and by minibus

Miya Folick: “Fist”

I don’t know if one or more of Russian-Japanese-Californian Folick’s parents are immigrants, but this feels like a child-of-an-immigrant song: very formally correct in terms of tunecraft, very very direct lyrically, like you’re writing to make sure relatives who speak English as a second language get it. Everyone understands punching yourself in the face!

Guspy Warrior, Baba Manyeruke: “Mutrangarire” (2023)

Music of Africa continues to uncover things the rest of us Anglophone Afropop fans would otherwise never notice. Take this Zimbabwean former dancehall guy making the obligatory amapiano turn, but on his own terms, like inviting his gospel-singing dad “Mechanic” Manyeruke to join in from the second verse and steal the song from him.

Adeem the Artist: “One Night Stand”

Simple trick: make a song that sounds like it could’ve been on the radio c. 2000 by hiring Butch Walker to produce it, except make it explicitly queer, the enby singer saying “I played coy to see how high he’d trace my inner thigh”. That it becomes a paean to if not necessarily monogamy then at least open-term relationships is as trad as country gets.

Skee Mask: “BB Care”

Skee Mask came up as a breakbeats guy before finding wider acclaim by covering a wider terrain of electronic sounds. Though I did eventually come to terms with this, it’s no shock that my favorite recent track of his is… a bunch of breakbeats, albeit accompanied by lingering synths that show artistic development and all that.

Dieuf-Dieul de Thiès: “Djirim” (live 2017)

Founded in 1979, one of that time’s most popular Senegalese bands outside of Dakar finally got around to releasing their debut studio album last year. As this performance from a festival in the Netherlands shows, they’d been carrying the material around for a long time. Younger trombonist Wilfried Zinsou gets the main hook, but it’s great to see OG singer Bassirou Sarr and I think the late Pape Seck on guitar get their time in the Dutch sun.

Katy Kirby: “Cubic Zirconia”

Indie singer-songwriting which in addition to being on the righteous “you can make out the words” side, has some art to its artifice. It’s about working out one’s sexuality, and also about how some misfits have the ability to turn on Functional Normie mode, while others are stuck being “the prettiest mermaid in the souvenir shop”, unless they decide to be the drunkest.

Simona: “Cocon”

Argentina-to-Barca technically-a-singer who takes a reggaeton base and combines it with trendier club sounds. About a minute in this hits a clattering, rather random breakdown, which may or may not be to your taste depending on whose hand hyperpop makes you want to crush with a mallet; me, I was relieved when she got back to the porn sighs.

Mackenzie Carpenter: “Dozen Red Flags”

As a relief from sociopolitical issues, here’s a pre-release from an album due on Friday that’s about an evidently terrible man whom the narrator still inexplicably gives a chance to, which could be a metaphor for oh stop it stop it. Her performance is cute and funny, with a yellow flag being that she’s sort of a lazy singer by country standards, but said standards are so high that non-specialists might not mind much.

Shaunmusiq, Myztro, Scotts Maphuma, CowBoii, Kabelo Sings, Mbuxx: “Yini Ngathi”

I’m still trying to work out what “quantum sound” is (and what it has to do with Toyota minibuses) so I don’t know if this is quantum sound. Whatever it is, it’s from the harder edge of Greater Amapiano, the sternness of the low synth mitigated by a hyperactive squeak that’s like a ball haphazardly bouncing around inside a… Toyota Quantum? Yeah I dunno.

Tom Noble: “Time Is Running Out”

If what you want out of your Studio 54 revivalists is attention to detail and also the sense that Disco Demolition Night is right around the corner, here’s your song (and associated album), so long in the making that singer Darwin Jones sadly passed away before its release. For him, let’s remember that time or an approximation of it can be bottled and served in a brandy snifter.

Hustle, Valentino Ignoto: “Baroud”

Dave Moore is taking on another not entirely thankless year of, among other things, tracking the worldwide spread of amapiano’s tendrils. A vaguely militaristic-sounding Algerian rapper (in vibe more than form)/Italian producer collab? Yeah, that can have stuttering log drums. Not the worst thing with the potential to do a mini Peso Pluma.

Jon Langford’s Men of Gwent: “Adrian Street” (2015)

Top three songs related to fake gay Welsh pro wrestler Adrian Street: (1) this; (2) Exotic Adrian Street and the Pile Drivers: “Imagine What I Could Do to You”; (3) Luke Haines: “Linda’s Head”. This one is sociologically deepest, with admiration for Street for finding a way to avoid black lung, but the gap between 1 and 2 is smaller than it has any right to be.

Royel Otis: “Linger” (Sirius XM Session) and “Murder on the Dancefloor” (Triple J Like a Version)

Australia’s great guitar-pop hopes consist of an effective guitarist—that’s Royel—and a remarkable singer—that’s Otis—with a smooth gentleness in his fourth octave that’s genuinely hard to find precedents for in white male popular singing. “Linger” edges out Faye Wong for best Cranberries cover through the ease with which Otis switches between falsetto and head voice “have to”s. “Murder on the Dancefloor” is even better for a matter-of-factness about both his ability and the subject matter that makes me think the best comp might be the Blue Sky Boys: murder or no murder, he won’t be the one to kill the groove. Their own material isn’t yet up to this standard; in the meantime, I think the streaming economy makes it economically viable to be the world’s best cover band.