Video & Audio: April 2022
I’m so happy, ’cause today I found my friends
Em Beihold: “Numb Little Bug”
The TikTok generation is the latest to identify the mindstate in which one is “a little bit tired of life/Like you’re not really happy but you don’t wanna die”. Mostly I’m heartened she expresses it through kawaii lyric videos rather than Antonioni movies.
Bella Shmurda & Olamide: “Vision 2020”
The world’s most exciting music genre of recent years might be Nigerian street pop (or street hop, depending on whether you’re on an odd or even level of p-pt-m-sm.) “Cash App” might be more sociologically intriguing, but this captures the fundamental pop-more-than-hoptimism of the genre despite its acknowledgement of hardship and poverty, especially in Olamide’s verse. It was recorded in 2019.
Hayley Williams: “Trigger”
When I was writing the artist and title while this was playing, I started typing “Tay…” Suffice to say, that’s a good thing.
The Buoys: “Drive Me Home”
Actually the world’s most exciting music genre of recent years might be tuneful Australian women trying to put bad relationships behind them through song. Aside from not being from Melbourne, another differentiating feature of singer/guitarist Zoe Catterall is that she has a genuine band to propel her away from her past, advise her to delete shit from her phone, and drive to the Woronora River to make a band-having-fun video that actually looks fun.
JID, 21 Savage, Baby Tate: “Surround Sound”
After a smash collab with Imagine Dragons that had something to do with a League of Legends Netflix series (don’t worry elders, there’s no need to know what “Imagine Dragons” is), Spillage Village’s illest spiller edges closer to sustainable stardom, showing he’s mastered the mid-song beat change as well as anyone besides Kendrick and maybe Doechii. Baby Tate puzzlingly gets fewer bars than Aretha.
Poppy: “So Mean”
Several pop hopes have been making their ’90s alt-rock moves lately, but being an A+ student of genre theft, Poppy goes as far as to swipe entire chord structures, like the Cobainian flat-six in the chorus here. The result: pure lithium.
Snow Ellet: “To Some I’m Genius”
As a “suburban indie rock star”, he’s under no obligation to further quantify the “some” in his title: as long as there are at least two Big Ten college kids who believe that quick-plucked guitar leads are a valid way of processing unfulfilled dreams, it passes a fact check.
Kweku Smoke: “Do or Die”
Not the world’s most exciting music genre of recent years but one of the more useful ones might be drill made by Ghanians, who improve upon the original by retaining its hardness and homosocial strength while making its context less murdery. Kweku Smoke has mastered the vocal tics of his American models, and adds a few yawps of his own.
Let’s Eat Grandma: “Happy New Year”
Epic Morodersynths, literal fireworks, a wisp of a song that doesn’t derive any tension from the fact that time passes despite four thousand years of precedents and is kind of moving anyway. Now that’s what we call indie pop!
Focalistic, Davido, Vigro Deep: “Ke Star” (remix)
Fine, the correct answer for most exciting music genre in the world right now is still amapiano. The anti-Scorpion Kings minimalism here—when the beat stops and re-enters mid-song, it’s as if producer Deep accidentally hit the off switch and had to turn each element back on individually—makes every cymbal crash and log-drum bang-bloop into an event.
The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am Not Afraid to Die: “Queen Sophie for President”
No matter how silly the idea of having a queen might be to us as non-emo kids, we must be gracious and considerate hosts.