Video & Audio: Blings at the speed of sound
"Car wash is played out, new GoFundMe accounts'll proceed"
Kendrick Lamar: “The Heart Part 5”
It’s no surprise that when safely ensconced from dodgy concepts in his bulletproof Rover, he can still do quality introspection (even if some of it’s in character as Nipsey Hussle) while going faster miles an hour, but I admit I’m at the stage where it feels a bit odd for him to rap over a good beat.
DJ Black Low, DJ La Bengwa, Licy Jay, Menate Entertainment: “Sbono” (vocal mix)
All of South African electronic music’s weirdest tendencies in percussion, synths, vocals, and plink-plonk come together to form something that’s at least as avant-garde as anything you’d hear in some repurposed post-industrial building in Berlin. As for dancing, the more legs, the better.
The Range: “Urethane”
From renowned hotbed of grime Vermont comes this reworking of M.I.K’s 2014 “Ice Rink” that isolates the isolation inherent in lines like “last year man got left in the dark” and uses low humming chords and wispy reverse-noises to imbue them with the time-defying grandeur of the Green Mountains. I think they call this Romanticism.
Sky Ferreira: “Don’t Forget”
If her and Jorge Elbrecht’s scuffed production pretends the near-decade since her only album never happened, the lyrics make it clear it’s been a rough nine years: “I’ll catch your disease, it’s such a raw deal world.” Right in the eye of the zeitgeist again.
S.G. Goodman: “Work Until I Die”
The repeated drone-strums create a sense of entrapment reminiscent of the Pretenders at their most pessimistic. As for an escape route, reversing the 70-year decline in private sector unionization is tricky, but it’d beat dying.
Phelimuncasi, DJ Nhlekzin: “I Don’t Feel My Legs”
Like a South African Altman movie played at double-speed and cranked up to drown out a generator. If it blows up, it won’t just be your legs you can’t feel.
Harry Styles: “As It Was”
Pretty slight for a 10-week number one, but this year I’ll take it.
The Weeknd: “Less Than Zero”
He’s hard to hate when he manages to add warmth to his detached Moroder-synth palette, as he does here through a career-first convincing admission of fault. I don’t expect another one anytime soon.
Kenny Chesney: “Everyone She Knows”
With most of the profitable women in Nashville preferring to have a hand in their own material, McAnally/Osborne/Copperman hand this exploration of the possibility of being an independent woman in a conformist town to Chesney on a platter, and to his credit, he doesn’t fuck it up: his dispassionateness means empathy is left to the listener, but at least he’s not a lech.
Demi Lovato: “Substance”
Quality pop-punk is trickier than finding a producer who knows how to record power chords: it requires lots of Goth-notebook words (“head full of maggots”, sure), a voice that can find a path through the overdriven guitars, and a healthy dose of the egocentricity that many of our finest former teen stars can never entirely rid themselves of.
Scotty McCreery: “Damn Strait”
The fifth-or-so most successful American Idol winner is gifted a title that became inevitable once country music decided it’d allow the big D. Pun aside, there’s a solid emotional core about how in the wake of a break-up, you can’t even find solace the art you love if she loved it too. Kelly Clarkson would’ve been able to across seething disdain for George, though.
Bad Bunny: “Moscow Mule”
The rise of Bad Bunny to biggest star in the New World, if not the whole world, shows there’s still a huge market for dudes who are ragingly horny yet not too threatening, bad yet a bunny, willing to get naked yet without visible genitalia, at least per this video.