Lizzo: “I Love You Bitch”
A simple sentiment expressed as clearly and straightforwardly as possible, and if I can’t sing along without changing it to “fish” that’s fine.
Ethel Cain: “American Teenager”
Slavishly follows the reverb-and-everyone’s-a-synth mushrock template formalized by Tris McCall, but when I cut my losses trying to guess her consonants and looked up the lyrics, what do you know, they were similarly ambivalent about booze, Jesus, America. No need to do an MFA program, she can skip to teaching in one.
Dave Rempis & Avreeayl Ra: “Fire and Ash”
The best 2022 free jazz cut I’ve heard to date unless I’m forgetting something. Avreeayl Ra gets a long banging drum intro before Rempis busts out his tenor and jumps between registers blurting out fast phrases that could’ve come from interstellar space (the album, the region, whatever.) Not available as a single, but the Bennu album is worth your ten bucks.
Emperor X: “Communists in Luxury”
Do you agree with the following?
1. Children under the age of 18 should have the right to education, regardless of how much money their parents make.
2. Child labor should be outlawed.
3. Industrial environmental destruction should be punishable by law.
4. Poor people should be taxed at a lower percentage than the wealthy.
5. Banks should answer to a government authority that regulates lending practices.
6. Governments should subsidize farming.
7. Governments should take responsibility for air traffic control, freeway construction, and mass communication infrastructure.
If so, congratulations, you just agreed with about half of the Communist Manifesto. Happy birthday, Karl Marx!
— Emperor X’s Tumblr (of course he had a Tumblr), May 2018
Halsey: “So Good”
By the time the acoustic guitar chorus hits she sounds more or less like Maren Morris (who, I remind you, was briefly as gifted at cumulative melody as anyone in the 2010s.) When she hits the highly specific bridge about her friend Maria calling her with good news that immediately gets overshadowed by Halsey’s own dramas, I find myself quite moved, though mostly for Maria.
Aespa: “Girls”
The idols most likely to have read The Rest Is Noise go for as normie a statement of identity-cum-metaversal-supremacy as any song about defeating “the first villain in the Aespa Universe” (gotta love K-pop wikis) can be, and in doing so rock as hard as anyone these days without a real guitar within earshot. Also what I thought was “Donald Trump” was actually “nanweo jweo”, so we’re good, Winter.
Buck 65: “Part 2” (from King of Drums)
“Forlorn north”/“Paul Orndorff”, “nitwit”/“shit fit”/“it/it”, “monotony”/“pottery”/“dichotomy”, etc. etc.
Michael Spyres: Rossini: “Largo al factotum”
No really, this guy. Spyres uses his “baritenor” range and some why-so-serious ersatz countertenor to finally get across how silly all those Figaros actually are.
Tove Lo: “2 Die 4”
Sad Girl Summer pioneer fakes us out into thinking this’ll be another morose one with a minor key verse about a (hot) Sad Boi. Then there’s a pre-chorus with Inspirational Piano, a rhythmic chorus, the same rhythmic chorus again, and then somehow we’ve reached Hot Butter’s(/Crazy Frog’s) “Popcorn”. For video game designers and others who think fun must be earned; technically I’m in one of those groups.
Flora Purim: “This Is Me”
There’s some iron law that Brazilian women singers get sharply better upon hitting their eighties. Purim, a veteran of Chick Corea’s and Dizzy Gillespie’s bands, updates her husband’s “I Don't Wanna Be Myself Again” into an expression of pride in herself and in the life she’s lived that no amount of synth noodling can take away from her.
DJ Khaled, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, John Legend, Fridayy: “God Did”
It seemed like Khaled and Jay-Z thought this would be a career-capping smash; instead, it entered Billboard at #17 and is already plummeting. Hova starts off in peak blasphemy mode a la “Never Let Me Down”, thrills for sixty-odd seconds then runs out of turbo, and just grinds it out for another three minutes. I guess it’s hard to tell your billionaire buddy he’s a one minute man nowadays. To the surprise of nobody not in the liner notes, Weezy has the best verse.