Pop is so good right now. Why?
A lot of people are citing the return to recession pop as the scary factor, but I say, dear reader, that the return to slightly off-key synths and cassette sounds should be far scarier.
Music
It only occurred to me recently that I haven’t flexed my music analysis skills on OBSCURAE yet. Let’s fix that!
If you listen to the charts right now, there’s a definitive nostalgic shift—to the ’80s, to the sampling of the ’90s (looking at you, Bad Bunny), and more than anything, a use of instrumentation that sounds like it’s been run through analogue gear.
What does this mean? It means people want to listen to pop music that sounds like the music of the past.
Oh no! Is that the conservatism of nostalgia I see? Where maybe, if we listen long enough, we’ll start yearning for a time when things were perfect and better in the past? OOPS!
Now, does it help that a lot of the artists making this music are, for the most part, progressive, queer, or both? Yes…but it’s not looking good, in my opinion.
I started to notice this as I put together a reference playlist for my upcoming album—it became clear that the unifying factor, the thing that was making me spark as an artist, was this sense of a record feeling a little imperfect, which I could attribute almost completely to the sounds we all associate with records that came out before digital audio workstations.
A lot of people are citing the return to recession pop as the scary factor, but I say, dear reader, that the return to slightly off-key synths and cassette sounds should be far scarier. Some artists are more culpable than others (not all of them are involved in how their sound is crafted), but the fact that our tastes have shifted back in time is something I have not let slip by me.
As I’m embarking on my own project, I’m VERY aware of this shift, and doing my research as to how to make sure I don’t contribute to it because, and I can’t stress this enough, it’s working on me too.
OK.
Tate McRae
When I think of her contribution to this phenomenon, I’m specifically thinking of “2 Hands,” which skirts around the issue with very modern drums. She is an example of how Victoria Monét’s meteoric rise has signalled to the labels that people do actually want to see their stars dance (if they can, which McRae certainly can). I don’t welcome the comparisons to Normani, although I wish Normani had taken this more uptempo approach to start, and then slowed the tempos down when the album came out. Anyway, I was resistant to McRae’s rise until “2 Hands”—she’s the modern recession pop, and I’m a full sucker for pop music in all of its beautiful and terrifying forms.
Chappell Roan
The one and only. No one ever mentions how much Reneé Rapp opened the door for Chappell in the modern press to blow through with “Midwest Princess,” how songs about girls got normalized bit by bit, and then Reneé, with the backing of “Mean Girls,” bust through the curtain, and Chappell danced through. We love a good moment of lesbian solidarity. Long may they all reign. I think it’s good for pop music that these women dominate the next decade or so—it’s so healthy for us all. I will say—Chappell also mainstreamed the solid gold ’80s backward shift in the sound, but again, that was a creative choice on her part, and to queer it like this is its own brilliant project. She’s about to embark on another similar project with the new album, and I, for one, will be front row.
Addison Rae
I have a lot of words to say about Addison, and I think OBSCURAE is a safe space to say them. I absolutely adore Dara Allen (her stylist), absolutely adore her, and there really is no qualifier for that. I bring her up only because I believe she’s had a hand in Addison’s aesthetic and styling across the album and singles too. Though ‘Diet Pepsi’ is impeccably produced, the vibes of both the visuals and the lyrics were so off. I didn’t work out why until I actually watched the video, instead of the loop on Spotify. If we take the single in the context of the political moment, lyrics like “young lust” and “losing all my innocence in the backseat,” paired with the visuals, this young blonde girl draping herself over this tough guy —it was giving Lolita in the totally worst way. Like, the kind of single an artist talks about in 20 years as being evidence they were being groomed. I’m sure that’s nowhere near the truth, but it was communicating that, visually and lyrically. I don’t know if she escapes that through the rest of the album, but I’m old school—if the lead single doesn’t hook me, I’m not giving the album a chance unless I love you. I don’t know Addison enough to listen to the album.
Sabrina Carpenter
Now this is cutesy, doe-eyed nostalgia-bait done right—with an ironic, acerbic edge, and a knowing cheekiness and self-agency when it comes to her sexuality. You don’t get the sense someone is getting something over on her—the entirety of “Good Graces” is a threat. This is subversion at its best. She knows where the line would have been in the ’70s, when this aesthetic was at it’s height, and she actively and repeatedly crosses it. An entire recurring bit on her tour was simulating sex positions on a stage shaped like a penis. Just over the line enough to break the illusion, not so far as to be off-theme. There is a genius to the way Sabrina constructed the Short n’ Sweet persona, a genius to which I continually tip my hat.
Doechii
For my own personal reasons, I haven’t clocked into Doechii’s career since ‘Alter Ego’. I hear she’s done some pretty fucking amazing things, not the least of which being winning the gold she deserves. From what i’ve heard on TikTok, she’s also slipped back into the 90’s, but I wouldn’t know enough to know if she’s subverting the nostalgic effect that would have. I just know she’s everything and more and I want her to win forever.
Bad Bunny
My devil, my angel, my crazy boy. What can I say about this album that isn’t just me glazing him for 200 words? It’s so well-produced, it has that nostalgic kick to it but with completely modern vocal production, which cuts it completely from a backslide and turns it into the best homage, and oh my god the ass I’ve been throwing in my bedroom to this album is categorically insane. I put this album on, and my entire apartment is clean in 20 minutes.
But, of course, there’s something else at play, which is that this album is as much a firm, progressive, and clear political statement, by the biggest artist in the entire world, about his home country, about colonisation across the world. It’s a message to party, to hold each other close, and not to give up. For an artist this big to do this at scale—no one is really talking at length, in English, about how revolutionary that work is. Well, I guess I am now.
BBNO$
I am hearing stuff about this man far and wide across the internet. I haven’t heard any of the recent songs. I encourage him to keep up the good work. 🫡
DJO
I am quaking; I need an album from this man TODAY. He is making the nostalgic shift back, unfortunately, but there really aren’t many male artists (except the next one on this list, and the two prior) operating at this level of vulnerability to an audience this wide. I am endlessly fascinated by the sounds this guy decides to make.
Mk.Gee
DUDE DUDE DUDE DUDE DUDE DUUUUUUUUUUDEEEE GET INTO IT!
He’s like if Peter Gabriel and Sting and Prince and Clapton and…oh noooooooo!!!!!
This is the problem—Mk.Gee is definitely tapping into the “music was better, everything was better” conservatism of nostalgia bone that absolutely works on me. The kind of sound I need to be careful not to fall into because it’s so seductive. What’s worse is there’s no redemptive thing here—there’s nothing cutting the sound to propel us into the future. There’s no subversion of the form—he’s a cute white boy with long hair playing guitar, tale as old as time.
I let myself micro-dose Mk.Gee as a treat because it’s so good, man.
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