And now it's been four weekends
2026 Mix 14: A song of the year still shines after a few weekends, plus pop as the new indie(?) b/w mild teenage reminiscence and an indie block stuck at the end
It has only been two weekends since the last time I sat down with a big pile of songs, but that still means I have quite a backlog to sort through this coming week.
I didn’t have a ton of time for discourse in those two weeks, but I have wanted to write something about a calcifying pop myopia that I’ve been noticing for a few years now. I was thinking about it looking at what feels like the hundredth absurd “genealogy” chart of pop music I’ve seen, that begins with Madonna and ends with a group of minor stars that to me have little to do with their supposed lineage.
I’ve been having a hard time categorizing this sort of pop chat, which seems to fall somewhere between fandom conversations, social media spitballing, and shallow YouTube native criticism. It is characterized by a stunted timeline that rarely goes past the mid-to-late ‘80s, assertions of a shared canon of stars that seems haphazardly cobbled together, and the persnickety flowcharting of what to me look like arbitrary associations.
What it reminds me of is…me. When I was sixteen.
I was pretty late getting “into music,” by which I mean having strong opinions about and studying popular music closely. I’ve written about my rock-critical history before, but to recap: in my junior year of high school I realized that the kids I wanted to talk to about movies talked about music half of the time and I wanted to keep up. The first thing that really stuck in my craw was three people having a conversation about The Joshua Tree by U2 and having absolutely no idea what the hell they were talking about.
So I threw myself into a frenzied study of rock history. But it wasn’t just any rock history, it was a weird version of rock history that had congealed into a blob of conventional wisdom on the internet, across indie message boards and websites. It was typified in Pitchfork, where you’d learn that the Beatles were extremely important as long as you discounted the teenybopper stuff, but also that Pet Sounds was wildly overrated (a subject of roiling debate) and the Rolling Stones were kind of passé (no such debate that I can recall) and the Pixies and Pavement were gods. I have a graveyard of ‘90s recommendations that came as a historicized package but that I see no particular rhyme or reason to now—though I do regret selling my copy Eccsame the Photon Band by Lilys. It was an authoritative-sounding history from a group of people who were mostly just describing the records they happened to like (fair enough).
None of the reference points really meant much to me early on, so I sort of went along with it, bought albums that were said to be important, avoided ones that were said not to be.1 I liked the Doors and Pink Floyd, but I didn’t invest much in them (literally—I was still buying a lot of CDs at the time). I was really into Frank Zappa on the recommendation of a teacher, but the herd was steering me toward Captain Beefheart.
Now that I’ve had a few more decades of sense-making under my belt, I recognize how slapdash all of this ostensible canon-making was—to be clear, mostly on my part, but also on the part of those early sites and a few sniffy online personalities. This is maybe just the nature of canon-making.
But there was something specifically slapdash about the indie canon, which seemed to absorb little bits and pieces of broader conventional wisdom around classic rock but not others, deified a few non-indie nobodies that I never understood how anyone could possibly like, and drew meticulous lines between big influences and many tiny little ripples in ways that were exciting to me when I was younger but now make little sense to me. The story about the past seemed to change to retroactively match whatever minor contemporary indie artist was now in the spotlight. I came to eventually understand that the historicizing was happening backwards: find the next big thing right now and make the “canon” fit to it. It was never really about the past; it was about making some version of a past to fit the present, so that the present—which was small and insular by many metrics—would seem bigger and more important.
My sense is that some version of “pop music”—most of which really falls under the umbrella that I’ve been calling A-pop—is going through something like its indie phase. What’s important about that distinction is that it’s an audience distinction more than an artist distinction, per se. The rock canon of indie sites in the early aughts didn’t only comprise “indie acts,” but conversations about every act was “indie” because of the weird way that they distorted history to make a selective crop of minor contemporary artists feel worthy of sharing that same canon.
I think the same thing might be happening now with the sort of pop music that was once dismissed in those indie conversations: a need to shrink the field down to something manageable, to meticulously catalog its smallness as a sort of illusion to make it appear larger. Again, this may in some sense just describe all canon-making—and I would bet that many of the flowchart-makers are themselves pretty young. But I think most people really into indie rock music in the early aughts would tell you that it felt small then, and felt in need of a defense against the tides of more popular mainstreams. It reminds me a lot of a similar defensiveness about certain pockets of pop music now, which have lost their claims to a coherent mainstream and need other ways of asserting importance.
1. Six Sex: Not ur mom
Argentina
Well, folks, the song of the year has arrived — in fact it arrived a few weeks ago, but I had several mixes in the pipeline already and only got to share a few breathless posts about it over on Bluesky.
It’s Argentine provocateur Six Sex’s “Not ur mom,” a real hoot, blahs blah-ed and nyahs nyah-ed, that strikes me as equally funny in or out of Spanish. To my surprise, the only explicitly racy line seems to be the, er, titular joke. (Fair warning, the official video, a combo of “Not ur mom” and lead-in “Ultra Terrorific Fantasy” is highly recommended but maybe not at work.) I hope this is the opening salvo for a whole album—she’s already released a follow-up, “boyfree.”
If you need a primer on Six Sex, try Richard Villegas’s profile from 2024 in Remezcla, which anointed her “queen of the perreo rave.” On paper she seems like an Argentine Charli XCX, including precocious rave attendance, canny collaborations, and an eye and ear for transgression within alt-pop’s plausible deniability that you’re doing it as a bit or as commentary. All that is fine as far as background goes, but I don’t think her previous work quite prepares you for what’s happening here. This is doors kicked down stuff.
Being late to artists like this always makes me wonder if I should be trying to follow scenes more diligently. One reason I don’t really follow scenes very well is that my ears tend to be on the alert for sparks flying out beyond their boundaries; the scene itself is like a launchpad and I’m always looking up. I think this is mostly a “me” problem—I’m easily distracted—and I don’t want to downplay the importance of the terrestrial. My own role in the musicwrite ecosystem is weird, more based on a restless disposition and addled attention span than some underlying philosophy that says the sky is better than the ground. (Plenty of people can watch both.) I think the work people do in scene cataloging is vital; it just doesn’t happen to spark joy. Only the stars do.
2. Theodora: Miss Kitoko
DRC-France
Speaking of stars, some people just have it, you know? It’s not necessarily a pop star thing, though it sometimes overlaps with pop stardom. There are plenty of non-stars who have it, and it boggles the mind that they struggle so much (well, not really—it’s not really up to anyone in particular). So it’s nice when someone like Theodora ascends in what seems to be a simple, preordained sort of way—hit after hit, spark after spark. Her third appearance on my mixes this year alone and likely not her last.
3. BikaBreezy, Jaytrue: 巴适 (Bashi)
Kazakhstan
Q-pop rapper goes ama-pop, sounds fantastic.
4. Lil Uzi Vert: What You Saying
US
Is this the first Lil Uzi Vert song I’ve paid attention to in ten years? Has there really been over a full decade of Lil Uzi Vert? (What year is it?) Who chose to roll with this sample and why does it work so well? I’m counting this as very tenuous Eurovision influence in mainstream US hip-hop—Indila was rumored to be approached for 2026 for France. They went with this one, which is good, is a very satisfying A-pop story (Monroe was born and raised in Utah) and would also be a good Lil Uzi Vert sample.
5. Yuri: Tekito Make
Japan
My statistical find for artist of the year 2024 (i.e. didn’t realize how many times she appeared on mixes until I looked at a spreadsheet) is back, and I can’t place the obvious song that her flow sounds like. The closest I got was “Work from Home” by Fifth Harmony.
6. Cosmosy: Chance ~switch on~
Japan
One of those “global girl group” deals between Japanese and Korean companies, but with all Japanese members. I don’t know if the standard jazz-inflected K-popish chord progression (which I wrote about a bit here) has a specific name but I am nothing if not neologism-minded so should probably call it something. A J/K progression? (The “j” could stand for “jazz” but also sometimes “Japan”?)
7. Sugar ‘N Spice: Sun-Kissed
Thailand
For more sugar than spice, you’ll probably need to go further afield—Thai pop continues to operate across multiple K-pop generations, not being afraid to sound goopy and saccharine in a seemingly passé sort of way that I still like.
8. KiiKO: KiiKO Forever
Japan/Ireland
Well-produced glitchy J-pop from a duo based in Ireland.
9. MJ Cole f. PinkPantheress: Still Sincere (MK Dub)
UK
A leisurely coasting two-step number with PinkPantheress baked right in, sounding a bit like someone pasted her vocals back onto a track she’d already absorbed into her own music.
10. Anitta: Pinterest
Brazil
Anitta released this charming, low-key samba about plotting out a vacation with a new beau on Pinterest in both a Portuguese and Spanish version, and I kept changing my mind on which one to put on the mix. You get the highlight (pronunciation of Pinterest as “peen-ter-esh”) in both versions, so vote your conscience.
11. Julia Takada: Take You Away
Japan
The opening synth swoop really got me; the rest of the song lives up to it (just).
12. heavy / bloom: Бруд [Brood]
Ukraine
This is kind of what I wanted the Hemlocke Springs album to sound more like—lots of sharp left turns into rapping and chanting and guitar solos, a sense the song can’t figure out where it’s going.
13. Pappy Kojo: Masallaci
Ghana
14. Pablo Fierro: Yal
Canary Islands
15. Antropoceno, sonhos tomam conta: Ayaba Oxum
Brazil
A quick Golden Beatology stretch before the extended indie rock landing: smooth Ghanaian rap, interesting Middle Eastern cosmo hodgepodge from a DJ from the Canary Islands, and an indulgent Brazilian guitar freakout.
16. Avalon Emerson: God Damn (Finito)
US
17. The Orielles: Shadow of You Appears
UK
18. Ida: It’s Not All Right [1995]
US
19. Makthaverskan: Pity Party
Sweden
20. Teen Suicide: Spiders
US
Indie section! Starts with an artist I would have sworn was a Spotify Indie Find or something but apparently has enough cred for a bunch of Pitchfork coverage. Then, former fave The Orielles take the Phoenix route of devolving for each new album—the indie Benjamin Button disease—moving further away from songcraft and toward pleasant in utero (not In Utero) drone, pleasant enough in this case to make the mix. This suite also gives me an excuse for a Numero Group rerelease of an Ida song from 1995 (which means it does not feature Karla Schickele—aka k.—on bass).
To finish up, a great rec from Isabel, melodic Swedish indie I would have pegged as…Irish, maybe? And finally some light downer guitar thrashing from a group that I once again failed to realize features KITTY. I noted in this very blog that she was in this band only a few months ago and yet still forgot again when I pulled this song. I guess she’s still got star potential after all these years.
That’s it! Until next time, follow the stars, even if they don’t become stars.
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title translated from Anitta: Pinterest (“e agora já são quatro weekends”)
There is a distinction I should probably make here between me placing myself in a current landscape of music nerds and my more isolated historical interest in rock criticism, which meant lots of reading from sources that contradicted the indie folks. I was getting multiple stories, and for the record did buy plenty of Pink Floyd albums—but no Doors albums (I eventually bought one, apparently?)—but my point is that when it came to the people who seemed the most like high school friends I was trying to impress, I was pretty deferential at first.