Hardy hardy hah

Mix 34: 1962's world before (without?) the Beatles, then hardy-har K-rap, Lil Wayne and the Pixies, my mathematically favorite reggaeton artist, and an ode to Mr. Peanutbutter

The biggest star of 1962 in someone’s timeline

Well, I have managed to stick another iron into the newsletter fire — I decided at the last minute to participate in a pick-a-year mix challenge over on Bluesky, MyYearInMix, and drew the task of sharing 40 tracks for the year 1962. Will update all blurbs, links, and playlist in this separate retrospective post. (All retrospective posts are at this tag.)

Here’s what I wrote in my preamble, lightly revised.

My process in this challenge was to carve out as much space as possible around the Acclaimed Music singles of 1962, the majority of which are ear-worn.¹ I didn't think I knew 1962 that well, but in fact my childhood memories of all of these songs are incredibly powerful. My parents listened to “golden oldies” format—dad was Boomer/Silent Generation cusper, mom was a hippie—so neither liked the emerging classic rock tilt of non-golden formats, and I rarely heard music on the car radio past 1964.

This mix will comprise music that feels familiar to me but that I do not have strong childhood associations with, or don’t otherwise carry any particular music-critical baggage about. Much of it is brand new to me. To get a sense of what you mostly will not find from 1962, check out that Acclaimed List. Some of those songs are as etched into my soul as any I can imagine, but also aren’t favorites—“Do You Love Me,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Love Me Do,” “Twistin’ the Night Away.”

My sense after some impressionistic research is that 1962 is a transitional year for global zeitgeists, like 1998 and 2008. From an Anglo/American-centric POV, that’s on the verge of Beatles, Britney, and Taylor, respectively. The latter two shifts are in my wheelhouse, but my sense of 1962 was very much received. The biggest initial surprise was going in expecting the Beatles on the horizon, but coming away thinking that, for the most part, the world was not screaming out for a Beatles to consolidate the landscape—and it seems particularly unlikely that any British pop act of 1962 was in a position to do it. Seems broadly similar to Britney in ‘99: Swedes from outer space.²

The second-biggest surprise, similar to my 1998 survey, is my initial impression that a lot of huge international movements of the early-to-mid-60s feel somewhat tentative, even though they are coming out of the gate strong, especially French yé-yé and Jamaican ska/reggae. Meanwhile, popular sounds hit when they’re ascending (surf, folk-rock) and descending (calypso, doo wop); American songwriting team usual suspects are at full steam even with flops; a broad swathe of genres sound pretty good, except for the unconscionable number of twist/dance craze cash-ins.³

I’m now pretty well convinced that “Love Me Do” was a true counterfactual pivot point, like what I argued about “Teardrops on My Guitar” in my Taylor Swift series. There is next to nothing about 1962 music that obviously points toward what’s about to happen. With hindsight you can diagnose sclerosis: disparate, desperate fads; instrumental party rock wallpaper and water-treading; the declining power of pop celebrity accruing to crooners at the expense of the best working artists, most in soul music. But that just means more potential paths forward; this is just the world we got.

This mix will instead be a glimpse of worlds we didn’t get: Bob Dylan as the wildest session harmonica-player you've never heard of; some other country’s guerrillas studying and then conquering the American pop machine; jazz learning to stop worrying and court the teenyboppers; mountains moving to make Bunker Hill an idol.

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Previous 2024 mixes

MIX 34: HARDY HARDY HAH

1. XG: Woke Up

From Frank Kogan’s latest post on YouTube reaction video streamers, grappling with them as performance (“his laugh is as good as Walter Brennan”) and as criticism. Can never tell how genuine those reaction videos are, or whether it even matters to anyone. Maybe it’s more like wrestling, we’re all in on it and along for the ride. Anyway, the reaction folks are right about this one, even if they’re faking it—the song’s a blast.

2. Master Peace f. Santigold: Santiladang

London singer has a solo version of this song, but it sounds like a Santigold song, and a good one, so I wanted to see if she had any other involvement in it. But no, according to Rolling Stone, How to Make a Master Peace just catches him vibing on what the kids—who are not content owning the future so must keep mucking around with the past, too—call indie sleaze.

3. Jessie Reyez f. Lil Wayne: Ridin

Now this is indie sleaze—utter filth over a beat that sounds like a royalty-free approximation of the Pixies, a “Fight Club song type beat.” On first listen, Wayne’s verse seemed more cartoonishly explicit than the track called for, but turns out Jessie Reyez’s laid back delivery just lulled me into not noticing how raunchy the rest of the song is, too.

4. Addison Rae: Diet Pepsi

Sabrina Carpenter asks “what if Taylor Swift still had songs,” but I’ll take Swift’s exhausting authenticity over Carpenter’s winky confessional-flavored filler (I will not, however, complete the phrase and take Taylor any day of the week—exhausting’s exhausting—so they can split attentional custody). Addison Rae, on the other hand, was smart enough to just make a xerox of Taylor’s xerox of Lana Del Rey: now we know the answer to the question “who will Single White Female the Single White Female?” As a cherry on top she threw in maybe the third-best music video I’ve seen this year, after ARTMS’s “Virtual Angel” and XG’s “Woke Up” (merely references experimental cinema instead of making it).

5. Fana Hues: Rental

An R&B singer who has been bubbling under for a few years and now sounds ready to boil over with one of the better R&B albums I’ve heard this year, Moth, a view-from-nowhere genre sampler that hits most of its marks as long as the tempos stay above 90 BPM.

6. Chxrry22: Poppin Out (Mistakes)

Similarly throwback-minded R&B, but without Fana Hues’s recessive mini-diva cipher affect, which is a double-edged sword: the ciphers can get a deceptive truckload of personality through, whereas a more confident vocal risks feeling anonymous, as it does here (risks it, that is, would say it still works).

7. La Joaqui, elaggume, Fauna Music: Tattoo Remix

8. La Joaqui, Gusty dj: Tu Patrona

Two from Argentine reggaeton star La Joaqui, who I had to check to see I featured only once before. I didn’t even realize these were two songs by the same artist, but they sound great together. So now I guess this is, strictly by the numbers, one of my favorite artists of the year? Funny how that happens.

9. Dimi3, Shehani: Hada Magee

Sri Lankan pop song that’s equal parts I-pop and cosmopolitan melting pot, with bleeps and bloops you could trace to some vague nostalgia for the early 21st century, plus a bunch of fun sonic ideas poking through every few seconds.

10. Gyeongree: Cherry

An addition to the spotty discography of a former member of 9Muses, a group I haven’t checked in on since my first and last attempt to compile my favorite K-pop songs into a mix back in 2013.

11. Nogizaka46: 熱狂の捌け口

Saw Nogizaka46 mentioned in Patrick St. Michel’s newsletter last week after having selected this song already—he likes the one currently on the Oricon charts, “Cheat Day,” but it was too cloying for my tastes. This one is considerably more upbeat, features a brass band some MIDI rockabilly.

12. Berrin Kekikler: Arada Bi Bak

Sleek Turkish electropop with [swirls glass, inhales deeply, sips] …are those notes of Fergie I’m detecting?

13. Magda Drejka: Milczysz

Haven’t been getting many impish weirdos from Poland this year—this is more polished than what I’m looking for, but it has its charm, tightly coiled electro-confessional in the verses and a big Margaret Berger chorus.

14. A-Trak: Jyeah

The second volume of 10 Seconds, A-Trak’s techno made on a vintage SP1200 sampler. I featured an Alan Braxe and DJ Falcon remix of something from the first volume, “Bubble Guts,” on my 2022 playlist.

15. MC Davi CPR f. DJ ORBITAL: Menu Degustativo

16. DJ Bokinha, MC LD, WR Original: Potencial das Duas Rodas

Two funk tracks this week, neither of them the excellent MC Pipokinha-fronted reworking of “Sweet Dreams” Frank Kogan recommended that I couldn’t find on Spotify. Instead, a track that is unusual both because it uses a jazzy chord progression I associate with Atlanta bass (“My Boo,” or the “K-pop chord”) and second because it runs over three minutes, like they trust the thing as a conventional song. The second track is under two minutes, and lets you feel every second of it by hammering a three-note plinking synth line at you.

17. Lonni Monae: FTPU

Milwaukee cut-up cuts it up over what sounds like an old 95 South beat.

18. LaRussell f. Too $hort, P-Lo: Give Me a Beat!

Ode to Bay Area rap in lyrics and sound, which seems mostly like 90s hip-hop with a dash of hyphy. (Where’s the hyphy revival?)

19. Maude Latour: Cursed Romantics

New Maude Latour album puts the other contenders for post-Taylor confessional star of the moment to shame, which is to say it’s an A- in a sea of solid B’s.

20. Daffo: Good God (Porches Remix)

An incongruous, not to say bad, light hyperpop remix approach to a good neo-slacker-indie single by Philadelphia artist Daffo. The original from late 2023 is worth checking out.

21. Mirami: Вона

Europop from a Ukrainian girl group trio, like a minor-key Bananarama.

22. Lolina: Easy Rider Geneva Heat

The vocals here remind me of Farah, the wildly disaffected frontwoman on several Italians Do It Better dance singles (here’s her exhilarating drag of a take on “Losing My Religion”). But it’s a different vein of art-pop, by Estonian artist based in London under aliases/groups Inga Copeland and Hype Williams (no, the other one).

23. Gut Health: Separate States

Spiky, spunky post-punk pop (sax skronk inclusive) from Australia that has what strikes me immediately as the worst video I’ve seen all year, which perhaps puts it in the running for fourth-best.

24. Venga, Bea: Me Cago En Tus Muertos

Not sure if this was a recommendation or a playlist find, Spanish indie with the sort of sweet melody you don’t usually get from the rest of the slacker indie-pop types in America. Maybe this is what Sabrina Carpenter’s next album should sound like? No, leave it for the rest of the world.

25. Blueburn: Mr. Peanutbutter

Ending things with a Taiwanese ode to Paul F. Tompkins’s character from Bojack Horseman. The song seems to re-dramatize the rocky relationship between Mr. Peanutbutter and wife Diane, but I don’t remember if I gutted Bojack Horseman out long enough to see the full arc. I take it from the video (second-worst and fifth-best of the year?) that things don’t end well.

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That’s it! Until next time, if you fake a reaction to something, at least make the performance worth it.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from XG’s “Woke Up”

1. Ear-worn (adj.): the quality of an earworm having long hardened into permanent memory.

2. If the Beatles remind me of Britney Spears, Bob Dylan is more like Taylor Swift—you see exactly the slot he’s going to fit into, but you can’t imagine how big things could possibly get once he breaks through. Also, re: those Swedes from space, the metaphor is imperfect. They were songwriters, not leads of Swedish bands, and the earlier breakthrough is with Backstreet Boys, not Britney Spears—and the Spice Girls also paved the way sans Swedes—but I don’t think any of that is comparable to what happened to pop music as a whole after Britney.

3. I checked my 1962 mix against Chuck Eddy’s year report and did pretty well at including things he mentioned, but was also amused by his reminder of Charlie Gillett’s distaste for twist music:

“None of the successful records had much to recommend them beyond their insistent beat,” Gillett frets, as if an insistent beat can’t be its own reward.

For the record, Gillett is wrong and Chuck is right (the twist beat is incredibly important, and the “successful records” are great), my gripe is only with the magnitude of inferior cash-ins. They don’t suck on principle, only in practice.