I won't follow, I won't bow

2025 Mix 38: The '20s revisited, a too-rare foray into Taiwanese pop, a few fun music videos (cheap Spiderman PDA inclusive), and refusing to dislike things on paper

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I spent the past week sorting through my favorite songs of the decade so far, and I figured some of you might want to look at a whittled down selection in a manageable <counts> one hundred sixteen tracks. That’s eleven honorable mentions per year plus the top fifty.

I’m not going to share that top fifty yet (so only 66 today), because I’ll be participating in a daily music challenge over on Bluesky called #TheTwen2ie5 (yes I have copied and pasted this spelling somewhere). But I can share my 11 honorable mentions for each year.

Wasn’t planning on writing about any of these in the intro, but if you post the name of one in the comments I will talk about it. Or you can share your own! Or just acknowledge this newsletter quietly and move on with your day. It’s really up to you.

2020s Honorable Mentions (11 per year, ordered alphabetically by title)

2020 HMs
1 - Playboi Carti: @ MEH; 2 - Lembayung Group: Aku Berdansa Seorang Diri Disini; 3 - Lil Mosey: Blueberry Faygo; 4 - BigKlit: Boy Bye; 5 - Ava Max: Kings & Queens; 6 - Kitten: My House; 7 - Kate NV: Plans; 8 - Borock N Roll: Semesta Menyambut Gegap Gempita; 9 - Lianne La Havas: Weird Fishes; 10 - Wonderframe: จกตา (ตะมอย); 11 - MILLI: พักก่อน

2021 HMs
1 - DellaXOZ: AHH!!; 2 - Teenage Sequence: All This Art; 3 - Olivia Rodrigo: deja vu; 4 - MC Levin f. DJ Kaioken & DJ Gege: Ela me Falou Que Quer Rave; 5 - Allie X: GLAM!; 6 - Lil Nas X: MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name); 7 - Alicai Harley, Moelogo, & Nadia Rose: No Rampin; 8 - Montparnasse Musique: Panter; 9 - Sophia Chablau e Uma Enorme Perda de Tempo: Pop Cabecinha; 10 - Farah: Rock Show; 11 - Cardi B: Up

2022 HMs
1 - Nia Archives: Baianá; 2 - Ralphie Choo: Bulerías de un caballo malo; 3 - Wednesday: Bull Believer; 4 - Hitkidd & GloRilla: F.N.F. (Let's Go); 5 - PVA: Hero Man; 6 - Lady Aicha & Pisko Cranes Original Fulu Mziki of Kinsasha: Kraut; 7 - KH: Looking at Your Pager; 8 - Thakzin: The Magnificent Dance; 9 - Ice Spice: Munch (Feelin’ U); 10 - Lil Yachty: Poland; 11 - Monaleo & Flo Milli: We Not Humping (Remix)

2023 HMs
1 - DJ Arana: ABCDário Da Guerra; 2 - Khalfan Govinda: Ampayinka; 3 - Vayda: Bingo; 4 - Corinne Bailey Rae: Erasure; 5 - Bb trickz: Missionsuicida; 6 - Dlala Thukzin f. Zaba & Sykes: iPlan; 7 - Mellow & Sleazy f. Tman Xpress & Keynote: Kwelinye; 8 - Nia Archives: Off Wiv Ya Headz; 9 - La Sécurité: Serpent; 10 - Skrillex f. Nai Barghouti: XENA; 11 - Tietê: Zig Zag

2024 HMs
1 - Saya Gray: AA BOUQUET FOR YOUR 180 FACE; 2 - JADE: Angel Of My Dreams; 3 - Rico Nasty & Boys Noize: Arintintin; 4 - Judith Horn: Deep Shit Times; 5 - RAYE: Genesis.; 6 - Alice Longyu Gao: Little Piggy; 7 - Tems: Love Me JeJe; 8 - Gen1es: LUCKY BELL; 9 - Juky San: Nghĩ Đến Anh; 10 - Baby Kia: OD CRASHIN; 11 - Ashna Lweri: Uma Oma Ayi

2025 HMs
1 - Tautumeitas: Bur man laimi; 2 - Myaap: Fairy; 3 - Rihanna: Friend Of Mine; 4 - SAILORR f. Summer Walker: Pookie’s Requiem; 5 - Miimii KDS & Dj Skycee: Sé Miimii; 6 - MOLIY & Silent Addy f. Skillibeng, & Shenseea: Shake It To The Max (FLY) (Remix); 7 - THÉA: QUI FERA TAIRE LES KIDZ FUCKED UP??; 8 - Tayna: Thana; 9 - FLVCKKA: Tsunami; 10 - Mula: Wôyô Mulingue; 11 - Tokyo Syoki Syodo: Okazaki Kyoko No Ano Ko Ni Naritakatta

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Previous 2025 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. PVA: Hero Man [2022]
UK

The eagle-eyed among you might have noticed that one honorable mention in my 2022 list up there is this very song! 2022 was by far my worst ever year for music discovery (among other things), and it was a big blindspot in my lists. So some of my 2022 finds are retroactive, including “The Magnificent Dance” by Thakzin, which I first heard toward the end of 2023. PVA was merely a happy accident, a song that snuck onto my mix this week and was too good to shake off. I decided it was worth the mention.

2. Zheani: Naked
Australia

Speaking of 2022 blind spots, I missed Zheani’s I Hate People on the Internet when it came out, the album that sparked George Henderson’s interest in Zheani and fairy trap (he wrote about the album here). I’ve found the fairy trap framing an interesting way into related music that’s been turning my head—a more promising path than some formal history of most of the stuff calling itself “hyperpop,”anyway. (I like hyper- as a production style that’s gone global in a lot of different directions.) This is the first Zheani on one of my mixes, I think—she puts herself at the same sort of distance that I said Alice Glass did a few weeks ago, but creates an energy out there that Glass doesn’t — I guess I’d say Glass puts the energy off at a distance, while Zheani puts herself off at a distance but the energy comes through anyway, something like that.

3. Naarly f. FORS: C’est pas compliqué
Sweden

Had to check to make sure that I’d been taken in by this Swedish knucklehead throwing a congenial global dance party once before — and not only was I indeed taken in, it was only a month ago! In that case I said the music exhibited “a sort of post-traumatic stress reaction to the drop” but I maybe misread that; it’s aiming to turn your head without disturbing your body too much, and achieves this effect.

4. Zanthite: ZALİM
Turkey

Some combination of YouTube extensions I use to eliminate ads and clutter on the site has now created a weird audio artifact where occasionally the sound will slightly slow and then rush forward again like a warped tape. I wondered if I had accidentally noted this effect positively in the newsletter (I usually enjoy it; it made “Hello” by Adele sound much better). I did mention the combination of bass and guitar sounding like “tape warp” in one of k.’s songs the other week, but that was accurate. I also wondered if the glitch was why this Turkish track seemed so delightfully off-kilter. But no—Zanthite are just like that, and have simply chosen to sound like Ween (complimentary).

5. QViNT: กรี๊ด (Scream Therapy)
Thailand

I could have really used some nice blood-curdling screams in this one, instead of the polite and stock-sounding group scream. But it does have a scrappiness to it that makes it all work, and I liked having such a somber-sounding title lyric this week that does not match the goofy vibe of the song at all.

6. Lai: 超級會 (Naughty)
Taiwan

Another mark for (against?) my vast ignorance in how I approach this newsletter is that I still can’t tell you almost anything about Chinese or Taiwanese pop, or explain beyond ill-informed guessing why Taiwanese pop always makes my mixes and Chinese pop never does (I mean, at some level it’s just because the Taiwanese pop I hear is better, take that for what it’s worth). This means I’m also in no position to expound on the significance of the very fun and very gay video for Lai’s “Naughty.”

Lai is a member of the Taiwanese boy band WOLF(S), who recently went on hiatus following another member being investigated for not doing mandatory military service. Michael Hong mentioned Lai in a short blurb back in 2021:

Despite significant strides, LGBTQ+ representation from Taiwan is still limited. A year after Taiwan became the first Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage in 2019, one article asks you to celebrate with LGBT anthems performed by three straight artists. There’s good reason for it, given that there are already few openly queer artists in the Taiwanese music scene, including HUSH and Enno Cheng, most of whom aren’t really adopting queer aesthetics, whereas Jolin Tsai proudly depicts the wedding of two women in her music video for “We’re All Different, Yet the Same.” But it still feels like a disappointing snub against the queer community all the same. An artist like Mitchell Zhong, performing songs that adopt queer ideas within music videos that confidently portray their queer aesthetics feels like a shift, and along with other artists like Lai, represent an exciting new direction for the Mandarin-language music scene that’ll be exciting to watch.

7. Miki: Particule
France

8. SAADI: Hollow Body
US

Two electropop sparklers—the kind that are diverting but disappointing compared to real fireworks—with head-turning videos. First, effervescent French pop from a French-Korean artist who could only afford the cheapest Spiderman suit in her one-take PDA video but manages to wring every penny out of it, and maybe a few other things, too. Syrian-American artist SAADI seems to have had about fifteen different sketches of ideas for dance videos and proceeded to make bits of all of them. Video features prominent window panes, but the music is not windowpane.

9. DUEJA: Heul doch
Germany

More strong hyper-indebted pop from Germany. Should probably do a more formal survey of this stuff at some point.

10. Ella Chen: 勇鹅 (《欢乐家长群2》电视剧片尾曲)
Taiwan

A splendid, shameless rip-off of “APT.,” which is only fitting since “APT.” is the biggest song since…some other extremely big song. A good reminder to document A-pop theory in action: ROSÉ accepted her MTV VMA for song of the year (from presenter Paris Hilton) with a five-minute speech in which the final person she thanked was herself. Taylor, watch out!

11. Mafune Towa: さしすせそグルーヴ
Japan

Folkish pop artist does her own take on a schoolyard rhyme cadence with clicks and clacks and bloops cohering into a ragtag bossanova beat.

12. Busy Signal, Bounty Killer, Beenie Man: 3X BBB (Tripple Bad)
Jamaica

Three big B’s indeed, but the sample feels even bigger—it’s just the three of them on Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz “Deja Vu” (mostly Steely Dan’s “Black Cow”) and it’s exactly as enjoyable as that sounds to you.

13. Balimaya Project, Discos Pacifico All Stars: Nuestro Latido
UK/Colombia

A “15-piece supergroup that crosses borders,” and I believe them, diaspora Afro-Latin funk that throws an audibly large party that is maybe a tad too restrained, in the venerable world café fashion, for so many pieces. Too much elbow room.

14. Unfazed: Mau Olhado
Brazil

Meanwhile this snippet of Brazilian Afrohouse is too cramped, should switch venues with the 15-piece. The song needs extra room to stretch out from its abrupt fade in/cut out 2:42 single edit—luckily there’s a full 6-minute edit on YouTube.

15. Mariana Froes: Espelho [2020]
Brazil

A bulletproof bossa far too up my street to leave off this week, even after I realized it was from 2020 and I hadn’t checked the release dates carefully enough. No big deal, being a few years old is on theme.

16. Carin León f. Kacey Musgraves: Lost in Translation
Mexico/US

A nice bilingual duet between Kacey Musgraves and regional Mexican music star Carin León, who met doing a vocal warm-up together in Nashville to “Fue Un Placer Conocerte,” which Musgraves knew by heart. The result here is cute, if a little corny. Bet it would sound great on the rebooted Muppets.

17. La Messa, Tormento: Musica Vera
Italy

An interesting balance between sunshine pop retro throwback and contemporary post-EDM global pop, with a hint of the Latin-influenced shot in the arm I’ve been noticing across Italian pop lately, without really sounding forward-thinking about it, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

18. Bonifrate: Os Anões da Villa do Magma No. 1 (Versão Cassette) [2005]
Brazil

Twenty-year anniversary of a Neutral Milk Hotel-ish Brazilian indie artist’s debut, recorded in a one-bedroom apartment in 2005, then given wider release and a tour a few years later, and remastered this year.

19. Cochemea: Otros Mundos
US

New York artist of indigenous Yaqui descent does instrumental jazz with a rhythm section by Daptone, has flashes of Ethio-jazz.

20. Oren Ambarchi, Johan Berthling, Andreas Werliin: Yek (Single Edit)
Australia/Sweden

Have enjoyed pretty much everything by Oren Ambarchi I’ve heard, and here his perpetual, hypnotic composition style hits a more definite groove—maybe a bit less hypnotic and a bit more song-y (in fact even earns itself a breezy six-minute “single edit.”)

21. Les Trois Accords, Cœur De Pirate: Toujours les vacances
Canada

22. Finnegan Tui: Cannonfire
New Zealand

Two concluding songs that I came around to after some wavering on whether to include them, just knowing I’d dislike them on paper and then remembering that thankfully I don’t listen to paper. The first is jaunty piano-driven twee-stomp from Montreal, the second New Zealand folk that splits the difference between Leonard Cohen and Chris Martin. Neither made me want to throw my headphones across the room despite the way I’ve just described them, so have decided not to overthink it.

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That’s it! Until next time, help me find more songs from 2022.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from QViNT: กรี๊ด (Scream Therapy)