I’ve finally been able to think properly about “Choosin’ Texas,” the Miranda Lambert co-penned Ella Langley hit that has broken Billboard records while simultaneously giving me grist for a theory of American “regional pop” (it remains stubbornly low on Billboard’s GXU chart, hitting an all-time high of #33 last week).
I hadn’t thought about it much beforehand because, frankly, I couldn’t remember how it goes. I think the only commentary I’ve had so far on it is as an aside in my piece about weak melodies, where I lumped it in with other melodic genre artists who don’t manage to earworm me.
But thanks to an inquiry about whether or not “Choosin’ Texas” has gotten the budots remix treatment, I decided to make the accursed remix myself. I’ve said before that mash-ups are more like music criticism than music production. Mash-ups give me a chance to think about both the overall structure of songs and about particularities and peculiarities that I sometimes miss in listening. In the case of “Choosin’ Texas,” though, I actually grew to like the song less, even though I can technically hum it now.
I was irritated by the song’s lopsided verse structure, with a rogue couplet acting as a a mini-prechorus to jumpstart the chorus early. (In that way it’s similar to the extra measure in Taylor Swift’s “Fate of Ophelia,” which sounds like a random and superficial choice.) I was also struck again by the dishwater quality of the melody. And the song has neither post-Swiftian syllabic interest nor a faintly pleasant easy listening melody like Olivia Dean specializes in. It just sort of sits there without going anywhere.
Anyway, I don’t really want to beat up on the song—it’s…fine, solid 6/10, wouldn’t turn it off but probably wouldn’t notice it, either, etc.
I was interested in the BDM take on it that frames it as a rare “family-friendly” hit:
And I would say what Ella Langley is doing is… putting out songs you can enjoy with your mom, or your aunt, or your kid cousins, or at a swim meet, or whatever.
[…]And if you’re mad about the charts, I think one question is: who else is doing that? Because to me, it seems like a handful of artists are ruling some very static charts right now simply because they don’t have a lot of competition at trying to do this thing, which is, make a song most people can play in most contexts.
It seems true that there is very little music on the charts that is aiming for pleasant and acceptable in this way, regardless of whatever else it might be doing. It’s striking how little Top 40 pop I notice getting public airplay for younger kids (one reason, though not the only one, why KPOP Demon Hunters and “Golden” were such huge hits last year, too).
For many years now what most people think of as “pop” and what I’ve been starting to call “A-pop” has been appealing to a more savvy and online audience that has certain expectations of content—confessional enough to suggest a writer in the center, but more knowing and less genteel, often with profanity as a kind of shortcut to “realness” in a way that was harder to get away with in a pre-streaming environment—a weird amalgam of confessional rock and raunch-pop. Pop-as-genre’s relationship to “least objectionable” popularity has become more like indie rock’s relationship to the mainstream rock that preceded it—defensive, cerebral, and highly sensitive to territorial breaches from general audiences and outsiders. It’s not designed to let everyone in, even if it doesn’t think of itself as actively keeping everyone out.
It also reminds me of the creatively exciting but structurally disastrous rise of prestige television, where an abandonment of conventions could seem thrilling during a transitional phase, after which everything takes on a leaden, overworked feeling without offering the simpler pleasures of the more conventional past—comedies without jokes, dramas without episodic cohesion, a sense that no one is really sure what they’re trying to do, but in a way that is pretentious and hesitant, like spinning an ART roulette wheel and hoping to reverse a losing streak.
One thing that was interesting about the teen confessional boom of the mid-aughts, and the alt-rock invasion of adult contemporary that preceded it, is that it really was an exciting transitional period for mainstream pop, the way it managed to do angst and anger while still sounding fundamentally pleasant in a radio airplay sense. I remember hearing “Because of You” by Kelly Clarkson come on at a restaurant once and thinking about how it seemed to both fit into that context so well and still rip me out of my surroundings when I was really hearing it. Having it both ways—provocative easy listening—seems difficult to do these days, though I think some artists (Taylor Swift most obviously, who comes directly from that former environment) still try to do it.
This is maybe related to other thoughts I’ve been having about changes in songcraft, away from easy earworms and strong melodies. But as “Choosin’ Texas” also suggests, there can still be something missing in songcraft even where the listening is easy.
1. Angèle: Dis-le
Belgium
2. Camille Yembe: Rien à fêter
Belgium
Two Belgian pop songs from a great London Lee thread of recent Francophone pop. My focus has been on Francophone music coming from Caribbean and African diasporas, or informed by them, but there’s a good case that French-language pop is just more generally on fire lately. I’ve sort of wondered if we might get our first song in French in ages on the Hot 100 in the next year or two.
3. Jain, Meryl: Fam
France/Martinique
Shatta star Meryl continues to diversify her sound through collaboration, appearing on a phonk-inspired French electro pop track.
4. Sw@da, Niczos: Podlasie Bounce Karnavał
Poland
Meanwhile former Polish phonk-poppers seem far too restless to stick to one sound, on this one have some folk elements thrown in to bounce claps and Eurodance.
5. Lali: 1Amor (En Vivo)
Argentina
I tend not to include live performances from Latin American stars even though these versions are often huge. Argentine pop star Lali offers what sounds to me like an improvement on her 2024 “1Amor” that happens to be a good wedding-themed lead in to the next track.
6. flowerovlove: American Wedding
UK
Flowerovlove is yet another twentysomething pop formalist bringing melody to the forefront like ice water in the desert. My first impulse was to peg it to indirect country influence, but upon listening to it in context, it’s only as indirect as Sabrina Carpenter, which I eventually admitted this is hewing pretty closely to. The full-length also cycles through Olivia Rodrigo and few other post-Taylor singer-songwriter styles—there’s some lazy lyrical writing throughout, expletives peppered in like placeholders standing in for more interesting turns of phrase, and the whole thing feels a little underbaked. But she’s a promising talent, and she’s already collaborating with Willow, so we’ll see where that goes.
7. Masha Kondratenko: Тіп з Рейтарцької [Tip z Reitarskoi / Guy from Reitarska]
Ukraine
Spiteful-sounding disco-rock from Ukraine—would hate to be whichever guy hanging out on scenester high street Reitarska she’s talking about. “He’s got vinyl records and anxiety,” “I don’t mind, he’s a decent guy, though a scarf in July is a bit much.”
8. judith: Ay Ay Ay
Mexico-Honduras-US
Something like a median Latin pop song, from a US artist of Mexican and Honduran heritage. I strongly suspect per my musings above that one reason that western Anglophone pop is in a crisis right now is that they have no idea how to handle the dominant pop forms of the moment, whereas anyone with a passing familiarity with Latin pop can put something out that sounds great.
9. AZIEDOESNTEXIST: Strange
US
Atlanta emo-rap made in a fast cheap and out of control method but sounds slow cheap and merely frazzled.
10. xiangyu, Gimgigam: Perori!
Japan
xiangyu is back! I’m not sure that there’s anything that she’s ever put out that I haven’t immediately considered for a mix, and no two songs sound the same. This time it’s semi-ironic dorky old school hip-hop beats that put me in mind of early Cibo Matto.
11. Kinocohotel: 電子廃墟の恋 [Denshi haikyo no koi]
Japan
J-rock power-pop that’s tuneful in an almost jigsaw-puzzle way; my brain started constructing the chart for it in my head while I was listening.
12. Phương Mỹ Chi, Shiki, DTAP: Liễu Yếu Đào Tơ
Vietnam
Still don’t have a great handle on the different lanes of Vietnamese pop—for new music, I currently have a general Vietnamese pop playlist, a Vinahouse playlist, and I get more avant-garde stuff from other places. This seems to be on the more traditional end of general pop, with slightly more of a pulse than that usually suggests.
13. Nigar Muharrem: Yaram Derindir
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan I know even less about, but do occasionally find good pop stars there. Should probably do more digging.
14. The Watergirls: The Whole of the Moon
UK/US
A charity single from the DFA label to celebrate the late JD Twitch, who loved the Waterboys original. I never managed to figure out a way in to the Waterboys, though I could imagine liking them more if I were about a decade older. (I might get a chance to try again if their 1988 album Fisherman’s Blues makes it into the upcoming Best Albums poll of 1988.) Enjoyed this electro rendition, though.
15. The Olivia Tremor Control: Advice from the Oceans
US
I have no idea why I had a burned Olivia Tremor Control CD among my earliest forays into music nerdery, back when I was mostly testing out classic rock and had barely cracked ‘80s indie—I think my friend Ana might have had their CD? Anyway, have always been fond of them and tended to set them apart as the Elephant 6 band it never stopped being cool to like. Looking forward to a long-awaited return album with remaining members.
16. Les Poissons: The Image You Choose
Norway
I can’t tell if these fish have even made a ripple in Norway; the streaming numbers are abysmal. But this is the second song I’ve included from them this year, even if it’s not as good as first featured track “Nature Boy,” which has all of 80 views on YouTube since then.
17. Kashcoming: Chaser
Nigeria
Spacier than the usual Afropiano—as holding patterns go, it at least holds interest, too.
18. Thabo Tonick: Listen to the Kids
South Africa
Three-step vanguard label Stay True Sounds has a radical philosophy: simply release all of the best songs all the time. Can’t believe it was that simple!
19. Mike Cooper, Pierre Bastien, Mark Cunningham: Archaeopteryx
UK
Jazz trio farts around in an echo chamber, leaves an impression, if not anything dinosaur-sized.
20. Yuki Watanuki: ゆめうつつ [Yume utsutsu]
Japan
Can you believe this meme anti-pop is only the second weirdest song on the mix this week?
21. Sara Bareilles: Hands Off My Body
US
The honor of weirdest goes to Sara Bereilles, who has sort of managed to do a straight version of “Dawn’s Song of Fears” from Girls5Eva. Ditches the jokes, but ups the unhinged escalation by literally representing it with an abrupt key change in every chorus. Love it.
That’s it! Until next time, throw around more key changes, why not.
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from Masha Kondratenko: Тіп з Рейтарцької [Tip z Reitarskoi / Guy from Reitarska] (“вініл і тривожність”)