When it's not fun anymore
2025 Mix 30: An indie nine-darter, uneven funk crossovers, Eftalya Yağcı and Dani Nigro (with an "I," no relation) return, and I no longer confuse Marina Satti with Mabe Fratti (also no relation)
Over on Bluesky, I recently asked people what music they would have known the artist and title of from 5 years before they were born when they were 10 years old. I was asking because although I knew very little music from this period when I was ten (in 1994 that would mean the music of 1979), my kids are very familiar with big songs from early 2010s—they’re still floor-fillers at the school dances. I can’t imagine anything from 1979 that would have filled a floor in 1994 except maybe “Y.M.C.A.” It all would have sounded far too old for an elementary school dance.
The most interesting findings in these sorts of prompts aren’t my attempt to make a clear narrative out of the responses, but to savor the responses themselves—lots of stories about radio formats, older siblings, and parents’ record collections. Different cultural contexts yield very different results, but not in predictable ways. So take all of the following with a grain of salt.
What I found when I asked this question was that in general the age of the respondent made a pretty big difference. People born in the ‘60s and early ‘70s claimed to have a very strong sense of music from before they were born, while people born from the late ‘70s to the early ‘90s responded more similarly to how I did.
There were common “ten-year-old self” knowledge blobs around the rock music of the 1960s and early ‘70s across different age groups, though. I personally heard much of the same music that Bluesky respondents who were born ten years or more before me named: I would have known lots of Beatles songs, Beach Boys songs, Rolling Stones songs. I also might have known even older songs, from golden oldies radio my parents listened to.
One person scoffed at my prompt, thinking it was a “take” rather than a genuine question, and claimed that in the ‘90s you would have heard music from the late ‘70s on Top 40 and soft rock radio. But I didn’t hear that music, at least not when I was 10, or if I did hear it I only heard it in the background. Top 40 radio did not regularly play songs from 15 years prior in 1994, and I wouldn’t have listened to the soft rock station—that was the stuff I heard in the background without clocking things like artists and song titles. I remember the more expansive “classic hits” format (“the 70s, 80s, and today!”) arriving later, closer to the 2000s.
One working theory I have is that rock music after the Beatles and pop music after MTV and Thriller have a similar type of attentional pull, and that what my kids experience of the megasellers of the ‘80s, ‘90s, and ‘00s is similar to what I absorbed from classic rock. When I ask my kids directly about this, they tell me that pop from all eras just sounds like pop to them, and they associate lots of it with their early childhoods. This includes Whitney Houston, Miley Cyrus, Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Katy Perry, and “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen, to name a few, all in a jumble. For what it’s worth, these mostly are not songs that I curated for them, but ones they encountered in school and camp and with friends. But all rock music, from classic rock of the ‘60s to the ‘00s indie rock music we play, sounds ancient (“really really old, like really old”) to them.
One of my arguments in the A-pop series is that there is a large historical bubble of blockbuster American pop that spans roughly 1983 to 2010, and after that we transition into today’s world of A-pop, where American music is one large region among many. It no longer commands the singular global center of gravity, but is instead one source of gravity among many. I still have to think more about this argument, but think there’s something to it.
1. Sir Chloe: The Hole
US
Well, it’s nice to be reminded that bread and butter indie songwriting can bowl me over on occasion. I can’t tell you exactly why this song is perfect to me. It reminds me of how some sports become so hyper-competitive over time that only a flawless execution will get your heart rate up, but also you’re expecting flawless execution so the whole enterprise of watching feels oddly frictionless, having lost some of the grit of technical fallibility. This is like watching a perfect game in a sport I don’t really follow, like diving or darts, where I get the sense of its impressiveness without really feeling it deeply. An indie rock nine-darter.
2. Daisy Grenade: So Happy
US
And on the other side of the flawlessness spectrum (flawful?), here is what a pop song used to sound like on autopilot given the norms around choruses in the mid-aughts. Maybe the Max Martin teenrock formula worked a little too well, exhausted every permutation of a chorus like this. But a few decades will do a sound wonders, or at least give it a little nostalgic glow, and I am extra amused that Daisy Grenade’s power-pop-punk duo includes Dani Nigro, no relation to Dan, which I must have missed the first time I featured them (“What if Skye Sweetnam cursed!”).
3. ifeye: r u ok?
South Korea
It’s odd that in what by all accounts (from people who track this sort of stuff) is a weak year for K-pop, it seems to have broken through completely, not only in KPOP DEMON HUNTERS form but also with the straight-ahead pop banger of the year (“High Horse” by NMXX) and the genre-mash country music novelty of the year (“Kill Ma Bo$$ by KIIRAS) and plenty of replacement-level songs that make me feel like South Korea is approaching a global center of gravity for pop music that America is downshifting away from (I guess planets have manual transmission), the sort of thing you can only really tell when you stress test it, i.e., it’s still got the same force even when doesn’t appear to be exerting its full force.
4. Sayuri & Sopholov, Fuentas Prod: Secunena
Mexico
Realistically, though, there are lots of centers of gravity now—this is really the main crux of A-pop, that we need to understand an interplanetary system without an obvious sun, as if heliocentricity was the mistake. Or maybe it’s just that what looked like a planetary system for a long time with the US in the center star position has always just been a bunch of stars? Or no, wait, I’ve got it, heliocentricity was correct and American dominance was geocentrism and the “sun” is the constituent elements of all music. Right? Anyway, finding my way to the Reggaeton System after so many years of keeping it in the background is obviously mostly a skill issue, but I dunno, it just sounds really fun now, and I don’t think it’s just me? But maybe it’s just me.
5. Tha Hot Girls: We On Fire
US
There’s a youth media charm to this gender flip of the Hot Boys’ “We On Fire,” like the whole thing was created in a summer camp by group of counselors to inspire younger kids to become rappers. This is just one in a series of Cash Money reimaginings (reboots?) from a New Orleans group, a lot of fun.
6. Heidi Montag f. Bibi Babydoll: Explicit
US/Brazil
The distance between Bibi Babydoll and Heidi Montag on this song is maybe more interesting than the song itself, Bibi an effortless star where Heidi Montag’s flop sweat is part of the bit. In some ways it’s interesting to see how pop music took the long way around over many years to meet up with Heidi Montag’s (let’s say) orthagonal relationship to singing and popcraft, but it also underlines how far we’ve come from needing to take the long way around when there are many more direct paths all over the world you could use instead. It’s like how everyone wants to drag the corpse of “poptimism” discourse back into the spotlight these days when pop-chat has long since become an annoyingly indie proposition and the dyed-in-the-wool OG poptimists have gone literally anywhere else in time or space to escape it.
7. Cacau Chuu, Mc Beka Sp, DJ Artimundo: Jeito Fenômenal
Brazil
A resolutely solid 6/10 funk song that’s a 6 like people say someone is “an L.A. 6” to mean a 10 pretty much anywhere else.
8. Cash Cobain: Feeeeeeeeel
US
Last year Jon Caramanica gave six Cash Cobain songs/features a tie for “song of the year,” even though I very strongly suspect that there was some trolling there, as I can’t imagine any person, including Cash Cobain fans, who could listen to all six of those songs and put them in the same category. But despite my peevish misgivings, I get what he was going for—breadth and impact. That breadth has never been breadthier while the impact has never been…well, less. This is the solid 6/10 that is probably an everywhere 6, but I always give at least one bonus point to moderately successful attempts at Brazilian funk crossover, like a character actor who moved to Cincinnati.
9. Eftalya Yağcı: Gula
The triumphant return of Eftalya Yağcı, the Turkish pop never-was (to date) who managed to put out something like my fifth favorite single of the decade so far, “Darbuka.” The “Darbuka” energy, which was characterized in the genre tags as “dembow” back in 2023 (huh?), made its way to Greece and Marina Satti (up next!), while Yağcı retreated(?) into Turkish soundtrack ballads. This is the first proper pop from her that’s turned my head in two years, and it’s a beauty—a touch of Afrobeats and flamenco, a wistful minor-key melody.
10. Marina Satti f. Tso: Fashion Killah (Marina’s Jazz Version)
Greece
This comes from a few versions of “Fashion Killah” that diverge from the original club version at the halfway point. Very much enjoyed this version, silliest and best of the three (club, rock, jazz) that introduces horns and jazz drumming, sounds harder by going soft.
11. Nadine: Baggy Jeans
Norway
An early ‘10s party pop throwback from Norway, only missing an incongruous rap verse. I’m confident that Flo Rida was available.
12. MAYonair: Biết Chơi
Vietnam
More killer V-pop, probably the most successful integration of Brazilian funk hard clave this week, with apologies to Cash Cobain.
13. Sofia Reyes: idgaf era
Mexico
Interesting combination of smooth sounds and meme chorus, like if Javiera Mena covered “abcdefu.”
14. Anfisa Letyago: In My Arms
Russia
Italy-based Russian DJ with some straight-ahead pop trance with a vocal hook that’s reminding me of something—maybe t.A.T.u.? No—it’s the “guess who’s back?” bit from “Without Me” by Eminem. Mash-up incoming?
15. Jvcki Wai, vangdale: Narak
South Korea
More smudgy hyper stylings from Jvcki Wai and vangdale, the fairy trap dream team.
16. Helio Batalha: Pirigrinu
Cape Verde
I think this is the first song from Cape Verde on one of my mixes — wish I had more to say about it than that!
17. Samthing Soweto f. Blxckie: Ama Get Down
South Africa
South African singer falls outside of various house subgenre conventions, probably lands closest to a more R&B take on the textures of Sun El-Musician-style “dream piano” (he was on what I think is the first song I ever heard by Sun-El Musician back in 2017). Is certainly dreamy.
18. Kalibwoy, Audio Thvg: Tetris Riddim
Netherlands
Yeah, I will put anything featuring the Tetris theme on a mix, especially if the singer sings along. This! Newsletter! Is! Free!
19. Son of Ika: Oskroh
Nigeria
Cruise! Another subject that deserves a deeper dive than I’ve given it.
20. Dave Nunes, Dyo: Better than I Do
Netherlands/UK
Dyo has a surprisingly high hit rate for someone whose features on enormous songs don’t seem to really benefit her career directly (she’s the singer on “Sexual” with NEIKED). I have thoughts about singers like Dyo—pop figureheads for EDM and other dance-oriented music — in the next A-pop installment, which I will probably publish in about a week, fingers crossed.
21. Natalia Lacunza: Apego Feroz
Spain
22. Silica Gel f. Japanese Breakfast: NamgungFEFERE
South Korea/US
Two gauzy electro numbers, one—the Spanish one—mostly frictionless, the other—the Korean one—spiky in a way that is nonetheless a soothing wash, like that cursed old fad for flip flops with “massage balls” on the soles. It’s maybe not a great sign that this is the best song featuring Japanese Breakfast I’ve heard in a year they put out an album.
23. Titanic: Gotera
Guatemala/Mexico
Ending things with a previously featured favorite. I never made the connection that Mabe Fratti was one half of the Titanic duo (with her partner Hector Tosta as I la Católica), whom I remember liking a lot in 2023 before Fratti broke through with her solo album. And they are still good! New album drops in in September.
***
That’s it! Until next time, I hope you will find interesting new ways to communicate with your 10-year-old self about their musical taste.
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from Sir Chloe: “The Hole”
At 10 (i.e. 1968) I was familiar with Songs by Tom Lehrer (my parent's record collection), How Much is that Doggy in the Window, Donald Where's Yer Troosers, and The Laughing Policeman from the roughly early 50's period.
When Mollak, the Jvcki Wai & Vangdale album, dropped, I thought "why is Narak a single, it's the weakest cut and musically a retread of Spoil U." But it sounds amazing in isolation here.
That said, I'll pick Ms. Menhera for the next one. I love how she's barely bothering to sing in English at all now. She doesn't need to anymore.
A great selection this week.