You make me eat, you make me sleep
2025 Mix 34: Searching for new songs in bulk and finding some usual suspects: K-pop, V-pop, baile funk, amapiano, and hyper-ish stuff from the US, Germany, and China.
The other week I was thinking about enshittification, and specifically the theory from Paul Krugman that the phenomenon—a business reducing the quality of its services while maintaining a reasonably profitable plateau of subscribers—is an inherent feature of any business characterized by its network effects. I offhandedly claimed that I thought that this sort of degradation of service would never affect music the way it would affect other mass art forms like television and film, but I didn’t really follow up on what I meant.
To be clear, I don’t think that art itself can “enshittify.” I’m highly averse to using the concept as a metaphor for a vague sense that something is worse than it used to be. The question is how beholden any given art is to the business model of its distribution system. For music, I think the answer is “not as much as you’d think.” That is, the technical barriers to entry for producing professional-quality music are so low that almost anyone could theoretically make a decent song at any time, on any budget, and with any distribution model (including basically no model).1 The constraints are much more artistic and social than material. (There aren’t zero material considerations, especially around marketing and promotion, but it’s orders of magnitude less than in almost any other nominally mass art form.)
Thinking about this — the resilience and practical inexhaustibility of recorded music — nudged me to write something specifically about Spotify as a platform and why I continue to use it even as artists continue to pull their work and the platform itself shows signs of degradation.2
I still use Spotify because I don’t think of using streaming platforms primarily as a way to listen to the music I want to hear. (That’s what my music collection is for.) Listening to music is a secondary function of what Spotify actually offers: a vast database of new music that is searchable more quickly and reliably than its competitors because of the company’s focus on their user-generated and company-generated playlist ecosystem. It’s a platform I use to amass and then whittle down huge numbers of songs from around the world, all of which are dispersed in a hundred different places. These “places” are mostly (1) company-curated new music lists from around the world and (2) a constantly-shifting collection of dozens of bespoke genre, regional, and other playlists that users update frequently. I find almost no new music from purely algorithmic recommendations, not because I’m opposed to this, but because it rarely works very well.3
I’m ambivalent about which platform might work for this purpose, but I can say pretty confidently that right now only Spotify actually does work in terms of volume and speed. Each week I gather about 3,000 tracks from 120 different playlists and over the course of a few hours generate a “long list”—usually about 50 tracks—which I then narrow down and sequence into each week’s mix, often with a few holdovers put aside for a future mix.4 This is a system that I’ve honed over many years now, and the whole process from gathering the tracks to sequencing a mix takes about four to six hours. It’s as efficient as I can imagine doing this, and anything more cumbersome would probably make it impossible to do it anymore.
I’ve tried to replicate this process on the other major streamers, and so far it seems pretty hopeless.5 Without this system, I’d have to try something else, probably relying much more on global charts and YouTube. Such an alternative would almost certainly be slower and yield fewer songs, but maybe I could make it work. I doubt I’ll be able to keep this up forever, whether I change or the platform changes first. But I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
1. Yves: White Cat
South Korea
2. Bébe Yana: 1-2-3
South Korea
Starting with two solo K-poppers, LOONA member Yves and EvoL’s Bebé Yana. Yves’s new English-language EP is good, and I switched in different tracks from it in the lead position before just going with my initial choice, “White Cat.” This would be a good, if somewhat arbitrary, excuse to go into my thoughts about “deep phonetics,” ft. K-pop, Tate McRae, and Britney Spears, but I think there are too many ideas there so I’ll punt to a separate intro some other week.
3. Gen1es: Rewrite
Thailand
Haven’t really been keeping tabs on Thailand’s girl group scene this year and nothing I’ve gotten from my lists has jumped out, but last year I had to do a genre dive to find the best stuff. Gen1es appear to still be chugging along.
4. Juky San: Trao Về Anh
Vietnam
Juky San had one of my favorite V-pop songs last year, “Nghĩ Đến Anh,” which had a sweet vocal performance just shy of a more conversational singing style, which she leans into here on a song produced by 2pillz.
5. VCC Left Hand, V#: Mình Lượn Lờ Moshi Moshi もしもし
Vietnam
George Henderson has been more diligent keeping tabs on the Vietnamese medium-underground (middlestream? …nah). This song has the sort of classic soft rock/city pop chord progression I wrote about while thinking through how Asian pop might have fed back into American pop through the neo-disco turn. But it’s done at a kind of Brechtian distance, with video game sound effects and guitar fuzz and background clatter interrupting the smoothness, courtesy Mona Evie members producing.
6. Hayley Williams: Mirtazapine
US
A straightforward ode to an antidepressant I haven’t tried personally. Maybe I’ll get around to it—it’s pretty common for longterm antidepressants to sort of peter out over time, requiring new options, something I find extremely annoying. …You know what, I’m not even going to bother reviewing this song (which I like!) and will just say while I’m being candid about medication that if you’ve had uneven or totally ineffective experiences with antidepressants you should consider (if at all possible) doing some genetic testing that might help guide prescribing decisions. My understanding is that right now the testing mostly helps to identify a few very specific genetic conditions and is less helpful in the absence of one of those.
7. Alice Glass: Catch and Release
US
One of two this week from Frank Kogan’s ongoing singles list, also a rec originally from George. I never had much interest in Crystal Castles at the time, and reading Alice Glass’s statements about abuse during her time in the collaboration doesn’t make me very eager to revisit. Glass has had a steady hyperpop output in the past several years, and this one has a harder throb than most of the other stuff I sampled, but it’s a bit distant.
Hyperpop’s Autotune-maxing aims for adrenaline centers, but like many things adrenaline it can be a fight/flight/freeze proposition — sometimes it can really draw blood, but sometimes it can run away from the emotional core it’s ostensibly trying to get at, or act as a sort of numbing cocoon. I think this falls into cocoon territory (likely more interesting than “flight” but less interesting than “fight”), the pain happening behind glass instead of among the shards.
8. Snõõper: Worldwide
US
Over on Bluesky, Porksweats asks why it’s “pop-punk” and not “punk pop,” and asks what punk pop would sound like. Snõõper was my suggestion.
9. forty winks: commie bf
US
Maybe this is punk pop, too? Nah, too straightforward indie.
10. Dj Narciso Rsproduções: Ultra
Portugal
Another week, another woozy Príncipe release that I will be able to search later if I use the adjective LOPE. I hope whoever does all of the art for these is paid handsomely.
11. Digdin, Teko Bolado, Mc Priscila, Puccatsunami: Sabotaram Meu Copo Arrochadeira
Brazil
Second Kogan pick this week and first of two funk tracks. My minorly-informed sense is that there’s been an infusion of sunshine into baile funk this year—more millennial funk throwback beats and cheerful vocals. Maybe the vibes are better in places where you can credibly put coup attempts on trial.
12. RVS Prod, DJ NELHE, Refem Mc, Mc Ramos ZI: Batendo Com Pressāo
Brazil
Not sure what turned my head on this particular song, which seemed destined for the funk holdover bin (450 strong), seems to be a case of two timbres activating some little pleasure center in my brain (the vocal melody and the little whistle at the very end of the beat loop), the whole thing cobbled together like a miniature Rube Goldberg contraption.
13. S1RENA: DNA
Germany
There was some absurd discourse online the other day about the lack of lasting cultural impact of postwar German popular culture (or something), but a few side conversations from it got me wondering whether or not German pop is going through a quiet renaissance at the moment, with many more weird and/or filthy novelties making it through to my playlists from, I’m assuming, TikTok. I’m not aware of much German hyperpop-oriented stuff, but S1rena seems promising. Subject for future research.
14. Libenson, Nadeem, Reborn: 5 секунд
Ukraine
Dnb-pop makes it to Ukraine, with some dubstep bass stabs that make me wonder if a more earnest revival might be closer on the horizon than I’d expect. Usually when I think things like this are “on the horizon” some music article is soon published informing me that it started at least a year ago.
15. Fifi Zhang: Where UR (Angel with No Feathers)
China
For some reason Zhang’s 2021 “Travel through the Milky Way” made it into the first draft of this mix, but I swapped it out for something more recent. Also not aware of a ton of hyperpoppy stuff from China, but that’s profound regional ignorance on my part—even though I have a few reliable sources for C-pop, I still have basically no sense of it.
16. Kalie Shorr: When in Rome
USA
Shorr’s Sheryl Crow-ish muscularity puts her a bit more in confessional alt territory than country, per se, and on this one helps her steer clear of windowpane, though she’s a little too slick for straight-ahead indie rock. In fact I’m not really sure where she fits in, or where she came from — first hit “Fight Like a Girl” rings a bell, and she appears to be one of the last old-school Radio Disney successes before the station shut down in early 2021. This one makes a bigger play by going smaller.
17. De Frank Kakra: Psychedelic Man [1976]
Ghana
A very un-psychedelic—maybe sarcastic?—solid highlife single, from a retrospective/re-release of a De Frank Kakra’s mid-70s work, on Finding De Frank.
18. Eje Eje, Elad Kimchi: The Bride
Israel
This project from members of Israeli-Turkish Şatellites is much closer to psych, albeit a glossy contemporary variant.
19. Mela Bedel: HADİ YALLAH
Turkey
Some crackling Turkish disco from someone who sounds like she has a storied career in Turkish pop but only signed to Sony in 2020.
20. Shang Jal, Emmanuel Jal, MANU (UK): Kuon Bel
South Sudan/Canada
An easy pick for Golden Beatology of the Week, from father and son South Sudanese artists now based in Toronto whose Italian-Ghanaian producer has savvily hidden some Pet Shop Boys synths in a cosmo-pop smorgasbord. Father (Emmanuel) is a prominent speaker and activist, the author of War Child: A Child Soldier's Story. Son (Shang) is a charmer.
21. Mluusician, Ricky Lenyora, DJ Maphorisa f. Vulela Maweekend, Mark Khoza, Angekebabuye Mc: Malacosta
South Africa
It was likely I’d throw this platonic ideal amapiano party on the mix anyway, but the Lacoste alligator sealed the deal—the song is like a Lacoste shirt, dependably presentable if not exactly cutting-edge hip.
22. Etran de L’AÏr: Agadez
Niger
Ending with some Tuareg desert blues with a group who named their (excellent) 2022 album Agadez after their home region. I originally had a track from that album in this slot, but lucky for me a few months ago they just released a song of the same name, but not from the album.
***
That’s it! Until next time, get your songs wherever you can find ‘em.
—Dave Moore (the other one)
Title from Hayley Williams: Mirtazapine
I worry much more about visual mass media and especially television, where the distribution model props up everything else: the staff, the scope, the conventions, the ability for anyone else to actually see it. Television is a medium that suffers acutely as its industrial context suffers. I think this is also true, if perhaps less true, of mainstream narrative film. It is probably not true of experimental films and other forms of art cinema and documentary, which operate much more like music and fine arts than they do like television or Hollywood film.
I don’t really want to get into how I feel about the political sentiments and/or spending of the billionaires who run these companies, or what I think I or any other consumer should do about it. I don’t have consistent beliefs about this, except that there shouldn’t be any billionaires.
I think of algorithmic recommendation systems as a bit like using Wikipedia to get a grounding in something you have no background knowledge in. There are small pockets that might be exhaustive, but you should assume the process is mostly just giving you shallow leads for deeper research.
The tracks I find this way comprise the vast majority of what I share each week. A few others come from the many recommendations and leads I get keeping up with reviews, friends, music chat, etc., and I try when possible to credit recommenders in those cases.
That said, the availability of most songs on most platforms is pretty reliable after you’ve already found them, and there are tools that you can use to automatically populate multiple platforms with the same songs. This is how I’ve added Tidal, Deezer, and YouTube playlists to my posts. I’m still looking for a solution for Apple Music that doesn’t require an ongoing subscription.