You will never fit the shoe

2025 Mix 46: An album-length Taylor Swift mixtape, testing the sprawling permutations of budots as a theory of...something, and reaching 1K songs (...fin?)

Like a deranged weirdo

Well, I have crossed the 1,000 song threshold for the year, with one week to spare. I haven’t decided whether next week will be a rare vacation week before I start year-end posting or if I have another mix in me.

What I really didn’t think I had in me was another album-length mash-up mixtape, which I haven’t attempted since 2011. But life can surprise you.

Behold: 13eats - A MixTaype, 13 mash-ups that explore Taylor Swift, rap music, and flow.

I’ve been writing about the connections between Taylor Swift and rap for a while now. In 2023, I wrote about the similarities between her melodic style and what I call “modal rap,” a form of melodic rapping popularized in the 2010s that locked rappers into notes in the minor pentatonic scale. I pointed out that most of Taylor Swift’s melodies are built on a similar major-key template, repeating the same cluster of notes often without really cohering into a strong melody, the impact happening mostly in her delivery. In 2024 I wrote about Tortured Poets Department and how Taylor Swift seemed to be writing and releasing material like a rapper might, with the music accompanying her words seeming almost like an afterthought.

I always wondered what Taylor Swift would literally sound like against the sort of melancholy minor-key rap beats I was using as a comparison point. I describe her melody style as “hugging the root tone”: building songs around the rhythm of the words and (I would guess) rarely starting the process from an inspired wordless melody. Her singing, especially post-2020, tends to generate more rhythmic and verbal than melodic interest, which should in theory make it interesting to pair with rap.

I get the basic thesis out of the way in the first group of tracks, with examples of how Taylor Swift’s melodies have similarities to the logic of modal rap: a freely sung, droning repetition of the same few notes. After that comes a section with more avant rap and hypertrap. (I’m partial to the combination of “I Look in People’s Windows” with NLE Choppa’s “Slut Me Out 2.”) There’s a short pop section—I salvage some redwood and bring Taylor Swift along for amapiano’s infiltration into Afrobeats.

At the end of the mix, I tie my musings together with older work. First, a live performance of Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” where you can hear her get her sea legs when the fiddle comes in. I pair “You Belong With Me” with “Ride Wit Me,” the song that I conspiratorially believe she learned to play when she was twelve. More accurately, I believe she learned how to sing “Ride Wit Me” over the chords to “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne. And finally, a hard genre (Jason Kelce pronunciation: “jawn-ruh”) pivot to imagine what “Taylor Goes Pop” would have sounded like in the early ‘10s if she’d worked with EDM producers instead of Swedish polymaths.

I hope you enjoy—or, barring that, will politely ignore Taylor Swift as usual and instead go find one of the thousand songs I’ve shared that is not by Taylor Swift this year that you do like.

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Previous 2025 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube || Deezer

1. Rocio Sensación, STEREO: La Nueva Sensación
Argentina

I usually can’t keep track of where I find things, but this was little-listened-to enough that I could see it was from Ryan Dee’s always indispensable playlist. Don’t think I’ve given him the requisite shout-out yet this year, so here it is.

2. $HUP, Victor Mendivil: Paris Hilton
Mexico

Mexican rapper with enough personality for madcap dembow, but put toward more straightforward rap production. The spark in the voice against the dullness in the beat create the right friction.

3. Param, Manni Sandhu: Mera Mahi
India

Second appearance for Punjab phenom Param, already graduating from earnest intro to house party.

4. Lukão Mec, Dj Adah, Lado Sul: Passa o Teu Bigode
Brazil

Some fun brega funk, pairs well with last week’s Anderson Neiff song. I can’t really tell how popular this style is at the moment, or if there’s a meaningful break between it and the other funk I come across on a weekly basis. You’d think I’d figure some of this stuff out by now.

5. Meja Kunta, Lava Lava: Wezi
Tanzania

Great singeli pop single shared/described by Lokpo last week:

“there’s a cottage industry of SINGELI POP next to the bongo flavour mainstream. overlap exists: bongo big shot Lava Lava guests on my fav singeli singer Meja Kunta’s ‘Wezi.’”

(I still have a backlog of his picks to go through for year-end consideration but really liked this one.)

6. Eftalya Yağcı: DÜNYA
Turkey

And also thanks to Lokpo for bringing the new Eftalya Yağcı to my attention after I think I introduced Yağcı in the first place. Virtuous recommendation cycles! She has gone ama-pop and it sounds great.

7. Thuli P f. Kay Invictus, Nia Pearl, & Leandra.Vert: Hai Suka
South Africa

8. Theology HD, Dj Chloe: Shaya
South Africa

And ama-proper sounds pretty good, too — Thuli P with a lovely vocal on her amapiano track, and Theology HD and Dj Chloe with the sort of 3-step track that underlines how quickly the scene ages. Two years pass and these sound like golden oldies.

9. NLE The Great: KO
US

Ever-restless NLE the Great (Choppa) rebranded as a Christian(?) rapper and is using his newfound godliness to write a diss track about NBA YoungBoy set to production that sounds like it could have been in a direct to video Goofy movie sequel, or maybe a sex ed PSA, something he has already generously provided to the world. [Ha, didn’t catch that the beat is built from the same sample as Tupac’s “Hit ‘Em Up”!!]

10. DJ Danz: Sugdan Na Ang Pag Budots
Philippines

11. DJ Ericnem: Kiyod Kiyod [2021]
Philippines

12. DJ Love: Budots Dance Camusgirls Tiwtiw Bomb Mix [2024]
Philippines

What to do about budots, the late-aughts/early-tens Philippines phenomenon that has exploded in a global second act in the ‘20s as a TikTok superspreader (news at eleven), leading to profiles in Pitchfork and multimedia features in the Washington Post. I’ve been nudged to take it more seriously from Frank Kogan and his ongoing 2025 songs.

It’s hard to tell if a scene like this is in ferment, per se; as best as I can tell the template hasn’t changed much since godfather and reigning superstar of the genre DJ Love established the sproingy Eurocheese template over a decade ago. Three major stars have emerged, and are apparently teaming up as a Three Tenors-type supergroup: Love, DJ Ercinem, and DJ Danz, all of whom I feature here with the best songs available on Spotify (a miniscule sliver of their output).

The basic template for budots is to take a song, any song, and lay out the chorus melody or musical hook in literal bells and whistles. A sped-up sample of the original will often appear, but sometimes it’s just an instrumental. (The sample that made my jaw drop was the DJ Danz “Casual” budots mix.) Budots has a Eurodance feel, but it has a steadier trot of a tempo (140 BPM or a bit less) and a more interchangeable feel. Many remixes are exclusive to TikTok dance challenges.

I am fascinated by which songs work and don’t work in a budots remix. It has something to do with isolating a core element of a song and pasting it with a cream pie to the kisser as a sort of stress test—the best songs either lean in and eat the pie or are totally humiliated. But anything in between falls flat. Which I guess makes “Opalite” the budots Cecil Terwilliger?

13. 10.2%: 112
Sweden

Cheesy Swedish untz.

14. Effie: Can I Sip 담배
South Korea

South Korean hyper-something that takes the warp and crunch of hypertrap and does something a bit poppier with it. Butterfly meme, but it’s a fairy instead of a butterfly: is this fairy trap?

15. Julie Durocher: Bad News [c. 1967]
US

A nice Wanda Jacksonesque tune from a Wisconsin artist who started her music career in the ‘60s at age 14. From a recent Numero compilation that gathers obscure country 45s.

16. Psyché: Sabir
Italy

17. Populous: Racatin [2017]
Italy

Two straight-ahead cosmo-pop numbers that, unbeknownst to me when I sequenced them, are both from Italy. A little psych here, a little worldly techno-pop there, but they’ll probably both end up on the same mix next month (instrumental chill vibes to drink a martini to).

18. Bibi Club: Amaro
Canada

I may retire my separate Canadian Francophone stats category after this year. But how about one last Montreal artist for the road?

19. Yumi Zouma: Phoebe’s Song
New Zealand

Christchurch indie band that I’ve featured once before. Could mistaken this for some 1995 B-side if I hadn’t clocked a lyric about Travis Kelce.

20. Tiffi M, lukakrush: Seen
Sweden

Gauzy Swedish jangle indie — not sure why this song appeared on my playlists when she has a pretty good album out from October without this song on it.

21. Taylor Acorn: Home Videos
US

22. Bella White: Little Things
Canada

Ending with two country tunes. Taylor Acorn was the inspiration back in 2019 for a show about Taylor Swift clones with last names from the NATO alphabet, like Dollhouse meets Nashville: Taylor Acorn, Taylor Bravo, Taylor Charlie. More than a little maudlin as childhood nostalgia trips go, and I wish the phrase was “home movies,” but I liked it enough to keep it on. Bella White brings it home with some authentic (Canadian) Americana.

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That’s it! Until next time, I hope you’ll consider getting down with these. Sick. 13eats.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from NLE The Great: KO