You wouldn't believe what you're capable of

2025 Mix 10: Setting the record straight on "Since U Been Gone" and indie, a classically trained opera singer reconstructs Soulja Boy from first principles, and good stuff from 15 countries

Say auuuuughhhhh!

This week I’m going to try to conclude my mid-aughts musings of the last few weeks by re-airing a minor annoyance I’ve had about the conventional wisdom on “Since U Been Gone.” It’s clear that the song was influenced by popular indie of the early ‘00s: in interviews, co-writer Luke Gottwald often told the story of production partner Max Martin being annoyed by an indie song’s refusal to use a big pop chorus and wanting to go in and fix it.

In popular retellings, this has mutated into them being inspired primarily by “Maps” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which is cited on the song’s Wikipedia page and recalled in John Seabrook’s The Song Machine. But Gottwald himself doesn’t mention “Maps” in the Billboard cover story from 2010 that includes his anecdote on “Since U Been Gone” that Seabrook quotes from. This is how Gottwald described it (emphasis added):

Gottwald remembers well the genesis of “Since U Been Gone.” “That was a conscious move by Max and myself, because we were listening to alternative and indie music and talking about some song—I don’t remember what it was. I said, ‘Ah, I love this song,’ and Max was like, ‘If they would just write a damn pop chorus on it!’ It was driving him nuts, because that indie song was sort of on six, going to seven, going to eight, the chorus comes . . . and it goes back down to five. It drove him crazy. And when he said that, it was like, light bulb. ‘Why don’t we do that, but put a big chorus on it?’ It worked.

The source of the “Maps” connection is a specific guitar line in the middle 8 of “Since U Been Gone” (starting at about two minutes in) that does sound like a similar riff from the middle 8 in “Maps.” The first person to notice this, as far as I can tell, was Ted Leo, who in 2005 used the “Since U Been Gone” bridge as the transition point to “Maps” while performing a heavily blogged-about medley of the two songs live. Then in 2006, Rob Sheffield mentions the similarity in his profile of Karen O and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in Rolling Stone:

Karen O’s a tough customer, the firecracker who conquered the world in ripped fishnets, smeared lipstick and black leather gloves, not to mention the Corona she uses to start beer-sloshing fights with the crowd. But she got the fear when she heard Clarkson’s smash “Since U Been Gone,” which features the guitar break from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Maps”—not a sample, just a precise replica. Says Karen O, “It was like getting bitten by a poisonous varmint.” I try to argue that the Yeahs should be honored to share Clarkson’s mall cred, but they’re not sure. “Ah, well,” Karen O says. “If it wasn’t her, it just would’ve been Ashlee Simpson.”

I would note that despite the resemblance, the guitar line that sounds “Maps”-like is not a precise replica, and it also doesn’t play a major role in the song’s verses or chorus. To say the song is “based on” “Maps” seems like a serious overstatement.

So what song were they listening to? We know that the chorus is a Max/Luke invention (this was their complaint to begin with). And there is a much more obvious source for the verses. The song that “Since U Been Gone” is based on is almost certainly “Hard to Explain” by the Strokes, the same song used in the classic Freelance Hellraiser mash-up “Stroke of Genie-us” from 2001, which famously suggested what teenpop would sound like with an indie band backing it.¹

“Hard to Explain” fits Gottwald’s description much better than “Maps.” The “Genie-us” mash-up underlines how weak the Strokes’ chorus is, failing to deliver on the promise of its verses. “Genie in a Bottle” sounds great in the verses, but then goes a little sour when the huge Aguilera chorus hits the samey chorus chords, which don’t quite fit the melody.

For what it’s worth, Gottwald fairly recently name-checked the Strokes specifically, in a 2011 interview cited in a 2023 article (emphasis added):

“Either the first or the second thing we did was ‘Since U Been Gone,’” Gottwald told Rolling Stone in 2011. We were listening to the Hives and the Strokes, and Max was like, ‘Why can’t they just write a hit chorus?’ And that’s what we did.”

I didn’t find the original 2011 interview on a quick search, and the above quote only came to my attention this week (h/t Isabel). But all of this sleuthing is probably overkill anyway, because the instrumental in the verses to “Since U Been Gone” sounds almost identical to “Hard to Explain.”

This is what it sounds like if you slow down “Hard to Explain” by about 20% and put it under an acapella of “Since U Been Gone.” It doesn’t require changing the key of either song (G major, same as “Maps”).

What you hear in this clip is the same three-second loop from “Hard to Explain” repeated four times. The only change I made was to pitch-shift the loop on the second and fourth repetition to match the chord change between major and relative minor.² You can also hear the unaltered mash-up without any pitch editing here.

I think it speaks for itself.

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Previous 2025 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube

1. Dj Aguilar f. Magi, MC Parlon PH: Mtg a Nossa Musica
Brazil

Kicking things off with the lead track from the best Brazilian funk album I’ve heard this year so far (not that I’m tracking them carefully), Dj Aguilar’s Direto do Alto Vol 1, which like most of my favorite funk albums is an eclectic bunch of collaborations with various of-the-moment MCs and DJs. Aguilar charts an interesting path between pop and noise, veering more pop on average and thus standing out from the bulk of funk I usually come across, most of which I set aside in a holdover list. If you’re so inclined to listen to 220 other tracks, go nuts.³

2. Rico Nasty: Teethsucker (Yea3x)
US

A recommendation from Holly Boson, whose extremely thorough Which Eminem Album Are You quiz you should take—come for the laughs, stay for the insight. Rico Nasty has been making a series of left-field plays for a bigger pop breakthrough that seems stubbornly elusive, and here she’s taking her cue from Quavo and Lenny Kravitz single-handedly attempting to revive the institution of THE MALL from its cultural graveyard last year on “Fly.” (This reminds me that I really need to finish my 1998 series and publish it here.)

3. Đông Nhi: Một-Không (1-0)
Vietnam

A great V-pop track that owes more than a little to Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy.” Strings and choir and splorps and boings all jockey for space in the mix, but the fiddle hook is the grounding throughline that the whole thing revolves around.

4. Girl Talk, T-Pain, Yaeji: Believe In Ya (Max Tundra Remix)
US/UK

Was so-so on this Girl Talk-produced T-Pain/Yaeji collab. Girl Talk really isn’t much of a producer — I still can’t forgive him for ignoring the keys of the songs he mashes up, annoying me enough way back when that I learned how to do it myself. Max Tundra, who is much of a producer, strips the song down to the struts and builds it back up with a characteristically painstaking synth mosaic, giving it much more of a pulse.

5. Tommy Richman: Actin Up
US

I only recently looked into the backstory of Tommy Richman, whose “Million Dollar Baby” made much more sense coming out of cab speakers last year than it did coming through headphones. Turns out the guy’s from northern Virginia and studied to be an opera singer, but decided instead to reconstruct Soulja Boy from first principles. I find this to be a remarkable achievement, even though the template isn’t exactly obscure.

6. STARKIDS: Do It
Japan

Buzzy, not to say hyper-, pop-trap from Japan, from a group whose rattle can’t help but betray an ear for pop gentility. An interesting compromised sound, getting caught up in a pop/noise dichotomy that Brazilian funk does cartwheels around and most American hypertrap ignores entirely, unless it’s a Camila Cabello song.

7. Soso Maness: Foudre
France

More noisy (but not that noisy) rap from an Algerian-French artist who can melt your speakers but stops short of trying to melt your brain.

8. Turk, Ziad Zaza f. Kingoo: La Aman
Egypt

Glitchy Autotune rap from Egypt gets closer to brain-melt and has an appropriately comic-gruesome video to match. (Video content warning for very graphic but also very…er, weird…violence.)

9. O’Flynn: Banggg
UK

This is one of those suspiciously short dance songs that I suspect comes from a minor artist juking the Spotify playlists, but there seems to be a real footprint out there, so I’ll accept it as a brief bit of mix spackle and not think much more about it.

10. Decius f. Lias Saoudi: Queen of 14th St
UK

Here’s a dance music project featuring the lead singer from Fat White Family, listed in Tom Ewing’s album-a-day exercise over at Bluesky. He writes: “Impeccable vibe—sleazy, dark, chemical etc, kinda like Black Devil Disco Club in parts—and sizeable beats on an ultimately quite functional dance record (don’t expect big hooks).” Very DFA-coded. Maybe the sound has come back around—will have to play the DFA #2 compilation before dinner to see how it’s holding up these days.

11. Ali Omar: Hashish [1998]
Australia

A song from a posthumous collection of the Liverpool-born, Sydney-based producer who passed away in 2009, cerebral post-rave that insinuates like fragrant smoke curls.

12. Arp Frique & The Perpetual Singers: Hold the Line (Another Taste Rework)
Netherlands

Joyous disco gospel from Amsterdam, the groove set by Frique’s tight funk band and American vocalists Brandon Delagraentiss from Houston and Rocq-E Harrell from L.A. Easily stretches out to eight minutes in the rework. Good for a Golden Beatology pick.

13. Pellegrino, Zodyaco: Mario
Italy

Italians do it better, if by “do it” you mean reclaim soft sounds with dogged (bordering on fetishistic) fidelity to the myth of a bygone analog era.

14. Punomo f. Peter Selin: Ihanan kiire
Finland

The Finns are pretty good at it, too, I guess, albeit applied to the myth of an earlier era, the sort of studied Motown pop throwback that tends to annoy me but goes down smooth in this case.

15. Les Ambassadeurs du Motel de Bamako: Get Up James [c. 1973]
Mali

Now, if you’re looking for a more jaw-dropping sort of fidelity, you could do worse than the James Brown impression on display in this selection from a new Mr. Bongo compilation of Malian music in the 70s, The Original Sound of Mali 2.

16. Yuri da Cunha, Ary, Danny Peezy: Mano Mingo
Angola

Time for a “what genre is this?” block — here’s some killer kuduro that hints a bit at South African house styles. Will admit that while my South African subgenre knowledge has slowly expanded, I haven’t been as diligent working through Angolan pop, so I can’t tell you which of the other stated genres (kizomba, zouk) may apply here.

17. Tera Kòrá f. Twitch 4EVA, Laud Shaba: Plan
Netherlands

I am even further afield with logdrum/Afrobeats pop from Netherlands, an area that I am confident LokpoLokpo will have a metric ton of expertise in. This time the genre machine gives me hiplife, alté, azonto, and asakaa along with the Afrobeats tag that satisfices.

18. Sizwee Nineteen f. KiidCharmaine: Skomborithi
South Africa

This one says “quantum sound” on the tin, and indeed the blown-out bass is harder than anything I’ve heard outside of Mellow & Sleazy’s brief imperial phase, but the real star is KiidCharmaine’s sweet vocal on top.

19. Nasha Travis: Sisemi
Kenya

More Kenyan pop with a breezy pan-African pop approach—filed under bongo flava, which is probably as good a genre tag as any.

20. Da Lee LS: Ninizela
Lesotho

EDIT (3/13/25): Well, I have done something unprecedented — I have removed and replaced a song from one of my mixes on principle. I was duped by a Spotify scammer who put a whole gaggle of amapiano producers on his weird spoken word track originally in this spot, and I’ve decided that I can’t let those shenanigans stand. I’ve edited the mix and replaced the offending song with a near-miss: Afro house jam “Ninizela” from Lesotho artist Da Lee LS.

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That’s it! Until next time, add me to your Wikipedia edits whenever possible.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from Girl Talk, T-Pain, Yaeji: “Believe in Ya (Max Tundra Remix)”

1. I do wonder if the creation of “Since U Been Gone” was more strategic than the producers let on in interviews, and if they were specifically trying to make a decent song out of the “Stroke of Genie-us” mash-up. The bar they use isn’t essential to “Hard to Explain,” but it is essential to the mash-up. But I don’t think you need to indulge in a conspiracy theory to make the broader point that “Hard to Explain” was obviously the inspiration, hence this being shoved in a footnote.

2. Long gratuitous nerdy footnote alert! There is a one-note difference between “Hard to Explain” and “Since U Been Gone” in the way I’ve put it together here. A straight pitch shift down a third from the major key (G major) to the relative minor (Em) gets you an identical guitar line except for one note: in “SUBG” they play an F when they walk back up to the G chord, whereas when you pitch shift “Hard to Explain” you get an F#.

This is a deceptively brilliant change and I think is one of many reasons why the song is so sticky. The F is the minor second in E, and playing this note rather than the F# gives you a moment in phrygian mode, which usually has a vaguely Middle Eastern feel. But the impact isn’t so specific in this case; it’s just another example of Max/Luke finding interesting little formal ways to get at the spikiness of indie rock while building a structure that can contain something closer to a big pop chorus (or maybe hair metal) — they’re basically “out-spiking”
indie with an uncommon technique. They do something similar with the opening tritone interval in “4Ever” by the Veronicas.

3. Last week my kid (8) looked at my Spotify playlists and said, in a tone of total shock, “You have a Brazil Funk Holdover playlist??” I said “yes,” and that was the end of the conversation. I don’t have any idea why they were so shocked by it. However, the other day they played a little three-note riff on the keyboard that they said sounds like “dad music” and it was basically a Brazilian funk synth line.