I stick with the weirdos

Mix 11: Shakira & Cardi B, Marie Davidson, Eurovision, and musings on melody and Minimum Viable Pop

A diagram that makes me wonder if “Sk8er Boi” minimum viable pop?

This week I’m thinking about minimum viable product in pop music: the song that, with the lowest level of competence, still scans as successfully hitching itself to the bandwagon of a musical trend. My theory is that when you start seeing minimum viable pop, it’s the inverse of what happens in software (where you send out the pared-down version to stress test and improve it). In pop, the zeitgeist usually comes in strong—it starts out as at least a motorcycle on the above MVP chart—and gets whittled down through imitation: knock-offs, sure, but also people genuinely trying to distill a trend down to its essence, or re-create it from first principles. And there are also the people just plain getting it wrong in a way that still kind of gets at the spirit of the thing, which I think is different from just trying to cash in on a style and failing.

This week I finally listened to all of the Eurovision finalists, which is nothing if not a graveyard for pale imitations—lots of minimum viable pop, or worse. I always have the same reaction to Eurovision entries when I first hear them: disappointment because I’m not in the right headspace to listen to Eurovision as Eurovision. I’m using the wrong lens, so only the few entries that I would think to put into rotation in my everyday listening stand out. (If I’m lucky, this will be three or four songs.)

But then over time (this year, it was less than 24 hours!) I snap into Eurovision’s whole deal and adjust my expectations accordingly. I start to hear the whole thing in a way that frames schlock and obnoxiousness that I might otherwise ignore as spectacle. Eurovision is fundamentally a visual/audio sensory experience for most folks, whereas I usually ignore visuals whenever possible. But with a lot of the finalists, you can sort of hear the visuals—the costumes, the staging, the singers mugging the camera. I hesitate to say any of this enhances the music, per se (I still wouldn’t put several songs I now respect as spectacles on a mix), but it changes the nature of the experience. My kids are insisting that we watch it together this year. Perhaps I will write about it — should be fun!

Mix 1 // Mix 2 // Mix 3 // Mix 4 // Mix 5 // Mix 6 // Mix 7 // Mix 8 // Mix 9 // Mix 10

MIX 11: I STICK WITH THE WEIRDOS

1. Shakira, Cardi B: Puntería

Well, I’d say Shakira capitalized pretty well on the Bzrp session from last year. Cardi B weaves herself into this song seamlessly, to the point that I can barely tell when the baton passes between them after her rap verse. The whole album is a gem, albeit really just two EPs awkwardly stuck together (first half from 2024, second half from 2023 or before). Fine by me — my favorite Shakira album (She Wolf) is barely even an album; the original run order minus bonuses was a scant nine tracks clocking in at 30 minutes.

2. Marie Davidson: Y.A.A.M.

Love Marie Davidson’s campy irony—her forced acronym for “F.U.C.K. Y.O.U.” is right up there with Calvin and Hobbes’s Get Rid Of Slimy girlS.

3. El Alfa, Maluma, NLE Choppa, Donaty: Sacudelo

Did not expect to see NLE Choppa on a dembow track, but if anyone could get him it’s El Alfa, who must be the biggest breakout dembow star at this point. Par for the course for these sorts of big tent affairs, the style feels a little off the bullseye—for one thing, the song is at least a minute too long (I thought everyone figured this out!). But I really enjoy NLE Choppa huffing and puffing to keep up, managing a half of a verse in rapid-fire before repeating the same word five times and then retreating to half speed.

4. Angelina Mango: La noia

5. Marina Satti: Zari

6. Ladaniva: Jako

Eurovision time! These are my favorites, from Italy, Greece, and Armenia. As far as the spectacle goes, I’m looking forward to seeing Austria’s “We Will Rave” (Kat Stevens hears a “Mr. Vain” influence, which was a real time warp to listen to again — no idea when I last heard that one, maybe way back during the Poptimists LiveJournal year polls c. 2006?). My kids will undoubtedly fall in love with early betting market favorite, Croatia, with the obnoxious “Rim Tim Tagi Dim.” There seem to be far fewer ballads this year, as (again via Kat) the BPM is creeping up to a club-friendly average of close to 120.

7. Thaman S f. Mahesh Babu, Sahithi Chaganti : Kurchi Madathapetti

Grabbed a few songs from YouTube’s global charts this week. This is a song from Guntur Kaaram, a Telugu-language Indian film. I’m curious how things catch fire like this on YouTube — for a hugely popular film I understand it, but there are others (see below) whose virality I haven’t been able to trace at all.

8. Wednesday Campanella: たまものまえ

But before we get to viral mysteries, here’s another strong Wednesday Campanella track that inspired me to listen to “Aladdin,” which is now in the running for one of my favorite songs of all time (ack, should have nominated it for the People’s Pop Favorite Songs competition!) several times in a row.

9. Ozoda: Ko’k jiguli

Here’s the other YouTube global hit, Uzbeki synth-pop whose immense YouTube popularity I have not been able to explain very well with a few cursory searches. (It’s Spotify stream count is only about 30K.) The chorus sounds like the sort of thing that eventually becomes a meme, I just can’t trace its actual meme journey. Are there any good YouTube view inflation conspiracy theories?

10. DJ Lycox, foundation.fm: Dia 14

Haven’t to my knowledge heard any Príncipe artists attempt pop music like this — a mixed result, but it warms up after the first minute.

11. Buse Betül: Bebeğim Hiç

Post-modal Turkish sing-rap — this is a great demonstration of the ambiguous melody-writing I’ve been writing about recently. In this example the singer seems closer to the stricter boundaries of modal rap, though technically she’s singing across the whole minor scale. Spiritually, all of this stuff feels of a piece: late Taylor Swift, PinkPantheress, maybe the new Kacey Musgraves a little? The melody is subservient not to the words but to the rhythm of the words in context, improvisatory-seeming melodic constructions that make sense for the rhythm and mood, can even be memorable, but categorically aren’t earworms.

12. Coco & Breezy: I Am Free

This is the song that got me thinking about minimum viable product — whatever zeitgeist this thing is mining (I hear it as post-Tyla Afrobeats/amapiano-inflected R&B), it’s mining it at the shallowest possible level, in a way that I find fascinating. It should fall apart, and for many of you it very well might, but I think it just hangs on — floats through life, just like it says on the tin.

13. Tulenkay: Angry Nkrumah

Ghanaian rapper sounds like he’s found a midway point between rap and amapiano here, the amapiano elements encroaching but never really knocking his vocals out of the spotlight.

14. Team Paiya f. Didi B, Ste Milano, Tam Sir, 3xdavs: Fimbu

Good-natured posse cut from a C’ôte D’Ivoire hip-hop group. I find the video amusing because it really captures how briefly a few featured artists appear on the track (at least one seemed to pop in for a few frames of the video, let alone seconds).

15. Dj Yk Mule: Northerners Mara

Another Nigerian cruise song from Dj Yk Mule, who appeared on a mix last year. Still haven’t learned much more about the scene but I’m glad that my algorithm seems to be giving me a steady supply of it.

16. Seraphine Noir: Velvet Dusk

Lebanese fusion artist based in Montreal. The horn-tracking vocals are the secret weapon on this one, puts me in mind of Chick Corea and Return to Forever.

17. Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti, Frank Rosaly: Destejer

A track from a Latin American duo (singer from Bolivia and drummer/composer from Puerto Rico) based in Amsterdam with an upcoming Nonesuch album. They both have a heavily indie collaboration pedigree (this track came from the Pitchfork playlist) but sound more like cosmopolitan jazz types to me.

18. Mei Semones: Tegami

Self-described “alternative indie J-pop” singer-songwriter based in Brooklyn with a bossanova bon bon.

19. Club 8: Daylight

Swedish indie pop duo Club 8 were a golden beat discovery in the People’s Pop 2023 poll with “The Next Step You’ll Take.” This is closer to gothy synth-pop, but still charmingly small.

20. Gordan: The Bell Is Buzzing

Wasn’t sure how to describe this one so I’ll just punt to their overwrought PR from the YouTube description:

The self-titled 2nd album from this acclaimed transnational (Serbia/Germany/Austria) experimental trio, fuses traditional Balkan vocalizations with feedback, electronic sound generators, pulsing bass and hypnotic drumming. Gordan mirror the mysticism of legends and stories from the Balkan region, creating a music stretched between expressiveness and abstraction and tradition and the avant-garde. The unique vocals of Svetlana Spajic (Marina Abramovic, Robert Wilson, Antony and the Johnsons) are both rooted and deeply interpretive. In turn, Drummer Andi Stecher and multi-instrumentalist Guido Möbius employ sonic strategies that meld the songs into something contemporary and unpredictable.

I suppose that’s better than“what if Suicide made world music?” (Wait, is that better?)

21. Plastic Cavern: ขอให้พรุ่งนี้เธอไม่อยู่คนเดียว

Galaxie 500-ish twee drone from Thailand that very annoyingly tacks a “soundscape” onto its last few minutes (it was already too long!). But I finally found a cozy penultimate spot for it on a mix where the dragged-out coda sounds nice going into…

22. Baby Rose, BADBADNOTGOOD: One Last Dance

…A soulful closer from a singer I would have pegged as a good 50 years older than she is (still under 30!), which surprised me so much that I looked up her Tiny Desk appearance to verify. BADBADNOTGOOD (all caps band name status grandfathered in) is a good match for the faux warped vinyl feel they’re going for.

****

Speaking of warped vinyl, I am still coming to grips with the sheer tonnage of music on display in the photos in Robert Christgau’s Pop Conference presentation, which made me feel anxious. …Heavy! (Unsentimental, habitual dumping of stuff is a hard-wired value in my family, though I do still probably have too many books and albums even at what I would liberally guess is less than 1% of the total Christgau cache.)

Until next time, dump stuff if you can swing it!

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from Marie Davidson’s “Y.A.A.M.”