It would be good to forget all this

2025 Mix 3: Eurovision hopefuls make some noise, Russian tweens go viral, Ice Spice has trickz up her sleeve, and the whole world gets a little weird with it

Eurovisionary

I am now two full mixes ahead of schedule and January isn’t over yet — I’d say that’s a fairly auspicious start to the year (er, musically). I also now have two somewhat contrarian musical takes brewing, of varying levels of sourness, but this week I’m going to let the music speak sourly for me and cool my jets on anything that smacks of negativity until the ideas have percolated a little longer. Will see if they turn out to be wine or vinegar.

Lots of gloom on the playlist and in the world this week, so from here on out, good vibes only, or at least weird non-bad vibes, in the intro. Assorted thoughts and recommendations:

• After being maybe the best young celebrity champion for abortion rights in 2024, I’m going to give Olivia Rodrigo a more charitable listen this year and report back, sans snark. (The real impetus isn’t political, though: her bonus tracks last year were some of her best material ever, who knew except everyone?)

• Chuck Eddy put out his Best Albums of 2024 a few weeks ago, a post that’s always a pleasure to read. He provides warm and good-faith pushback against the aggregate conventional wisdom of colleagues in a way that always helps shake me out of tropes about “the year in pop” I’ve been steeped in for a month.

• Come join the Peoples Pop poll fun over on Bluesky if you’re so inclined. You don’t actually need to be on Bluesky to vote for finalists — voting for finalists will be over at the Peoples Pop site, in a ranked choice system based on Eurovision scoring. (Yes, things can always get geekier. )

• Mary Lou Williams! Is great! Listen to her! Pick anything. I chose this solo piano rendition of “Yesterdays” from 1944 as my Williams selection for my pre-1954 music challenge slate (sez me: “folds past and future in on itself: harmonies cracked open to the point of dissonance, then a joyful pivot to stride piano.”). She provided a counterpoint to my other favorite pianist of this era, Erroll Garner, with his own take on “Yesterdays” from 1946.

• I made an appropriately unholy mash-up of two songs I grew to like after cramming them both together—Geordie Greep’s “Holy Holy” and Gracie Abrams’s “I Love You, I’m Sorry.” Started as an inside joke but was surprised at how well it worked.

We’ll see what another week brings. I know some of what will happen next week already, because the next mix is already finished and I am now two weeks behind on new listening from just sorting through the stuff I already found. There is so much good music in the word; it’s very hard to be temperamentally gloomy about humanity in the face of it all.

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Previous 2025 Mixes

Tidal || YouTube

1. Sw@da, Niczos: Lusterka
Poland

It’s Eurovision qualifying time, so this week and next I’ll feature some hopefuls from various countries that I’ve come across so far. The first is a recommendation from John Wojtowicz, who shares a phonk-influenced Polish track recorded in an “unknown language,” which is to say it seems, according to people who know more than the zero that I do about it, to combine Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Podlachian (northeast Polish territory) dialects. Whatever language it is, they’ve provided a translation on YouTube good enough for me to pull something out for a newsletter title this week. It’s still January 18 as I write this blurb, so hopefully by the time it publishes there won’t be too much to forget yet (though I’m not counting on it).

This was my attempt to describe phonk to a few other folks in an email thread about this song:

Phonk is an “I know it when I hear it” genre. I associate it with (often Eastern European) SoundCloud hard electro with percussion like dropping a sack of potatoes on the microphones, coffee bean and can inclusive. Hyperpop chipmunking is often a feature, but also screwed slow-down vocals, and usually extremely blown-out sound. I imagine the production workflow is very similar to Brazilian funk but with no clave rhythm and a much grayer and grodier palette.

2. Andrei Zevakin f. Karita: Ma ei tea sind
Estonia

This might be my second-favorite Eurovision hopeful. If two’s a trend, then this Estonian song suggests a potentially dark and exciting contest—though my guess is a different and much sillier Estonian contender, Tommy Cash’s “Espresso Macchiato,” will get the nod instead.

3. Jane Remover: JRJRJR
US

As long as we’re staying dark, though, here’s the latest moody masterpiece from Jane Remover, whom I seem to like best at the harshest extremes. This is arty hypertrap done right, with little pixelated video game explosions in all the right places.

4. Ice Spice f. Bb trickz: BB Belt (remix)
US/Spain

The deluxe rerelease of Ice Spice’s I-guess-underrated Y2K! gives me an opportunity to appreciate her beats in a new context. There really are surprisingly few major rappers right now with beats that sound as simultaneously huge and claustrophobic as Ice Spice’s do, but she seems determined to stamp a bunch smiling poop emojis on top of all of them. Here we only have to hear the hook “I’m Miss Poopy, but I never smell” twice before she hands the mic to a real amateurish professional, Bb trickz, whose only “poo” is in reference to Winnie-the. (Fair warning: two more “Miss Poopies” follow the guest verse.)

5. Inspector Spacetime: Party at My House
Iceland

An Icelandic group that named themselves after a throwaway Dr. Who joke on Community have gone low-tech enough with their novelty dance song that it skirts ‘10s quirk and hits ‘90s Eurodance.

6. chi f. Len: Peru
UK/Nigeria

Trickily-rhythmed lite hyperpop by two hard-to-Google Londoners, at least one from Nigeria. Chi’s previous album from 2023 is called I’ve Seen the Lizard People, which I’m hoping will be a hyperhoot. (Or whatever sound a lizard makes.)

7. Kiss Facility: Malket Gamal El Kowan
UAE/Ireland

Emerati singer and Irish-Chilean producer have found a winning formula: let the instrumental go breathy so the singing doesn’t have to.

8. Friða Dís: Must Take This Road
Iceland

Minimal guitar-driven rocker that approximates Pink Floyd by recording its two or three instruments in an empty airplane hangar.

9. Betsy, Marina Yankovskaya: Sigma Boy
Russia

Won’t touch the politics of the TikTok “ban” with a ten-foot pole on the blog, but I will say that without TikTok we probably would not have this Russian tween duo going viral with what sounds like (and I really hope is) a sarcastic ode to self-proclaimed “sigma” jerks. Quick scan of an English translation suggests this is the case: “You’re my sigma boy, but I want your tears—got it?”

10. DARKSIDE: S.N.C
US

Have enjoyed Nicolas Jaar’s work on and off for many years, and his remix of Cat Power’s “Cherokee” put him firmly in camp of artists I always keep light tabs on. His group, Darkside, I know better as one of a few re-imaginings of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories I enjoyed more than the actual album at the time (it’s still online—Random Access Memories Memories).¹ That wasn’t a very high bar (I really disliked RAM), but they cleared it easily, as they do here with some indie funk whose Commodores synths are pretty good but are no match for Senegal.

11. M¥SS KETA: 160BPM
Italy

Is Italian pop in ferment, or has the months-long honeymoon fade-out of my first trip to Europe in a decade just made me more amenable to it? Might be the former, since none of the Italian pop I liked last year sounds anything like M¥SS KETA’s noise, which Wiki labels “fidget punk,” as good a descriptor as any, I suppose (though it’s more fidget than punk).

12. 4Mr Frank White f. Breeder LW: Mikono Juu
Kenya

Entering year three of not having a great bead on Kenyan pop music, specifically why the stuff that breaks through to me seems to be so globally cosmopolitan—and not obviously connected to other ascendant African regional styles—without having an obvious regional signature of its own that I can hear. Anyway, this is a good one!

13. VTR f. LILCR, Peter Napo, & CVLTVRE: 2 HOT
Italy

More noisy and nominally hyper pop from Italy, this one captivates musically, like a fine painting glimpsed through a greasy window pane, and also features vocals as moody and crisp as Drake’s can be when he’s not belly-flopping.

14. Gordão Do PC, Mc Menor DN, Mc Leozin: Fantasma
Brazil

Brazilian funk with a soft clave that regularly plops into a buzzing morass on the one, featuring a pretty vocal hook sent speeding and spinning off, plus game melodic verses from the fellas.

15. Dengue Dengue Dengue: Agita2 [2023]
Peru

Some noise I missed from Chuck Eddy’s albums list—I didn’t check out his #1 LP, Nyege Nyege Tapes faves TAKKAK TAKKAK, soon enough to process it for year-end consideration. I’ll make amends here with something from #1 EP of the year by Dengue Dengue Dengue (styled on this one as DNGDNGDNG).

16. Dj khalipha: Nostalgia Street House
Nigeria

If this is Nigerian cruise music (as it should be, since Khalipha is considered a cruise “pioneer” by no lesser authority than the first publication I happened to google, which wound up being Resident Advisor), it’s the sweetest and most cinematic version of it I’ve yet heard. Cruise seems to be achieving terminal velocity as a crossover genre: its producers are competing more directly for pop audiences with a slick Afrobeats sound and more cruise songs are showing up in my general playlists, not just genre dives.

17. Greg Spero, Nicole McCabe f. Ka’Cye Thompkins: Step Ahead
US

A hard pivot to jazz—not much to say here, since this is a replacement track for an amapiano song I deemed too old to include at this point (I have 25 and counting other also-rans from South Africa you could check out if you’re so inclined). It’s a little plain, but hits the requisite level of funky to avoid “smooth.”

18. Eiko Ishibashi: Coma
Japan

A Drag City city artist, maybe best known for soundtracking critical darlings by director Ryusuke Hamaguchi Drive My Car and Evil Does Not Exist, does indeed drag a bit, but is in no way a drag: trippy and immersive, bonus points for not giving me any inclination to pay attention to the words, which are not in English. Though I’m not sure that would have made a difference.

19. DJ Koze f. Damon Albarn: Pure Love (Day)
Germany/UK

And speaking of not paying attention to lyrics, this one has a total blank space where the words should be, which works just fine for me because a pleasantly Autotuned Albarn sounds great against the downer space cha-cha Koze has given Flimsy Steve to float around in.

20. Kite f. Nina Persson: Heartless Places
Sweden

Synthpop group pits the sweetest Swedish voice of ‘90s alt-rock against a mild industrial drone—Persson wins out, a little light slowly but surely casting out the darkness.

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That’s it! Until next time, be the kind of person (like Persson!) who uses their little light to cast out the darkness.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title translated from Sw@da, Niczos: Lusterka (“Było b charašo zabyt' pra toje”)

1. The other two are Musicophilia’s incredible RAM-inspired retro mixtape The Gold and the Silver Dream (1971-1982) and L’ordre’s RAM (Vanderlay edit).