Looks like downhill from here

Mix 45: Hyperactive highs and downhill crashes, plus deceptive short people, deceptively popular Turkish disco, and Francophone hits I missed.

Wondering how I made it through the year

Well, it’s certainly been a year. I have now reached over 1,000 tracks, which is usually when I throw in the towel until January, but I think I can still scrounge up another song or twenty by Thanksgiving, and will still plan a January post of songs I missed.

I finally finished the Uncool challenge over on Bluesky (top 50 singles from ‘77-’99) and shared a draft of something I wrote a few years ago on Whitney Houston’s version of “I Will Always Love You,” my top pick. (I shared it in screenshots, but if you click through the image you can also read it in the alt text.)

I also shared a bunch of my writing based on a “get to know me” meme, and it made me think I should probably have a static page for writing links to specific pieces. If you’re interested in what I shared, the thread is here.

And how about albums? Well, last week I migrated over my static page for my year-end lists going back to 2005, plus retrospective lists. You’ll see that my 2024 albums list has one big update: the new 070 Shake album Petrichor is gunning for my top spot, though I think Willow will comfortably hold it off, and it might end up below Shakes & Les’s Funk Series, too.

But I was certainly taken with, and maybe taken aback by, Petrichor. Here is how I have described it so far:

• “this album is absolutely fucking deranged (complimentary)”

• “there are ZERO good choices on this album, and it's a masterpiece”

• “What if XXXTentacion was Ashlee Simpson?”

• “What if Solange Knowles Pierre Menarded the Chris Cornell & Timbaland album?”

• “The new 070 Shake album is the alt-R&B equivalent of the ‘...and totally redeem yourself!’ scene in Dumb and Dumber”

Best review, though, was from Kat Stevens:

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Previous 2024 mixes

MIX 45: LOOKS LIKE DOWNHILL FROM HERE

1. The Knocks, Yelle: All the time / Tout le temps (losers! Remix)

OK, brains off! Time for some fun — a ruthless big dumb banger of a remix that takes everything I tend to dislike about Yelle (the Yelleness of it all) and scrapes most of it away, leaving only a hard mid-aughts pop techno jam in its wake — it reminds me a little of Alter Ego’s “Rocker.”

2. CRRDR: Toy En Nota

Matching the hyperactivity with some reggaeton tachycardia from Sam 3K’s radio show. CRRDR is Colombian avant-pop, a bit too traditionally hyper to get a “hyper-” prefix, which often suggests a certain clinical distance from the pure Pixy-Stix-snorting high you get from this.

3. Ella Mai: One of These

Well, “Boo’d Up” did not lead Ella Mai to the unquestioned global dominance she earned, but she maintains a solid career and occasionally gets some second-shelf DJ Mustard thrown her way.

4. Ocevne: Cadillac

French R&B is smooth on top and herky-jerky underneath, like a Jaguar body on a Flintstones car.

5. Pom Pom Squad: Downhill

What to do with Pom Pom Squad, sometime alleged visual influence for Olivia Rodrigo, and not not annoying in the same way that Rodrigo can be. The new album is so good that I’m less prickly about any role they have in the alt-pop-girlie turn of the 20s, and it also makes me wonder if I’m ready to cast the chip from my shoulder and revisit the whole zeitgeist. I can only nurse a grudge about the erasure of mid-aughts teen confessional from critical conversations for so long…right? Certainly I couldn’t just seethe about it forever…?

6. Anna Erhard: 170

I know there are at least some areas where I’m ready to get over myself, because this is about a subject I am sensitive about (mercilessly making fun of a short guy) and it’s hilarious. Though to my credit (not to sell myself short! Ha! Hm.) I would never claim I was taller than someone who is clearly taller than me. In fact I will often claim I am slightly shorter than people who are about the same height as me. Bad posture, you know.

7. Nicki Nicole: Forty

Don’t know how long Spotify has been announcing global rankings on artist bio pages, but Nicki Nicole has achieved the impressive feat, if somewhat backhandedly precise, of being #353 in the world. One of many promising Argentine rappers in the past few years — I should see if any of the others round out the rest of the 350s.

8. Ikkimel: Unisexklo

Extremely stupid, and I assume extremely raunchy, freestyle-inflected German dance-pop, in the grand tradition of Katja Krasavice’s “Dicke Lippen,” which I’d forgotten made my top ten singles list in 2018. I guess I’m a sucker for German filth (er, novelty pop songs only).

9. Theodora: Kongolese sous BBL

And speaking of things that would probably be funnier if I weren’t monolingual, here is Lokpo’s pick for funnest song of the year, French pop with traction in the wider Francophone pop world. For more Francophone pop, Geoff de Burca has put together a nice playlist of Francophone songs from 2024, a few of which I’ve included on mixes (even one in this very mix, chosen before I saw this!) but most of which are new to me.

10. Melike Şahin: Canın Beni Çekti

Turkish disco-pop seems solid, if a bit plain, so after hemming and hawing about its inclusion I was surprised to see that, at 17 million views on YouTube, it is by far the most popular Turkish song I’ve featured all year.

11. Paula Biskup: Kłamałam

Meanwhile this light house-pop from Poland I figured would be a crossover smash, but it only has 10K views. Something about the song’s feel of going through the motions, restless to be done with itself, puts me in mind of 80s global pop scenester and socialite Stephanie, whom Mark Sinker recently posited is, on top of being the Princess of Monaco and one-time Rob Lowe girlfriend, “the one true dawning of the alt-pop girlie wave.” I hadn’t heard Stephanie’s music, but described it as having “a certain sleepiness and disaffected air to it that most actual music of this period doesn’t really have, like if Debbie Gibson was also on 4AD.”

12. DJ Ws da Igrejinha f. Triz: Com Pressão

Last year DJ Ws da Igrejinha released a strong funk album in a relatively weak year for proper album releases in the genre, but 2024 has seen a rapid uptick in proper album releases from funk stars, so this one, which is at least as good as 2023’s Caça Fantasma Vol. 1, has gotten lost in the shuffle. Like a lot of funk producers, Igrejinha has leaned into a less noisy and prettier vein of production this year, and this one practically tiptoes along, though with more assuredness than that suggests: think ballerina, not little kid sneaking downstairs to steal a cookie.

13. DJ Kawest, DDB: Parano

Glad that my Caribbean pop dive clued me in to DJ Kawest’s work. This is less audacious than the other songs of his I’ve featured, but it’s lovely.

14. FAVE: Complicated

Naija pop that is standard Afrobeats in production, but there’s something about FAVE’s vocals that are harder than what I was expecting, provides a sense of needed friction between vocals and beat, and had me wondering why more American rappers haven’t been able to capitalize on how their vocal grain might productively push against the smooth surfaces of Afrobeats.

15. Talibah Safiya: Black Magic

One from my albums list that I never found a spot for — Talibah Safiya, a Memphis artist nominated for a contemporary blues album Grammy in 2019, here sounding a little like Lemonade-era Beyoncé.

16. Dj Ademar: Neném Cagou

Don’t let the horrifying and inexplicable A.I. baby in the video here fool you, this is a quite nice bit of kuduro (Spotify tags it kizomba, but I can’t really tell the difference yet).

17. Rap Shar3, OTSHA: El Keef M5ada (Egypt x Sudan)

Couldn’t find much info about this in my rushed research this week (it’s been a year!) — one of many installments of an ongoing street rap series.

18. Debordo Leekunfa: Djeneba Djaba

Some viral joy from Côte D’Ivoire, the one coincidental overlap this week with the aforementioned Francophone playlist. I will likely feature something else from that list next week, though, or in my catch-up post.

19. Kalibwoy, Red Rat, Puri: No Follow

Minimalist dancehall banger, a collaboration of Jamaican and Suriname singers and Dutch-Indian producer.

20. Zuma: iMali iMali

21. Musical Jazz: Heshkha (Jaiva)

Two more Lokpo recommendations from a run-down of unconscionably long amapiano albums, including the Umshini label sampler put together by producer Zuma and the slow-burn Musical Jazz album eightEEn, so far the only one that seems to earn its two-hour-plus runtime. The former rides the 3-step trend, while the latter has an economical bent to it that gives it the same freshness that Shakes & Les (who feature on the album) also explore in their Funk Series—basically, the game is how few elements can you retain in an amapiano song and still give a sense of full immersion. It’s like they’ve figured out how to weave in room tone like another instrument.

22. Mulatu Astatke, Hoodna Orchestra: Delilah

Finally, a track from a new album from legendary Ethiopian bandleader Mulatu Astatke in collaboration with Tel Aviv group Hoodna Orchestra. I had heard Astatke before, but got to know his earlier music better during my 1974 research this year — his Ethio Jazz made my top ten.

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That’s it! Until next time, hope you can enjoy your highs before you hit the down slope.

—Dave Moore (the other one)

Title from Pom Pom Squad’s “Downhill.”