Top ten pop/electronic albums of 2020

This category is notorious for giving me the biggest headache. Between narrowing it down, and choosing honorable mentions, to committing to a list with 30+ mainstream pop albums from the year that I still haven’t listened to, nailing this one down is a marathon that begins in November and leaves me second-guessing through February. But for what it’s worth, here are 10 of the albums I listened to the most this year, in chronological order — why has everything been in chronological order this year? My unconscious motivation has been perfectly and succinctly explained over at Burn Your Hits, who says “I added release dates this year because I think they were especially relevant in 2020 (how quickly was the world ending when you first heard this song?)” — now with extra references to “quarantine,” “escapism,” and “not as good as their last, though.” (Note: Some of these blurbs interpolate pieces from previous notes posted earlier on this site.)

Selena Gomez: Rare
(2020.01.10)

Rare feels different, not just because fans have been teased with Selena Gomez collabs and feats for years, but because the singer’s statements regarding gossip-heavy story lines involving her life feel more personal than ever. There’s no hidden message or subtext behind songs like “Lose You to Love Me,” or “Look at Her Now,” and even in “Dance Again“and “Rare,” she’s not shy, lyrically, about claiming her own narrative. The album was a strong start to the year, a month we rarely see pop albums from big names as solid as this, and a January that now seems as distant and hazy as your very first day of school. Still, with everything that’s happened in between then and now, this album has remained as accomplished as ever, both for its creator, I’m sure, but also for the listener who appreciates records as brave and open as this.

Niall Horan: Heartbreak Weather
(2020.03.13)

Out of all the ex-One Direction members’ solo albums, Niall Horan’s Heartbreak Weather remains one of the best and most underrated. Sure, it’s missing the charisma, charm, and overall controversy-baiting of a Harry Styles, but its dependence on genres like new wave, synth, and acoustic keep the album anchored in time-tested comfortable familiarity. Between the acoustic and the synth sections, I find myself returning to the latter, like the arena-sized title track, “Arms of a Stranger,” and “Cross Your Mind,” songs the album would have been smarter to crowd out the weepies with. It’s a nice follow-up to his largely forgettable debut, and as all of the albums released at the beginning of the year can attest to, it’s unlucky release date seems to have gotten it unfairly buried.

The Weeknd: After Hours
(2020.03.20)

The big story in the music world this season was the obvious, and allegedly deliberate, omission of The Weeknd among the Grammy nominees, an omission so glaring that, as Main Pod Girl points out, tips from snub to scandal. Despite anyone’s personal feelings about The Weeknd’s behavior and lyrical content, anyone would be remiss to ignore this album’s stunning production value and national embrace in 2020: “Blinding Lights,” which rolled out at the end of 2019, has now officially lingered in the Top 10 of the Billboard’s Hot 100 longer than any other single in Hot 100 history. Most importantly, it has had the amazing capability to sound as fresh and exciting as it did a year ago when it was first released. While I’m still not sold on the entirety of the first half of this album, After Hours, with all of its interesting, successively topped performances, from fireworks to more fireworks, has slowly won me over during a year when wondering what Tesfaye and Team would come up with next provided much-needed, pleasant distraction. And if it’s true he missed out on noms because he chose to perform at the Superbowl over the Grammys? He made the right choice.

Dua Lipa: Future Nostalgia
(2020.03.27)

When every other artist postponed their albums and canceled roll outs, Dua Lipa was the outlier, sending her album out into the world a week earlier than planned, on March 27, in the midst of history-making lockdowns. Releasing an album during a global pandemic is tough enough, but releasing a dance record during a global pandemic, with clubs shuttered and social gatherings verboten, is even tougher. Yet Future Nostalgia pulled off the impossible, streaming into living rooms and headphones with a welcome joy and comfort through its bite-sized, 37-minute long journey through Latin freestyle, early 00’s girl-group pop, swelling disco strings and cool, chunky synths. The album will forever remain “the quarantine album,” but for positive reasons, beaming light and hope into living rooms and kitchens through quirky pop songs about love, lust, betrayal, and the anticipation of the return to normal we can all look forward to if we’re brave and patient enough to meet it.

Lady Gaga: Chromatica
(2020.05.29)

Despite the hokey, ugly visuals for much of this album cycle, Chromatica has grown on me. Like a lot of pop music before it, it’s rooted in the near-past, the one just old enough to seem part-nostalgic and part-exotic to Millennials, drawing from wells as deep as Amber’s “This is Your Night,” to Robin S.’s “Show Me Love.” It’s more than a return to Gaga’s The Fame sound because it’s a sound that was only ever put on pause for more intimate projects like A Song is Born and Joanne that grabbed for something, anything, that would retain the spotlight after Art Pop tanked. But to be clear, Art Pop slapped, and everything in between it and Chromatica was just a strategic distraction, an elaborate show of smoke and mirrors meant to make everyone appreciate the magic of Lady Gaga once again.

Chloe x Halle: Ungodly Hour
(2020.06.12)

I’m still not sure that this album is better than their debut, but Ungodly Hour is so intent on pleasing, it’s hard to ignore its magnetic pull. The album sees two young women now confronting some of the more complicated and unpleasant compromises of adulthood, with their signature downbeats and twinkling harmonies. There are bittersweet moments all over this album, including a youthful production that hints that as far as they’ve come, they still have a way to go. This album shows that the journey to getting there will be as rich as its destination, offering much more than the average pop star ever could — I’ll take the scenic route.

Jessie Ware: What’s Your Pleasure?
(2020.06.26)

Jessie Ware brings a levity and seriousness to disco on What’s Your Pleasure?, one that feels as grown-up, and uncool, music-for-adults as some of the best of the genre’s origins. The attention to detail and unwillingness to compromise on irony for the sake of a wider audience is commendable; Random Access Memories this is not, though de Homem-Christo and Bangalter could take some serious notes if they’re looking to craft songs that are more than just technical marvels, but beating hearts, too. As my introduction to Jessie Ware, this one has the unintended consequence of setting the bar beyond an ability to surpass.

Taylor Swift: folklore
(2020.07.24)

In the Netflix documentary, Miss Americana, Taylor Swift greets us with her disappointment at being snubbed a best-album nomination at the Grammys, determinedly avowing to do better next time. folklore is that next time. As an album, folklore works best when viewed in the context in which it was conceived, produced, and executed: a classic Swift album in texture and sound, but also desperate to please, competing against all of the other women who released career-defining albums this year, but mostly, seemingly, against herself. For better or worse, embracing all of that is part and parcel of Swift fandom. Yet folklore is also an album that has reached beyond the bubble, from everyone to casual listeners, to indie publications who appreciate its slicked-back production and elegant story-telling. It’s a new peak for the writer, who after seven albums, still proves to draw from a bottomless well of inspiration. In a time of endless “quarantine albums,” Swift’s is the ultimate flex, the one that captures what a creative mind can conjure with a solid work ethic, plenty of time, and complete creative freedom.

Ariana Grande: positions
(2020.10.30)

positions, while not the best album of Grande’s career, is as consistent as its predecessor thank u next, and boasts some of the best production on a technical level of the year. Listeners looking for a hit single or a pop number in the vein of “No Tears Left to Cry” or “Into You” will be disappointed, but that ship has sailed in lieu of an aggressively grown-up approach that flaunts an uninhibited and sexually frank lexicon, a sign of the times for Grande who is coming into her own in the age of The Weeknd. The album could do with a bit more variety and a bit more flesh on its track’s run times, but its warm strings and laid back chill has stayed with me these last few months, a palliative to some of the more frenetic albums on this list.

Kylie Minogue: Disco
(2020.11.06)

Kylie Minogue is first and foremost a pop star, not a disco diva, and the structure of each of the songs on this album keeps her rooted in very familiar territory. Disco joins a long list of club-ready hits from Jessie Ware, Dua Lipa, and Roisin Murphy this year, but besides Lipa’s, Minogue’s boasts the most accessible and the least experimental approach to its revival, a disco album for a general audience content to dabble rather than immerse. It’s an achievement nonetheless, banking on its ability to offer escapism and help put out the dumpster fire that was 2020. In that sense, it has succeeded. As the album I have listened to more than most of the others on this list in the last month and half alone, its ability to provide some sense of obliterating peace cannot be overstated.

Honorable Mentions

Allie X: Cape God
Meg Myers: Thank U 4 Taking Me 2 the Disco I’d Like 2 Go Home Now
Cleo: SuperNOVA
Bright Light Bright Light: Fun City
Kid Cudi: Man on the Moon III: The Chosen

Bonus Track: Top 5 Hard Rock/Metal Albums

As I said previously, I don’t want to do an official top ten for this category this year due to the less-than-usual number of new metal albums I was able to listen to, but for what it’s worth, here are my top five from what I did manage to hear in this category, including what is probably my favorite record of the year. I look forward to disowning a large portion of this list as soon as I tackle all the great releases I missed from numerous, well-curated year-end lists, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some amazing stuff to be heard here.

In This Moment: Mother
Stallion: Slaves of Time
Unleash the Archers: Abyss
Movements: No Good Left to Give
Oceans of Slumber: Oceans of Slumber

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August 2020: Highlights

The glaring drawback to writing monthly highlights is the lack of time spent with each new release, with mere days in the case of a few. With new releases piling up in the queue every week, it can seem self-indulgent to go back for more than a couple of repeat listens – but how else do you know if an album is terrible, a grower, or ephemeral? This column allows little space for that, and so I’ve been treating it more like footnotes to initial impressions. I’ve always been spotty with criticism itself, preferring history and context to straight musical analysis, and I keep in mind something Jill Lepore wrote in her introduction to These Truths: A History of the United States every time I sit down to write: “The work of the historian is not the work of the critic or of the moralist; it is the work of the sleuth and the storyteller, the philosopher and the scientist, the keeper of tales, the sayer of sooth, the teller of truth” (xix). So once again, for your consideration, some notes on the journey to uncovering those truths.

Kenshi Yonezu: STRAY SHEEP
(2020.08.05)

Kenshi Yonezu’s music is the type the Oricon chart loves: absolute mid-brow J-pop, its mid-tempo, soft rock-heavy tones and nasal male vocals weaving back through a historical J-pop tunnel that includes the likes of Gen Hoshino, Official HigeDANDism, Mr. Children, and Southern All Stars. To start! As a distillation of the very precise, average mean of J-pop itself, you would think it would be hard not to like a little, like the gradual sponge-soaking of AKB48’s discography, now so saturated into the consciousness of any J-pop fan alive enough to count to two, that it’s hard to find it completely deplorable, or to realize the extent to which its sound is, essentially, the “J-pop sound” today. But where they really excel is in how much they have influenced other producers to steal the basic formula and inject it with style and substance, something lacking in the carbon copy prints of Kenshi Yonezu’s music. None of this is to say that STRAY SHEEP is a terrible album — how can any of it be terrible, when it is so unobjectionable, so safe, so ready to please the majority of a music-listening population who just want something that fits snugly into a pair of AirPods at the office? Something mellow enough to overlay, without having too much distracting personality or emotion, over opening credits and closing credits, and advertisements for flavored sugar water? Its big central themes of depression and overcoming struggle are universal, hard-wired to be relatable. Hey, I get depressed, too! It’s a kind of alchemy that seems destined to fall at the wayside of exceptional, original, and ultimately material matter, a surprise only if you aren’t aware how most people aren’t really looking for anything more than a reflection of their known reality in a safe, comforting package. For these people, an album that contains the hits “Uma to Shika,” “Lemon,” and “PAPRIKA” is the perfect bathwater, another entry in a long list of J-pop music that is more symbolic than it is artistic. As of this post, STRAY SHEEP has been #1 on the chart for the past four unbelievably consecutive weeks, which more than solidifies it as the most popular Japanese album of the year, a designation that is unlikely to get topped by any other album this year (surprise me!). Congratulations Kenshi, you’ve done it. Welcome to the hallowed, tepid halls of J-pop’s absolute middle.

Miley Cyrus: “Midnight Sky”
(2020.08.14)

Drag queens used to imitate celebrities, but with the sheer fun, originality, and mainstreaming of RuPaul’s Drag Race, it seems inevitable, in hindsight, that celebrities would now be imitating drag queens. Par for the course that Miley Cyrus would pick up the torch, since she has been imitating others throughout her whole career — country stars, pop stars, rap stars. I hope one day Miley finds out just exactly who she is, and though I’m certain this is just another re-invention on the road to that discovery, it’s one of the better ones. “Midnight Sky” is a song about walking out the door and not turning around now, masquerading as an innocuous pop song. “Free Woman” it is not, but it reaches for the same stars. Miley has worked in this 80’s disco-pop style before, notably with Mark Ronson, himself no stranger to vintage influences, though it seems to have taken a small team to assemble this seemingly straight-forward single. More exciting is the news that she worked with Max Martin for tracks on her upcoming album, which she promised to release when it’s safe to promote on tour. So is she really going to make us wait til 2024? I predict a backtrack on that: if it’s anything like “Midnight Sky,” it’s too irresponsible, and cruel, to hold out that long.

Unleash the Archers: Abyss
(2020.08.21)

It’s been so long since I’ve heard a metal album that I really, really like, that I am considering foregoing a top hard rock/metal list for this year’s annual year-end countdown. Not only have I been hard-pressed to find anything worth returning to in the genre, but I’ve been finding it near impossible to discover any new artists that make for a lazy Saturday spent surfing a back catalog. It’s now August, and Unleash the Archers is the very first. I have no qualms sharing that one of my favorite sub-genres of metal is power metal, the more a review contains the words “explosive,” “emotional,” and “epic,” the better. Cheese a plus. Abyss has all of that, including “incendiary” guitar solos, “soaring” female-fronted vocals, and a pace that never flags. Its at-times goofy fun and throwback riffs are welcome words and sounds this year, and I love forward to spending time with this band’s previous work whenever one of those Saturdays pop up, which seems to be more of a mythical optimism this year.

Hans Zimmer: “Themyscira”
(2020.08.22)

Wonder Woman was the first first female superhero to star in her own movie in either of the two shared universes from rivals DC and Marvel. The movie also had the distinction of being directed by a woman, one who vowed to hire as many women as she could for the crew, so it’s a bit of a head scratcher why she couldn’t make an impact by hiring a woman to compose and direct the score. Female composers are so scarce, that the industry is falling all over themselves to heap praise on Hildur Guðnadóttir. Guðnadóttir deserves every bit of the acclaim she received for her work on Joker, but there actually are other women in the industry, and they could all use a little exposure to help them get the recognition their talent deserves in a heavily male-dominated industry. I mean, was Pinar Toprak busy or something? I feel a bit guilty saying that because Rupert Gregson-Williams did a phenomenal job with the original score: his Wonder Woman is action-packed, thrilling, and hits all the right punches, and knowing a sequel is coming down the slide makes me think it will be hard to top “Action Reaction” or “Lightening Strikes.” But also…was Pinar Toprak busy again? I suppose Wonder Woman‘s success now merits the prestige direction of Hans Zimmer, and I really do feel if anyone can come close or top the original, it might be him. Then again, his superhero work is really hit or miss for me, so I’ve been anxiously awaiting the Wonder Woman 1984 score, and then waiting, and then waiting some more, as every movie release has been pushed back, and then pushed back again. Finally, the unheard offering of a cue “single” has been released as an olive branch. The track is “Themyscira,” and it hints at what we can expect from the full score: orchestral grandeur, with a bit of choral flair. It’s hard not to compare this piece to Zimmer’s main theme for Gladiator, and I expect that’s a nod to the scene this piece will show up in, a rather deliberate one-note delivery of the composer’s idea of arenas and ancient games. I don’t hate it, but it’s hardly original. I know Zimmer composed the original WW “theme” in (very loose use of that term here) Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice that Gregson-Williams cited, but I hope that Zimmer returns the favor and drops subtle hints to the original score. Wonder Woman 1984 — and presumably the score — is now set to drop October 2. If we’re lucky, we’ll get some more teaser tracks before the date gets pushed back again.

(By the way, in case you’re wondering what Pinar Toprak has been up to, her score for the smaller-screen superhero Stargirl was released this month. No, this is not Wonder Woman-level work, but it’s solid, and better, I think, then her work last year on Captain Marvel. Every year she seems to expand as an artist, and I look forward to seeing her get her big-screen due in time, not just because she is a woman, though that is certainly noteworthy for the industry, but because her level of skill demands it.)

Katy Perry: Smile
(2020.08.28)

It’s fortunate for Katy Perry that Teenage Dream did so phenomenally well, as it’s the kind of success that’s allowed her to coast long after she had anything original or noteworthy to share, and well, well past the time anyone else would have been hunted down by cancel culture before a single apology could be performed on a kind of please-let-me-keep-my-career world tour posing as genuine understanding, glossed over with virtue-signalling self-enlightenment. Katy Perry knows how to play to the people, is what I’m saying. She’s the type of person intent on ticking off all the boxes required to keep the public’s attention, any number of which has included ditching religion, kissing girls, shooting whipped cream from her chest, making highly inappropriate comments about other cultures, engaging in trendy, Twitter-worthy beefs with high-profile celebrities, cashing in on those beefs by copping the opponent’s successful playbook of trendy celebrity cameos, and jumping on bandwagons from music styles, to dances, to feat. guests. Katy Perry is not the first celebrity to stoop to desperate tactics (there’s at least one other in this month’s highlights), and even your unproblematic faves have employed some of these measures over the course of their careers, but only a few have done it as recklessly, as guilelessly, and as obviously, all the while hopscotching across a series of increasingly mediocre albums. The newest batch of Perry singles, in particular, has left me perplexed, the type of toothless nosedive as disappointing as Gwen Stefani’s trajectory. Is it something about mega-popular talent programs that force people to dilute anything even remotely interesting about themselves? All this meandering dither is just to say, Smile is okay, but the world deserves a lot better from someone trying so hard, from someone who released a Teenage Dream and yet still gets all the same hype despite failing to produce a single album as great. Max Martin is notably absent on this set, replaced by a lively circus of producers (many fellow Swedes, but many not), creating a kind of charcuterie board of leftovers that has been sitting out just a bit too long to be wholly palatable. The songs range from high-octane decent (“Cry About It Later,” “Not the End of the World“) to mid-paced meh (“Champagne Problems,” “Tucked“). The album is also marked by the exclusion of her best single, post-Witness‘s “365,” although I guess some deluxe editions include the other duds not worthy enough to make the album proper. It’s been a whole lot of build-up for something so conservative, and in a sea of solo albums from Selena Gomez (yes, that was actually this year), Dua Lipa, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, and Jessie Ware, this is surely the most tone-deaf. As a side note, the concept art is a baffling overreach, and last-minute additional cover art hints to the rush in which this was clearly put together. Perhaps more thought into anything Perry does would help, as years of scrambling continues to work against her.

Selena Gomez & BLACKPINK: “iCE Cream”
(2020.08.28)

At the pace at which K-pop moves, it’s hard to believe that 2NE1 will only be celebrating the 10th anniversary of their first full-length studio album this month. It might as well be two times that number considering how quickly the group has fallen out of memory, and how the widespread popularity of boy bands like BTS have created an entirely new generation of K-pop fans, one for whom 2NE1 never existed and might as well serve as nothing more than a historical footnote to the massive ascendancy of BLACKPINK. It’s sad, but not surprising: groups like Super Junior and Girls’ Generation and 2NE1 were themselves replacements for groups like H.O.T. and Baby V.O.X and in five years, another YG group will replace BLACKPINK. It’s a dizzying pace of constant recycling that requires little more than a basic understanding of the pace at which fashion and style move.

So I can’t help but wonder if fans of S.E.S. felt as bewildered by “Naega Jeil Jal Naga” as I currently do by BLACKPINK. Aside from a global popularity that rests almost entirely on three or four songs, they’ve also managed to strike up collaborations with artists as high-profile as Lady Gaga (on this year’s “Sour Candy“) and now, Selena Gomez with “iCE Cream.” It’s all brilliant marketing, I suppose, splashy neon colors, and shiny backdrops, and trendy choreography working its butt off to make the group look a lot better than singles that are wholly self-contained in the first five seconds actually are. Three minutes later and you’re still waiting for a proper chorus. The collaboration aspect isn’t as important as the message itself, which is that BLACKPINK and Gomez are at a stage where both parties, with their astronomical social media numbers, can mutually benefit from the other. The medium, YouTube, is perfect, because it provides the ideal mode in which to place beautiful women in highly-stylized fantasy settings, doing beautiful, fantastical things, like pretending they’re allowed to eat sweets. Tale as old as time, really, but it only succeeds if the music has any sort of substance, which “iCE Cream” does not. Not to mention that “iCE Cream” is already the fourth or fifth high-profile K-pop song about frozen junk food, and just as far down on the list compared to, just off the top of my head, f(x), Hyuna, and Red Velvet. I want to like BLACKPINK, and I already like Selena Gomez, but this single is another in a long-line of empty hits from the group that make me feel older with each passing day. Am I out of touch? No, it’s the children who are wrong.

January 2020: Highlights

As expected, maybe due to the sheer amount, the majority of music released at any given time in any genre is either average or forgettable. There are, sometimes, hopefully, less than we’d like but still, a few that end up being excellent. But if they can’t all be excellent, they can at least be interesting. Whether or not any of that music manages to avoid the trap of being derivative or just plain bad, it gets people thinking and talking, and that is, by far, one of the greatest by-products of the relentless pursuit of excellence. So let’s dive into some of the interesting releases of January 2020, with perhaps a smattering of excellent or excellent-in-training among them.

Shingo Katori: 20200101
(2020.01.01)

Former SMAP-member Shingo Katori is no stranger to collaborations, having released one-offs with several fellow J-poppers during his time in the mega-successful boy band, most notably with Tomohisa Yamashita on the short-lived, but fun, project THE MONSTERS in 2012. But now that SMAP is no longer, he’s free to indulge in a full-length project, and I really hope the first-day-of-the-new-year release date is a flex signaling his intent to pursue this type of thing full-time in the next decade — so says Takuya Kimura, too, but no one is feigning surprise over the music of Go with the Flow, a literal parody of safe J-pop. Meanwhile, Katori’s album is filled with borderline bizarre collaborations with artists ranging from TeddyLoid to SCHA DARA PARR to AINA THE END of idol-group BiSH (the BiSH members have been getting around, though, so maybe that’s not notable). As you can imagine from such a varied roster of guests, the album is musically all over the place, its central thesis being Katori himself, who brings a surprising sense of wonder and delight to these tracks that run the gamut from J-rap to disco. This box-of-chocolates approach is the last thing I expected to be hearing and enjoying during the first week of 2020, and is all the more welcome knowing the alternative was probably a Go with the Flow. Katori has set a new bar for SMAP solo albums: good luck clearing this one boys.

YOUNHA: UNSTABLE MINDSET
(2020.01.06)

Who is Younha? This is a bad question to be asking in 2020, both of a singer who has been quite prolific for the last fifteen years, releasing a large amount of albums in both Korean and Japanese, and for someone I’ve somehow never even heard of until now. Personal shame aside, UNSTABLE MINDSET is the sequel EP to 2019’s STABLE MINDSET, though it’s hard-pressed to form any immediately obvious correlation outside of the linked cover art. Acoustic, indie-sounding ballads of K-pop are my Achilles heel, the Korean genre I am least interested in and most likely to avoid, so maybe it’s not surprising this one didn’t register. But I guess the slow rollout of January releases had this one rising to the top in a way it never would have in June or July. There’s all the usual hallmarks of this subgenre, not least the devastatingly heartfelt vocal performances, but most of all, it is gentle, just the type of music to open a new year with. Going back to hear some of her earlier releases hasn’t inspired me to continue looking into the singer, or anticipate future work, but I like the unexpectedness of how this one turned out, how there’s always room to be surprised, and how one of the least exciting months in K-pop on record can make you appreciate even the small things.

Selena Gomez: Rare
(2020.01.10)

I’ve already written a bit about Rare, the first great pop album of the year, but that doesn’t mean it has left me entirely. No, none of the hooks require more than a few chews to digest, but it has got me reconsidering the references I dropped to Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande. Pop stars mining their personal lives for hit songs is nothing new, but it does make me wonder if everyone would have been as interested in an album that didn’t indulge in obvious nods to exes and personal struggle. We live in an era where everyone, even grandma, wants you to check out their very important, personal-brand curated Twitter, fashioning drama out of every mundane breakfast known to humanity. Would this album have felt like such an event if it steered clear of finger-pointing and back-clapping? If it refused to give fans and hungry audiences exactly what it wanted? Is it possible to create an album that’s not so personal, yet universal? Does anyone want to listen to an album like that? Is it cheating to walk upon the bridge laid by the paparazzi you complain about, if the story you told and responded to didn’t need overt explanations because it was assumed, by the foundation they planted, that we already know about Pete Davidson and Mac Miller and Joe Alwyn and a kidney transplant? I don’t know! But I do know it didn’t make Halsey’s album any more listenable, so there’s clearly skill involved in pulling it off successfully.

Poppy: I Disagree
(2020.01.10)

Poppy has left the world scratching its head: there are plenty of stereotyped “millennial” artists now flourishing in the music business (Billie Eilish, Kim Petras, anyone making overt homages to Y2K culture), but none as Internet-savvy as Poppy, who has fashioned her entire brand on being a weird hodgepodge of social media and “shock” culture, the type of thing that is giving me Dark Web vibes when it’s not making me wonder if “Concrete” is the first actual American J-pop song I’ve ever heard. It’s not all a success, as the vocals and lyrics rarely reflect the instrumentation, which mostly invokes a quasi-experimental meets industrial, nu-metal spirit. Still, I can’t shake this one, and I keep returning to it: it feels a bit like being given pieces to several different puzzles and asked to both separate and construct them, and I for one, knowing the final picture might not result in a genuine accomplishment, am having a good time putting it all together.

Eminem: Music To Be Murdered By
(2020.01.17)

Controversy aside, I wasn’t expecting anything from a new Eminem album (the last time I noticed Eminem was seventeen years ago when he starred in a weirdly successful film that made an actual Academy-Award winner out of him), so this was a nice change from the usual Billboard-Hot-100-rap, the Top 40 being as far as my curiosity and exposure to the genre takes me, and what you hear there is mostly the rattling hi-hats of trap. It’s almost like looking into a fun house mirror, a brief reminder of why almost everyone I knew in sixth grade had memorized the words to “My Name Is” (because there were only two music videos being requested and played on The Box, and it was this or Aerosmith’s “Holy in My Soul,” that’s it, for like three years). Actually, Tom Breihan summed up what I found most moving about this album: “the thing that really sets Music To Be Murdered By apart […] is the way it flaunts Em’s obvious and overwhelming love of rap music.” And later, “the Eminem of this album sounds present and focused. He seems to love rap music again. That’s something.” Something is not to be scoffed at when you expected nothing. Trim off the dead weight (the Ed Sheeran song, definitely, but like five other tracks, too) and you’ve got something that feels close to victorious.

Sumire Uesaka: NEO PROPAGANDA
(2020.01.22)

Technically a seiyuu, Uesaka has cultivated a unique brand of off-the-wall idol-pop that is mostly due to songwriters and producers, though that doesn’t exclude her from the creative equation. In addition, she’s the perfect vehicle for the poly-tempos and speed shifts that weave throughout her poppy, techno, sound effect-heavy onomatopoeia odysseys. She fell back on a more traditional J-pop sound with NO FUTURE VACANCES, but NEO PROPAGANDA boasts song writers both old and new like Kenji Ohtsuki, Ryohei Shima of The Dresscodes, and MOSAIC.WAV who have imbue the album with all the hallmarks that have defined her sound from rolling Rs and high-pitched shrieks, to gonzo interpretations of Russian culture, all wrapped up in highly-stylized song titles like “Bon♡Kyu♡Bon wa Kare no Mono♡” and “Run Fast, Rasputin!” Unpredictability would make it an exhausting trek to the end of this album if it wasn’t so much fun; I can’t help but root for this colorful collection of odds-and-ends.

The Weeknd: “Blinding Lights”
(2020.01.21)

As someone with mixed, but mostly positive, feelings about Starboy, I was pleased with both “Heartless” and “Blinding Lights” when they were released just before the new year, the former which had, and continues to have, a ton of repeat value for me. These two songs are the well-known yin-and-yang of Tesfaye, the “Starboy” and the “In the Night,” the dark, brooding self-flagellating nightmare-scape of indie mixtapes, and the groovy, darkwave pop star who flirts with fame and Max Martin-level stardom so at least he can dance while it destroys him (is there anybody more consistently conflicted about their fame in music videos as Tesfaye and like, Ayumi Hamaski?). “Blinding Lights” finally got a video release, this one both a sequel and car advertisement that illustrates the previous point perfectly. Both songs have been getting some unique performance visuals on late night, the first when “Heartless” was performed on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert with a very cool, very re-watchable, very vertigo-inducing stage set-up, and then “Blinding Lights,” both on Colbert again, with box and audience participation, and seemingly immediately after he stumbled off the streets of the music video, on Jimmy Kimmel Live! I love when an artist goes all in on a concept, and as the term “era” (as in Starboy-era, and Like a Virgin-era) has been plucked from the trade pubs and into the tweets of the casual-listening public, I hope we get an album announcement soon, so we can put a decent name to this deliciously decadent-in-Vegas, sinfully-red jacket era and hashtag it immediately.

CY8ER: “Renai REALITY-sho”
(2020.01.22)

The electro-pop boom has long since bust, but believe it or not, there was a glorious time when Yasutaka Nakata ruled J-pop and nobody could go two weeks without some official collaboration or production credit or eager knock-off fighting for prime headphone real estate. But it’s been a while since Nakata was able to pull off anything as game-changing and seminal as his early work with Perfume, MEG, Ami Suzuki, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, or his own passion project with capsule. Still, that laundry list gives you an idea of how prolific he was and it’s not something any one can easily dismiss after a few years of disappointments. I might be losing hope of anything interesting from Perfume and Pamyu, but I see a cred with his name and my heart still skips a beat. “Renai REALTIY-sho,” for idol-group CY8ER, is a very safe and comfortable space for him. It’s the bread-and-butter of Nakata-pop, that while bereft of any depth, does give off extra thick slices of the year 2008. It’s a welcome respite from some of the forgettable, slower-paced music he’s been putting out with Perfume, and it fits CY8ER like a VR glove. Unfortunately, the video, which does have some really cool visuals, is an exploitative mess, and this pretty-good-but-nothing-special track is the highlight of their new album Tokyo. Still, it was nice, just for a few minutes, to be transported in musical time, and I hope others continue to keep their minds open to Nakata, as I believe that he is still capable of surprises. But mostly, I hope that the increasing staleness of his particular sound, like that of Tetsuya Komuro’s in the early 2000s, doesn’t hamper his ability to adapt and adjust, or discourage him from putting in the effort to grab new listeners.

LatuLatu: Mangekyou ETERNITY
(2020.01.22)

If rock is dead, I’m not sure how to even think about J-rock, which sometimes seems plagued with an identity crisis, trapped between visual-kei inspired anime-pop and indie math rock. At the wayside has fallen the type of rock music that showed both how technical and how fun the genre could be. Bands like B’z and hide with spread beaver, who didn’t take themselves too seriously, who appreciated a big hook and a satisfying riff, and didn’t suffer the type of fools who objected to chart-appreciation. This is not a lament on the State of J-rock Today, nor is LatuLatu (not 100% on the romanization here, is it LatouLatou? I’ve yet to see it in its native habitat) here to save the genre, but boy did I have more fun listening to Mangekyou ETERNITY than I have listening to J-rock in a long time. The group, which might have made my best debut list last year if I had any idea who they were two months ago, were billed by HMV as a “desktop rock unit” that gained some fame on TikTok. They released their first official single in September and their first mini-album this month, which has gotten a bit of much-needed press. If you like ONEOKROCK, you won’t find anything objectionable here, though note that the comparison applies more to the energy and earnestness of this set than ethos. Neither rock nor J-rock is dead or has ever been dead, but it’s always nice when something comes along that feels like it could breathe some fresh air into the lungs of a sometimes-anemic genre.

SixTONES: “Imitation Rain”
(2020.01.22)

The last weekly #1 for the Oricon chart this month is a doozy, the type of thing that makes me wonder who talked whom into bringing this into existence. The double A-side single featuring the debut of two Johnny’s groups, SixTONES (pronounced “stones” because the alphabet is meaningless) and Snow Man, were dropped last year, and I remember noting Snow Man’s super fun, super K-pop approach (yes, it is 2020 and J-pop is still trying to Frankenstein pieces of K-pop) not only in sound, but in production, styling, visuals, all of it. It’s nothing special, but it was different and I liked it. I would call it a success. But SixTONES’s “Imitatation Rain” is actually doing better on social media, and after finally watching the video I have no idea why: it’s like one giant step backward. The ridiculous over-the-top emoting, drama, rainfall, the spoken interlude, it all made sense when I saw the production credit for Yoshiki, X Japan’s tireless and now inescapable leader. You can go back and pick out every single Yoshiki-ism in this: the piano, the whiny, soap-opera monologue (I can’t resist, here is a sample, and try to pretend you haven’t already heard this at the end of every X Japan ballad since 1988: “What’s the meaning of life, what’s the point of getting it right? / Cause’s everything’s fake, everybody breaks. […] Breaking down, I am breaking down / peace of mind is shutting down”), the entire catalog of his favorite English vocabulary (rain, life, dreams, endless — the only one missing, I think, is crucify and scar, but I’m going off of the shortened-PV version). There is even a point at the end of the video where one of the guys plays air piano! Air piano! As choreography! I wish I could like this because I love the idea of established producers taking their talent and tackling genres outside of their comfort zone, but this is the opposite of where Johnny’s should be taking their Reiwa debuts (among other actions they should strongly reconsider), and the fact that it made #1 was purposely inevitable, rather than indicative. I’m not writing this group off just yet, but needless to say, Snow Man wins this round. I hope someone handed Yoshiki his paycheck and politely declined any further contact, but a #1 doesn’t bode well.

Dua Lip: “Physical”
(2020.01.31)

What completed Dua Lipa’s transformation into a bonafide pop star? Was it “Don’t Start Now,” and its dance floor-therapy music video? Was it the blonde hair? The homages to past pop movements stacking up like dominoes, as if to absorb the essence of all of the past greats through musical osmosis, from the Spice Girls to Kylie Minogue and now all the way back to Olivia Newton-John? Her utter commitment to the trendy nostalgia-for-the-90s Look, from performance to red carpet? Dua Lipa was great when she was just Dua Lipa, but Future Nostalgia promises something bigger and better, a Dua Lipa with enormous ambition and a record company that knows what it’s doing. This is her Oops…! I Did It Again moment, a cataclysmic pop event that Warner is drawing out in excruciating, exquisite anticipation. It’s going to be a long, hard road to April 3, but so far, I have no reason to believe it won’t be worth the wait.

Selena Gomez’s Rare: Watch her go

In many ways, Selena Gomez is a textbook pop star: she has been trained for celebrity and stardom since childhood, has had a slew of mega-famous boyfriends and personal drama that has kept her in the public eye and the tabloids, is beautiful in a way normal people are not, and despite not possessing spectacular vocal ability, has a talented team producing amazing, trendy pop music behind the scenes of her career that expertly minimizes flaws and maximizes strengths. We got a glimpse of it in her first solo, non-Hollywood Records release, Revival, back in 2015, and now we finally get Rare.

Rare feels different, not just because fans have been teased with Selena Gomez collabs and feats for years, but because the singer’s statements regarding gossip-heavy story lines involving her love life, re: Justin Bieber, mostly, but also The Weeknd’s Abel Tesfaye, feel more personal than ever. There’s no hidden message or subtext behind songs like  “Lose You to Love Me,” or “Look at Her Now,” and even in “Dance Again” and “Rare,” she’s not shy, lyrically, about claiming her own “narrative,” a casual word she tossed out on Jimmy Fallon, but a loaded buzz-word among her and fellow entertainer/close friend Taylor Swift. But they’re also a genuinely skillful set of hooks, programmed to keep the ear worms coming. It’s the album we were going to get from Camila Cabello’s Romance, until it most definitely wasn’t, and done only the way Gomez can do. As Chris DeVille wrote in his The Week in Pop column for January 9, it is the song writers and producers like veterans Justin Tranter and Julia Michaels (even Bebe Rexha has a cred on “Crowded Room,” though I was disappointed not to see a single mention of Max Martin — you can’t win them all) who are the heroes here, with  the “writing and production […] smartly catered to the subtle, breathy vocals that best serve her voice.”

Musically, it doesn’t feel as thematically on point as the lyrics, but the tension and slower pacing of the majority of the songs (“Vulnerable,” for example, and “People You Know,” the song nobody seems to like but me) make up for some of the weaker tracks like “Ring” and “Kinda Crazy.” The Target-exclusive edition comes with an additional five tracks, mainly all the feats and collabs mentioned earlier released over the last few years in the run-up to Rare, like “It Ain’t Me” and “Bad Liar.” They’re inessential and don’t belong on the album proper, so it feels right to tack them on optionally as bonus content; the “narrative” feels here and now, while the older tracks feel like shed skin, a form and size that no longer fit. Instead, Rare is both a telling and re-telling, a study and a re-examination, of fresh pain on old wounds. Scabs over scar tissue. It feels honest, but most importantly for a pop star like Gomez who is playing in the Grande leagues, it feels authentic, a collection of hits you can bop to and empathize with.

Rare is a strong opening to 2020 and it’s doubly appreciated to have it during a week and month that usually sees very little consequential work being released in any genre. And like any really good pop album, it should have the strength to at least get us through, what? The rest of this month?

Top ten albums of 2015: Honorable mentions, Bollywood, etc.

Honorable mentions:

callme’s Who is callme?: More than just Perfume knockoffs, this is a solid electro-pop debut that runs just a little long at 16 tracks.

Arashi’s Japonism: Idol seniors expand on the recent national pride movement with an album heavy on traditional instruments. I’ll give them their due.

JUJU’s WHAT YOU WANT: Fun disco-pop from an underrated stateswoman of J-pop.

AILEE’s VIVID: R&B vocal powerhouse finally given songs that aren’t just Beyonce-replicas (bonus points for the track featuring Amber).

Flower’s Hanadokei: Ballad masters hit all the sweet spots with this beautiful collection of slow-tempo torch songs.

Hey! Say! JUMP’s JUMPing CAR: Fun boy band idol pop that see-saws between cutesy idol pop and EXILE-light jams.

The Only Three Bollywood Soundtracks You Need, 2015:

01. Amit Trivedi: Bombay Velvet
02. Sanjay Leela Bhansali: Bajirao Mastani
03. A. R. Rahman: Tamasha

Top Ten English Language Pop Albums of 2015:

01. Adam Lambert: The Original High
02. Justin Bieber: Purpose
03. Ellie Goulding: Delirium
04. Selena Gomez: Revival
05. Madeon: Adventure
06. Carly Rae Jepsen: E-MO-TION
07. One Direction: Made in the A.M.
08. Hilary Duff: Breathe In. Breathe Out.
09. Marina and the Diamonds: FROOT
10. Miami Horror: All Possible Futures