#gnjsoty2k25

[groovesnjams]

9'''N'''j Sºτ¥ 20xxv

nº 11 / 50

"Starburst" by Danny Brown

DV:

Some of my favorite songs are short ones, but if there's one thing I've learned from getting older it's moderation and I simply do not want every song to be 2 minutes and change, which this year (and even on this list) they more and more were. So the moment what "Starburst" won me over was at about 2:20 when it goes into a breakdown, then through a wormhole to another galaxy, and then, instead of ending, improbably enough that it surprised me, Danny Brown keeps on rapping over a beat even more wild than the one he started with. I'll admit here that I miss the old Danny Brown, the one who pushed Rustie to new heights and was himself pushed in turn, so "Starburst" is what I didn't know I was hoping for: the kind of frenetic beat and flow that no one else can pull off with this level of ease and panache, a prog-rap opus that feels like the culmination of Brown's recent flirtations with hyperpop and adjacent scenes.

MG:

I’ll concur with everything that DV wrote and add an additional detail I loved: the way this song is about both the grandness of the universe and watered down ketchup at the same time. It’s quintessentially Danny Brown, the piece of him that bridges the old and the new. He’s always pushed boundaries while capturing the often sad minutia of everyday life. And despite reference to the stock market, which might suggest he’s so rich as to be out of touch, Brown’s still in touch enough with that half of his life to call back to “Monopoly.” One other tiny detail that makes “Starburst” indelible? Danny Brown joins Nathan Fielder in the great 2025 Evanescence redemption arc. Where will they intersect next?

[groovesnjams]

9'''N'''j Sºτ¥ 20xxv

nº 4 / 50

"Rave Immortal" by ALT BLK ERA

DV:

Frenetic and abrasive and irresistible, "Rave Immortal" is the best example of 2000s-revival I've heard yet, the kind that transcends nostalgia and becomes something entirely its own. It helps that ALT BLK ERA borrow equally from Pixies' classic loud-soft-loud dynamic, that they throw it into a blender with wub and chiptune effects that would've been at home in a Skrillex set during peak dubstep, and most of all that they've got hooks to spare. This isn't aesthetic for its own sake, it's a brash combination of influences that together evoke a party outside time and space, eras and attitude mashed together to create something unmistakable. "Rave Immortal" invokes the apocalypse pop of the late 2000s, too, only to speed past it in a blur of possibility: "Take a chance, jump through that portal" they chant, urging us further up and farther in to a new reality, reaching for a utopia where the party doesn't end even if the world might. "Rave Immortal" doesn't ignore the physical limitations of reality - in a darkly funny moment, Nyrobi Beckett-Messam sings about throwing her guts up - but in its unwavering dedication to the unifying power of the rave, it strives for something transcendent. To quote a modern philosopher, there is much pain in the world, but not in this room: communities and societies and countries may come and go, but music and dance will live forever.

MG:

I fear that with the re-trenchment of Y2K aesthetics our brief flirtation with a nu-metal revival may be DOA, but whenever I catch glimpses of it, as with “Rave Immortal,” it remains tantalizing. Nu-metal is the first genre of music I ever pretended to like to impress a boy and for that reason, absorbing so much of its Mountain Dew and white boy aggression at the tender age of twelve, it will forever be seared into my psyche. ALT BLK ERA are the exact refresh the genre needs. Anger, but for party reasons. Glitch, but in the anime way. “Rave Immortal” is fully there, the exact sort of song you can violently rage to in the company of the pit.

[groovesnjams]

9'''N'''j Sºτ¥ 20xxv

nº 9 / 50

"Headphones On" by Addison Rae

DV:

We all know time has no meaning any more, but it's still a shock to do the math and realize this month marks eight years since my last cigarette. A friend joked that Addison Rae needed to find a better coping mechanism, but the complicated thing about it is after all this time I'm not sure one exists. Drugs are overdetermined as a category, at least in the USA where our government has been fighting a losing war against them for decades, but cigarettes might be exceptionally so: they remain a symbol of cool even after everything, and the hook for "Headphones On" isn't just about smoking, it's about what the cigarette represents. As of yet there's no metaphorical replacement for the particular tangle of disaffection, connection, insouciance, pain and pleasure that one symbolizes. Anyway: I don't love that I know exactly what "Guess I gotta accept the pain/ Need a cigarette to make me feel better" means, but I do feel I can speak for anyone who's smoked and say it hits harder than almost any other lyric this year. (Long ago Kurt Vonnegut called smoking "a fairly honorable form of suicide", and that's always stuck with me: a cigarette makes you feel better but it also makes you worse.) Addison Rae is someone I remain skeptical of thanks to her culture vulture past, but this year she got a whole lot better. "Headphones On" is strongly influenced by trip-hop, but producers ELVIRA and Luka Kloser make it sound entirely contemporary, a banger that pulls from another era without caring too much about fidelity. "Headphones On" is wish fulfillment: the world continues on after the cigarette - and song - end; you can never escape forever. But sometimes it helps to pretend, if only for a few minutes.

MG:

My unpopular opinion is that Addison Rae has always been great, just complicated – like all great people are. She’s willing to have fun with pop culture in risky ways – my personal favorite from this past year was when she wore an original Gypsy Rose Lee dress for a Fallon performance the week Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl dropped. I want to believe that Addison can harness all the charisma of Y2K Britney but because she chooses to and not because she’s compelled to by the dark miasma that swirls around her at all times. I want to believe she can triumph over a system that only sees her as an object and a commodity. I’m not totally sure that’s possible, for any woman, ever. But if it is, her debut record – the pop record of the year – is a fantastic start. Any of her singles could have made the top of our list, but “Headphones On” really speaks to the bleakness of pop stardom. I’m probably reading the text a bit too deeply but I can’t shake the idea that “headphones” refers to her hot pink wig, the same one Britney wore when she needed a new persona to navigate constant invasive paparazzi attention. Putting your headphones on is disguising yourself, protecting the real you from an unwanted gaze. Even this relatively unpalatable dynamic of fame seems to be something Addison desires – “life’s no fun through clear waters” she insists. I’m trepidatious but excited to hear where her murky river winds next.

[groovesnjams]

9'''N'''j Sºτ¥ 20xxv

nº 13 / 50

"You Killed The Music" by Debbii Dawson

DV:

At a work event this year I had the misfortune of being in a group when "Dancing Queen" started playing and a someone asked what she thought was the rhetorical question, "Who doesn't like ABBA?" Reader: I do not ever volunteer that I am an ABBA hater. But I also cannot stand by and pretend to be something I'm not, so unfortunately I outed myself and had to weather the shock and confusion of my work friends. It wasn't that bad, we moved on quickly, but it was a reminder of how beloved that massive group are even now, when Mamma Mia 3 is but a blur on the horizon. Debbii Dawson definitely loves ABBA, and Queen, and a whole slew of late-70s arena fillers, with a passion I have never and will never share. But in her hands, these influences very much work for me. The difference is mainly down to her voice, which sounds lush whether she's crooning a mournful intro or making triumphant punctuation out of "Aha/ aha-aha", which here sounds like the year's most essential nonsense syllables. "You Killed The Music" is undeniably a little cheesy - writing a song about songwriting never isn't - but Dawson leans into the melodrama and turns it into the kind of song that you can imagine playing at a wedding (or a work party) a few decades from now.

MG:

You know, there’s also a bit of something the hip kids won’t acknowledge surfing around in Debbii Dawson’s sea of influences – Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. I hear it both in the corny conceit of loss of love as loss of music and in the intense theater kid energy of this whole production. It clearly does not take place on the pop charts; this is bound for Broadway, baby! I generally do not have much patience for this aesthetic because there’s something really snide that underlies all musical theater, but Dawson’s performance is spectacular. She’s crisp and precise, absolutely owning this song and Sabrina Carpenter’s year along with it. This is not reheated nachos, this is leftovers with a fried egg on top.

[groovesnjams]

9'''N'''j Sºτ¥ 20xxv

nº 14 / 50

"Shake It To The Max (Remix)" by MOLIY, Shenseea, Skillibeng, Silent Addy

DV:

Maybe it was just my listening habits this year, but it felt like a weak one for floor-filling bangers - I only heard a handful, and most didn't stick. Or maybe it was just that nothing the year could hope to equal "Shake It To The Max." Moliy's been slowly building a lane where this is simply what she does: be the magnetic center of a posse cut, embodying the sort of party that feels like it could last forever. Here she's joined by a crew who nearly equal her. Shenseea in particular stands out; she doesn't get as much space as Skillibeng but makes the most of it. But it all comes back to Moliy: Shenseea might say she's "hotter than jollof", but Moliy's already moved on, all she wants is to find some to eat. "Shake It To The Max" is big enough for any club, but at the house party in my heart she's the focal point that the festivities revolve around, the unofficial master of ceremonies, the one everyone wants to get a word with even though she's too busy working it out on the dancefloor.

MG:

“Please just rewind, let me shake it to the max” is a feeling we all experience, the desire to relive a moment of bliss in order to maximize its perfection. It’s a fraught wish, one that diminishes the real joy of the firsthand encounter in favor of pursuing a fantasy high that can never be realized. And yet, it’s also its own flavor of bliss – yearning. Yearning is an energy and it’s captured best here on “Shake It To The Max.” That spark propels the dancefloor toward ecstasy, but Silent Addy’s production never feints in that direction. Instead it’s restrained and controlled, even the titular plea is emotionless and direct. This is one banger worthy of standing alone.

[groovesnjams]

9'''N'''j Sºτ¥ 20xxv

nº 15 / 50

"ict" by Oklou

DV:

At any given time I have four or five pints of ice cream in my freezer, which I rotate through but eat eat some of every day. Right now there's peach cobbler, rose pistachio, lemon blueberry parfait, and pumpkin spice (out of season!) I am trying to break this habit by baking complicated cookies and eating those instead, which has been working as a strategy for the last couple weeks but has years of ingrained habit to overcome before it can be considered successful. This is just to say it's not entirely unreasonable that it hadn't occurred to me until now that on "ict" Oklou is likely using a metaphor rather than singing an ode to literal ice cream. But part of the blame must also lie with the immersive soundscape of Oklou's production, which renders the lyrics almost irrelevant. "ict" trills and swirls and slows and speeds, but it's a spell that never breaks. Oklou had an incredible year - and performed one of the best shows I saw, accompanied by just a giant sheet stretching diagonally to the ceiling and a keyboardist (Casey MQ, who cowrote this.) But her peak was a song that is probably not actually about ice cream.

MG:

Last year we picked Oklou’s “harvest sky,” a decidedly autumnal offering, and this year we’re back with winter’s delight, “ict.” Don’t let the lyrics fool you, this is too airy, too whipped, too crusted with icy sparkles to be about summer and its oppressive humidity and indignant sweat. Even when Oklou goes light it’s still surrounded by the darkness that blanketed “harvest sky” – there’s something haunting about the way the song spins endlessly around itself and her insistence that she “cannot run anymore” rings ominous. For a song that draws inspiration from the tinny jingle of an ice cream truck, “ict” is also surprisingly faceted, full of little aural scribbles anchored by orchestral brass. In practice it sounds like the ballerina in a child’s jewelry box, twirling amidst the chaos of a busy weekday morning.

[groovesnjams]

9'''N'''j Sºτ¥ 20xxv

nº 16 / 50

"S.M.O." by Amaarae

MG:

There is a darkness and an utter depravity to “S.M.O.” that draws on everything from the Weeknd’s drug fueled nihilism to 90s gonzo porn to African and Caribbean dance music. The production is gorgeous – warmth pulsating through the dark club, filled with retrofuturistic synth and percussion – and the lyrics match that buoyant energy with the ice blue core of the flame. Amaarae sounds uniquely desperate and powerful, sometimes within a single turn of phrase like “I want to meet the God that made you” or “I want a week with her, she tastes like lexapro.” There’s a perverse arrogance to thinking you could meet God but she packages it inside longing and reverence that subvert her dominance. The sexual dynamics at play in “S.M.O.” are both the song’s outrageous centerpiece and so opaque as to be the fog disguising the whole room. It’s this thrilling charge that makes “S.M.O.” undeniable.

DV:

In "S.M.O.", I'm not hearing darkness so much as control - a sense of complete confidence that infuses the song with purpose. Amaarae has cited Janet Jackson as an reference point and this is perhaps the best sort of 80s influence to encounter after living through two decades of producers draining synth pop of all novelty: "S.M.O." doesn't try to echo the distinctive funk swing of Janet's breakthrough, it draws from the strength, the self-possession that made Control sui generis. Amaarae knows exactly what she wants and how to get it, and I suppose "S.M.O." can almost intimidating in its directness, but it is still flirting, and it is still fun. How dark can a song be when the singer at one point describes going down on her lover as being "on the scene like evening news"?

[groovesnjams]

9'''N'''j Sºτ¥ 20xxv

nº 20 / 50

"Max Potential" by Nourished by Time

MG:

No one juxtaposes our sick capitalist culture with tender human relationships like Marcus Brown. The sample that opens “Max Potential” and gives it its title is a bit of deranged corpo-speak that insists we’re on Earth to maximize our potential. In reprisal, Brown penned an ode to struggle and complexity – the true foundation of life on Earth. Quietly, he sings “I’m in love, I’m in love” and lets the hush of his words stand in relief of the song’s monster hook. Whether you’re grinding or rotting, “Max Potential” has such a sticky chorus that it could worm into anyone’s heart. Here’s hoping the Trojan horse works.

DV:

It's unclear to me whether this is a love song or a breakup one, which is maybe the point. Feeling crazy, feeling like only love might save you (romantic, communal, I guess self-, take your pick, they all pretty much work) feeling like the two are the same thing, Marcus Brown's hit on what might be one of the core experiences of this decade. And when I say hit: the way the chorus explodes into being like a firework is truly one of the most magnificent production achievements of the year, a moment so good it works every single time Brown drops that pitch-shifted vocal sample and fuzzed-out guitar chord. It's intensely gorgeous, a monument in sound.