Your Mom Called, I Polled Her (The World Cup Of 2023 Last 16)

With the 2023 poll nearly over I thought I’d run down the Peoples Pop Last 16, maybe even rank them. I came to almost all these new at the start of the poll so it’s just been the last month that they’ve grown and shrank on me. This is going to be live to everybody until the poll ends, then will be only for patrons.

Tracks arranged from worst to best, for a rousing and optimistic finale.

6

Billie Eilish - “What Was I Made For?”: Sort of unplaceable in that I haven’t seen Barbie, and normally with soundtrack songs that doesn’t really matter, but the knowledge that it’s from the film means it’s stranded between two worlds: I can’t hear the lyrics without thinking “is this… about a doll?” but I don’t have the context that might make that idea more rich or moving. On its own terms this is placid, well-constructed loveliness, I sort of wish Billie Eilish would get growly again.

Paramore - “Running Out Of Time”: This isn’t bad - none of these are bad - and I know people who swear by Paramore’s new, more ragged sound. It’s not working for me, though - the turn to a more subdued, introspective sound comes across as diffident to me and I bounce off it.

Miley Cyrus - “Flowers”: I spent a lot of time this poll with “Flowers” stuck in my head, which underlines why this thing got to #1 for a million weeks last year, and makes it the “As It Was” of the 2023 poll - on first play I was all ‘why was this even a hit?’ and then it wouldn’t leave my brain for weeks. I can appreciate “Flowers”’ tough break-up survivor AOR ballad more than I like it. In the darkish days of 2019 I’d have loved Cyrus’ beautifully bitter “Slide Away” (about the same split, I think!) to have a run at #1 - but this has “6 on Popular” written all over it, assuming I get that far.

Young Fathers - “Rice”: Try as I might I can’t get my head around this track, which is symptomatic of a wider thing with the band. “Rice” is quite subtle, an understated groove with some meaningful, mumbleful rapping on top, but it won’t ever stick in my head. Enquiries made, answers returned - they’re a great live band. Fair enough.

Olivia Rodrigo - “Bad Idea Right?”: I really liked this at first but grew increasingly restless with it and her other one’s overtaken it for me now. I liked Rodrigo’s 2021 tracks - “Good 4 U” especially - as a straightforward, energetic retro sound with a charismatic singer on top. On “bad idea right?” she’s more theatrical, constantly pausing the music to finish clever lines or drop sotto voce ad libs. It’s the sort of thing that Taylor Swift does once a hit, and a whole song of it is a risk (though see later). So it initially felt like there was more going on, but on repeated plays it’s too cute, to the point of exhaustion.

7

Olivia Rodrigo - “Get Him Back”: The opposite journey here - couldn’t stand this one at first, seemed like really leaden stomp-stomp-clap-clap cheerleader type music. It’s surprisingly rare - given I am in fact getting quite old - for me to feel too old for music but Olivia Rodrigo manages it. But then on subsequent plays I came to feel there was more to the track, especially in the last minute or so. So the Olivia positions flipped. (The Olivia track I wish we’d polled was “Vampire”, which from memory makes the ‘theatre’ and ‘rock’ elements jar uneasily with each other rather than try to integrate them. But maybe I’d be just as tired of that if I heard it a lot.)

Corinne Bailey Rae - “New York Transit Queen”: A very solid, enjoyable garage rocker, on somewhat White Stripesy lines, whose main appeal seemed to be the shock factor that it’s by Corinne Bailey Rae of all people. The pop equivalent of Storm getting that mohawk. Apparently the LP lives up to it - I will check that out.

Yussef Dayes - “Black Classical Music”: Like the Mercury Prize we now have a jazz entry. Unlike the Mercury (well, like all previous Mercuries) it got kicked out. I can’t really speak to the quality here because I only listened all through this a couple of times - it sounded impressive though, especially the cresting, complex rhythms the piece builds itself around.

Boygenius - “Not Strong Enough”: Thought this would be a lock for progression - the album is one of this year’s most praised, and everyone seems to agree this is the standout. I chafed a bit at the idea, but “Not Strong Enough” finally started working for me just as it got chucked out, when I got used enough to its 90s scrapbook wistfulness to appreciate the song underneath.

NewJeans - “Super Shy”: NewJeans push prettiness just to the edge of being completely vacuous and the tension between being something and nothing is what makes “Super Shy” compelling - is this a song or have I left my Switch on a menu screen? If I’m enjoying it, does that matter? The NewJeans track I adored in this poll was the crystalline DnB “Ditto”, a sort of vaporwave elevation of the ‘PinkPantheress Sound’ (see below) into something truly heavenly. But it got binned so this will have to do.

8

Mitski - “My Love Mine All Mine”: I’m not a big Mitski expert - in fact I’m barely knowledgeable - but her other track, “Bug Like An Angel”, had more of what I like about her, those lyrical or melodic turns where the track goes somewhere subtly different and unsettling from what I expected. But the fact “My Love Mine All Mine” doesn’t do that is probably what makes it a perfect miniature of Mitski-ness and her breakthrough! chart! hit! I’m very happy she’s finally in Pollhalla too.

PinkPantheress ft Ice Spice - “Boy’s A Liar Pt 2”: What a difference a year makes. “Boy’s A Liar Pt 1” - PinkPantheress’ shift away from her trademark soft DnB into a kind of broader electro-R&B-pop  sound - stiffed in the qualifiers of the 2022 poll, going out to Spiritualized. Fast forward, add Ice Spice (sounding, as usual, like she did her bit in 10 minutes while looking at her phone) (complimentary), and “Liar Pt 2” becomes a huge international hit. Meanwhile PP’s old sound is everywhere - she’s lowkey the most influential pop musician of the decade so far. (I still like her early stuff a bit more though).

Lana Del Rey - “A&W”: Sparked a Bluesky discussion of “Most Songs” - not the best, not the most important songs in an artist’s discography but the ones which are Most Them. “A&W” takes Lana Del Rey as far as she can go along one axis of Lana Del Rey-ness; her “Station To Station”, a complete assertion of persona that’s also an extremely bad trip and the - to riff on Chris O’Leary here - qlippothic underside not of her career but of the entire era of theatrical pop it’s situated in. (I’ll show you Midnights alright.) If you never liked LDR in the first place, this is strychnine, and a 7 minute dose to boot.

9

Megan Thee Stallion - “Cobra”: One of the great things about the end of year poll is the stress-testing of tracks across rounds. This did nothing for me on first encounter, because I wasn’t really listening to Megan’s raps, which on second play showed themselves as terrific: as blunt but defiant an admission of mental health struggles as I’ve heard from any MC, up there with Kendrick Lamar’s raps on the topic. It’s also, as one commenter pointed out, “the best rock song in the poll”, climaxing with a sweet guitar solo.

Chappell Roan - “Red Wine Supernova”: This shares a co-writer with “bad idea right?” and some of its box of tricks, but I like what Chappell Roan does with them vastly more. Maybe she’s just a better actress for theatre-pop, but her asides and good lines genuinely sound like she’s just come up with them (she sounds so excited at the rabbit joke!), and her gleeful horniness sounds more felt than almost anything else on this list. On the original playlist this came shortly after “A&W” and made Lana’s world-weariness sound jejune and forced - and I like “A&W” a lot. Roan can tip into wackiness on some tracks but there’s something of 94-era Jarvis Cocker about her delight in singing about fucking.

Nia Archives - “Off Wiv Ya Headz”: Some grumbling from commenters along the lines of this just being a remix of an old Yeah Yeah Yeahs song, or to be more accurate a remix of an old YYYs remix (the A-Trak mix of “Heads Will Roll”, which lends “Off Wiv Ya Headz” its structure but sounds to me like you-had-to-be-there blog house, apologies to its fans). This complaint is true, and let’s be honest, nothing here is new, but I prefer to see this song as an absolutely rinsing amen break workout which happens to borrow bits of Karen O and the lads. For better or for worse, most of the last 16 in a year-end poll will be exercises in nostalgia and magpie-picking of older sounds - the fresher stuff ends up in the B-Sides. In which case, give me DJ Hype over Sum 41 any day.