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pop music

Charli XCX Misses the Moment

Download a transcript. Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Wherever You Listen Sign up to receive our weekly cultural-recommendations newsletter. Once the fervor around Charli XCX’s…

Zach Bryan’s Stubborn, Shaggy New Album

In 2019, it seemed possible that the next big country star would be a Navy aviation ordnanceman from Oklahoma named Zach Bryan, who recorded scruffy videos of himself hollering fervent…

Will Geese Redeem Noisy, Lawless Rock and Roll?

On a recent Friday night, the indie-rock band Geese—which formed in New York City in 2016, when its members were still a couple of years short of the legal driving age—played the final…

Rosalía Doesn’t Want to Take It Easy

Sometimes it seems as if everyone wants to be a pop girlie. Last year, Taylor Swift counted herself among the “tortured poets,” but nowadays she is a self-described “showgirl,” having…

The Dishy Operatics of Lily Allen’s Breakup Album

In late October, two days after the British singer-songwriter Lily Allen unexpectedly released her confessional fifth album, “West End Girl,” about the breakdown of her marriage with the…

Tame Impala Is an Obsessive, Not a Perfectionist

The magic of Parker’s music—what makes his records so restless, dithery, dynamic—hinges on the minuscule yet crucial difference between perfectionism (endlessly boring) and obsession…

Do We Still Like Taylor Swift When She’s Happy?

If I were writing a song about Travis Kelce, a man I’ve never met, I would mention that he plays football, and that he has a podcast. I’d point out that he’s about to marry Taylor Swift,…

Why Does Taylor Swift Think She’s Cursed?

Since Taylor Swift launched the record-breaking Eras Tour, in 2023—a hundred and forty-nine dates, fifty-one cities, more than two billion dollars in ticket sales—she has been freakishly…

Bad Bunny’s Puerto Rican Homecoming

In 2016, a sinuous remix of a track called “Diles” began pulsing its way through streaming services and night clubs. It featured a handful of Puerto Rican performers, but the main one was…

Sabrina Carpenter’s Comedy of Errors

Earlier this summer, the pop star Sabrina Carpenter released “Manchild,” the first single from her seventh album, “Man’s Best Friend.” It’s a fluffy screed against a dude mired in an…

The Fiery Mania of Dijon’s “Baby”

Dijon Duenas has one of those voices that’s meant for televised singing competitions and gospel choirs, swooning ballads and achy slow jams. It preens and jilts, wails and whimpers, often…

King Princess’s Homecoming

After the Civil War, the German-born Jewish businessman Isidor Straus moved with his family to New York City. Straus was enterprising and handsome, with small round spectacles, an angular…

The Sleazy, Unsettling Sounds of Mk.gee

Earlier this summer, the singer and guitarist Mk.gee played two sold-out shows at the Stone Pony, a rock club just off the boardwalk in Asbury Park, New Jersey. The venue, which opened in…

Justin Bieber’s Messy, Improbable Masterpiece

In the course of Justin Bieber’s nearly twenty-year career, his music has come to be somewhat immaterial to his celebrity. For many, he is an almost Kardashian-like figure, whose songs are…

Ryan Davis’s Junk-Drawer Heart

On Easter Sunday, the Louisville-based singer-songwriter Ryan Davis opened a matinée show for Bill Callahan in the assembly room of a former Catholic school in Kingston, New York. Indoor…

Lorde Strips Down to Start Over

Lorde is contemporary pop’s greatest demystifier, and also its greatest mystic. This contradiction has animated her music from the beginning. “We aren’t caught up in your love affair,” she…

The World That ABBA Made

There is probably not a second that goes by without an ABBA song being played somewhere in the world. A remix of “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” is pulsing through a club on…

Haim Sets Off on a Rampage

This month, Haim—a three-piece rock band from Los Angeles, featuring the sisters Danielle, Alana, and Este Haim—will release “I Quit,” its fourth album and a carnal, sure-footed rebuttal…

Taylor Swift’s Master Plan

In retrospect, that Tumblr post might be one of the most important things that Swift has ever written. It has all the qualities of a good Taylor Swift song, conjuring an image of an…

Pavement Inspires a Strange, Loving Bio-Pic

I once assumed that Pavement would be forgotten by later generations, just as the knowing, sarcastic wit of the nineteen-nineties came to seem passé in the two-thousands. The band’s music…

The Rise of Megan Moroney, Emo Cowgirl

“I don’t write a whole lot of love songs,” Megan Moroney said last month, onstage at Radio City Music Hall. Fortunately, that’s not exactly true. Almost all her songs are about love,…