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      What’s the Best Way to Honor Sophie in Song?

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      Recent tracks from Charli XCX, A.G. Cook, Caroline Polachek and St. Vincent capture the producer’s philosophy and humanity, but not necessarily her signature sound.When the producer Sophie died at 34 in 2021 after an accidental fall, it felt like a singular loss, as well as the end of a nascent era in electronic music. The innovative Scottish artist, who worked with Charli XCX, Vince Staples and Madonna, was a linchpin of the U.K.’s experimental scene in the 2010s and advocated for a radical reframing of the way creators and listeners think about music. “The language of electronic music shouldn’t still be referencing obsolete instruments like kick drum or clap. No one’s kicking or clapping,” she said in 2014. “It makes more sense in my mind to discard those ideas of polyphony and traditional roles of instrumentation.”Sophie provided a new vernacular, as well as great inspiration, for a generation of acolytes, but her own body of work was relatively small and she rarely spoke to the press, making it hard to imagine where one of pop futurism’s leading lights may have gone next. While many artists, such as the avant-garde pop duo 100 gecs and the German experimental musician Lyra Pramuk, have drawn clear inspiration from Sophie, few have captured the perilous, cutting-edge newness of her work, which reinterpreted pop music codes in disorienting, physical, textural ways.On “Lemonade,” an early calling card, she seemed to craft melody out of the sounds of popping bubbles and hissing gas canisters; “Faceshopping” turns ideas of constructed digital identity into what sounds like a construction site, whirring with the sounds of tearing metal and heavy machinery. Sophie felt that music should be a tactile, unpredictable experience — she memorably said a song should feel like a roller-coaster ride, ending with the listener buying a key ring — but a lot of attempts to reference the “Sophie sound,” like Kim Petras’s 2023 track “Brrr,” reduce the producer’s philosophy to an aesthetic of bulbous bass and scraping synths while still fitting conventional pop forms.“So I,” a song from Charli XCX’s new album, “Brat,” pays tribute to her longtime collaborator Sophie, who died in 2021.Bianca De Marchi/EPA, via ShutterstockFour recent songs by Charli XCX, A.G. Cook, Caroline Polachek and St. Vincent seem to suggest that the best way to pay tribute to a modern titan is not to emulate her at all, but to reinterpret strands of her DNA in hope of alluding to a bigger picture. These tracks reckon with Sophie’s legacy in emotional, rather than technical, ways, acknowledging the humanity within a figure who is often remembered in flattening, counterintuitively rigid portraits.The most trenchant of these songs is “So I,” the wounded core of Charli’s volatile, clubby new record, “Brat.” Over shuddering laser-beam synths — a nod to her past work with Sophie on records like “Vroom Vroom” and “Number 1 Angel” — Charli sings about regretting putting distance between herself and Sophie, whose talent awed her, while she was alive. The song is nakedly vulnerable, almost power ballad-esque in the way it builds, resembling one of Sophie’s best-known tracks: “It’s OK to Cry,” the song with which she came out as transgender and revealed her face to the public for the first time. Charli makes the link explicit on the track’s chorus: “I know you always said ‘It’s OK to cry’/So I know I can cry.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Julia Fox: The Popcast (Deluxe) Interview

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, features an interview with the actress and downtown New York icon Julia Fox, speaking on a range of topics, including:Her appearance in the recent Charli XCX music video, “360,” with a slew of other “It Girls”Being the anti-“It Girl”Making decisions after starring in the movie “Uncut Gems,” along Adam Sandler, to right-size her fameHow motherhood has changed her relationship to adventureUpcoming acting projectsHow being transparent about her wild teen years shapes how she presents nowWhat she learned, good and bad, from her relationship with Kanye WestHer new song, “Down the Drain”Pop songs made by It Girl icons Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Addison Rae, Kim Kardashian, Farrah Abraham and Naomi CampbellTrying on different creative costumes, from acting to TV hosting to musicHer favorite magazines and online mediaWhat she learned from her infamous viral apartment tour videoSnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      The Ultimate Charli XCX Primer

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      Prep for the arrival of her new album, “Brat,” with 11 songs from her catalog (and 10 bonus tracks!).Charli XCXHarley WeirDear listeners,I don’t think there’s a single song I’ve listened to more over the past few weeks than “360,” the endlessly quotable, deliriously catchy synth-pop song by one of my favorite working pop stars, Charli XCX.I believe that most great pop music strikes a precise equilibrium between the smart and the stupid, and few artists working today understand that balance more intuitively than the 31-year-old English singer-songwriter born Charlotte Aitchison, whose rich and prolific career I’m celebrating with today’s playlist. Charli’s back catalog is deep and some of her songs can be as self-referential as an episode of “Arrested Development,” so ahead of the release of her highly anticipated album “Brat” on Friday, here’s a chance to catch up.I first heard Charli’s music in 2011, when I was hypnotized by her early single “Stay Away,” a dark and immersive ballad that sounded like a photo negative of T’Pau’s 1987 bubble gum jam “Heart and Soul.” (I sequenced those two tracks back-to-back on an iPod playlist I listened to incessantly that summer.) Two years later, “Stay Away” appeared on Charli’s debut full-length, “True Romance,” a brilliant pop album that should have been as big as, say, Katy Perry’s “Prism” or Miley Cyrus’s “Bangerz” (to name two giants of 2013) but failed to break through beyond a small but fervent cult fan base that came to be known as (what else?) Charli’s Angels.Over the past decade, that fan base has grown, and Charli has come to occupy her own unique space somewhere between the A-list and the underground. She’s had flirtations with mainstream success, usually as a featured artist (her brash hook was the best part of Iggy Azalea’s 2014 smash “Fancy”) or a songwriter (you can hear her voice in the mix of Icona Pop’s 2012 anthem “I Love It,” which she helped write). But Charli has ultimately remained a little too adventurous and uncompromising for superstardom. As she put it in a recent profile for British GQ with characteristic shrugging candor, “I know that if I suffered in silence, pushed through it and didn’t say what was on my mind, and maybe got like a brow lift or whatever, I could probably operate in a more commercial world.” The singles from “Brat” find her sounding more comfortable and creatively fulfilled than ever in that middle ground. As she puts it on the kinetic “Von Dutch,” “Cult classic but I still pop.”This playlist is a chronological tour through Charli XCX’s many eras, from her time as a precocious club kid to her more recent reign as a forward-thinking pop experimentalist. Her discography is loads of fun but it can also be overwhelming, so if you’ve previously been intimidated by it, consider this a road map. I had such a hard time whittling this playlist down to 11 tracks, though, that I’ve included 10 more recommendations in the Bonus Tracks, if you’re wondering where to go next.In the meantime, grab the keys to your lavender Lamborghini, fill it up with a thousand pink balloons and get ready to party, Charli-style.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Chappell Roan’s Eye-Roll Kiss-Off, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Prince, Young Miko, the Black Keys and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Chappell Roan, ‘Good Luck, Babe!’The rising pop star Chappell Roan sends an ex-lover off with an eye roll on the wrenching “Good Luck, Babe!,” a synth-driven tune that allows the dynamic vocalist to do her best Kate Bush. The subject of the song is noncommittal and perhaps in denial of her sexuality: Roan imagines her former flame kissing “a hundred boys in bars” and eventually becoming a man’s dissatisfied wife in the aftermath of their affair. But ultimately, Roan chooses herself, singing with all her heart, “I just wanna love someone who calls me baby.” LINDSAY ZOLADZPrince, ‘United States of Division’“Everybody stop fighting/everybody make love,” Prince urged in “United States of Division,” a song previously released only as a British single B-side in 2004, alongside Prince’s album “Musicology.” It’s six minutes of deep-bottomed polytonal funk — topped with synthesizer jabs and horn lines, goaded by a hard-rock guitar riff — that veers between disenchanted verses and a conditionally optimistic chorus. Prince was hoping for the best but seeing stubborn obstacles, pondering tribalism, inequality and faith all at once and wondering, “Why must I sing ‘God Bless America’ and not the rest of the world?” JON PARELESCharli XCX, ‘B2b’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tate McRae, Dua Lipa and the Fight to Be ‘Main Pop Girl’

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicOver the past few years, one question has been hovering over the careers of some of the most well-known pop singers in the world: Have they reached the tier of Main Pop Girl?It is elite company — think Rihanna, Taylor, Ariana. But what about Dua Lipa, who has loads of hits but maybe no metanarrative? Or Tate McRae, a young up-and-comer who understands the contours of pop stardom but is still filling in the outline? Or even Charli XCX, who plays with the idea of pop stardom in a self-aware way?On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the history of the Main Pop Girl idea, its roots in stan communities and whether it’s a title conferred upon you, or one you can earn.Guests:Jason P. Frank, news writer at VultureLarisha Paul, staff writer at Rolling StoneConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      SZA’s ‘Saturn,’ and 8 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Rhiannon Giddens, Norah Jones, Les Amazones d’Afrique and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes), and sign up for The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.SZA, ‘Saturn’The song SZA introduced in a commercial during the Grammy Awards, “Saturn,” has now been separated from its credit-card plug and released to streaming services in multiple versions; one, the sped-up version, brings out its clear pop structure. But the real-time version is better. The song is about a longing for the better place that her karma has earned: “Stuck in this paradigm/Don’t believe in paradise,” she sings. Arpeggios glimmer around her; a boom-bap beat brings an undertow. Her vocal lines argue with the beat as she joins generations of Afrofuturists like Sun Ra, looking beyond Earth and insisting, “There’s got to be more.” JON PARELESLes Amazones d’Afrique, ‘Musow Danse’“Musow Danse” (“Women’s Dance”) is the title track of the jubilant new album by Les Amazones D’Afrique: a Pan-African, proudly multilingual alliance of singers and songwriters carrying feminist messages to dance floors. “Musow Danse” is propelled by gritty distorted electronics and traditional drumming; it features Mamani Keïta from Mali, Fafa Ruffino from Benin, Dobet Gnahoré from the Ivory Coast and Kandy Guira from Mali, singing (respectively) in Bambara, Fon, Bété and Mooré, and sharing the chorus, “Rise up African woman!” PARELESA.G. Cook, ‘Britpop’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      13 (Great) Songs With Parenthetical Titles

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      How Radiohead, Whitney Houston, Meat Loaf and others made a point with punctuation.Radiohead’s Thom Yorke: (Nice pic.)Mario Ruiz/EPA, via ShutterstockDear listeners,Today’s playlist is devoted to one of my absolute favorite musical conventions: the parenthetical song title.Why use parenthesis when naming a song? There are so many reasons. Sometimes it’s a rather brazen way to remind a listener of the song’s hook, in case the title itself was too obscure: “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” “Doo Wop (That Thing),” “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).”But sometimes (and these are my favorite times) the motives are a bit more inscrutable. Does “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” really need that parenthesis? Would we not know what the Quad City DJs are singing about without the clarification “C’Mon ’N Ride It (The Train)”? Are the Kinks making fun of this whole convention with “(A) Face in the Crowd”?Plus, when we’re saying these song titles aloud, are we supposed to pause between title and subtitle, or just say the whole thing like a run-on sentence? Will you know which song I’m talking about when I say “Movin’ Out” or must I specify, “(Anthony’s Song)”? The mind boggles.This playlist is here to help you through all that confusion, and to celebrate some of the best and most inventive uses of the parenthetical song title. It features some of the obvious ones, from the likes of Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin and Talking Heads, alongside a few of my lesser-known personal favorites from Charli XCX, Sonic Youth and more. I hope it provides at least one opportunity for you to (shake, shake, shake) shake your booty.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Whitney Houston: “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)”In the chorus of one of the most jubilant pop songs ever, Whitney Houston qualifies her initial demand — hey, I didn’t mean just anybody — and lays her heart on the line. Good on her for having high standards on the dance floor. (Listen on YouTube)2. R.E.M.: “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”Michael Stipe learns to stop worrying and love (or at least feel fine about) the bomb in this cheerily apocalyptic hit from R.E.M.’s 1987 album “Document.” There are already so many words in this song, the parentheses seem to shrug, what’s a few more in the title? (Listen on YouTube)3. My Chemical Romance: “I’m Not OK (I Promise)”Gerard Way is (really, really, really) not OK in this 2004 emo-pop anthem, which asks listeners to imagine a sonic alternate universe in which Freddie Mercury fronted the Misfits. Though the parenthetical promise doesn’t appear in the song’s lyrics, it appropriately kicks up the overall feeling of excess and garrulous melodrama. (Listen on YouTube)4. Charli XCX: “You (Ha Ha Ha)”This title is poetry to me. From “True Romance,” the 2013 album by one of my favorite “middle class” pop stars, “You (Ha Ha Ha)” is a beautifully scathing kiss-off — as if the very mention of this person’s existence were an inside joke not even worth explaining. Savage. (Listen on YouTube)5. Bob Dylan: “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Have Never Met)”When it comes to parenthetical titles — as with just about every other element of songwriting — Bob Dylan is an expert. “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” is an all-timer; “One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)” is a classic; “Do Right to Me Baby (Do Unto Others)” is a clever co-mingling of the sacred and profane. But this one, from his 1964 album “Another Side of Bob Dylan,” is probably my favorite. I love the way the title switches from second to third person inside the parenthesis, as if he’s turning to the audience in the middle of a conversation and mouthing, “Can you believe her?!” It mimics a similar perspective shift in the song itself, when, in the penultimate verse, Dylan goes from singing about this woman to suddenly singing to her: “If you want me to, I can be just like you,” he sings, “and pretend that we never have touched.” (Listen on YouTube)6. Otis Redding: “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay”Recorded days before his untimely death, the parenthetical prefix of Otis Redding’s enduring swan song not only specifies what he’s doing on the dock of the bay, but it gives that titular setting a human character — eyes through which this languid bayside scene is witnessed. (Listen on YouTube)7. Talking Heads: “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)”When the members of the recently (sort of?) reconciled Talking Heads recorded the instrumental tracks for their 1983 album “Speaking in Tongues,” they gave the demos unofficial titles. But even after David Byrne wrote lyrics to what would become the luminous “This Must Be the Place,” they wanted to honor the track’s original nickname, which expressed both its compositional simplicity and its childlike innocence. (Listen on YouTube)8. Janet Jackson: “Love Will Never Do (Without You)”I’m a big fan of parenthetical song titles that complete an internal rhyme — see also: Sylvester’s “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” — and an even bigger fan of this ecstatic tune from Ms. Jackson’s 1989 opus “Rhythm Nation 1814.” That key change gets me every time! (Listen on YouTube)9. Radiohead: “(Nice Dream)”The members of Radiohead are such fans of parentheses that every single track on their 2003 album “Hail to the Thief” has a subtitle — which is honestly a bit much to keep track of. I prefer this early song from “The Bends,” which has its title entirely encased in parentheses, adding to the song’s liminal, somnambulant feel. (Listen on YouTube)10. Sonic Youth: “Brave Men Run (in My Family)”Off “Bad Moon Rising,” a strange and eerie early Sonic Youth album of which I am quite partial, this ferocious squall of a song finds Kim Gordon meditating on masculinity, turning it inside out with her sly wordplay, and bellowing each lyric with a warrior’s intensity. (Listen on YouTube)11. The Rolling Stones: “It’s Only Rock’n’Roll (But I Like It)”Perhaps the spiritual inverse of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ later “Fooled Again (I Don’t Like It)”, this 1974 hit contains a truly shocking admission: The Rolling Stones … like rock ’n’ roll? I have to say, I didn’t see that one coming! (Listen on YouTube)12. Aretha Franklin: “(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman”Oh, I could have written an entire women’s studies paper on this one in college. The proper title “A Natural Woman” proposes that there’s such a thing as authentic and essential femininity, but the parenthetical totally upends that notion — the singer doesn’t need to be a natural woman to feel like one. No wonder it’s a drag classic! (Listen on YouTube)13. Meat Loaf: “I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)”It’s the Alpha (and Omega) of parenthetical song titles. Thesis and antithesis. It prompts certainly the most profound mystery in all of rock opera, and perhaps in pop music writ large: What. Is. That? Meat Loaf claimed that the answer was hidden in the song itself, and in a 1998 episode of “VH1 Storytellers,” he pulled out a chalkboard and gave a grammar lesson proposing as much. (But I choose to believe the mystery … or maybe the explanation his character gave in “Spice World.”) (Listen on YouTube)Feelin’ pretty psyched,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“13 (Great) Songs With Parenthetical Titles” track listTrack 1: Whitney Houston, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)”Track 2: R.E.M., “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”Track 3: My Chemical Romance, “I’m Not OK (I Promise)”Track 4: Charli XCX, “You (Ha Ha Ha)”Track 5: Bob Dylan, “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Have Never Met)”Track 6: Otis Redding, “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay”Track 7: Talking Heads, “This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)”Track 8: Janet Jackson, “Love Will Never Do (Without You)”Track 9: Radiohead, “(Nice Dream)”Track 10: Sonic Youth, “Brave Men Run (in My Family)”Track 11: The Rolling Stones, “It’s Only Rock’n’Roll (But I Like It)”Track 12: Aretha Franklin, “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”Track 13: Meat Loaf, “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)”Bonus tracksOn Saturday night — one of the loveliest and most temperate New York evenings all summer — I witnessed something utterly enchanting in Prospect Park, as a part of the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! summer concert series: a free show headlined by the one and only John Cale. (Earlier this year, you may recall, I devoted an entire newsletter to Cale’s vast discography.) I’ve been trying ever since to recapture the magic of that night by listening to some of the songs he played: The serene “Hanky Panky Nohow,” the rollicking “Barracuda,” and, most haunting of all, his slow, mournful deconstruction of “Heartbreak Hotel.” More

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      9 Songs From Pop’s ‘Middle Class’ That Deserve to Be Hits

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      Hear songs by Carly Rae Jepsen, Charli XCX, Troye Sivan and more.Carly Rae Jepsen, likely cutting to a feeling.Jason Cairnduff/ReutersDear listeners,On Monday, The Times published a piece by the critic Shaad D’Souza that asked a question I’ve been pondering a lot over the past decade: “What happens when a pop star isn’t that popular?”D’Souza created a taxonomy of a relatively varied assortment of musicians — among them Carly Rae Jepsen, Charli XCX, Kim Petras, Troye Sivan and Rita Ora — who embrace pop musical sounds and command devoted, internet-savvy fan bases but still operate below the visibility of “major” pop stars like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. “For these artists,” D’Souza writes, “pop stardom isn’t a commercial category, but a sound, an aesthetic and an attitude.”“Pop,” though, is of course short for “popular,” and some purists might dismiss D’Souza’s question as a futile thought experiment: If a tree in a forest releases a single that fails to crack the Hot 100, does it even make a sound? And with detractors quick to label any perceived misstep as evidence that a pop star has entered her flop era, success and failure can now feel like an irreversible binary.But there are plenty of gray areas, too, and I appreciate the optimism of D’Souza’s conclusion: Hey, it’s a living. “It may be miles away from the spectacle and flash usually associated with pop music,” he writes of this broad career trajectory, “but it does provide a path toward something that, for decades, has proved elusive for a lot of aspirant pop stars: career sustainability.”The article made me think of something I mentioned in last Friday’s newsletter: Jepsen’s recent sets at Rockwood Music Hall (save it, please!), a tiny venue into which she crammed 150 fans at a time after her outdoor concert at the larger Pier 17 was cut short because of weather. Jepsen seemed to be having a ball leading direct-to-fan singalongs with her frenzied devotees, who may not fill Swift-sized arenas, but who nevertheless adore her. With Eras Tour tickets either impossible to come by or prohibitively expensive anyway, maybe pledging allegiance to a pop star with a more modestly sized fan base is, these days, the more sustainable way to stan.Though D’Souza makes the argument that the majority of these performers operate in a relatively safe pop playground, adjusted commercial ambitions also free up many of these artists to stop chasing fickle chart trends and make bolder, stranger and more sonically adventurous pop music. I want to celebrate that freedom on today’s playlist, which culls some of my favorite songs from a few of the artists D’Souza affectionately called “pop’s middle class.”My personal favorites of these are-they-actually-pop stars are generally the more outré ones: the eternal club kid Charli XCX, the vocally dexterous former Chairlift frontwoman Caroline Polachek and the genre-omnivorous British-Japanese musician Rina Sawayama. But, as you’ll hear, I appreciate a solid Jepsen banger as much as the next Jepfriend.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Carly Rae Jepsen: “Surrender My Heart”One of my favorite songs from Jepsen’s 2022 album, “The Loneliest Time,” “Surrender My Heart” — a surging synth-pop tune about how difficult it can be to open up to the possibility of new love — has one of Jepsen’s signature anthemic choruses and even some of her wry humor: “I paid to toughen up in therapy/She said to me, ‘soften up.’” (Listen on YouTube)2. Troye Sivan, “Rush”The lusty, effervescent “Rush” is the first single from the Australian musician Sivan’s upcoming album “Something to Give Each Other.” Sivan was one of the few cast members not to embarrass himself on HBO’s recent narratively challenged series “The Idol”; it remains to be seen if that increased visibility will push him closer to pop’s A-list. (Listen on YouTube)3. Caroline Polachek: “Welcome to My Island”Maybe one of my favorite pop choruses in years? Every time I hear it, I want to shout it off the top of the mountain like the guy from that Ricola commercial: “DESIIIIIIIIIIRE! I want to turn into you!” That lyric from “Welcome to My Island” also gives Polachek’s latest album — easily one of my most-played of 2023 — its charmingly ridiculous title. (Listen on YouTube)4. Charli XCX: “Constant Repeat”“I’m cute and I’m rude with kind of rare attitude,” Charli XCX sings, summing up her own unruly musical personality on this highlight from her sleek 2022 album “Crash,” which lets a flighty would-be lover know exactly what they missed out on. (Listen on YouTube)5. Ava Max: “Million Dollar Baby”At her best, Ava Max sounds like Lady Gaga would if she were still making “Fame Monster” B-sides in 2023. I mean this as a compliment; in my opinion, most pop songs should sound like they could have been included on “The Fame Monster.” Ava Max’s biggest hit, “Sweet but Psycho” from 2019, certainly fits this description, but I’m also a fan of this driving 2022 single, which cleverly employs an interpolation of LeAnn Rimes’s 2000 “Coyote Ugly” smash “Can’t Fight the Moonlight.” (Listen on YouTube)6. Troye Sivan, “Rager Teenager!”This wistful track, from the 2020 EP “In a Dream,” shows off the softer, sparser side of Sivan’s dreamy pop. It also would have worked as an entry on last month’s exclamatory playlist! (Listen on YouTube)7. Rina Sawayama: “Bad Friend”Man, I love this one. File it under “incredibly common life experiences that no one really writes pop songs about”; Sawayama’s wrenching “Bad Friend” chronicles, to the tune of a beautifully melancholy melody, the gradual erosion of a once-close friendship. “So don’t ask me where I’ve been, been avoiding everything,” Sawayama sings, before finding solace in a chorus of people confessing that they can relate: “Put your hands up if you’re not good at this stuff.” (Listen on YouTube)8. Carly Rae Jepsen: “Cut to the Feeling”Jepsen — bless her — has an unfortunate tendency to bury some of her best work, and it’s possible that has hampered her ability to achieve another pop radio smash. Consider that the single she released after “Call Me Maybe” was a painfully twee duet with the guy from Owl City (if you don’t remember Owl City, I’m jealous of your brain), or that she kicked off her “Emotion” era by releasing as a leadoff single that excellent album’s very worst song, “I Really Like You.” (At least she got Tom Hanks in the video.) “Cut to the Feeling,” from 2015, is an absolutely perfect, ecstatic, 10-out-of-10 pop song, and if you have never heard of it before that’s because it was released on the soundtrack of a Canadian-French animated film called “Ballerina.” At least you get to hear it now! (Listen on YouTube)9. Charli XCX: “Track 10”Many of Charli’s Angels — this one included — consider the gleefully forward-thinking 2017 mixtape “Pop 2” to be Charli’s magnum opus (so far) and this epic finale to be one of her most successful experiments. D’Souza highlights Charli as a musician who has straddled the worlds of mainstream pop and its more risk-taking underground, and a clear distillation of that contrast can be heard in the two different versions she’d recorded of one particular song. “Blame It on Your Love,” from her 2019 album “Charli,” is a glossy, radio-friendly tropical house jam, complete with a by-the-numbers guest verse from Lizzo. “Track 10,” though, is something else: A wildly weird deconstruction of a pop song, culminating in an escalating bridge that sounds like it’s being sung by a malfunctioning laser printer. Some songs are so special that something would be lost by even giving them a title. So this one, fittingly, is just “Track 10.” (Listen on YouTube)Desiiiiiiiiiiire,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“The Best of Pop’s ‘Middle Class’” track listTrack 1: Carly Rae Jepsen, “Surrender My Heart”Track 2: Troye Sivan, “Rush”Track 3: Caroline Polachek, “Welcome to My Island”Track 4: Charli XCX, “Constant Repeat”Track 5: Ava Max, “Million Dollar Baby”Track 6: Troye Sivan, “Rager Teenager!”Track 7: Rina Sawayama, “Bad Friend”Track 8: Carly Rae Jepsen, “Cut to the Feeling”Track 9: Charli XCX, “Track 10” More