I’m hesitant to publicly promote Kim Petras due to her continued association with Dr. Luke, but there’s no denying I listened to Clarity a lot this year. For better or worse, her music is highly addictive, and it’s hard to give up once you’re hooked. This song leans heavily into trap influences, a departure from Petras’ past bubblegum pop, but its dark, edgy atmosphere works surprisingly well. Her slightly nasal vocals are perfectly suited to the sort of woe-is-me emo delivery required by lines like “Before I close my eyes/I think of all the lies” and “Said you want a break/Then you broke my heart.” That being said, if supporting Petras feels too morally sketchy, there’s plenty of other pop music out there.



LIZ’s mixtape, Planet Y2K, released last month, is a bit of a mixed bag for me. I enjoy it a lot, and some of it borders on brilliant, but it sticks a bit too closely to its turn-of-the-century inspiration at times, leaving LIZ sounding more like a faceless voice on a Eurodance track than a popstar with a distinct personality of her own. That being said, this song, to borrow its own phrasing, “sparkle[s] in a way you’ve never seen.” It’s a bit surprising that a track produced by Dylan Brady, one half of 100 gecs, could sound so glistening and pristine. There’s a bit of weirdness, though, in the vocal processing, which momentarily makes LIZ sound like a vocaloid from 2119, like she’s performing in two timelines simultaneously.



Perfume Genius has a pretty solid track record at this point, and I’ll eagerly lap up just about anything he releases. For the bulk of this year, Mike Hadreas has been working on a dance performance piece that also contains new music, and “Pop Song” is a small taste of it. Reminiscent of No Shape standout “Die 4 You,” it’s expansive and nuanced, placing Hadreas’ fluttering phantom of a voice front and center as it undergoes several dreamy permutations. Built around throbbing beats and pulsing synths, it’s what you’d expect a piece catered to interpretative dance to sound like, but with that indefinable Perfume Genius spin. In other words: just your typical pop song, right?



The singles Rosalía released this year never quite reached the heights of last year’s monumental El Mal Querer, but two-part Fucking Money Man came the closest. Its first half, “Milionária,” maintains a more mainstream Latin pop sound, but with its earworm of a chorus and insanely short runtime, it’s difficult not to want to hear it again and again. “Dio$ No$ Libre Del Dinero” is also highly addictive because it’s so short but for different reasons, too. This is the song giving me hope that the sort of experimentation heard on El Mal Querer isn’t a thing of the past. Like that album’s “De Aquí No Sales,” it’s built like one massive loop, Rosalía’s voice circling around itself like a mystical, mesmerizing snake devouring its own tail.



Sevdaliza’s voice has never met a melody it can’t make entirely its own. She was less prolific this year than usual, releasing only two songs, but this one has refused to leave my head since I first heard it. The lyrics are simple, but rendered in Sevdaliza’s voice, heavy and rich like it’s dripping with jewels, they suddenly sound like the most poignant words ever uttered: “It’s a perfect world/I’m the perfect girl/You’re the nightmare/And I am the dream.” The more she repeats these lines, the more they sound like incantations to render some sacred magic, an impression that is only strengthened by the witchy synth build-up in the song’s second half.



I was totally into Slayyyter’s brand of trashy throwback hyperpop last year, but she’s somewhat lost me over the past few months. Her self-titled mixtape is undoubtedly fun, but the new tracks don’t give me the same insane sugar rush as songs like “BFF” and “Hello Kitty” (not to mention, the way the vocals were recorded and mixed physically hurts my ears). In my opinion, “Alone,” produced by Ayesha Erotica, is the last really exciting single she released, but it’s a whopper (and, oops, technically released last year). It sounds like Britney Spears on a bender, petulant baby voice dialed up to eleven, clashing mechanical beats head-butting each other into oblivion. As aggressive as the backdrop is, Slayyyter herself sounds almost sweet when she informs the song’s subject, “I think that you belong alone.”



Did anyone really expect me to go a full year without mentioning SOPHIE? As if last year’s acclaimed (and this blog’s favorite) album, OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES, wasn’t impressive enough, she decided to go and turn it into an absolutely insane 90-minute non-stop remix version for good measure. I keep coming back to this track in particular, which turns “Whole New World/Pretend World” from a staggering, bleak epic into the sugary electropop song that was always buried within. With an assist from Doss, it alternates between cutesy high-pitched vocal passages and pulsating crescendos of clubby bliss. This must be what it feels like to ascend to dance heaven.



I don’t know much about this band, but a friend put this song on a mix for me, and it’s one of those intensely cathartic ballads that makes you go completely still in your bed at one in the morning and contemplate deep truths that dare not reveal themselves in the light. I wouldn’t be speaking from experience about that or anything, it’s just a hunch. Anyway, it’s a good song and an intriguingly cryptic one, too, the words bare and impressionistic, matching the forlorn opening of acoustic guitar set to the sound of crashing waves. Eventually, the song’s sound opens up, as singer Shannon Lee compares herself to a candle, wailing, “For if I don’t burn, I’ll run.”



By all accounts, the CGI remake of The Lion King was a bad idea, but at least it gave us some more amazing music by Beyoncé. Her decision to center traditional African sounds and seek out lesser-known black artists from across the globe is admirable, and many of the results are downright stunning. This song stood out to me from first listen. It’s one of the most stuffed in terms of contributors, but the end result is surprisingly focused, a relentlessly energetic ode to being a woman in charge of her own destiny: “They’ll never take my power.” Beyoncé herself turns out a memorable verse, but she cedes the majority of the spotlight to her featured artists, who all sound like they’re having a blast.



I never cared much for Tove Lo before, and most of the songs on Sunshine Kitty sound, for lack of a better term, basic, but they’ve wormed their way into my brain anyway - especially this one, a slinky, sultry disco groove featuring a true queen of the dancefloor, Kylie Minogue. It’s a refreshingly self-aware song about taking one’s jealousy toward an ex who has moved on out on his new girlfriend. “None of it is your fault/And when I hate on you, I’m breaking the code,” Kylie admits during her verse; at the same time, she argues that it’s “hard to be fair to you when I got my heart broke.” It’s not the most nuanced take, but it is an unexpectedly complex turn for a song that sounds so carefree.



Since staging a comeback late last year, Uffie has been busy, releasing not only an EP but a number of loose singles and collaborations. So many years after “Pop the Glock,” once reviled, now legendary, it’s hard to imagine a more mature Uffie picking up where she left off - and she doesn’t try. But she’s still making exciting left-of-center pop music; it’s just a little more refined and low-key this time around. On this song, she takes on the persona of a heartbroken indie pop crooner, pouting over acoustic guitar that ultimately transforms into lo-fi electropop. “My heart keeps beating/My heart keepings beating,” goes the plaintive chorus before Uffie hits us with the real kicker: “My heart keeps beating the shit out of me.”



London-based, Singapore-born electronic artist yeule has emerged recently as a singular and innovative artistic voice. Her debut album, Serotonin II, lags a bit due to questionable sequencing, but it’s full of exciting surprises. This is one of its more experimental tracks, a breathtaking sound collage of yeule’s angelic cut-and-paste vocals. The weightlessness of her delivery contrasts with the more abrasive elements that occasionally peek through the gauzy veil, which culminate in a stuttering sample that resembles the incessant beeping of a dial tone. While something like “Pretty Bones” may be more accessible (as well as a better indicator of her usual sound), the inscrutability of this track has haunted me since first listen.