If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power was my #1 album of 2021, and while the commercial risk of the project was to some extent the point, I was disappointed with just how little Halsey's fanbase seems to have taken to the album -- it's already disappeared from her top 10 tracks and 'popular releases' tab on Spotify. And even when she followed it up with a much more radio-friendly Max Martin-produced single, "So Good" infamously got a kind of weird launch when Halsey posted a TikTok complaining that Capitol Records wouldn't release the song until the song went viral on TikTok (naturally, this controversy did go viral and probably helped get the song released, but it's all a sign of a pretty worrying trend with major labels putting the TikTok cart before the horse). I really like "So Good," though, I think it's a much better song than earlier pop hits like "Without Me" or "Now Or Never," and it seems to be slowly building steam at pop radio and getting a chance after a slow start on the charts. And I love the way the bridge transitions perfectly into the climactic final chorus with a bigger drum sound. Here's my 2022 singles Spotify playlist I update every month. 

Two of the biggest hits of the last few years, "Blinding Lights" and "As It Was," both have little 2-finger synthesizer leads that remind me of A-ha's "Take On Me." And "Maybe You're The Problem" definitely hasn't reached the heights of the Weeknd and Harry Styles songs, but it feels like the third "Take On Me"-core contemporary hit to make it really feel like a trend. I love those kinds of synth lines so I'm not complaining. 

American R&B radio has always been so resistant to sounds and artists from other continents so the number of Nigerian songs blowing up these days is exciting and a little unprecedented. And "Finesse" is one of this summer's Afrobeats hits that really stands out to me, "if I'm broke, that's my business" is such a hilariously great premise for a song.

My Chemical Romance are at the top of the When We Were Young bill, and this year they've been on their first tour in a decade. And I hoped their reunion would involve new music, since I thought they went out with a great album with Danger Days, and the solo releases that Gerard Way and other members of the band did while they were broken up was pretty great. But it wasn't really clear there'd be any new songs until they released "The Foundations Of Decay," and it felt like they decided to confound all expectations and release this slow 6-minute song that doesn't much resemble any of their hits (except maybe a longer, proggier version of "The Ghost Of You"). It took a while to grow on me but I'm glad they put it out, feels like a continuation of MCR's legacy as a band that follows its own muse. 

A few weeks ago we went on a road trip to Milwaukee to spend a week with my brother and mother who live out there. And while we were there my brother took me to the big annual music festival they have out there, Summerfest. We mostly wandered around eating and catching bits of different acts while waiting for The New Pornographers to play, but the best band I was introduced to that day was a different Canadian band, the Toronto quartet The Beaches. The members of the band each wore a different bright color, very Power Rangers/Powerpuff Girls, but I was really impressed by their songs and their musicianship. So I've been enjoying their previously released music, and then they released this excellent new single a few weeks after the show I saw. 

One of the things that Baz Luhrmann's Elvis did a pretty good job with was acknowledging the black musicians who influenced Elvis Presley, including the first artist who recorded "Hound Dog," Big Mama Thornton, who was portrayed in the movie by Shonka Dukureh. And the lead single from the soundtrack, Doja Cat's "Vegas," riffed on "Hound Dog" with a sample of Dukureh's performance in the movie. Sadly, Shonka Dukureh died last month, weeks after making her feature film debut and appearing on a Top 40 hit by one of pop's current biggest stars, very sad that she passed just as her career was really taking off. I like thing song a lot more than most of the Planet Her singles, too, that part where she says "DOG" in one line and "FRAUD" in the next line always makes me think that she's gonna say "FROG." 

"Big Energy" is terrible, but it's one of those huge career-making hits that ends up being hard to follow up. And the second single from Latto's 777, "Sunshine" has already kind of lost momentum and she's released a non-album single, "Pussy." But I think "Sunshine" is a really catchy track with a great Lil Wayne verse. That said, the Childish Gambino feature is weird and surprising, since Donald Glover has done so little music in the two years since he released the 'last' Childish Gambino album and said he was retiring the name -- it kind of feels like just wanted to do a "my sons are mulatto" punchline on a Latto track. And Gambino has always kind of felt like a bad Lil Wayne knockoff as a rapper to me, so it's very on-the-nose to finally hear them on a song together for the first time using the same flow. 

I thought Muse had a few pretty enjoyable singles earlier in their career. But it kind of feels like they've gone this rabbit hole of doing the same kind of dystopian vaguely political anthems over and over with diminishing returns. And now it just feels they're starting to sound like Kilroy Was Here era Styx, it's just awful. A shame, because the Craig Zobel film Compliance is one of my favorite movies of the 2010s.