Monthly Report: September 2024 Singles
1. Ella Langley f/ Riley Green - "You Look Like You Love Me"
Country music is the second-best genre for soaking in the diversity of America's regional accents (after hip-hop), I love hearing a singer with a distinctive drawl and looking up where they're from. Ella Langley and Riley Green are both from Alabama and their voices sound great together on "You Look Like You Love Me," which is Langley's first real hit and quickly becoming the biggest song for the more established Green as well. Unsurprisingly they already have another duet out, "Don't Mind If I Do," which doesn't have the same distinctive talk-singing verses but is also pretty good. Here's the 2024 singles Spotify playlist that I update every month.
2. Jordan Adetunji - "Kehlani"
I interviewed the Baltimore rapper Rye Rye 12 years ago when she released a major label album through M.I.A.'s N.E.E.T. imprint, and since then her voice (specifically her saying "what" on Blaqstarr's 2007 track "Shake It To The Ground") has become a really frequently used sample in Baltimore club music and then Jersey club and then a whole array of other styles of music. For three years in a row, a song with the Rye Rye "what" loop has appeared on the Hot 100 -- first Drake's "Currents," then Drake and 21 Savage's "Calling For You," and now Jordan Adetunji's "Kehlani." As I said in my last Remix Report Card, I was skeptical about "Kehlani" because there's been a whole pattern of unknown dudes getting hits by naming mediocre songs after famous women the last few years, but it's grown on me a lot since it's really crossed over from being a streaming hit and has gotten heavy radio play.
3. Lisa f/ Rosalia - "New Woman"
I noted here a couple years ago that Tove Lo has worked with lots of Max Martin-adjacent producers but had only done one album track with Martin himself. But Tove Lo co-wrote the new Martin-produced solo single by Lisa from Blackpink and it's so fucking good, totally reminds me of Blue Lips and makes me excited about the prospect of Tove Lo writing a bunch of giant hits for major artists with Max Martin. It's also just fun to think that a Korean artist and a Spanish artist worked with some Swedes to make something to appeal to the American market. The video is also killer, maybe the best thing Dave Meyers has directed since Missy's heyday.
4. Mustard f/ Travis Scott - "Parking Lot"
I think Mustard is more versatile than he gets credit for, and has a lot of great songs that aren't with west coast rappers. But sometimes his solo projects go heavy on collaborations with southern rappers that aren't that great, like the Migos one from his last album. I was pleasantly surprised by "Parking Lot," though, especially because the last Mustard/Travis Scott single, 2016's "Whole Lotta Lovin'" was a tedious EDM thing. "Parking Lot" chops a vocal sample from a '70s gospel record in a really cool way and it's one of the rare times I feel like Travis Scott found a really nice pocket on an uptempo beat and it doesn't have all the fussy beat switches he puts on his own records.
5. Halsey - "Ego"
Halsey's last album was my favorite of the decade so far and I know her upcoming album probably isn't going to sound a whole lot like If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power, but I think it's probably gonna be pretty cool. I really like her latest Greg Kurstin-produced single, and the day after she performed it at the VMAs, I tweeted a silly joke about the lyrics, and Halsey herself responded, which was pretty surreal.
6. Taylor Swift - "I Can Do It With A Broken Heart"
I often think or write about popular music in the context of its popularity, but I try to resist the idea that an artist's fame inherently makes their music more interesting. I will say, though, The Tortured Poets Department is a flawed but compelling album partly because Taylor Swift had a breakup in the middle of one of the most successful tours of all time, kept on performing with a smile on her face, and made an album about how miserable she was for at least part of the tour. "I Can Do It With A Broken Heart" crystallizes that situation the most explicitly, and in some ways makes that very specific situation a little more universal, because I think we've all had days that we were emotionally in shambles but still went to work and thought "huh, I'm still pretty good at my job even when I feel horrible." I think it was also pretty brilliant to do a somewhat standard tour footage video with all of that subtext.
7. JT - "JT Coming"
When a beloved musician passes away, we usually get an outpouring of tributes and homages that are often really wonderful. But I also really like when something they influenced just happened to be made before their death that becomes sort of an unintentional celebration of their legacy -- the Wayne's World "Bohemian Rhapsody" scene being filmed while Freddie Mercury was alive is kind of a classic example. So I think it's cool that JT's album, which came out weeks before Fatman Scoop's death, featured a song that sampled one of Fatman Scoop's most popular records, Timbaland & Magoo's "Drop," and is now the follow-up single to "Okay."
8. Tigerlily Gold - "I Tried A Ring On"
The North Dakota sister duo Tigerlily Gold broke through to country radio last year with the uptempo "Shoot Tequila," but I think there's much better songs on their album, including this really well written tearjerker breakup ballad.
9. The Last Dinner Party - "Sinner"
"Sinner" is easily one of my favorite songs from The Last Dinner Party's album, glad it's doing pretty well as the follow-up to "Nothing Matters" on American alternative radio even if they're not nearly as big here as they are in the UK.
10. Hanumankind f/ Kalmi - "Big Dawgs"
Last week, the 3rd-biggest rap song on the Hot 100, behind two of the tracks where Kendrick disses Drake, was by two rappers from India. I think the very entertaining "Big Dawgs" video is a big part of this song's success, but it also just sounds great, the lyrics are in English and full of American slang but it kinda feels like its own thing sonically. I'm curious how big this could be at a very international moment for U.S. rap radio with Megan Thee Stallion's "Mamushi" and the Lil Baby/Central Cee record.
The Worst Single of the Month: Inayah - "For The Streets"
I liked Houston singer Inayah's song "Best Thing," but the song that's become her national radio breakthrough is just the worst kind of regurgitated new version of an old R&B hit, in this case Fantasia's "When I See U." It's just pretty much the same song, with a weaker recreation of the beat, and an "I hate when I see you" flip of the lyric, no creativity, nothing new, just a total disappointment every time I hear this song and realize it's not the original.
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