Monthly Report: March 2025 Singles
1. Lisa f/ Raye and Doja Cat - "Born Again"
Blackpink hasn't broken up or gone on hiatus (they have a world tour kicking off in July) but all four members have released a solo album or EP in the last few months. Lisa's Alter Ego is probably the weakest of those four projects (why is she rapping so much?) but the singles "Born Again" and "New Woman" are probably my two favorite songs to come out of this whole blitz of Blackpink music. And as usual the K-pop that appeals to me the most tends to be the obvious stuff where they just get songs from western hitmakers. "Born Again" is more or less a Raye song but a really good one, makes me think her next album is going to be huge if she can just give a song like this to another artist. Here's the 2025 singles Spotify playlist that I update every month throughout the year.
2. Kendrick Lamar f/ SZA - "Luther"
Kendrick has a pretty high batting average for melodic R&B-flavored singles even though it's not really the main thing people associate him with, "Loyalty" and "Love" and "Poetic Justice" and "All the Stars" have all aged really well and "Luther" may be even better than any of those. The recent documentary Luther: Never Too Much got into how Luther Vandross was wildly popular in the R&B world and never fully crossed over like Michael or Prince but did want to have a #1 pop hit and never quite got there (the closest he got was a #2 duet of "Endless Love" with Mariah Carey). So it's cool that Twista's "Slow Jamz" got to #1 with a Luther sample while Vandross was still alive, and now we've got another song sampling Luther and named after him a couple decades after his death.
3. Almost Monday - "Can't Slow Down"
The San Francisco-based indie pop trio Almost Monday has kicked around alternative radio with a few minor hits over the last few years, and "Can't Slow Down" recently became their first #1. I was a little surprised to see recently that it's starting to get pop radio airplay too, not a lot of alternative songs cross over these days and this one didn't strike me as a super slick Glass Animals-type thing that would go Top 40 easily. It's growing on me, though, that little distorted analog synth riff is killer.
4. Juiicy 2xs - "Leave My Man Alone"
Back in 2019, Future curated a pretty good compilation of newer and relatively unknown artists, 1800 Seconds Vol. 2. The Cincinnati-born singer Juiicy 2xs had the only track on that album with over a million streams, and she's steadily released more music and built an audience since then, with "Leave My Man Alone" becoming her first charting radio hit. It's a pretty, funny catchy song, a possessive girlfriend's warning to other girls (my favorite line: "Even if it's his birthday, don't tell him happy birthday/ 'Cause why the fuck you happy he's born?").
5. Sturdyyoungin f/ Ohthatsmizz and Zeddy Will - "Trippin"
"Clumsy" was the 5th single (and 5th-biggest single) from Fergie's 2006 solo debut The Dutchess, and I didn't think any remembered or liked that song as much as I did. So it was fun to hear it sampled in a fun way on "Trippin," a song by Sturdyyoungin, a teen TikTok creator/rapper from Philly. I don't like this kind of extremely online meme rap all the time, but sometime it really hits. Case in point: Queens rapper Zeddy Will has another song getting spins right now, "Twerkin Wit Ya Friends," that I hate.
6. Drake f/ Elkan - "Nokia"
I've been annoyed for a while at how Drake's collab albums always have solo tracks by both artists on them, it just felt a little lazy or antithetical to the spirit of the project. And it really turned out to be a pretty bad deal for PartyNextDoor, who's not as famous or established as Future or 21 Savage were when they did albums with Drake. $ome $exy $ongs 4 U has six Drake solo tracks and one PND solo track. And while I don't think I'm generally a good barometer for the taste of Drake fans, "Nokia" was immediately the song I found the most enjoyable and memorable on my first play through the album. Now both the album's big breakout hits, "Nokia" and "Gimme A Hug," are both Drake solo tracks. PND got his first #1 album out of the deal, I'm sure he's rich and happy, but I dunno, I think it kinda sucks for him. And Elkan, the producer from Sierra Leone who did the "Nokia" beat and the goofy, infectiously catchy hook on the second half of the song, could very well get a bigger boost from this album than Party.
7. Travis Scott - "4x4"
There's a weird paradox of the streaming era where one of the ways you can really measure the level of an artist's stardom is when they have songs that don't even feel like hits but went to #1 on the strength of their fame and the size of their fanbase. Drake and Taylor Swift each have a whole bunch of #1s that their casual fans would not be able to hum, and that's also the case for the several Travis Scott #1s that aren't "Sicko Mode." "4x4" had the biggest drop from #1 in Hot 100 history, but I'm rooting for it to have more staying power than "Franchise" or "The Scotts," though, the beat by Tay Keith and FnZ in really good. They sampled an old video of a college marching band playing "Say Sum," a forgettable single Migos released 8 years ago during a brief dry spell before "Bad & Boujee." That horn sample sounds way cooler than the original "Say Sum."
8. Debbii Dawson - "You Killed The Music"
I watch a lot of the secondary MTV channels that still play videos like MTV Hits and MTV Live, and it's mostly big obvious hits, but they'll occasionally play some lesser known artists. And this video caught my eye recently, the song is very ABBA and the video matches that with an old school VHS aesthetic, pretty good.
9. Ella Mai - "Little Things"
Jayson Tatum led the Celtics to an NBA championship last year, and narrative-obsessed fans and commentators have talked a lot since then about how Tatum doesn't have "aura" or is "cringe" or isn't a superstar in some intangible way that goes beyond his talent and accomplishments. But he had a baby with a gorgeous British R&B singer and she sounds completely infatuated with him on her recent songs, so I'm not going to sit here and talk about how Jayson Tatum is corny and uncool, I think he's doing alright.
10. Joe Nichols f/ Annie Bosko - "Better Than You"
Joe Nichols had his biggest hits about 20 years ago, and "Better Than You" feels like a kind of old-fashioned pop country ballad. So I assumed this song wasn't new when I heard it on the radio for the first time, but it is new, and I really like it.
The Worst Single of the Month: Falling In Reverse f/ Saraya - "Bad Guy"
Ronnie Radke is a real piece of shit who's done hard time for his role in a murder and has rape and domestic violence allegations, and his shitty metalcore band just seems to keep getting better as people become more aware of all the gross stuff she's done. He's really started to lean into this and troll people with Falling In Reverse's latest album Popular Monster, which features Radke's mugshot as the cover art (a move reminiscent of the late XXXTentacion) and the single "Bad Guy," Falling In Reverse's fourth #1 on the Mainstream Rock chart, which is just putrid and unlistenable in ways I don't think I could adequately prepare you for. It's absurd that Epitaph Records releases this guy's music and music industry golden boy Jelly Roll is on his latest album and nobody seems to be experiencing any significant blowback for working with him.
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on Thursday, March 13, 2025 at 11:27 AM.
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