A while back I wrote about the kind of wacky remix single for Summer Walker's "Heart of a Woman" that featured one version of the song with fireplace sound effects and another with rain sounds. The follow-up "Spend It" is also a little creative with the alternate mixes -- "Spend It - Rent Is Due Version" is slightly sped up and "Spend It - Diamonds & Pearls Version" is just like the original but with the drums removed. The last time I heard the song on WPGC, they actually played the "Rent Is Due Version," which I found a little concerning. It sounds good with the tempo picked up a little but I don't like the higher-pitched vocals, it's not quite nightcore but it feels weird for R&B radio to follow sped up TikTok trends. In any case, "Spend It" is probably my favorite song of Summer Walker's career (barring maybe "Girls Need Love" before it was remixed with Drake). I made a record once called Materialistic that was partly about how people are dismissive of the way hip-hop and R&B songwriters describe a world that is driven by money, and "Spend It" is a great example of a kind of darkly funny, poignant song about how someone can just feel defeated by prioritizing love when they decide to pursue purely transational relationships. Here's the 2025 singles Spotify playlist that I update throughout the year. 

Chappell Roan released her first music video in almost two years for "The Subway," essentially the first one she's made as an established star. And it's good, but I'm a little bitter that "Good Luck, Babe!" didn't have a video and that "The Giver" didn't get promoted more in general. I think it's cool that she's leading the next album with a ballad where she can really belt, though, I feel like "The Subway" retains the personality of her other songs a little more than the slower songs on Midwest Princess. And I'm really enjoying the "she's got a wig" memes. 

Steve Lacy released a single with a sample of "Think (About It)" by Lyn Collins a few days before the publication of my book, which has a lengthy passage about the importance of the "Think" breakbeat to Baltimore club music. I love to see it! It doesn't seem like Lacy is really very concerned with capitalizing on "Bad Habit" becoming a #1 hit, coming back nearly three years later with something that doesn't sound too similar, but I dig it. 

Another Baltimore link: "Folded" was co-produced by D.K. the Punisher, who I interviewed 10 years ago when he was first starting to get major label credits with Jill Scott and Justin Bieber. One of the other producers on "Folded" is his mentor, Andre Harris of Dre & Vidal fame. Kehlani released two projects last year and it feels like she's really building on that momentum, "Folded" is already on its way to being probably the biggest solo track of her career. 

Zara Larsson's biggest hit in America, "Never Forget You" with MNEK, is now a decade old, but she's continued to make some pretty awesome music. In fact, so has MNEK, who co-produced the title track from her forthcoming fifth album Midnight Sun, which is kind of incredible, it's like what I always wished the Madonna song "Ray Of Light" sounded like. 

After my favorite promo single from Tate McRae's latest album, "2 Hands," got ignored by pop radio in favor of an annoying "I'm A Slave 4 U" knockoff, I'm pleasantly surprised that another great song from the album, "Revolving Door," has grown into a hit. I found it kind of surprising when McRae pivoted from slow sad songs to uptempo dance pop a couple years ago, but "Revolving Door" kind of combines those two sides of her sound in an interesting way. 

The first time I heard this song I just assumed Role Model was a band. But Role Model is a solo artist, a guy from Maine named Tucker Pillsbury who started out as a rapper whose early stuff sounded like Mac Miller (the first big star he collaborated with), before he focused more on singing and got his pop breakthrough with this catchy little country song. So I guess he's in the "white rapper to country singer" pipeline with Kid Rock and Post Malone that I wrote about a couple months back, I'll call him Jelly Roll Model. 

When an old album track becomes a surprise hit years later, I'm always interested to see whether it's something I put on one of my Deep Album Cuts playlists. I don't know whether to be embarrassed if it's something that I passed over, or whether I should remove it now that it's no longer a deep cut. "Something In The Way" isn't in my Nirvana playlist, for instance, and "Sparks" wasn't on my Coldplay playlist. "Party 4 U," however, was track 3 on my Charli XCX playlist, although I really never would've pegged that as the old song that would blow up post-Brat. 

Katseye debuted last year as an 'international' girl group with members from three different continents that was assembled by a K-Pop company and made its public debut with a Netflix reality show, "Popstar Academy: Katseye." I think most of their music so far is pretty good, above average pop, but "Gnarly" is the goofy noisy curveball they threw to stand out a little more, and it worked in the sense that it became their first Hot 100 entry. It seemed to serve to clear the way for a more conventional follow-up, "Gabriela," to do better, but I'm still stuck on "Gnarly," it's really grown on me. 

I like what Blackpink has done over the past year -- each member of the group released solo projects (three albums and one EPs) that have been all over the place musically and have spun off some pretty big singles, and then the group reconvened for a forthcoming world tour and third album. Unfortunately, the first Blackpink single in three years just kinda sucks and doesn't really feel like it's built to capitalize on the momentum from the solo hits. "Jump," co-produced by Diplo, references the Spice Girls' hit "Spice Up Your Life" but the vibe of the song is more Vengaboys, it's loud and obnoxious but not in any fun weird ways like "Gnarly." Meanwhile, Huntr/x from the animated film Kpop Demon Hunters is eating Blackpink's lunch -- the first K-Pop girl group to hit #1 on the Hot 100 is a fictional group of cartoon characters.