Lindsay Zoladz
Appearances
The Daily
The Year in Music
You know, the refrain of you're not like us, you know, resonates, I think, even outside of the world of hip hop beef, of music and into something more primal in our culture right now. Beyond the musical realm, there was a spirit of just nastiness and nastiness against people who don't think the way that you do or come from where you do.
The Daily
The Year in Music
That kind of made that song, you know, the anthem of 2024 for better and for worse.
The Daily
The Year in Music
I think a lot of it had to do with... Charlie being really savvy about the sort of extra-musical aspects of pop stardom these days that had this really bold, eye-grabbing cover with this very distinct slime green that really jumped out at you in this low-res font that just said brat, and that was endlessly memed, you know, seemed like it was made to be memed, and just sort of set the tone for...
The Daily
The Year in Music
Lindsay? I think in some ways, Cowboy Carter is like an album for liberals who want to signify that they like country music, but that they have some problems with the racial representation of Nashville, how country music radio doesn't like to play women and things like that, that like, you know, want to... support country music with an asterisk.
The Daily
The Year in Music
Cowboy Carter is the album to get behind if you feel that way. And I think almost to a fault, it's a record that feels very thesis-driven to me. It's homework-y. Yeah. Yeah, and there are parts of it that I think are wonderful and some really sublime runs on this very epic album. But it's also an album, I think it's an argument more than an album sometimes.
The Daily
The Year in Music
Lindsey, this song was inescapable last summer. Talk to us about Shaboosie.
The Daily
The Year in Music
Still inescapable as we're entering winter. It, I believe, tied the record for the longest Hot 100 number one song ever. That's a huge, huge, huge hit. 19 weeks. 19 weeks. I don't really get it, I have to say. Not my favorite song of the year, but clearly a song that resonated with a massive amount of people. It... Yeah, I... Help.
The Daily
The Year in Music
This is one, too, where, like, I'm open to theories because I truly do not understand why this song is as popular as it is.
The Daily
The Year in Music
this essentially marketing campaign that I think really tapped into something effective about the way pop music is consumed in 2024. So I'm also a fan of the record. It was, I think, my number three album of the year. I, like Don, I really...
The Daily
The Year in Music
Living in your big glass house with a view I thought you knew I had some help
The Daily
The Year in Music
think it's a strong collection of tunes, but that there's something else, sort of the meta-commentary and also the meta-commentary about sort of the album rollout, the packaging, the marketing strategy of the album that arguably became bigger than the music itself to talk about the brat phenomenon were, for better or worse, not just talking about the music.
The Daily
The Year in Music
How long do we have here? No, I just wanted one point that I wanted to respond to what John said. I think Charlie's someone, again, like not what we think of as a traditional powerhouse pop vocalist in the way that is, you know, getting to the echelon of fame that she, that Brat has taken her to.
The Daily
The Year in Music
Charlie's a vocalist who uses auto-tune and other filters and vocal manipulations in a way that is artful and interesting, I think, but not, you know, the way that we're used to hearing in a top 40 hit necessarily, or not a pop hit. Like, I think in a lot of ways, she manipulates her voice more like a lot of rappers do these days.
The Daily
The Year in Music
Yeah, I think something uniting the breakthroughs of both Chappell and Charlie XCX this year are just this craving for something slightly different from the way that pop has been going, but not so different that it's not still pop and that it can't still be incredibly popular and this sort of mass medium for communication. I think the alternative that
The Daily
The Year in Music
Chapel offers is something more sonic than anything. She's a very strong vocalist. She can belt.
The Daily
The Year in Music
And if you think about a lot of the way, you know, the sort of post-Taylor Swift wave of pop music, that there's this sort of whispery, you know, not a lot of variation in the melody, just almost the more, like, diaristic, confessional lyric that Taylor Swift has kind of—and the people in her wake have— have really tapped into, I think Chapel offers a sonic alternative to that.
The Daily
The Year in Music
These are big, almost, you know, Broadway big melodies. Like, these are songs that can be belted on a stage and with big, cathartic emotion.
The Daily
The Year in Music
I think something that was really cool about what Sabrina Carpenter pulled off this year was, you know, she has this defining summer hit in Espresso and it's out of nowhere. It's kind of quirky and funny and in some ways has the markings of like a potential one hit wonder song. You know, who is this woman? Fun summer hit. And then she pretty much immediately on the tail of Espresso puts out...
The Daily
The Year in Music
maybe an even better single called Please, Please, Please, which actually ends up being her first number one at Outperforms Espresso on the charts. And the sort of one-two punch of those singles showed that Sabrina Carpenter, from the outset, was like, I am no one hit wonder. If you like espresso, there's a lot more to me than that.
The Daily
The Year in Music
And I think just the way that she rolled out these hits and all showcased different strengths of hers was really impressive this year and kind of made her one of the year's breakout stars.
The Daily
The Year in Music
The Tortured Poets Department, to me, is sort of the album on which Taylor Swift is writing the enormous success of the Eros tour, which began... What, a decade ago at this point?
The Daily
The Year in Music
And so I think that while it was this record-setting blockbuster in terms of sales and fan engagement, the songs didn't have the cultural impact of, say, an espresso, a good luck babe. They weren't the songs that you heard out in the world this year.