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Aug 2024
46m 39s

Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, and the Unsta...

The New Yorker
About this episode

“ ‘BRAT’ summer”—so named for the Charli XCX album that’s become the soundtrack of Kamala Harris’s Presidential run—has given pop fans much to discuss, from Charli’s own flirtation with mainstream stardom to the meteoric rise of Chappell Roan. On the first in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes, Naomi Fry talks with her fellow staff writer Kelefa Sanneh about the state of the music landscape. The two consider the breakout successes of the moment—including “Espresso,” the Sabrina Carpenter song that launched a thousand memes—and the catastrophic failures, namely Katy Perry’s new single, “Woman’s World.” These highs and lows speak to the nature of the genre, in which artists can be cast aside as quickly as they were embraced. “Pop music, in particular, tends to be quite cutthroat,” Sanneh says. “If it’s not working, it’s flopping. And when it’s time for people to jump off the bandwagon, people jump off.”

 
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:


BRAT,” by Charli XCX
Woman’s World,” by Katy Perry
‘Woman’s World’ Track Review,” by Shaad D’Souza (Pitchfork)
Mean girls,” by Charli XCX
Good Luck, Babe!,” by Chappell Roan
I Kissed a Girl,” by Katy Perry
SOUR,” by Olivia Rodrigo
emails i can’t send,” by Sabrina Carpenter
Espresso,” by Sabrina Carpenter
Please Please Please,” by Sabrina Carpenter
Not Like Us,” by Kendrick Lamar
The Night We Met,” by Lord Huron


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