slayyyter - WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA

any takers for this? I've enjoyed her previous output to varying degrees, but this album seems a league or two above and perhaps the fullest realisation of her "sexy but troubled in the Midwest" vision yet. Me liking it so much could be down to the influences here generating a lot of personal nostalgia - there's the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (specifically Show Your Bones, but also "Soft Shock" and the A-Trak remix of "Heads Will Roll"), Sleigh Bells, the reverbed vocals of Modular records alumni of the late 00s (chiefly Ladyhawke), Benny Bennassi and his other garish EDM contemporaries, Justice's "STRESS", Gwen Stefani, etc.

Amidst all the raucousness, my favourite track might actually be "UNKNOWN LOVERZ", which would double as a perfect Addison Rae song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkmQyOhvKmo

Enjoyed Beat Up Channel$, which I think I discovered through the EOY poll, which is the 2nd track here. Digging the sound so far through the first half

i definitely hear Justice in "dance". it's good, i think i dig the stuff that sounds more like Goldfrapp mashed up with Death Grips most. ends strong too, with Brittany Murphy and $t loser two tracks before that

It’ll take some beating as my album of the year. She’s always been great but this is her most consistent and most fully-realised record so far.

best new music! and apparently she's featuring in the UK midweeks too, which is hugely impressive given that she hasn't really bothered review pages or the charts in any form previously

I feel like I hear Justice towards the end of yes goddd

Hadn't heard of her until hearing her guest song with Nile Rodgers on Sebastien Tellier's new album, and I've seen her mentioned a half dozen times in the week since.

was shocked there wasn’t a thread for this until i realized that i was using the wrong number of y’s in my search

it’s really great, better than i was expecting. evil blackout! bloghouse charli! some real nasty synths on here. “brittany murphy” soty??

Cannibalism also great on this

i wasn't expecting this to remind me so much of yeezus

alright let's ride in, poptimism '26 flag aloft

this is fantastic ofc

think I've worked out a wrinkle to my critique of deej's poptimism thread.'american chauvinism' isn't quite it, it's more that there's a sort of reactionary bent to what's being established, what musical styles are being accepted as worthy of poptimism. like, slayyyter hasn't been mentioned there once, while this is quite obviously the sort of stuff any serious attempt at contemporary poptimism should be nailing its colours to. but it's too hyper, too trashy, too low down the billboard main chart, too far removed from the house style. this today, april 2026, should NOT have been the first time i heard beat up chanel$, but somehow you all managed to fumble the bag hard enough that it (just) missed the 2025 77.

meanwhile raye gets multiple mentions on that thread. embarrassing

deej is just looking for something else in that thread, "what is good out of the most popular music in the usa these days?" which is a separate question to "what is good out of pop music (genre) these days?". i think that's unfortunately a less interesting question than it used to be for a lot of reasons, but oh well.

it's a pretty good album, at its best when at its most aggressive like on "beat up chanel$" i think

wikipedia says "Slayyyter's sonic inspirations for the project included How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb by U2, The Fame by Lady Gaga, and Yeezus by Kanye West" and i get the last two but i have no idea how you could possibly get from htdaab to this lmao

i guess vertigo was kind of their most proto-hyperpop moment?

sure, someone could do a hyperpop cover of "vertigo" and it's pretty easy to see how it would be an improvement, but that doesn't mean anyone should

sicko mode, slayyyter. you know what to do

this today, april 2026, should NOT have been the first time i heard beat up chanel$, but somehow you all managed to fumble the bag hard enough that it (just) missed the 2025 77.

Nobody else's fault you didn't listen to the nominations playlist...

This album is great though.

loving this album.
to be honest, tis what i had hopes for re fcukers.
(which is fine, but nowhere as good as this !)

this is fantastic ofc

think I've worked out a wrinkle to my critique of deej's poptimism thread.'american chauvinism' isn't quite it, it's more that there's a sort of reactionary bent to what's being established, what musical styles are being accepted as worthy of poptimism. like, slayyyter hasn't been mentioned there once, while this is quite obviously the sort of stuff any serious attempt at contemporary poptimism should be nailing its colours to. but it's too hyper, too trashy, too low down the billboard main chart, too far removed from the house style. this today, april 2026, should NOT have been the first time i heard beat up chanel$, but somehow you all managed to fumble the bag hard enough that it (just) missed the 2025 77.

meanwhile raye gets multiple mentions on that thread. embarrassing

― imago, Thursday, April 16, 2026 5:24 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

for what it's worth -- and this is pretty funny imo -- I met slayyyter in 2019 at the label I worked for at the time, because we were looking into signing her and I championed it. 7 years (!) later she is having a fairly explosive year, to the extent that, for the first time, she may in fact be on her way to qualifying for that thread in the near future

okay lol fine thank you for making slayyyter happen

Arguably there is a chauvinist (or at least unduly prescriptive) notion of when, how and in what circumstances pop music can be "worthy" or "exciting" or "interesting" being applied here. I like Slayyyter but until this album I don't she'd done anything that was both as interesting and successful - and hence genuinely subversive rather than merely cosplaying subversion with jazz hands - as Raye's "Escapism".

Like, a key "ewingist principle" about pop (to the extent that such things exist) is that enjoyment of music where the enjoyment (to put the music to one side for a moment) is not broadly recognised as smart, subversive, edgy, experimental etc. can matter fully as much as enjoyment that can more readily be characterised in such terms; that dancing to "Come On Eileen" on top of a photocopier at the staff christmas party, as a form of engagement with pop music, can, at least notionally, matter fully as much Mark Fisher writing some 25 page blog post about The Associates' "Party Fears Two" inventing new "populations".

In fact, Mark Fisher absolutely hated that aspect of the approach taken by writers like Tom, Frank Kogan etc. So, imago, I'd probably say what you call "poptimism" is in truth "k-punktimism".

we didnt sign her...I do not control the wind, I merely study it...

a response to imago, to be very clear, that I was taking zero credit for her success, quite the opposite -- suggesting if anything I was biased *towards* wanting to see that success to validate a hunch, that it's not the kind of thing i was ignoring, it simply took longer than I expected for her to 'figure it out'

Listening to this album felt like sliding down a ski slope - fun at the start, trailing off increasingly, bored by the end. I don't even think it's that the best songs are at the start, I think it's just that the production is so exhausting that I develop ear fatigue, and her personality is really one-note over the length of it.

I've heard other stuff before this from her that hasn't grabbed me either so I'm interested in why people think this is a leap forward and what it is I'm missing from it.

I probably enjoyed the start more than the end but there's a few fun little tricks and changeups to keep it fresh

Not that you need those! You just need songs people like! Down, chauvinist!

(I feel my own pop philosophy is not really Fisher's; it probably interfaces with elements of it at times wrt musical innovation, surprise, songwriting intricacy etc (although I'm sure I have my own leanings in this regard), but I do also have capacity for the Simple Widely-Insisted Banger, for example Come On Eileen, although it's true that at times I probably break from true faith and decry that in fact it is the people who are wrong; didn't Ewing do that sometimes though? don't you?)

(point obv taken re the chauvinism of demanding something from pop, which I accept I'm wont to do; I will hopefully achieve pop zen in 2040 or so. raye is alllllll jazz hands tho c'mon lol)

What I tend to take issue with is the slave morality of valuing things by reference to what we think they are not - slayyyter rulez b/c raye droolz. It tends not to allow a listener to approach either artifact curiously or thoughtfully.

Case in point: Jazz hands are fine, depending on the circumstances. But if you cannot recognise that Slayyyter is way more prone to them then Raye (again, not a problem per se) then you are allowing received wisdom regarding what certain stylistic manoeuvres signify culturally to cloud your engagement with the music. Theatrical pop has value insofar as its signification of theatricality generates surplus value exceeding its recreation of recognisable forms of theatrically. If you think one artist does that better than the other then argue solidly for that. For me, both artists achieve that only fitfully but “Escapism” remains superior to anything in the balance of either artist’s catalogue.

And yeah, sometimes I think the kids are wrong. If I thought a cohort was always right about things then my views and opinions would, by definition, cease to have independent value.