NPR Music - The Contenders, Vol. 24: JADE, S.G. Goodman, Cleo Reed, more

Episode Date: November 11, 2025

With the end of 2025 in sight, we pause to update our running list of the year’s best songs. Our latest adds include the (possibly twisted) dance pop of JADE, a brutal but affecting story song from S.G. Goodman, power pop from the band Liquid Mike and more. But we open with a question: Benson Boone... kinda awesome?Featured artists and songs:1. Liquid Mike: “Double Dutch,” from ‘Hell Is An Airport’2. Cleo Reed: “Always the Horse, Never the Jockey (feat. IWEWE),” from ‘C**try’3. JADE: “Plastic Box,” from ‘THAT’S SHOWBIZ BABY!’4. S.G. Goodman: “Snapping Turtle," from 'Planting by the Signs’5. Ken Pomeroy: “Stranger,” from ‘Cruel Joke’Weekly reset: A breezy, Sunday morning in a small townEnjoy the show? Send it to a friend and leave us a review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Questions, comments, suggestions or feedback of any kind always welcome: [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

So, Anne, I've actually been thinking a lot of you lately because something has happened to me that I wasn't expecting, and I think you're someone who might understand. I'm here for you, Robin. I think I've fallen for Benson Boone. Aren't you a big Benson Boone fan? I mean, fan is a strange word to use. You're a professional appreciator. I'm not hanging out here all alone, am I? I love a little backflipper.

I mean, I just think, or front flipper. He's actually more of a front flipper. It's a little backflipper. To be clear, he leaps off his piano and flips in the air, or sometimes just does it standing. No, I hadn't really spent any time with his music. But, you know, he's inescapable enough that I know who he is and I kind of know what's going on. But my kids and I, we were out somewhere a couple of weekends ago and a Benson Boone song came on. I didn't really know it, but my son heard it and he said, I love this.

What is this? And I said, I think it's Benson Boone. Was it magical, mystical, or whatever that? Mystical Magical was the song. There's nothing colder than your shoulder when you're dragging me along like you do. And so I ended up going down this rabbit hole through his catalog. And at some point it hit me, I thought, Benson Boom, kind of great. I mean, man can sing.

It's inarguable. Well, he's got so many bobs. That song Beautiful Things. When the drop of the chorus sits in that song, I think it's undeniable. It's pretty amazing. I've found myself sitting at my desk, looking at the tiny desk, and just kind of eyeing the space and thinking, is there enough room? Could he flip off the desk in land in the middle?

You end up in traction or... A thing that I can say about Benz and Boone that did surprise me when I did finally listen through that album is that there are moments where he slips into pretty uncanny, like, vocal cosplay. There was one moment where I was like, this is an extraordinary Adele impression. That's interesting. I thought you were going to say Freddie because he's like obviously Freddie. Our colleague Jacob Gans has made the case to me that Benson Boone's, his public presentation is sort of pushing the idea of Hill that he's new Freddie Mercury. And if they would just admit that he's

actually new meatloaf, then the whole thing would come together. Stay. I want you, I need you. Oh God. I These beautiful things that I've got. Well, it's all songs considered. I'm Robin Hilton, Ann Powers, here with David Tyler Amin. And I'd introduce you as music critic, but that has always been impossible for me to pronounce for some reason. Music critic, music critic. It's like rural juror. Much easier to say NPR music editor, David Tyler Amin.

This is a contenders episode. one of the, it's actually one of the last ones we're doing this year, where we update our running list of the year's best songs. It's a list we've been keeping all year. And I'm kind of just along for the ride this week. You all brought the jams. How would I thought we'd start maybe with one of yours? Sure. I wanted to play a song by the band Liquid Mike there from Marquette, Michigan, the Upper Peninsula, and it started as the solo project of this songwriter, Mike Maple, has been solidly a band for some time. now. They've had something of a sort of like small scale, you know, fairy tale come up where through various viral tweets and cosigns and that kind of stuff, managed to increase their profile wildly and people are really into the idea that like when his first records came out, he was driving a mail truck. It's, anyway, this is a song from their latest album, Hell is in airport. And the song is called Double Dutch. Its first beat is actually the closing hit of the previous song on the album, Crop Circles, and I think they really envisioned them as sort of

like parts one and two of a suite. So if you're listening in headphones, it starts a little hot. Man, that is some Daoud core right there. I mean, you love Power Pop, and they hit every note on this so perfectly. Incredible concision, too. That song is quite short. The whole album is under half an hour. It's, yeah, it's just how I like it. And I hear in that song, I don't want to say the influence, but just sort of like the parallel thought, parallel development of artists like Oso Oso and like Jeff Rosenstock, these bands that over the past couple of years have sort of defined a lane of blown out pop rock where the lead lines almost sound like synthesizers because there's so much gain on them. And the vocalists are sort of experimenting with this technique of not singing out of their range, but just sort of like tapping the ceiling of it in a way that kind of like scrapes against the. the surface. Yeah, it's like, you know, I think of a band like Superchunk, like Mac, when he was singing just like getting two feet taller somehow while he's going for those high notes.

Yeah, exactly. If yeah, I mean, if you love Superchunk, if you love Pup, I thought of Pup listening maybe a little Joyce Manor. Yeah. Or front bottoms. But this is like this squarely in my wheelhouse too. I mean, big cathartic guitar pop, those power pop chords. It's awesome. And it's sort of it's kind of a mirror piece for this other song, Crop Circles, which is a little bit more some of the bleaker things about like small town life, some of the cycles that people occasionally get stuck in, whether it's weird family drama or substance abuse or whatever else. Man, we're going to actually talk about small town life. I had that thought too.

I know, I know. I don't want to go there yet. It's a stealth theme show. Bonus points for naming the album, Hell is an airport. Who can't relate to that? my gosh, especially right now, way too much. So Liquid Mike, totally new to me, and then it did a little digging, and he's already released a half a dozen albums in like five years. One of those people, yeah. So, Anne, what do you got? Let's get away from the small towns and go to New York City for

my first pick, which is from an artist named Cleo Reed. Had either of you ever heard of Cleo Reed before? I had heard of her, but I hadn't listened to anything until you shared this with me, and I love it. She used to be in a band called Pretty Sick out of New York, a punk band. And she also went to the Harlem School of the Arts. She went to Berkeley. So she has a really eclectic background. And she is a multimedia artist. This year she released an album called Country.

And the whole album is about sort of thinking about labor and productivity in the States. And especially like what an artist has to do to survive. I think that's enough of a setup for the song we're going to hear, which is called Always the Horse, Never the Jockey. I woke up in spite of fear. I didn't ask to be here. I woke up in spite of fear. I did.

I did in my tail. I'm here till the shows I glide on me. That song, does it feel a little like musical theater to y'all? Musical theater in what way that a story is unfolding? The harmonies, the structure of the song. It's not what you might normally hear. I don't know, like on the radio or something, but I think it's so interesting that she brings this kind of theatrical flair

to her idea of a country song, you know. Nobody would maybe call this music country, but she's thinking about other ways to imagine making ballads, telling stories through these songs. It definitely has acts. I thought of, you know, the parable of the blind men and the elephant. Exactly, yeah.

Like, just in the sense that, like, if you played four different people, a clip from four different spots in this song, I don't know if anybody would be able to guess what the others had heard. Yeah, that turn it takes a couple minutes in is kind of breathtaking, and it becomes a completely different song.

Total vibe shift. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it comes down to this place from just, like, you don't totally know what to call it because every minute or so, turns into a different song. Yeah, the whole album is like that, by the way. There's another song, Salt and Lime, which I would have brought in, but it's eight minutes long. And in some ways, it sounds like an Erica Badoo song, but then it does become this sort of like avant-garde mood piece or

something. She's really just going all over in these songs, but at the heart of every song, including Always the Horse Never the Jockey, is just a fundamentally super tight, singable, poetic, expression of what she's trying to get at, which is, you know, how hard it is to survive, how hard it is, how much hustle we have to do. There's another song called I've Been Out Here Hustlin on this record, and she just sprinkles the magic on the day-to-day lives we're all living today. So the album is called Country and the song Always the Horse, Never the Jockey from Cleo Reed. Great pick. It's just lovely and strange and really captivating, lovely and strange. You called it a mood piece. I think that's a good way to put it.

Okay, just a reminder that we love feedback. So if you enjoy the show, leave us a glowing review on Apple Music or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also drop us an email. It's all songs at npr.org. We've got some more music coming up, plus your weekly reset at the end of the show. But Anne and Daoud, you all got a new show that you're doing in the All Songs Considered Feed that I want to be sure to mention. It goes out into the world every other Thursday. That's right.

Yes. And it's where you take a, we don't have any special name for it. I guess you could call it old songs considered. That's the joke name. But in the feed it will be all songs plus. Well, we say old songs considered because it's where you take a deep dive on a single song, an older song that sort of stood the test at time. It's like, is this a song with staying power or is it just a good song that we like? And somewhere on the continuum between those things, there's like this narrow band of songs that just keep coming back into our.

lives. And that was the thing that we wanted to investigate. What's been interesting is that as we've developed this podcast, I think we've found that the songs do connect in a way, because they're all songs that are like semi-canonical, but once you really think about them, they reveal their stickiness and their amazing stories. Well, the first one that you did was on Stevie Wonders. I believe when I fall in love, it'll be forever, which was awesome. I learned a lot. I loved how you tied in all the other pop cultural references. I'd forgotten that it was on high fidelity. That movie. That's the credit drop.

Yeah. But I learned a lot, made me think about a lot. I loved it. Again, you're doing them every other week, and it is a plus episode for people who subscribe to Impair Music Plus. But David, we're back to you for more new music. Okay. For newer music.

Yeah. This is newish. This is an album from the summer. I really, really was blown away and surprised by the new album by Jade. This is a member of the British Girl Group Little Mix, who in the mid-July. 2010s were kind of on top of the world. They had a one-direction-like origin story where they were separate competitors on the X-Factor who didn't win in their categories but were sort of reconstituted into a group. And then I think, you know, everybody just sort of burned out at once and

the solo projects have been trickling out. Jade's album is called That's Showbiz, baby. And this is a song called Plastic Box that is a spiritual cousin of dancing on my own by Robin, I would say. That's a high compliment. But I would say kind of, you know, a verse in takes the premise of that song and kind of bends it in half. So, as you may have discerned, this starts out sounding like a song about somebody whose lover has left them who has been wronged in some way and is trying to come to grips with it. And then come to find out it is actually about somebody who is in a relationship and it's going fine. And the thing that they are trying to come to grips with is that the person that they

are in a relationship with has had relationships before them. And it is this thing that like on its surface is, I mean, to use her own words, jealous and obsessive. And yet in a certain way, like a little bit relatable. There's this funny thing where she is 100% up for. about being totally irrational with the thing that she is doing and also being like, but the feeling is there and the feeling is real. I mean, I love Jade. She's such a maximalist, you know. She is so over the top and everything that she does.

When I first heard her, it was that song, Angel of My Dreams, which is just like every massive pop song at once. And this song is a little more refined or something, but it still is that like emotions out thing that I love. Yeah. It's very clever. but it's just very, very intense also. But I just love the sentiment of it.

It's just like, can I have your heart in a plastic box? And it's this thing that like you just understand right away that not only is that impossible, but... It's creepy. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you said that because the whole time I'm listening to you talk about this. I'm thinking, you sure it's not about a serial killer? Because she keeps talking about wanting their heart in a plastic box, but it's not any plastic box. It is a fully clean, never used.

untouched plastic box. I mean, the thing I'll put to you as a Weezer fan, Robin, is think about the song No One Else from the Blue album. It's like, that is a song that if you just read it straight would sound like straight serial killer vibes. And so it's like, you know, do you think about it that way? And you can. Or you can give the artist the benefit of the doubt and sort of like read some of the

satire into it and say, well, what part of this is actually ringing true? I mean, I think it's both. you know. She wants us to acknowledge that kind of jealousy that all of us feels when we start something new. Well, Jade, Plastic Box, what is that, what's the album that's from? The album is called That's Showbiz, Baby, with an exclamation point. So you know it's serious. Yeah, that is Showbiz, baby. And you're ready to completely bring us down now with what I know is your next pick, which I actually love. I love this song a lot, but it is a complete vibe shift. I had to bring this song in.

It is pretty much the opposite vibe-wise from Jade. But I will say what it shares is a kind of maximalism, something that we don't always get from this artist, S.G. Goodman. This year, she has a new record called Planting by the Signs. It's just extraordinary. And the song that we're going to hear is this, man, this is a short story. It's called Snapping Turtle. When I drove up on some low down kids

Or snapping turtle Taking turns with the stick I think you can both hear Why when I first heard this song I had to sit down immediately And listen to it again In this song, S. G. Goodman tells a true story From her own life.

This actually happened And she freely admits it when she was a kid one day, she grew up in Hickman, Kentucky, is a small town, and she came upon a group of kids who were beating a turtle with a stick. And she turned that stick on those kids. That's what happened. And she's not proud of it, but she made it into an amazing story with this song in which she talks about that moment and this confrontation with cruelty and her own violent response to that. intertwines it with the story of a friend in adulthood who has been beaten down by life in the way that that poor turtle was being beaten by those kids. And the thing that absolutely gets me about this song is the hook, the lyrical hook, which is the line, small towns where my mind gets stuck. And this is so, so S. G. Goodman, like she is very plain spoken in her music, but the poeticism of that

line and the way it just nails something about a life lived within severe limits and how that can really crush the soul, you know, challenge the soul. But then the music is so expansive. It's almost psychedelic that it's the tension in the song. It's just amazing to me. It's funny. I've also heard S.G. Goodman be a real evangelist for small town life. Yeah, yeah. Well, as someone who grew up in a really, really small town in a very isolated rural area and then, you know, in my adulthood moved to major metropolitan areas. People just overly romanticize small town living. I was very happy to grow up there,

but the truth is it's not Mayberry. It's got all the same problems. Small towns have all the same problems that big cities have, and sometimes it's worse because everybody knows each other. There's no anonymity sort of to protect you. Exactly.

So you feel all the hurts so acutely. And, man, there are so many moments in this song. I'm getting emotional just thinking about it because it's so tapped into my DNA. But, you know, one thing that I noted in the song is she got out. Yes. There's this great moment in it where she talks about riding a train through the south of France. Yeah. But she's remembering that friend of hers.

I think Leanne is the person's name. Yeah. And all the other people that she left behind. And I don't know. That closing line, too, yeah, the small town is where my mind gets stuck. So many ways you can read that. Exactly. Like it's still with her.

It's, you know, she's carrying that small town and the loved ones with her as she travels the world. And again, I just want to say, like the music, its humidity is incredible. You know, as someone who lives in the South, it just sinks into you the way that humidity does. I thought maybe you misspoke and you meant humanity, but no, you actually mean humidity. Yeah, no, I get it. This is a sweaty song. Okay, again, stay tuned for your weekly reset after this. But, Ann, you actually have one more that we're going to go out on here.

I had to bring in a song by my favorite discovery of this year. Her name is Ken Pomeroy. She is a Native American Cherokee artist from Moore, Oklahoma. And she's made this incredible album called Cruel Joke. It's a no-skips album for me, but I chose this song. It's a very small little song. It is sad. It's called Stranger.

But particularly, I don't think a lyric tops. the first lines of this song, which I'm just going to say, the wind keeps on hitting me like my mother used to. Unlike her, I feel it doesn't want to. Yeah. Man. Can I just jump to the one hopeful line in the entire song, though?

Feel free. Since we're not going to come back. And that is when she says, not once while driving did I think about dying. That's new. That's new. I know. I know. It's insane.

That verse is she goes into this thing about listening to a song about someone that's gone by someone that's gone. I know. Which is, again, it's like it feels like on paper like you're sinking down deeper into the depths. But if you think about it, like, practically, in terms of your own life, there is something about sort of leaning into art and music

that is about loss that can be really therapeutic and can lift you out of that state. All right, we'll go out on this. Ken Pomeroy, the song, Stranger from Cruel Joke. And a reminder, stay tuned after the song. We'll have your weekly reset. And check out the new biweekly episodes featuring you, Anne and Daoud, every other Thursday deep dives on classic songs.

But thanks as always for the great hang and great tunes. Thanks, Robin. Such a joy. And for NPR music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's all songs considered. The wind keeps on hitting me like my mother used to. Unlike her, I feel like it doesn't want it. For the first time in a long time, I'll be awkward silence.

Oh, I'm driving home from a studio that's unfamiliar. I just cried in front of friends and a stranger. I'm this strange because I haven't cried, let alone. Oh, once while driving did I think about that. that I guess hearing songs about someone that's gone by someone that's gone change my mind know a while ago