Switched on Pop - Breaking Through: Doechii, Mk.gee, Rosé

Episode Date: December 17, 2024

Three artists quietly reshaped pop music in 2024, though you might not know it from your Spotify Wrapped. As listeners question the accuracy of their year-end streaming stats, we explore the innovative sounds bubbling up just below the algorithmic radar. Tampa's "Swamp Princess" Doechii brings narrative depth back to hip-hop through her chameleonic vocal approach. Bedroom producer Mk.gee discovers entirely new possibilities for the electric guitar by deliberately recording "wrong." And BLACKPINK's ROSÉ challenges K-pop industry constraints while building bridges to Western pop on her revolutionary solo album. These artists point toward an exciting future where pop continues to evolve in unexpected ways, even as streaming platforms try to predict and package our musical tastes. Plus: Our producer Reanna Cruz presents evidence that their Spotify Wrapped might be fibbing, and Nate reveals his most-played track of 2024 was... Jeremy Irons singing "Be Prepared" from The Lion King? The algorithm works in mysterious ways. Songs Discussed Doechii: "Girls," "Yucky Blucky Fruitcake," "NISSAN ALTIMA," "Denial Is A River," "Boom Bap" Mk.gee: "I Know How You Got," "Big Mics," "Are You Looking Up," "Alesis" BLACKPINK"Boombayah," "Kill This Love," "How You Like That," "Pink Venom," ROSÉ: "On The Ground," "APT." (featuring Bruno Mars), "Toxic Till The End" Taylor Swift: "Shake It Off" Avril Lavigne: "Girlfriend" Toni Basil: "Mickey" Tom Petty: "American Girl" Bo Diddley: "Bo Diddley Beat" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're tired of endless scrolling to figure out where to eat, same. I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Eater. We've just launched the new-ish and way better Eater app. It has all the restaurants we love, gives you personalized picks wherever you are, and serves up smarter search results just for you. You can find my list of the best places for martinis and fries in New York City. And save your favorite spots, share lists, follow editors, and book right in the app. the Eater app at Eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding.

I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm producer, Rianna Cruz. It's the time to wrap up the year. And I feel like I've been seeing all of these social media posts of people saying, hey, you know, my streamer has told me, this is what I'm listening to. And also, some kind of conspiracies that maybe it's not as accurate as it seems. That like, I don't remember listening that much to that artists or that. song. I mean, Charlie, I hear you, you know, I've been saying since I got my Spotify wrapped that my Spotify wrapped is fake. It's not real. This is not my beautiful playlist. It's wrong. It's wrong. And I know this because I have been independently tracking my own data, my own music listening, okay, through the service, Last FM. Wait, so you're saying that like you've connected Last FM to Spotify. Last FM is counting all of your listens? Yes.

And you are data tracking your listening off of the Spotify platform. Yes, basically that. Okay, and what's the discrepancy? So every year, when I get my Spotify rap playlist, you know, my top 100 songs of the year, I like to cross-reference it with my data on Last FM because I only use Spotify. It's the only platform I use. And I like to see if the data that Spotify is giving me matches up with my actual data. And this year, I've noticed some pretty obvious discrepancies between what Spotify tells me is my top songs and what my top songs actually are.

So, for example, Spotify had told me that Pesel Pluma song, Lady Gaga, was my second most listened to song of the year. No surprise. You love Pesel Pluma. You love Lady Gaga. Yeah. Exactly. Didn't really surprise me. Right. But when I cross-referenced my Spotify data with my personal last FM data, Lady Gaga by Paisal Pluma was actually my eighth most listened to song of the year. Okay. Twist. And this was all the way down the playlist.

My third most listened to song of the year in actuality sat at 32 on my Spotify playlist. And my seventh most listened to song of the year sat at 31. So what's going on here, Rihanna? Why do you think Spotify might be juicing these numbers in favor of certain artists? Well, I reached out to Spotify and they have not commented. So when they do, I'll be sure to let you guys know. But I think Spotify is pushing forward artists that fit a certain pop narrative for this year. You know, it told me Charlie XX was one of my most listened to artists of the year.

And I famously did not like Brat that much. So I don't know where that came from. Not liking brat, by the way, is a very brat thing. But I'm not the only one. Friend of the show, Brittany Luce, tweeted that her Spotify wrapped was wrong as well, where two of her top five songs were from Beyonce's Cowboy Carter album. And in her own words, she hadn't listened to that album in months and didn't play it a ton when it came out. Rina, I'm really with you here because my own rapt, I just did not feel like represented me.

Yeah. Now, my Spotify is weird because working as a music journalist, I'm listening to just like a chaos. amount of music. Right. Number one, Charlie X-E-X. I do feel brat. I feel seen. That is true.

Number two artist was The Beatles. Hmm. Nothing's gonna change my world. Group listen to the Beatles. Love the Beatles. Don't listen that frequently. And it was my number two song. Supposedly I played across the universe

127 times this year. What? Which makes me think, like, someone has hacked into my Spotify account because I definitely have not listened to it. to across the universe that many times. It was my wedding song, so it is an important song to me. Again, I don't know what's going on here. Maybe my family sharing is like screwing things up, but it didn't feel like what I was seeing was representing me. And even if all of these Spotify rap lists

are accurate, that they are actually capturing the songs and artists we've listened to the most over the past year, it's not that interesting. There's more happening in music than just the top 10 artists. And what I really want to know is what's great outside of the current pop canon, the tailors and the Charlies and the chapels of the world. And that brings me to today. I feel like there are so many sounds that started to emerge in 2024 that we may have missed on the show. And I expect to go way bigger in the year to come. And so I want to talk about the swamp princess, the guitar alchemist, and the most beloved varietal of wine. I'm talking Dochi, McGee, and Rose. And I'm I want to look at these artist's origin stories, their breakthrough moments and sound, and the future that they're building.

Rana, do you want to kick us off with the ascent of Dochi? Absolutely, Charlie. I love Doji. She is from Tampa, Florida, hence the name, Swamp Princess. Great name. And she originally came up through SoundCloud, as we see with a lot of rappers these days that are getting mainstream popularity. Her first song was released in 2015, and that song was called. girls.

Fun. Oh, my goodness. There's two things about that song that I think are really indicative of Dochi. One is her voice and the other is her ability to have fun. Yeah, it's very irreverent. Yeah, so Reverend is such a good word. And speaking of irreverent, her debut project, Oh, the Places You'll Go, came out in 2020. And her song, Yucky Blucky Fruitcake, went viral the year after. Hi, my name's don't she with two eyes. I feel anxious when I'm high. Teacher say I talk too much. Mama say I'm talk enough. I remember seeing that all over TikTok back in 2021. Like, people were using that for Fitpicks, for ran the videos everything.

Yeah. She's been around for a second. Her song, What It Is, even was a Billboard hit last year. But this year was her big breakout moment with her mixtape called Alligator Bites Never Heal. Great name, by the way. Perfect for the Swamp Princess. I love the name Swamp Princess. Perfectly captures this duality of, you know, sort of bratty quality, the alligator, dangerous, fierce, swampy qualities,

but also then like elegance as well. And alligator bites never heal is the perfect title for the swamp princess. And keeping with the animal theme, you know, I mentioned earlier her voice. Something I love about Doji is that she is a vocal chameleon, able to transform herself to fit many different styles of rap and emulate many different artists. Like, I've been getting into Lil Kim lately, which is a whole sidebar. But she has Lil Kim and Azalea Banks sensibilities on a song like Nissan Ultima. Rates up jigs up put your dicks up.

Put your dicks up. Put your motherfucka fucker sticks up. They suck. That's tough, nigga pay off. Get your rates up for the motherfucking princess. Babush. Mejee, she freaky kind of league is Dalai Lama. Don't you cooler than I'm gonna'clock.

Napa. Juna. I'm the new hip hop Madonna. I'm the new hip hop Madonna. I'm the trap. Grace Jones. I don't know what type of motherfucking crack day on. I mean, I'm the new hip hop Madonna.

It's like we just dropped a Madonna miniseries. Everything is coming full circle. It's all coming together. It's all coming together. Time is a flat circle. And like Madonna has just so many ways of using her voice between the really aggressive, raunchy, fun chorus that she leads with and then this wild flow, unbelievable rhythmic dexterity with her voice.

Something I really love about Dochi is how effortless it all feels. You know, like the opening lines of Nissan Ultima have this internal rhyme scheme that she's pulling off incredibly well. You know, she's rhyming up, cup, sucked, makeup, fuck, bluff, tough, suck. Like, it's like these layered rhymes that also is bouncy. Wake up, Aikov, get your tits up in my makeup, face fuck, get your bakeup, fake tough, niggas dick suck, put your sick suck, but a motherfucking princess. It's fun and fresh and has, in addition to a rhythmic dexterity, a lyrical dexterity as well.

She's definitely the first person to ever connect the Dalai Lama to being hotter than Asana. And also be Madonna and also be Grace Jones and also be. Carrie Bradshaw. Like, it's all in her. And going back to the vocal chameleon thing, like what she's doing on Nissan Ultima sounds so different than what she's doing on a song like Boiled Peanuts.

And that sounds different from a song later on the tape, slide. Wow, because we called this effortless, but it's so studied. Dastically different styles on display here, but connected. by her specificity of her language, her sort of meta-commentary,

always breaking the fourth wall to sort of analyze what she's doing in front of you. And her gift for both being incredibly dexterous and then just like having wild abandon. In her NPR Tiny Desk concert, she starts the whole thing by blowing raspberries and saying, rapidy rap, rapy rap. And the song, Boombop.

So there's always this like juxtap rap rap rap de rap rap rap rap rap So there's always this like juxtaposition of being serious and deep and just being totally like devil make care Yeah, it's a very like cheeky representation of rap music as a whole. You know, she's performing it to the highest caliber. But she knows what she's doing and she knows what style of rap she's always emulating. You know like boom bap obviously is the style. of rap that was big in like the 90s, you know, where you're like rapping about hard things over a hard drum beat, you know, it's usually brought up in arguments that's like, man,

I hate mumble rap, you know, we got to go back to the boom bap era. To all the killers and a hundred dollar billers, a billis. For real, you get who ain't got no feelings. Boom bap, bha. And by opening her song where she's saying nonsense over the boombab beat, you know, She's like, boom bap, boom bitty bap, bap. It's really playing into this narrative of hip hop as a whole. She knows her place in the lineage of hip hop,

and she's doing something really refreshing, which is, I think, carrying on that history of narrative rap that certainly in the world of bumble rap has sort of taken a back seat. And part of, I think, what's so compelling about listening to her is when you get a song from Dochi, like, denial as a river, where you start hearing, these multiple stories unfolding where she's using different voices to play different characters. It's so compelling.

Fast forward me, 2023. I'm stacking lots of cheese and making Monty. My grass is really green and honestly, I can't even fucking cap no more. This is a really dark time for me. Going through a lot. By a lot, you mean drugs. I wouldn't.

Drugs? No. It's a natural point. Oh, my goodness. It's like children's story by Slick Rick, but for a new generation. Totally. All right, you kids get to bed. I get the story move.

We just broke down Kendrick's album, GNX, on the show. I feel like there's a lot of shades of that multi-perspectival approach to rapping here, and I can't get enough. So Dochi's having this moment, but I don't know. What's the next for this artist, Rihanna? Well, she's nominated for three separate Grammys, including Best New Artist, and I think she has a pretty good shot. But I think she's really pushing new ground in hip-hop by kind of,

satirizing hip-pop. And I think we're going to see a lot more of her in 2025. The project she put out this year, Alligator Bites Never Heal, is a mixtape, right? So when she puts out a full debut record, I really think it's going to be the moment.

Cool. All right, let's travel from Florida up to New Jersey. We've got a new boss in town who we're going to hear from right after the break. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? You have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova, and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough.

Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you. Okay. Ready? Ready. Do not sugarcoat something for me. No. No.

No. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other. individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly Democratic cities for ice raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process.

of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period? I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want. border at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top

down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. Amongst the beautiful green fields and produce and the clover-shaped interchanges of New Jersey. It's called the Parkway. There is a new guitar god emeritus. his name is mcgee mcgee spelled capital m lowercase k period g e e born michael gordon in the aforementioned great state of new jersey is like dochey having a moment in 2024 also like dochey has a great origin story First, he goes west to none other than the USC Thornton School of Music. Wow.

Where he crosses paths with a certain music history professor who we know and love, Professor Sloan. Wow. And it's there in the first class that Sloan ever taught at USC, History of Pop, that Mike Gordon has a profound revelation. What's that? that he needs to drop out. Oh. Wait, it's your fault that we have McGee?

So I can't, you know, determine the exact causal relationship here, but I can say that he takes my class and then promptly drops out of music school. Wow. Yeah. Following the time-honored tradition of people like King Princess, for instance, dropping out of the Thornton School of Music, music school isn't for everyone. That's fine. And that's great.

Yeah. McGee, at this point, already has a sound that he's really. refining and articulating and developing. And he's going to pursue that on his own. He releases an EP in 2017 that answers the first question that many people ask when they see this artist. It's called pronounced McGee, spelled MCGEE. And he showcases the sound that really stands out in the contemporary music landscape, a landscape that I would describe as being kind of maximalist and in your face.

His sound is a little withdrawn, a little sparse, a little enigmatic, and you can hear it on a track like, I know how you got. It's like vapor wave hauling oats. McGee continues to release music, but it's in 2021 that his star gets another bump when he collaborates with the artist Dijon, and they release some live videos of them collaborating together that get millions of views on YouTube, Let's listen to a little bit of that teamwork in the form of the song, Big Mikes.

There's a little bit of soul, a little bit of rock, and a lot of bedroom pop. In fact, all these tracks we've listened to were produced in McGee or someone else's home, including the album that will become his. breakthrough this year, 24, two-star and the Dream Police, all recorded at home. And this album refines his sound a little bit, putting even more at the forefront his distinctive approach to the guitar, which we can hear on the track that we kicked off this discussion with, Are You Looking Up? It is strange, man. I'm not a guitarist, but there's some familiar things here, a certain 80s feel, maybe through a chorus effect on the guitar.

There's some maybe muting of the strings, which reminds me of bands like The Police. Then there are other factors here that I can't put my finger on. There's like distortion that comes in and out at odd moments. There's this kind of effect where the guitar seems closer and more distant. Some of the notes are so staccato. They have almost no decay whatsoever. It's familiar and yet kind of disorienting.

I feel like this is why he's so celebrated right now as a guitarist. The guitar has been the mainstay instrument of rock-oriented music for 75 years, longer, maybe. And it's so rare that someone comes along and is able to find a distinctively new voice. I've never heard anyone exactly like McGee, even though I can hear some of these references. a lot of it, I think, is in this very lo-fi, at-home bedroom-type approach to recording. Like, he's not trying to get the tone of a guitar god. He's getting a sound, which is very lo-fi, it's not refined, it's very messy, feels like what it feels like to record in your bedroom.

And yet, I think it actually is a very practiced sort of sound. Like, this is a very deliberate tone. This tone has earned him praise from guitar. gods like John Mayer and Eric Clapton, but y'all, we have our own guitar god right here at Switched on Pop HQ. Wow. Hardly. Charlie Harding, yeah.

Can you whip out a strat or a hollowbody and like help illuminate what's happening in this McGee guitar tone for us? I've got an axe right here. Conveniently placed. An axe. That's a thing that cool people say, Rihanna. Okay. Got it.

You don't say guitar. That's, ugh. No. Okay, so the thing is, like, most guitar tones that are going to feature, you know, a classic stratocaster, they're going to need the perfect amplifier. And the amplifier is kind of like to the electric guitar, what the entire resonating body of the acoustic guitar is. Like, an electric guitar by itself doesn't sound like anything. It's utterly boring and drab. You know, you get like a, like, there's nothing there.

Yeah. So typically, you get, like, a, you know, a nice good amp tone. own. But McGee doesn't go for the nice sounding guitar amp. Instead, he goes for this what you'd call a direct sound, where you plug the guitar directly into your audio interface, and it frankly sounds kind of like plucky, dead, there's no sustain to it. It sounds really uninteresting.

It's just kind of not very lively, but then he adds a ton of effects. A little bit of distortion, a little bit of chorus, a little bit of EQ, and it gets more interesting. Nice. Right? Okay, starting to get a little closer to McGee. McGee-ish. Admittedly, McGee has a lot of different guitar tones that he uses, but the one that stands out most to me

is he has this way of defying physics. When he plays louder, it's like he sends his guitar into the stratosphere. He's playing quietly. Nothing particularly interesting, but then he hits a note hard. Sometimes the guitar is close up, and other times it's far away and distorted,

depending on how hard he's hitting it. He's using all kinds of interesting processing, like a gated reverb into a distortion box, and it just sounds otherworldly. It feels like it's hard to comprehend, which is fitting because, frankly, most of his lyrics are mumbled. The music is lo-fi.

Everything is a little bit hard to discern, including his guitar tone. Yeah, I love McGee, but it took me maybe a dozen listens to get into him because I can. kept listening to his album over and over and was like, what is he saying? What is going on here?

Maybe I can connect to anything that'll get it to click with me. And I think that ability to be incomprehensible is his strong suit. You know, you can't really discern anything. And it doesn't really have a place in the modern pop canon. Like, it's so different than everything that we have. Which is wild, because we've referenced things like, Holo notes, the police. Right. I think it sounds like Peter Gabriel to me.

Peter Gabriel, but as if like sent through a transistor radio across time and space. Right, right. I feel like though this unintelligibility of McGee is a big part of his artistic statement. Like it's actually embedded in his lyrics and what he's sorting out in his songwriting, like on the song, Elisis. We have the characteristic, low-fi, difficult to comprehend. guitar tone, everything is going to wash out in Spacey, but he's singing about, I'm in another body who's in somebody else, feeling headless and heartless, confused, uncertain about identity, falling into someone else's body in order to try to find one's own being. The feeling of

being lost and confused is what the music is about, is the sound that he's creating. Which I feel like is ironic because Elisis is the clearest we can hear his voice over the course, of the album. Like, this is the song where I could discern the lyrics the most. Well, I do accept your description of this music as unintelligible. I will push back a little bit because I do hear a lot of really catchy melodies. Yeah. In McGee's music.

And if we can pivot to the future of this artist, I think that will be the thing that gets him even more mainstream acceptance, his ability to write a hook. And this came up in a really funny way this year Because back in May, Rianna and I went to Conway Studios in Hollywood And interviewed the piano virtuoso Charlie Puth And in a wide-ranging conversation, he dropped in a little McGee nugget about the song Candy. Do you know McGee?

Sure. Candy? There's, it's just peddling on it. On the D. So you're saying that Charlie Puth is saying that McGee should be a bigger artist? That should have been the title of that episode, frankly. And I'm saying if a consummate hook writer like Charlie Puth is looking towards McGee as a source of inspiration, that we might see this artist achieve even a higher degree of success in 2025.

So you're giving him an A-plus, even though he dropped that out of your school. Yes. Mike, wherever you are, I've got an honorary degree waiting for you. Are you allowed to just issue those? I think you need a larger committee to support you on that one. I've got my printer right here. I've got USC letterhead on my computer. You want one?

This sounds fraudulent. All right. So there's my case for McGee as another artist not to miss in 2024. But Charlie, you've got your wine varietal promise here that you made. the beginning of the episode. Yeah. Take us to our final artist. Okay, so we got to talk about Rosei.

Rosei, people might know as the main vocalist and lead dancer of the K-pop idol group Black Pink. But before she was Roseanne Park, nickname Rosie, born in 1997 in Auckland, New Zealand to Korean immigrant parents. And as a teenager, her father encourages her to audition for YG Entertainment, one of the big K-pop entertainment groups. She tries out in 2012, and she's number one amongst 700 other people trying out. Wow. So she moves to South Korea at 16 to start training for four years.

And she kind of gets in the game relatively late. Like, often people start training to be in K-pop idol groups way younger. But she is a standout. And she's made a member of the group Black Pink, which really helps shape the third generation of K-pop. They have huge hits like 2016's Bumbaya. 2019's Kill This Love. 2020's How You Like That. And 2022's Pink Venom.

Pink Venom, we've covered on the show before. We have indeed. It's been a little while since we've spent time with Black Pink. They blew up all over the world, including in the United States when they headline Coachella. Rose, though, has also been working. working on developing a solo career. In 2021, she put out a solo EP, simply titled R. It set the record for the highest first week sales by a Korean soloist. It also is part of what helped her sign a global solo deal with Atlantic Records. This is a big deal. Black Pink is with YG Entertainment in

Korea, but she has her own solo deal with Atlantic Records in the United States. And this is where I think her breakthrough moment is happening. She recently released her debut solo album, Rosie, aiming to showcase a more personal side of herself and her music, with tracks like number one girl, toxic till the end, and her breakout hit, Apata, or APT. That's how you say apartment in Korean. Oh, we're hearing so much in that, Charlie. I can't wait for you to unpack it. Yeah, my first impression was like, I am hearing this whole lineage of music going back to 2014 and Taylor Swift's to shake it off.

Back to Afro Levine's girlfriend in 2007, which calls back to Tony Basil's Hey Mickey from 1982. It's a drumbeat that was heard in 1976, the Tom Petty's American girl. It potentially takes us all the way back to 1955 with the famous Bo Diddley beat by Bo Didley. I don't think anybody's ever mentioned Bo Diddley and Rosey from Black Pink in the same sentence. Rihanna, how appropriate is that, though,

because the song Apata takes this American abbreviation and turns it into a brand new Korean neologism in the same way that musically the song takes this American slash Caribbean rhythm and translates it into this effusive K-pop-Bop with Bruno Mars. There's a similar kind of translation happening. And it's fitting for the song because I feel like especially when we hear that drumbeat through maybe like a Hey Mickey or, or girlfriend, it has this very playful sort of vibe, which connects directly to the song,

because Apata is also this Korean hand game, kind of like raw paper, scissors. I don't totally understand it. So she is writing a song about this game, Apata, but also making a double entendre that's like, hey, come back to my apartment. Let's have some fun. And this is significant. It might seem kind of tame to some American listeners, but for K-pop idol fans, there's so much more going on here. Because if you're in a K-pop group, you usually have a concept connected to your artisthood. Like Black Pink are known for their concept girl crush, which is like fierce and independent, cool, like don't mess with us. Occasionally, a group will go through a concept evolution over a course of album cycles. Rose's concept here on Rosie is like

the exact opposite of girl crush, sort of throwing out this whole idea and saying, hey, I'm going to put out a project with my own given name. It's going to be about personal revelations. I'm going to strip away all of the baggage of what it means to be in a label-backed girl group, where you are expected to maintain really this overall concept and also be this person who plays being both available and simultaneously unavailable all at the same time to maintain the parissocial relationship with fans. She's taking that very polished, high-octane, performative, K-pop idol identity and subverting it by using storytelling techniques from Western pop music

that help peel back the layers of who she is. is to make a more intimate record. And we get that from the very first verse in Apata. Okay, kissy face, kissy face sent to your phone, right? Emogies, Mom, Mom, Mom, Like, whatever. That's a quote from Love's Labor's Lost, I believe. Excuse me? Oh, okay, sorry, misremembering. It reads like maybe text messages, oh, kissy face, kissy face emoji. But to say I'm trying to kiss your lips for real is actually fairly transgressive. Like, as a K-pop idol, you can actually be penalized if you are seen to be dating. Oh, wow.

Yeah, yeah. There are major scandals that can seriously hurt your career. If you say, like, hey, not only have I been dating somebody, but I broke up with them, I have both been available and unavailable in a way that I'm not supposed to be. This is transgressive. Maybe you can wink and nod to sexual intimacy. But to say, like, red hearts, red hearts, come give me something I can feel, like, come up to my apartment and we can have fun.

Like, you're not supposed to talk about that. And so depending on the kind of listener you are, you might experience this song totally differently. Wow, Bruno Mar is kind of laying it all out there. He's doing the hard work so Rose doesn't have to. Yeah, we're going to Drake, Dance, Smoke Freak party all night. It sounds like a silly fun pop song, but it is a real coming out for a K-pop star. And it is a major hit. this song broke records. It made Rose the first female Korean artist to top the Spotify US chart.

It also notably is the only song on her record that really features any Korean language. The majority of this project is in English. And she's clearly demonstrated that she has a global appeal. And part of her approach is using the language of Western pop and sort of more intimate styles, even if it's party music, from American pop songwriting in a way that, reveals parts of her identity that wouldn't necessarily be safe to do within the context of a K-pop idol group. Wow. So I think with this huge hit with Bruno Mars, Rose has established, hey, I am a force to be reckoned with. I expect future projects to go even further. And I think we're going to hear a lot more of Rose's voice. Well, in some ways, we've come a long way from

Rihanna's Spotify-wrapped, exposed conspiracy theory that kicked off this episode. But I do like the connections we've made because all of these artists have kind of bubbled up in different ways. You know, some of them were already members of well-established superstar K-pop groups. Others were making bedroom pop. Others were emerging from the swamps of Tampa seemingly fully formed. And each is a reminder that the music world moves in mysterious ways. And this, my friends, leads me to one more conspiracy theory that I'll just drop in our collective laps before we all say goodbye for the holidays. Rihanna, you question the veracity of Spotify wrapped. I'm here to question whether Spotify is stealing my voice for their AI-wrapped

podcast because three separate people have emailed us saying something weird is going on. Spotify is making an AI rap podcast and it sounds exactly like musicologist Nate Sloan from Switch on Pop. Wow. I have not heard this. I don't think you have either. Holy shit. Can we listen to this and see what's going on? And, you know, I'll start, depending on what we hear, I'll start speed-dialing my lawyers. Here, okay, your wrapped AI podcast.

Here, I'll just play it to you over the mic. Hello from Google's Notebook LM. We're here to unwrap your 2024 Spotify. Okay, that's not me. Let's go. Your year in music, it's a story waiting to be told. And, wow, 28,4008 minutes on Spotify. That puts you, you know, way up there.

Top 12% of listeners globally. That is some serious dedication to the soundtrue. of your life. It really is. And speaking of soundtracks, let's dive into the song that defined your 2024. The one you played on repeat, the one you couldn't get enough of. Wow. The one you played on repeat, the one you couldn't get enough of.

Nate, that really does sound like you. Y'all, do we have a, do we have a case here? I mean, it's not just Spotify. That's Google L.M. Like, that sounds like Nate Sloan. Who's trained your voice? Have you given permission? What's going on here?

I have not. And I think we've got to take this straight to the top, you know, Supreme Court, landmark decision, Google v. Sloan. Let's do this, folks. Forget it, Nate. It's Spotify. You've already lost. You don't stand a chance. Love a Chinatown reference, Rihanna. This podcast has been effectively shadow ban from the entire internet.

It's okay. Google just make it for us. Switch on Pop is produced by Raina Cruz, edited by Art Chung. engineer by Brandon McFarland, Illustrations by Aras Gottlie, or member of the Box Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture, which is part of New York Magazine, and subscribe at nymag.com slash pod. Find us on the socials at Switchdown Pop

and tell us what you've been listening to in 2024. We just had a smattering of artists, but there's so much more incredible music that emerged this year, and we want to hear about what's on your, quote-unquote, Spotify rap and what's in your ear drums. I also want to know if your Spotify wrapped is as off as mine is.

For real. Unfortunately, I cannot claim that mine is inaccurate because my top song is Jeremy Irons as Scar the Lion singing, be prepared from the Lion King soundtrack. It's kind of the banger though. 100% accurate. Oh, it banged.

We'll be back again next week. Nate, you say that your voice has been manipulated and taken by somebody else. Well, I've got a story for you about how people's voices have fundamentally been altered in the sound of Autotune. We'll be sharing that next week alongside the Verge cast. And until then, thanks for listening.

And subscribe to the newsletter. Oh, yeah, that too. Listen, and subscribe. Yeah, and Shadow Band. Attention, Spotify. Has arrived the new Good Girl Jasmine Absolute of Caroline Herrera. A fragrance intense with character Gourman and addictive. Imagine a jasmine emvolventy,

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