Switched on Pop - Does It Trance? The Weeknd & FKA Twigs

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

In last month's episode predicting the coming year in pop, one of the team's predictions was that trance music – the ethereal, dreamy subgenre of electronic music popular around the turn of the century – would make a comeback on the charts in 2025. And even though we're less than two months into the year, we're already seeing the tides of nostalgia bring this club-oriented music come back into fashion. This episode of Switched On Pop, Nate, Charlie, and Reanna take a look at trance music: where it came from, what it sounds like, and if we can hear it in two of the year's most anticipated records: The Weeknd's Hurry Up Tomorrow and FKA Twigs's EUSEXUA. Does it trance? More Subscribe to our newsletter to receive your own bingo card! Songs Discussed KLF "What Time is Love? (Pure Trance Mix)" Sven Väth "L'Esperanza" Robert Miles "Children" Paul van Dyk "For an Angel" Ian Van Dahl "Castles in the Sky" Tiësto "Adagio for Strings" Darude "Sandstorm" Charlotte De Witte "Universal Consciousness" FKA twigs "Two Weeks" FKA twigs "Cellophane" FKA twigs "Tears in the Club" feat. The Weeknd FKA twigs "EUSEXUA" FKA twigs "Drums of Death" FKA twigs "Perfect Stranger" FKA twigs "Room of Fools" FKA twigs "Childlike Things" The Weeknd "Wake Me Up" feat. Justice The Weeknd "Open Hearts" The Weeknd "The Abyss" feat. Lana Del Rey The Weeknd "Timeless" feat. Playboi Carti The Weeknd "Give Me Mercy" The Weeknd "Red Terror" The Weeknd "Sao Paulo" feat. Anitta The Weeknd "Reflections" feat. Travis Scott & Florence + The Machine The Weeknd "Enjoy the Show" The Weeknd "I Can't Wait to Get There" The Weeknd "Hurry Up Tomorrow" The Weeknd "Blinding Lights" The Weeknd "Save Your Tears" The Weeknd "Until I Bleed Out" The Weeknd "Take My Breath" The Weeknd "Out of Time" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to Switched On Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm producer, Rihanna Cruz. So I'm sure the two of you know, my DJ alter ego is... DJ Castanza. DJ Castanza, exactly. And I go out a lot, you know, I go to Warehouse Raves, Afters, stuff like that in L.A., you know, very like Unz-O-Uns vibes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We know. We know. We know. We know. what afters are, right Charlie? Give me a second to Google that real quick for us. Is it like an after party? So think about it this way.

The rave goes to 4 a.m. The afters go to 7 a.m. You know what I mean? In 1920s, Harlem, that would have been called the breakfast dance. So I'm with you now. I'm totally on board for afters. Okay. All right, raves, afters.

What are you doing at these salacious events? I'm dancing. I'm cutting. a rug to put it in 1920 slang. Just talking Nate's language. Exactly. But when I do that, the thing I love more than anything is when I hear things that sound like this.

In a movie like Blade the Vampire Hunter, when all the vampires are in a warehouse like dancing, this is what I imagine I'm listening to. Totally, where there's blood raining down from the ceiling. Exactly. Yeah. So we just heard the 1999 song, Castles in the Sky. by Ian Van Dal, a vocal trance classic. And when I hear it, it makes me feel good.

I feel uplifted. It feels like a breath of fresh air. You're in the middle of this like Unz Unz Brigade. And that kind of comes in and parts the clouds. So you're a transhead. I am a transhead. I would say that. I mean, I said in our 25 prediction episode that I was predicting a trans music comeback on the charts in 2025.

I feel like my beloved co-host here, Nate Sloan, though he has a doctorate in musicology, is undereducated in the world of trance music. And maybe, Nate, do you think we could give you a very brief education? I think this is a fair assessment, and I would love to be taken to school for a change. So my understanding is, like, trans is one of the important umbrella genres in the world of electronic dance music, right? You've got your house, techno, dubstep, drum and bass, hardcore, ambient, breakbeat, industrial, UK garage, there I'll say it. Jungle, two-step. Trance. Trance is its own thing.

And it goes back to like 1988. People will say that the very first trance song was KLF's, What Time Is Love, parentheses, pure trance. Right there in the title, baby. But the scene really takes off when German DJ Sven Vath fuses the hard-hitting beats of techno with euphoric melodies and lush synthesizers, like on his 1993 track, Lesperanza, from his album, Accident in Paradise. Sven Vath takes the sound and builds out trance-specific labels like IQ and Heart House. The music becomes ubiquitous across the dance music world in the UK, in Australia, Goa, Abita.

Many subgenres exist. Acid trance, hard trance, uplifting trance, epic trance. it's got to be bigger and bigger trance. And this trance moment really takes off in the era of like 1998 to 2001. You've got the ubiquity of MBMA as a party drug, a global scene of partiers, Winamp MP3 visualizers to get people going at home on computers listening to trance. And I feel like there's like a certain sound when I think of trance. You know, disclaimer though, electronic music genres are as much about the people, the place,

and the party as they are, the actual sound. and these distinctions can get slippery. There are major gatekeepers in these genres. But, Rihanna, when you think of trance, what is the first track that comes to mind? Right off the bat, I'm thinking about Robert Miles' song, Children. We start with atmospheric melodies, digital pianos and guitars twinkle in.

There's lush synthesizers. And, of course, it's going to turn to a giant number with Forda Floor dance beats. That song is so good that Robert Miles made it to get people off the dance floor and send them home but it just kept people

because it was that much of a banger. Okay, speaking of keeping us on the dance floor, when I think of trance, I think of Tiesto's adagio for strings. It's got that lush synthesized sound of Robert Miles and takes it to another level. He introduces the trance gate.

A gate is basically like a fence for sound. It can open and close. And when you hear that da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. that's basically one long sound with this little gate turning it on and off instead of going da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And that trance gate is just so emblematic of that genre

and it, of course, contributes to the overall energy to get you going on the dance floor. So we've got children, we got Dajat for strings. What else, Rihanna? What else do you think of when you think of trance? I think of these, like, rolling synthesizers on a song like Paul Van Dykes for an angel. You aren't in a trans-like state

You are now, right? Watching Nate's face as we play these clips Has been immensely By the way. That might have been the most trancy thing we've heard so far. Well, that's because we haven't listened yet to Derrude's Sandstorm.

We've got our lush strings. We've got that trance gate. We've got epic builds. And we also have a... piercing sawtooth lead synthesizer. I know it's been memeified, but man, that song is a banger. It still slaps. Yeah.

Is this a good time to pose a philosophical question to you two? Yeah. What separates trance from, say, techno or another related genre of electronic music? Because I'm picking up everything you're putting down. I'm hearing the rolling synths. I'm hearing the haunting piano melodies. I'm hearing the sharp contrast between these epic builds and these sort of ethereal textures. But can you enlighten me as to where the fault lines between trance and its siblings lie exactly?

Like I said, there can be lots of overlap in sonics between genres. It's not just the sounds. It can be the party. And these genres are an ever-moving target. Like, techno today is super different than the techno of like Detroit, Derek May, where it all began in the 80s. You know, if you go to like Berlin's number one nightclub, Berghine and you listen to Berlin Techno, which is a UNESCO intangible heritage asset, you're going to get a really different sound from a DJ like Charlotte DeWitt. Techno today is this rolling, really intense sound with a rumble bass. that imitates the reverberations of the club.

It's super aggressive beats that are highly repetitive. Songs designed to hear reflecting off of concrete walls in a deep dark club, smells like sweat. These tracks are supposed to build over seven minutes. They're way more repetitive oftentimes. They are often about putting you in a certain mindset that might be similar, but doing so in a really different way. It's not about these lush ethereal,

pads, these haunting beautiful melodies, it's a totally different approach to putting you in this mindset. I actually think that's what really separates the idea of trance from so many other genres, is that trance is a genre that defines itself by the mindset that it wants to put you in. What is it trance? It's a quasi-hypnotic state of suspended consciousness. Exactly. That's what this music is doing for us. I'm buying what you're selling, Charles. So trans had its moment around Y2K. It became incredibly commercial. Obviously, it's existed in the underground of R Sins,

but was later replaced by French House, Dubstep, EDM, other genres that had their moment in the sun. And yet, today, like everything Y2K, it looks like it's peaking up again. And I think we might be hearing some trance in pop music. We're already hearing trance on the charts. Okay, the two big albums that we're going to look at today are FK Twiggs's record Usexuala, and surprisingly, the weekends hurry up tomorrow.

Does it trance? Does it trance? We're going to figure that out. Is that like, is it cake but with trans music? Cool. Kind of. Okay. So let's start with Usexual.

And when I say that word, yousexual, what feelings, what emotions are conjured up in the two of you? Goosebumps. Sensuality. I like that. Usexuala is a brand new made-up word, by the way. Did not previously exist prior to last year and is the name of FK. Twigs' third studio album. Twigs is an artist from the UK and has been working for over a decade. And she's basically made her career on being a quirked-up genre-fluid artist in the sense that she's moved from like,

electronic R&B in her early records to more pop and trip hop in recent efforts. Her first record aptly named LP1 was a critical darling with songs like two weeks. Not trance, but kind of trancy. Transy. Electronic for sure. I mean, that got major play shown my age here when I was in high school. But listening to that in comparison with her following record, Magdalene, we see her continue to be viscerally emotional in her vocal delivery. Magdalene was crafted in the wake of a breakup with Robert Pattinson of Twilight fame. So Magdalene, we're getting more piano and these raw textures. Whoa.

There's literally sounds of cellophane in that record. Very Cape Bushy to me. Her vocal delivery hits those high notes in a very similar way to Cape Bush. I mean, they're both from the UK, so there's a lineage there. after Magdalene, she released a mixtape Capri songs that was much more upbeat and poppy, owning the clubs in 2022. I heard that record everywhere. And she actually had a minor hit in Canada with the other artists we're talking about today, the weekend, on the song Tears in the Club. So in all those songs, we're hearing Twiggs's love for electronic music and these textures and mixing those electronic sensibilities with an emotion.

motive delivery. Essentially, trance. Electronic music with like heavy emotional, lush feelings, not trance necessarily per se, the genre characteristics, but like the feeling that it's giving you. Exactly. Those, those emotions, right? So bringing it all the way up to you, Sexua, Twiggs said that this record was inspired by her time in Prague, in which she fell in love with, not trance, but techno music. She actually hosted a slew of techno raves to promote the album, one of which I attended. But the interesting thing is that people can say it's a techno record all we want, right? But I don't hear techno. I hear pop music and I hear trance. And it's not anywhere more apparent than in the title track, You Sexua.

Nate. Yo. Pop Quiz. Okay. What makes that trance? What are the elements that Rihanna is hearing that make that trans. Okay, we've got these rolling synthesizers in the background there. Dik, ding, ding. We have a kind of lush, ethereal vocal track hanging out on top. And Charlie's like, okay, well, not exactly right, but we'll give it to you. Melodic trans, vocal trans, these are subgenres. Totally.

And then we have a pulsing, repetitive drumbeat that kind of. kind of lulls us into some kind of trans-like state. What are the things that keep the gated, the gated, shoot, wait, with the transcates, the transgate. Yes, we're hearing the transgate, and we hear it very clearly in the back half of the song. Oh, yep, there they are. There's even at the end there a little, like, sample piano that sounds like the Robert Moses track, children. Robert Miles.

The Robert Moses The architect of trans music Huge Trans pioneers There's a lot of similarities between Robert Miles' song Children And you sexua, right? They both start small

And explode Into this dancey melody Kind of how children starts Very muted And then we all rejoice in this giant trans-like explosion Oh, that's another part of it. It's like trance is as much about the journey that it takes you on, right?

Which I think distinguishes it a bit from techno, which is often about like riding through this long seven-minute song to see where you're going to end up. This is like really clear narrative arcs intro, build up, breakdown, drop, reset. There's peaks and valleys. Yeah. So at the beginning of Usexua, we start with minimal instruments. It's very sparse. Okay, but there's that techno beat. Got that rumble.

Arpeggiating synths. And then slowly we hear this synth roll in. And then over the course of the song, it grows and grows before we explode in this feeling of you sexual. It's all coming together. Breakdown to build us back up. Ooh. And we're back. It's a little Robert Miles, Robert Miles piano to get us back into the biggest moment.

Makes you want to throw us some shapes. That's a different style. So just so I have this straight. So FCA Twigs goes to Prague, falls in love with trance. While filming The Crow reboot, which sucked. Invents this new term, Usexuala, and deploys it as not only an album title, a song title, but also kind of the second coming of this 90s trans genre to support her message of what is Usexual, universal love and acceptance? Well, so more than anything, right?

We've discussed trans being this feeling, you know? So Usexuala works in tandem with trans because in an interview with British Vogue, Twigs actually said the word Usexual means to be so euphoric. that one could transcend human form. What does that sound like? It's in the word. Trans. Trans music. Cool.

So in the song Usexuala, we're also hearing not just sounds that evoke trans, but lyrical connections. The song Usexuala is anchored by this idea that we're not alone, that something is bringing us together. She repeats it over and over and over again in the song couched by the word Usexuala. You're not alone in our bodies. We are transcending our own bodies going into the universal consciousness of yousexual.

And then she follows it with the words, and if they ask you, say you feel it, but don't call it love, comma, yousexual. Huh. Cool. So this title track is, in a way, the ethos for this record. She's bringing this whole new word to the table. This is the first song on the album,

also named Usexuala kind of placing us in these sounds. The rest of the record jumps around from subgenre to subgenre. Again, I hear a lot of industrial pop. I'm hearing a lot of bureaucisms more than I hear this techno that she said inspired the record. Can you explain to me the track drums of death? Seems pretty self-explanatory, Charlie. Not sure what else. else you need to know here.

Drums of Death, I feel like, is the most techno-e on the album. It's the most percussive. It's in the title, Drums of Death. That's more techno and hardcore than anything else, really. But she's dancing around various sounds. It's a pop record. Yeah, it's a pop record. I think the song Perfect Stranger is the best pop song of 2024.

That's all about that upbeat bass, which we heard in, I think, the very first first track you played, Rihanna, at the very top of the episode. Castle's in the Sky. So another classic trance staple. Even in the songs that don't really sound trance, because Perfect Stranger is presented as this electronic pop song, but because Twigs loves these sounds so much, she works it in to the songs that aren't as electronic. So we have U-Sexuala, we have Perfect Stranger, these were the two singles from the record.

I also hear slight glimmers of trance again on the song Room of Fools. One of the more dancey songs on the record. Oh, there's the trance gate. Tic-Tick-Tick-Tick-Tac-Tac-K-Kat. There's that piano. Oh, yeah. And there we're getting text painting too, right? Like it's multi-layered because when Twiggs says it feels nice,

we move from these more abrasive synthesizers, kind of hard to listen. to cacophonus into this piano and synthesizer melody, evocative of the classic trans songs we listened to earlier in the episode, like Robert Miles' children. This piano melody that kind of carries us through as if the rain clouds are parting. You know, we get this moment of respite. And that is the trance sensibility. Yeah, it's kind of like when you're at a club dancing, things are getting too intense. And you're like, I'm feeling a little overweight.

and you need that musical break to like feel at home in your body and safe again, or maybe transcending your body and safe again wherever you might belong. Speaking of Robert Miles, once again, I am looking at the track list. There's a song called Childlike Things with Northwest. Is that a reference? I don't know. I wouldn't say so. It's a pop song.

It's a really good pop song. Northwest sings in Japanese for a verse. It's pretty awesome. A little bit more house piano than it is Robert Miles' trance piano. I don't know if I would call it trans-inspired. That track specifically, though I do enjoy it. That track's good for going like 90 on the freeway. You shouldn't be going 90 on the freeway, Rihanna.

So true. You got your license just a few years ago. No, you're right. Metaphorically speaking, Charlie. Oh, sorry. Metaphorically speaking, if I was going home from a rave at 4 a.m. and the 10 is empty, and I'm listening to FK Twigs, blasting. You know, good for that, hypothetically.

All right. But what Twigs does on Usexua is create a trans-like state, through this made-up word, U-Sexua, and what it represents, but sonically, she very clearly has a deep reverence for the sounds of trans, recognizes its emotive qualities, and puts smatterings of that in the U-Sexual ethos. So going back to our question, does it trans, I'm going to have to say yes.

What do you think, Nate? I'm going to say some of these tracks, like Room of Fools, are trance with a capital T. Others may be more nodding, but I feel like the spirit, the ethos, as you said earlier, Rianna, of this music pervades this album. And it is, I mean, of all FKA Twigs work I've heard so far, this is the most enjoyable thing I've heard from them. And that's very refreshing for me. Maybe I can pivot it from one artist whose music is previously very dark to another. The King of Dark Pop R&B, The Weekend, Abel Tess Faye, has a new album out, the conclusion of a three-part trilogy that we're going to listen to right after the break.

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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. Does it trance? That's the question we're dealing with here. We've got Canadian artist Abel Tesfay, The Weekend. He has released his sixth studio album, Hurry Up Tomorrow, supposedly his last, using the moniker The Weekend,

and the conclusion of a trilogy that began in 2020, with After Hours where we found the weekend in Las Vegas, experiencing darkness, excessive drugs, gambling, running through a broken relationship, all to the danceable 80s synth pop of Max Martin co-produced hits like Blinding Lights and Save Your Tears. The weekend is running away from everything that is causing pain in his life, and at the end of After Hours on the song, Until I Bleed Out. we experience the supposed death of the weekend. He bleeds out at the end and is taken away in an ambulance,

but then in 2022, the weekend is back with Dawn FM, where we find him in some kind of purgatory, reflecting on his life. More 80s synth, but with a stronger overarching narrative, the conceit is led by this in-between life-and-death space or spiritual guide through this in-between life-and-death. space is the voice of Jim Carrey as a DJ who is hosting 103.5 Dawn FM. You are now listening to 103.5 Dawn FM. You've been in the dark for way too long.

It's time to walk into the light and accept your fate with open arms. Scared. Don't worry. It's a haunting album with spooky sounds as well as like 80s Kmart music in the hands of producer one Otricks point, never, and a song like out of time with some vapor wave pop. The album was full of these ghastly ballads as well as a fairly morbid lead single, Take My Breath. So we arrive in 2025 to the third album in this trilogy, Hurry Up Tomorrow, that picks off where we left off in purgatory. Abel Tess Faye says that this is the final album of the weekend, that he wants to be reborn as himself, which I think is really funny, because he's been trying to ax this character since 2020.

He literally died at the end of After Hours. Then he went to purgatory. And then we need to listen in an hour and a half, including a forthcoming film and World Tour, to the true death of the weekend. Now, I don't think that this album has as strong of a linear narrative or cohesive arc as Don FM, which I really enjoy. But it deals with a lot of the same themes.

Alienation of fame, substance abuse, broken relationships. They're all there. But this album contains every, sonic identity you could imagine. It's got Brazilian funk featuring the biggest star in Brazil, Anita, on the song, Sao Paulo. It's got trap hip-hop

on the song Reflections Laughing, featuring Travis Scott and somehow also Lawrence in the Machine. That song ends chopped and screwed, but you want to go the opposite directions? You got your chipmunk soul on Enjoy the Show. Do you feel like you're needing some 90s hip-hop now? Well, you've got it on I Can't Wait to Get There.

And all throughout, lyrics reflecting on the downfalls of fame and all of the turmoil that playing this character the weekend has brought him and he's trying to kill off the character. And I think in a certain way, he's trying to put us in a certain mindset. A mindset between life and death, this existential state, an almost hypnotic state, a trance-like state, if you will. Bring it back around. He did it. Yep.

He threaded the needle. The question is, if this album contains every kind of sound, does it? Does it contain trance? Let's take a look around. Does it trance? Insert crowd noise. Let's see what happens if we just start at the top of the album. The song, Wake Me Up, featuring Justice, who we spoke to on the show just a few months ago. We began reflecting on his legacy.

And we're in some kind of death state. Lush pads. The amazing synthesizers of the great Mike Dean, who, plays extensively with the weekend. Travis Scott played on a lot of Kanye records. And I think he's giving me a bit more like Mozart Requiem than his trance. It feels like we're at the funeral for the weekend at the very beginning of the song. Until it takes on a totally different beat.

Running out of time, we've heard that before. This is more thriller than it is trance. I was going to say, I'm getting sniffings of Quincy Jones in there. We had a very lovely. send off for Quincy at the Grammys this year. Not quite trance, maybe putting us in this, you know, hypnotic mind state that's in between life and death. But if we visit the productions of Max Martin and Oscar Halter alongside the weekend on the track, Open Hearts, I think we're going to get some trance. Transgate bass. Arpeggiation. And get this.

Ooh. Transcates. Okay. You got that transcates. And then we just need a crappy digital piano to splash an octave over the top of that. You mean like on the song The Abyss featuring Lana Del Rey? Ah, there it is. Totally. It all comes back to children. Exactly. The thing is, I even hear the sounds of trance on songs that are totally not trance.

Like the biggest song on the album. right now is timeless. Featuring Playboy Cardi, it's a production led by Feral Williams. You're like, I don't know, right? It does not trance. You know, Charlie, I'm kind of picking up what you're putting down, though. There's those little synth stabs, right, that are like, bouto?

Well, synths, a little bit of those, like, arpeggiated, you know, saw-toothy things. And then, once again, some big, epic, lush, ethereal vocal patterns. heads and pianos. Classic Mike Dean. Oh yeah, I mean, his sins are the biggest sounds on the planet. This is not trancing for me. I don't know what y'all are talking about.

It's not the foreground. It's the background elements. It's like he's trying to make us feel like we're in this in between life and death state in a place of hypnosis not quite conscious. And so he's using some of these tones that you might have heard in trance. Okay. Let's try a few other places. Let's take a tour to Give Me Mercy another Max Martin Oscar Holter production. I don't know. That's like just straight up like Vangelis? 80s PBS music. Yeah. Not Vangelis, but there is no joke, Georgio Moroder on this album.

Godfather of dance music, and to be clear, this is not trans. So, no, that's just Giorgio, that's like 70s since the precursor to where dance music is going to go way before, or like 20 years before trans music. But I do maybe catch a little bit on

one of my favorite songs on the album is Red Terror. It's one of the most beautiful and haunting songs he's ever written. It's sung from the perspective of his mother who escaped the Ethiopian, genocide called the Red Terror. So a little bit in the synthesizers, those really deep pads, the sawtooth, arpy things bouncing around, feel very 2000s trance against a very different kind of backdrop.

At the end of the song, he basically calls to finally kill off his character. Two quick thoughts. First of all, I love a good concept album. But can this dude just like release some good songs? I don't need to follow you on this journey anymore. It's a little much for sure. Yeah, we've been with this storyline for a long time. Now, my second issue is sadly with you two because I need to object to some of the ways you're characterizing the elements of trans here.

Lush synth pads do not equal trans. If you put a stained glass window in my bathroom, it doesn't make it a church. You know what I mean? It was like you said at the outset of this episode, Charlie, it's like it's about the full context of these elements. True. And I remain unconvinced that a lush synthad puts us in the world of trans. Now, if you wanted to tell me the origins of some of these sounds, which have become so

ubiquitous in the work of artists like The Weekend, can actually be traced back to this 90s trans movement. I find that compelling, but I'm hesitant to ascribe this trance-like quality to these weekend tracks. There, I've said my piece. Fine, fine, fine. Then let me take you to the very last song on the album and see if I can convince you otherwise. It's called Hurry Up Tomorrow. It's the title track.

We're now like an hour and 25 minutes into this album. Snoose Fest. Okay. What? Charlie is vindicated. Now tell me that's not trans. It's trans. It's trans.

It's trans. It's trance. You made a compelling point. Except that's actually just be making a five-minute trance beat over the top of the vocal on the final track that it's fired me so much. S-U, G-T-F-O, W-T-F. You can't do that. What? You have just broken all of the trust we've established over 10 years.

years on the show. It's trans adjacent. Wait, let me hear this what you made again. I got, now I need to listen to it with fresh ears. Here's the weekend.

Yeah. Wash me with your fog. It has to pay for my sick. We need a really bad I think you need to get on the remix album here, Charlie,

based on that. audition that you just submitted. Yeah, that was good. I was a few minutes late for our recording because I literally did that in like just a few minutes. Worth it. When you presented that, I thought in my head, I was like, wow, that's the most interesting song on the record.

I really would have remembered that if that was on the album. And then I was like, oh, okay, maybe I was just sleeping. No, it was never on there in the first place. Okay, so Usexua does a trance. Definitively, yes. Yes. The weekends. The weekends, hurry up tomorrow.

Nate is unconvinced. Here's the interesting question, though, is like, dance music scenes are not just about the sounds, right? They are about the space that they're happening in. And oftentimes when a scene transcends wherever that party, wherever that region is, and those sounds start to seep into the world of pop, I think oftentimes that is the sign that that scene is actually about to go underground again and some other thing is going to happen. Because so often these parties are about not just who belongs there, but who doesn't belong there.

And perhaps some of the sounds on the weekend, which I do think are maybe trans-adjacent, might be off-putting to some of the people who might be parting in these scenes. So I think your skepticism, Nate, is totally apt. Question for the panel. Rihanna, you had this bingo card prediction of a trance revival. Why, yes. Have we satisfied that category? Can we cross that off our bingo card for 2025? So in an ideal world.

I would love to have our listeners cross that off on their bingo cards. But I don't know. Usexuala still has a long ways to go. I hope it grows over time. Definitively, we've decided that hurry up tomorrow does not trance. So I don't know if it counts. But I hope in the coming months we see more trance on the Hot 100. You know, we got to get Lady Gaga abracadabra to number one.

Because that song, to me, does trance. gonna reach out and grab you. Wait, that's abercadabra, right? Ignore him, Rihanna. So I am also curious to hear what you report from the raves and the afters. Yeah.

You know, what doesn't get measured on the billboard, but maybe is measured in the sweaty, concrete rooms that you frequent in the early hours of the morning. What is being played there? And maybe that could also tell us whether this revival is real or not.

For sure. So next time you party, please bring your giant microphone, your headphones, and your audio recorder, and report back to us. Poser check. But I will for the sake of the show. Thanks, DJ Cassanza. Switched on Pop is produced by Rana Cruz, edited by Art Chung, engineered by Brand McFarlane, illustrations by Iris Gottlieb. Our theme music is by Jossi Adams and Zach Tenario of Arc Iris. Remember of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of Vulture, which is part of New York Magazine.

You can subscribe at NYMetM. tag.com slash pod. Find more episodes of Switchedon Pop anywhere you get podcasts. Go to our website, switchonpop.com. While you're there, sign up for our email list. Get a 2025 bingo card delivered to your inbox as well. And you can play along with us. If you have no idea what we're talking about, we are following all the predictions we made about what's going to happen to pop music in 2025 over the course of the year. We'll be back again next Tuesday. But until then, Thanks for listening. Attention Spotify.

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