Switched on Pop - The rise of surrealist pop: KATSEYE and ADÉLA

Episode Date: October 20, 2026

The music of global girl group KATSEYE might be confusing on first listen. A less-generous read might consider their songs to be rudimentary: the lyrics are mostly nonsense, the instrumentals evoke lesser 2010s pop songs, and the aesthetic can’t decide whether it’s targeted to children or adults. However, maybe the nonsensical nature of KATSEYE is also… the point? And maybe that point is tethered to early surrealist movements of the early twentieth century? On this episode of Switched on Pop, producer Reanna makes the case to Nate that KATSEYE and ADÉLA are indicative of a larger shift in pop music, one that tethers itself to Marcel Duchamp and the dada movement. CREDITS  Reanna Cruz: Producer  Iris Gottlieb: Illustrator  Charlie Harding: Host, Executive Producer  Dion Lee: Art Director  Brandon McFarland: Audio Engineer  Nick Ripps: Video Editor  Nate Sloan: Host  Lissa Soep: Editor  Zach Tenorio & Jocie Adams: Theme Composers  Switched On Pop is a co-production of Vox Media Podcast Network, Vulture, and Rock Ridge Productions. Link to Charlie and Nate’s live event with Jensen McRae at USC! Songs discussed: The Lonely Island, Emma Stone – Turn Up The Beef KATSEYE – Gnarly KATSEYE – Animal KATSEYE – Hootie Frutti KATSEYE – PINKY UP Fifth Harmony – I’m In Love With a Monster Portugal. The Man – Feel It Still Britney Spears – Toxic Britney Spears – Circus Da Hool – Meet Her at the Loveparade Little Richard – Tutti Frutti ADÉLA – Ain’t In La Miley Cyrus – We Can’t Stop ADÉLA – Nicole Kidman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Switched on Pop is doing a live taping of our podcast in Los Angeles on Thursday, November 5th at 7 p.m. At Beauvard Auditorium on USC's campus, it is free and open to everyone. All you need to do is go to the link in our bio to reserve a spot. This is going to be a ridiculously fun event. We're going to feature the incredible singer-songwriter Jensen. McRae, a fan favorite, I would say. And we're going to have a live band performing excerpts from literary pop hits from Kate Bush to Hozier to, yes, Taylor Swift. If you're in the L.A. area, we would love to see you there. It's on Thursday, November 5th at USC, and it's totally free.

Go to the link in our show notes to RSVP. See you there. Unlock unlimited free grocery delivery with PC Express Pass. Shop online and get the same low No Frills prices delivered. Get your first year of PC Express Pass for just $2.50 a month. Learn more at nofrills.ca. Nate, have you ever seen the 2016 movie Pop Star? Never Stop, Never Stopping? Not only have I seen it.

I have been listening to the Lonely Island and Seth Myers podcast religiously. So I am here to dish about all things pop star. Okay, I'm glad because while it is a satire of the pop music industry, there's a song in it by the fake pop star Connor for real, which is referenced as the catchphrase verse. And it's named that because, as I'm sure you remember, Andy Sandberg just lists off catchphrases. It's kind of bitch say word.

Doodoo-da-da-da-dil bird. Doink to-doink. Sorry, dad. Inky nuts. Squirrel jam. Balance in my check. Look. Serber in the sherbet.

Twark. One hundred gift baskets. You're now rocking with a Tesla boy. So good. So good. I love that track. Turn Up the Beef featuring Emma Stone. And why bring this up, you might be asking?

It's not just because I love Popstar, which I do. It's because that song is what I think of every single time I listen to a track by the Global Girl Group Cat's Eye. Welcome to Switch on Pop. I am producer Rihanna-Cruz. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. I'm so happy we started off with that, Nate. Yeah, maybe we'll have an excuse to play Finest Girl Bin Laden song at some point. But I'm curious to learn more about the catchphrase pop idea.

Well, I feel like no group does that catchphrase pop. like cat's eye. Eagle-eared listeners might remember us discussing them at the end of last year with regards to their hit song, NARly, which I think is a shining example of that. That song was released in the middle of 2025. That song was released in the middle of 2025. And I think for a lot of us, myself included, Katzai was a kind of flash in the pan, right? Like, this song is funny. It's humorous. It doesn't really make much sense. And I thought Katzai would be in and out in the pop music world. But since Narley, their presence has only continued to grow. The group just performed on SNL. They were nominated for two Grammys, including Best New Artist. And their newest EP Wild, which came out this August,

debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, featuring songs like Animal. Nobody knows you're out of control, but I see a side behind the closed doors. They go. You move like to startis. This rise to stardom doesn't come without some personal challenges for the group, namely the current loss of two of their six members right now

due to quote-unquote hiatus. but it's clear that something about Katzai is connecting with people in some capacity. And something I've noticed is that people talk about Katzai. The way that they do, I think, most K-pop artists, you know, they focus on the visuals, the aesthetics, the fan base in the specific case of Katzai, the changing tide of members is always in the discussion. And that all makes sense to me considering the group's origins with the South Korean conglomerate Hybe and the TV show Pop Star Academy,

where the group was created in efforts of making a global group from the K-pop model. But while there are some critics writing about Katzai, it does frustrate me that people aren't really talking about the music as much. I'm guessing this is where we come in. Absolutely. I'm someone who's trying to understand why Katzai has been so successful and continues to grow,

when especially on first listen, I felt like songs like Narly were a little juvenile. I thought it was kind of nonsense. I struggled to understand who it was for and where it lands on the spectrum somewhere in the middle between club rat and like children's radio. Some might say the best thing to come out of Narley was the viral Christmas Carol parody version, where they substitute Marley, as in Jacob Marley, the protagonist of that, and have lines such as Party at the Fuzzywick House. Party at the Fizzywick House. This song.

Oh, my God, you're a ghost. Oh, my God, is this real? Oh, we're going haunted tonight. Oh, we're going out tonight. We are on such a different science. Our algorithms are not to save. But respect, respect to the Jacob Marley fans out there. We're healing generational devise on this podcast.

Absolutely. Always. Me and you, we're hashing it out in real time. Okay, but so that was your initial impression of Narley. But now it sounds like you've, you're seeing the song more favorably. I think so. I think there's an element to electronic music that tends to lean into the simple and the nonsensical. We could hear it in other cat's-eye songs on the wild EP like Hootie Fruity.

Certainly a spiritual successor to NARLY, I would say. Absolutely. And I won't lie. I was a little confused thinking about hootie-fruity, you know, conceptually. But, Nate, I'm here to say today, I think that very confusion is the point. Ooh, okay. I'm into this way of entering the music. because we just did a 500th episode where we talked all about, you know, embracing music that you

might initially have an adverse reaction to. And I feel like now in episode 501 we're modeling that. So couldn't be better timing. Today, Nate, I want to look at the music of the cat's eye cinematic universe, including Adela, another artist in the group's orbit. Look at how they're approaching music and figure out what that approach says about the future of pop. Let's do it. Sweet. And right off the bad, I'm going to make a bold claim.

I've given this much thought, Nate. I think I've gotten to the bottom of Katzai's whole shtick. Ooh, here we go. I think they're fully self-aware. I think they know what they're doing. And though I'm not a philosopher nor an art historian, okay? I think Katzai is pioneering a new wave of pop music that I will refer to, henceforth as Dadaist Pop.

I couldn't be happier to hear those words. My wife Whitney is an art historian. She has taught me well in the surrealist lineage. And I have to say, I kind of surprised myself here. I don't watch a lot of reality shows, but I have seen every episode of Pop Star Academy. And I do feel invested in this group, Katzai. So I'm strapped in.

All right. I never could have expected this from you. So again, not an art historian, but let me see if I could summon my bachelor fine arts degree real quick to give you a definition of Dada. The Dada movement is an avant-garde art movement from the early 20th century where artists in response to the chaos and the relative insanity of World War I made work that both rejected. logic and was seen as anti-art due to its approach that felt nonsensical and unstructured to many. It's the beginning of postmodernism and dada work could be sculpture, it could be sound, it could be poetry. And with that in mind, I now turn to Global Girl Group Katzai. Let's take a deep hard listen to the lyrics from last year's gnarly. We have lyrics that, like we're a little nonsical.

And the things that they're saying move from the mundane, Bobati, to the technological, to the meta, where they're like they're like, this song is gnarly. They're just listing things, but the way that the girls are doing it is inherently absurd and ironic. I don't think you would describe boba tea or fried chicken as gnarly. I don't know. Would you, Nate? No, I tend to save that adjective for, you know, like a really big wave that I'm about to surf perhaps. Totally.

Shocker, bro. I'm always out there hanging 10. And so, yeah, that's more when I would deploy it personally. Right. You wouldn't use gnarly to describe these mundane things. And yet the juxtaposition of those concepts between gnarly and something so random is where the interesting tension lies. And that tension, I think, is Dadaist. And thus Nauri is Dada pop.

Cool. I think I need an anchor image for Dada right now, Rihanna. Is there like a famous Dada piece you could supply me to sort of orient myself? So I think probably the eminent example of Dada art comes from the artist Marcel Douchamp. And Duchamp had a series of pieces that he called Ready Made, which are regular objects manufactured and mass produced, but placed in a context in which it could be considered art, right? and this could be anything from a coat rack to a comb with a phrase etched into it to a literal shovel. For example, I think the most iconic piece of Duchamp's, I'd say, is his ready-made work fountain from 1917, in which he presented a porcelain urinal with the signature r. R. dot mutt written on the side as the work. That's the piece.

So if I've got this right, the way Douchamp transforms these everyday objects into artistic spectacle is analogous to cats eye, taking, say, Bobatie, and imbueing it with this artistic aura. I would say so. I love it. To go into a cat's eye song, I think much like. the ready maids and da-da work in general, you need to challenge the process of thinking rational thought. And you need to lean into the absurdism of what you're hearing. Yes, you have to be willing to surrender a certain amount of logic and conscious thought and enter a more, I guess, id-driven experience of the world. Charlie is away. So Rihanna and Nate will

Oh, yeah. I know. Finally, that guy is out of the picture on vacation in Santa Fe. And Rianna and Nate can just dig deep into urinals and Dada and Dachamp. Oh, yeah. And I don't think it's particularly out of pocket to make the connection that cat's eye is Dada because you think about what I said about Dada artists making work that defied logic in response to the chaos and the turmoil of World War I. When you look at the context in which this music is being released in, there is deep unrest socially and politically. So maybe I don't think it's out of the question for Katzai to be dabbling in similar aesthetics to contrast what is going on in society the same way that Dada artists emerged in post-World War I Europe. When I listen to the song through that lens, I start to hear things a little differently. Throughout the first verse, there are these violent sounds, knives, being sharpened. There's these kind of orgasmic outbursts. When I listen closer, I can hear that turmoil and unrest sort of penetrating the surface of the song somehow. Whatever is being used sonically has that metallic, sophie-esque sound to it.

That sounds like you're kind of banging pots and pans. Or in this case, as you said, like sharpening a knife. Yes. Very face shopping coded. Another, our Sophie, another artist who feels deeply in a surrealist lineage. My shop is the fake side front, front. I don't know, Nate. Maybe we're the first people ever in history to say that when I listen to cat's eye, I think of Marcel Duchamp.

But when Duchamp described his ready maids, he, I'm coming with quotes today. I'm coming with history. I love it. I'm coming with it all. Duchamp described a ready made work as, quote, an ordinary. object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist. Now, in modern parlance, we could call a ready-made something bland, something corporate, something not super thought out. Human made, of course, but it only exists as art because we decide

it's art. With that in mind, here's a quote from the pitchfork review of Cat's Eyes Wild. by Kieran Press Reynolds, quote, The sum of this band is not worth more than its parts, especially when the parts are arranged and optimized by the Hib Geffen Machine. They go on to write, quote, These songs have a beautiful hollowness that comes from making music about things that could have been performed by anyone else and mean nothing to you. So Katzai is the ready mate.

Is that? Cats eye is the ready made, right? Deep. Maybe cats eye is the fountain of pop music. In this metaphor, I guess this makes Hibb Duchamp and the various Catsye songs are the Ready Maids? No, no, no. I think you're close.

I think Hib is the urinal manufacturer. I like that. I really hate to say this sentence. So just please no one clip this out of context. This is not reductive. Katzai is the fountain. How about that? Katzai is the fountain.

Totally. And you are Duchamp right now because you're putting the fountain in our minds, in the gallery of our minds as the aesthetic object. And I don't know how the song fits into this itself. But something like that maybe is the calculus. Well, when I listen to a track like Animal off of the Wild EP, I do understand what Kieran is talking about in their review where they talk about how the song is manufactured and processed

and it means nothing and it could have been performed by anyone else. Nothing really out of the ordinary here in the chorus. Standard metaphor being an animal on the dance floor. but if cat's eye is the fountain, right? The fact that the song is so standard is the object of interest to me. The song has to demonstrate some level of formula in order to serve its purpose as the commodified object. Bingo. I could do this all day, Rihanna.

Okay. Let's listen to the verse of animal. You're the boss You run the circus Baby Take it up a notch You're so sophisticated Don't want to be on a schedule

You're on your whole time There's a lot of toxic vibes In here Just incidentally I need to mention that Fingernails One two three colors Pined Cup-dive and bag of your waistline

So looking at this verse right We have an anchor in this vocal hum, the which, Nate, you think sounds like Britney Spears toxic. I mean, not that part exactly. I think what sounds like toxic is the drums especially. They're like kind of lightly swung in this way. And then

there's part of the melody that reminded me of toxic. There's a little bit of that minor third motion there. So yeah, maybe some light. inspiration there. I'm not sure. Baby, can't you say I'm calling? I see what you mean. I don't think I necessarily agree.

What Animal reminds me of with this like boom chuck beat, it feels like it's pulling from a mid-2010s soul R&B revival thing. It's giving me Sean Mendez. It's giving me a vibe adjacent to like Portugal demands feel it still. Oh, okay. Yep.

So that's definitely in there, but it really reminds me of a song by another girl group, one that peaked in the mid-2010s, the group Fifth Harmony. And I think Animal sounds like their track. I'm in love with a monster. Oh!

You buy me a door before you buy me a rose. Covered in dirt before I'm covered and gone. Yep. Both songs, they have the same kind of vocal stem that becomes an earworm. Similar melodies, let's listen again to Animal. You're the boss, you run the circus, baby. Take it up a notch. You're so sophisticated.

Don't want to be on a schedule you're on. They both have a certain amount of blues, inflection. they have those lightly swung drums. They even have, you know, passing the vocals around the group like that. Yeah, I can definitely see the overlap here. And I feel like for me, Fifth Harmony is indicative of the larger musical trends of the mid-2010s. Like I remember that era as coming off as very sanitized, very corporate, very processed on the mainstream pop charts, you know, coming off of the Sleasball vibes of the late 2000s recession pop 2010 era and moving into like Ferell's Happy,

which was the number one song of 2014 and Bruno Marr's Uptown Funk, which was the number one song of 2015. You could see that shift. And Katzai is pulling from that corporate sanitized era of pop music. The lyrics second that. The lyrics are nothing that I haven't heard before. They're very basic. They're not really full of substance.

The opening lines are you the boss, you run the circus baby. You're the boss. You run the circus baby. Take it up a notch. It's so sophisticated. Don't want to be on a schedule you're all the whole time. These are common metaphors, and they feel like non sequiters, as if you were trying to build a pop song from like bare principles.

Yeah. You run the circus sounds like a phrase, people say, But I don't think that's ever, I don't think that you're like, oh, yeah, that guy, he runs the circus. You know, you're like, that's not a thing. It's like, well, you wouldn't call the head of a circus a boss. You would call the head of a circus a ringmaster. Right? Ringleader.

Or what do you call it, a ringmaster? Don't let me end that song camp because I would not get it right either. But maybe that brings merit to your Britney Spears connection, Nate, because maybe the circus reference is trying to connect it to Britney Spears's song, circus. Okay. so not toxic as I was initially thinking, but perhaps another Brittany cut. I mean, there's certainly some conceptual overlap here because I feel like in this stage, Britney Spears is acknowledging her own status. I mean, there's certainly some conceptual overlap here because I feel like in this stage in her career, Britney Spears is acknowledging her own status. as a kind of ready-made pop star.

And that was, I think, what people found so compelling about this album. Like, this song is actually acknowledging the fact, like, yeah, you look at me as though I'm this product. Right. And you look, you don't even see me as a person. You see me as a sort of archetypal. As a circus act. Yeah.

Yeah. So there's, there's kind of a maybe spiritual link between these two in some ways. Totally. They're channeling this corporatized energy, maybe. implicitly and explicitly. And I want to bring it back to Dada for a moment and do Shamp's ready maids, which are manufactured objects that become art. And in the case of the fountain, which is the urinal piece, it's generic in concept. You see it every day, you know, when you're out in the world. And to be blunt, it is something that you piss on, right? And I don't

mean this in a reductive way, but right, like Katzai is the ready made. Right. Unlock unlimited free grocery delivery with PC Express Pass. Shop online and get the same low No Frills prices delivered. Get your first year of PC Express Pass for just $2.50 a month. Learn more at no frills.ca. Hold music. Not what you want to hear when a pipe dispersed in your basement is flooding. That's why Intact Insurance answers 2 million claim calls per year within 20 seconds.

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Call 1866-531-2600 to visit connectxontera.ca. And I realize, like, this argument is totally out there. It's out of left field. And I'm maybe making an argument that could unintentionally extend to all sloppy, corporatized pop music that is churned out on an assembly line from the flavor of the weak pop star. Right. But the difference here is I think Katzai is in on the gag, which makes all the difference. Yes. There's a line in their song Pinky Up off the Wild DP that kind of lays it all out for us.

Wow. What do they say? The only truth is knowing you know nothing? The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing. Paraphrasing with a wink, that famous Socrates quote, that's like, I know nothing. Yeah. Wow. I did not expect that song to go there.

And yet you're right. It's like this is a peak behind the curtain. We know what we're doing. We know this is, you know, hollow, to quote, the pitchfork review. But maybe that's exactly the point. Maybe that's where true wisdom lies when you forfeit the idea of trying to create some deeper meaning. Right. And I love how the line is delivered by Katzai member Megan, as if she's booming coming down from the class.

It's like a voice of God type thing. There's a bit of a, like, Bill and Ted's excellent adventure vibe here. Like, So crates. All we are is dust in the wind, man. So crates. The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing. That's us, dude. Oh, yeah.

But I think even Bill and Ted, like, knows what they're doing when they do. that. Truly, yeah. I mean, that's, that's, that's the idea, right? The true wisdom comes in the places you're not expecting it. Like Pinky Up by Katzai. And it tells me that Katzai is willing to incorporate philosophical and artistic themes and concepts into their work. So let's zero in on Pinky Up for a second, because I think this is another example of how the group can be Dada's pop. Pinky Up. That last section feels very Europop to me, which is appropriate, I think, as a deeply kind of surreal genre of music in general. It is a sample of a 1997 trance song called Meet Her at the Love Parade by Da Hou.

Very like doof, doof, doof. So is Pinky Up a phrase similar to gnarly that kind of serves this enthemian? purpose while not really signifying anything in particular? I think so. I think it relates to the etiquette concept of keeping your pinkies up when drinking tea and all of that. But the lyrics that follow the statement of pinky up, up, up, up are it's a state of mind. I bet it goes like this, which really, again, does not mean much of anything. The more mundane way, it also gives them a dance move to do. I mean, they do a lot of hand dancing. I remember that from their first, like, hit touch as well. There's a lot of, like, stuff happening.

A lot of hand jive. When I watch cats I perform, it feels like, and I mean this with love, like I'm in a dystopian movie, and this is the entertainment that's, like, beamed in onto every screen. It is like what would play at the Capitol and the Hunger Games for sure. Exactly. And they're putting like messages into the songs. You just walk around going pinky up, up, up, you know. That's the duality of this music.

It is corporate, centrist, conservative pop. And at the same time, it has this surrealist anarchy to it. Right. And the verses of Pinky Up even advocate. for that kind of anarchy. So we have Making Out With Your Best Friends, robbing the Louvre.

Later in the song, they talk about getting arrested and killing people juxtaposed again with the chorus, which is pinky up, etiquette,

being prim and proper. Wait, Rihanna, there's an even deeper bombshell here. What do they say after robin the Louvre? We Mona Lisa

with a cute attitude. What artist has a famous parody of the Mona Lisa. Is it Duchamp? Hell yeah. His piece L-H-O-O-O-Q which takes a reproduction

of the Mona Lisa and he draws a mustache and beard on her face. And I want to say in French L-H-O-O-Q means something like she's hot or something, something very crude like that. It might be even dirtier than that. She has a hot ass

I guess what it translates to. But yeah, talking about Galaxy Brain. I mean, maybe they're hip to this Duchamp reference and they're like kind of sprinkling it in to pinky up. Maybe. The promo for the song I remember was a shitty AI generated photo, but it was of the Mona Lisa holding a cup of tea with her pinky up. So there's this pendulum between anarchy,

and corporate eyes control. Mm-hmm. Where does this leave us as listeners, as consumers, even? I think it leaves us contending with the idea of anti-art. You know, Dada was lambasted as anti-art because of its rejection of the traditions and the principles of modern art as we knew it. And when we listen to this chorus, that's like just the words pinky up over and over again, as if it's a nursery, rhyme. It is reductive. And I think that could be an insult, but also in this context, the purpose of the song. We're not shooting for the stars here. It is reductive and it is catchphrase pop. But as we're

learning, catchphrase pop does have merit. Their song Hootie-Fruity follows a similar formula. I'm so excited we're talking about this song because as a music historian, I'm thinking about what its antecedents might be as well. And my mind immediately goes to Little Richard, Tootie Frutie. I feel like that is the predecessor to Hootie Frutie, another song that is essentially a series of nonsense rhymes. Of course, one can't help but draw the connection between Little Richard and Cat's Eye. Nonsense words have been in pop since the dawn of pop music. And sometimes they also cover up a deeper truth. I mean, I'm pretty sure the original lyrics of Tootie Fruitie were Tootie Good Booty.

And many people understood it to be a song about anal sex. there's a lot of layers to that song, even though it sounds like nonsense. And perhaps we could find similar depth in Hootie Frutie. I'm not sure. Or depth. I don't know if that's quite the right word I want to use, but certainly multiple layers of meaning. How about that? Right, right.

Well, that goes back to what I said earlier, Nate, where I told you that the first time I listened to Kat's Eye, I was very confused because you, you, you could see it in Hootie Frutie. The lyrics are sexual, but it uses this repetitive hook that is seen as childish. It's nonsense words. And that back and forth between adult themes and juvenile presentation is a contrast. And is a hallmark of pop music dating back to Tootty fruity and probably earlier as well. I bet we could come up with some nonsense songs from the 19th century. There's moments of lyrical genius in here. Hootie fruity on your tongue.

Hootie fruity all night long. My favorite line, hootie fruity like the $20 smoothies in L.A. Facts. Someone needs to do something about those. That's an heroin reference, I'm guessing. Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

You know it. But looking at the lyrics of hooty-frutie, the funny thing is, I do think these lyrics are Dada, and there is a merit to the way that nonsense lyrics are written within the Dada practice. One particular Dada's technique is the cut-up technique, which was popularized by the poet Tristan Shara in the Dadaist Manifesto. Yes. And he says to make a Dadaist poem, you know, there's a series of steps,

But essentially you take a newspaper and scissors, cut out an article in the paper, cut out every single word from that article, shake it all up in a bag, pull whatever words and phrases out in a certain order, and that order is your poem. When you listen to a cat's eye song, doesn't this sound like it could be their approach to lyric writing? 100%. I love that. The cut-up method of lyric writing. And if that is the approach, they're in good company. David Bowie in the 90s made this machine with, I think Brian Eno called the verbacizer that would generate essentially random phrases for him to use in his lyrics. And I think he might have even been inspired by that same cut-up method. So this is kind of an interesting lineage they're part of if we start to view the lyrics that way.

William S. Burroughs used this method to write his books. David Bowie has talked about using it. Kurt Cobain has used this method. And even Tom York from Radiohead has used the cut-up technique to write the record Kid A. So you don't really see this in mainstream pop music. And I think it's a cool way to think about nonsense lyrics. You know, through these cat's-eye tracks, I'm getting the impression that this is a new approach to mainstream pop. The artists that we mentioned, none of them are bubblegum pop artists. You know, I don't think of Tom York is like chart-topping pop star. This approach throws caution to the wind a little bit and leans on the techniques of absurdism to craft good pop songs. And I think the method is working. I'm also moved by the work of another artist in the cat's eye cinematic universe, as I mentioned, the pop star Adela, who actually auditioned to be in Katzai on the Popstar Academy show and was sent home. It feels like in her work, she's pulling from the same playbook. But instead of leaning into full dada, her work skews a little bit nihilistic, where nothing has truth, purpose, or meaning.

Stay with me, Nate. She evokes this vibe sonically, I think, on her true. track Ain't in L.A., which contains a nearly one-to-one copy of the intro to Miley Cyrus's We Can't Stop. Here's We Can't Stop. It's our party we can do what we want. It's our party we can say we want. Here we go. So in a very reductive explanation of nihilism, it kind of boils down to this idea that nothing matters. And I think we can't stop by Miley Cyrus is kind of the millennial nihilist

vortex to use a term that you taught me about, Nate. Sorry, I've made you, I've made you so insufferable since joining this podcast. Clearly. But here, Adela shows us by copying we can't stop to this degree using the same man that delivered the chopped and screwed section on We Can't Stop, nothing matters, including copyright law. Yeah, why worry about lawsuits if we're all going to die anyway? Exactly. And I think this idea is hammered home on her song, Nicole Kidman, a track that is anchored by lyrics that I find,

not to mean really much of anything. Every single night, I pray that my tits are sitting right. Mulan Rouge, my corset is so tight. Baby girl ain't control. I feel like Nicole. And every single day I wake up the world is my buffet. It's so interesting.

Even the way she's singing is almost nihilistic. It's like she's not putting any emotion into it. It's devoid of like feeling the way she's describing these things. It's like you don't know how she feels about it. It's just like reciting these words and experiences, but she's somehow dissociated from them. Right. What does it mean to be Nicole Kidman? What is the connection between these lines?

Does anybody care if there's connection between these lines and these sounds and her affectation? Like, probably not. But like Katzai, I think that makes these songs profound. Like, they're intentional nonsense, you know? Like Adele is leaning into the fact here that in modern society, the society in which we live, nothing really has meaning. People just be saying whatever. Lyrics be saying whatever.

And that's cool. We've gone from the sort of playful and somewhat tongue-in-cheek surrealism and Dada movements to something a little darker. The Antonin-Artoe theater of cruelty, perhaps, is where we've arrived with Adela. Oh, yeah. And I feel like her visual esthetic. is kind of in that vibe as well. Everything's very sort of grungy and torn and kind of rough around the edges.

So if we go back to where we started, I guess we see, whether it's the, you know, the Katzai or Della end of the spectrum, it's like these are responses to a world that has seemingly lost its sense of order and logic and why not embrace something that is chaotic and inchoate and sort of subconscious. I mean, Nicole Kidman is in the Billboard Top 10 right now. So people are clearly connecting with it. And what I will say is that I think there is a chasm opening up in modern pop music right now, spurred by our societal unrest.

Lately, I've been noticing that as a listener, there's kind of two modes of songwriting that you can go in if you want a pop hit. You can adopt either a very diaristic approach, you know, your Taylor Swift's, your Phoebe Bridgers, your Olivia Rodriguez, where you speak from the heart as if the lyrics are lifted right from your journal. You're talking about feelings. You're kind of putting your deepest thoughts on the mic. This is a very successful method and feels very 2020s to me, feels very tight into the rise of TikTok and singer-songwriter culture.

We've talked about successful artists like that constantly in recent months. But the alternative, as we see in Katzai and Adela, interests me. And that's on the other side of the chasm. And that's to do the full nonsense mode, catchphrase pop, dot-eyist approach. And clearly people like that philosophical nonsense catchphrase pop, da-daist approach. Katz-I's EP went number one on Billboard. Adela continues to climb the Hot 100. And I think we're all writing the tide of Sabrina Carpenter's Mi Espresso.

Oh. Wow, talk about urtext. So to close, because I feel like this is an argumentative essay that I would write in college. Duchamp made art because he was frustrated that painting was for the eyes and not the mind. Obviously, painting still has its merits

and for the sake of the metaphor, I don't want to go so far as to say Katzai is like a thinking man's girl group, but maybe Katzai also makes music for the mind not necessarily the ears. I feel like you've given me a new way to listen to this group, and that's a good thing

Because my feeling is they're not going anywhere. Switched-on-pop is produced by myself, Rianna Cruz, edited by Alyssa Soap, video by Nick Rips, engineered by Brandon McFarland. Illustrations are by Iris Gottlieb, and our theme music is by Jossie Adams and Zach Tenario of Arc Iris. We are a member of the Fox Media Podcast Network and a production of New York Magazine, which you can subscribe to at nymag.com slash pod. Yes. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. And until then, thanks for listening. Unlock unlimited free grocery delivery with PC Express Pass.

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