Legacy and Future of Feral Pop

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Then suddenly it's over, and you're wishing you enjoyed the days just a little bit more Therpy can help you slow down and actually be present for the moments that matter BetterHelp, you can connect with a licensed therapist from anywhere on your schedule. Don't just survive this summer, Thrive. Visit betterhelp d. com slash voxpods Welcome to Switch on Pop. I'm producer Anna Cruz. I' musicologist Nate Sloan, and I'm a songwriter Charlie Harding. This week on Switched on Pop, we've been exploring the new sound of pop music through the lens of what I have come to dub feral pop for its uninhibited experimental genre blending sensibilities We've already spoken about the DJ Nino Geraci and the pop star underscores and how they both speak to this vibe through a palpable love for EDM and Dubstep And on that same vibe, there's digital sounds and textures and an approach that indicates no genre is off limits, often switching through multiple in the same song So It's a very tactile genre and speaks soundly to younger listeners, than Gen Z and Jen Alpha, which is fitting because today we're going to be talking about the third artist I find to be firmly on the Feral pop roster, the rapper T Hollis, who is only twenty two years old. So he's very much a young artist making music for young people I know I'm talking to two elder millennials, so don't get scared. Here's his song Poster Boy. I'm shaking in my new b. Shaking my ars. No, my hockas This song is off of his twenty twenty three album titled two and in it you could hear a lot of the elements we've been talking about all week. Dub step beats, lots of electronic, digital, fragmented sounds vocals which are almost unintelligible because of how highly they're processed. Same vibe. Yeah, it's a hybrid electronic rap. sound. I know you can't hear the lyrics too much and that's by design, you know, it's so low file, you can't even make out the words he's saying, but it's like T Hllis here is his own instrument. You know, his voice is chopped and kind of ingrained into the mix. in such a way that his vocal is not a disparate element. Like the vocal is of the overall texture of the sound, not something that is being accompanied by the other musical elements Totally Yeah, the vocal is just another instrument. I appreciate you identifying us as elder Millennials Ranna because Out of all the feral pop we've heard this week This is the hardest for me to Digest The distortion, the unintelligible Vocals The harsh synths is a mix of elements that feel like they are designed to repel me I mean, what do you want out of Ferreal pop Nate? You want some Steey dance, some highly produced, you know, beautiful high fi records where you can hear every harmony and instrument? No, if you want to be feral, it's got to be this messy. This is this is the most feral thing we've listened to in my opinion. This is like a cab that needs to be spayed. You this is deeply feral. It's funny that you guys think this is the most feral because of all the music that we've talked about this week of all the artists that I brought under the Feral pop umbrella, I feel the most confident in asserting that two Hollis is going to be the biggest deal. veryer soon Part of me says that because he is a Nppo baby. His mom founded a music PR firm and his dad is a musician. so the press push that he's had has been absolutely unmatched But Tu Hallis is kind of already a big deal by underground standards. He has a really big dedicated fan base. That song Poster Boy has almost two hundred million streams on Spotify. It's pretty simple It's only two minutes long and seems made to score slow motion fancams of pular movie actors as it has been on social media. It reminds me of the big TikTok hit from a few years ago that we had covered on a Chartbreakers episode, the song Ecstasy by Suicidal Idol. Yeah, that song haunted me ever since you played it for us, Rihanna. And it's really catchy. Is it? Wow.ee this is, I mean, I'm fascinated because I feel like we are now starting to fracture a little bit in our consensus. in a way that I think is really revealing That song, I find catchy, but in a really dark way Yeah. And the fact that you think T Hllis is going to be the biggest of all these artists maybe defies what I said on previous episodes of this series of like, o, I'm feeling optimistic for you know, these these musicians and their generation this I'm not sensing the optimism anymore I'm not sensing the love of digital technology. I'm sensing more of the disillusionment or disassociation. It feels the most appropriate. I mean, underneath this entire discussion of Feral Pop and this embrace of digital technology has been the embrace of old technology that was safe and un threatening. We live in a moment where new graduates are booing the CEO's of major tech companies. so I think it's really appropriate to have This sort of voice like to haul is something that is a little more menacing, a little more foreboding. It feels like it's fitting. Very doomer core. blown out bass and snare is so distressing to me When it comes to the overall repertoire of T Hollis, I gott to admit of the three artists that we've been talking about, I'm probably the least familiar with his work But only because I think a lot of T Hollis' appeal is a bit harder to explain musically. So it goes back to something that I said about Poster Boy that we've been discussing, the fact that the vocals are so low fi, they're like obscured. You can't really hear what he's saying. And his voice comes through clearer on his newer music, which we'll get to Poster Boy was the song that blew him up And the fact that you can't really tell anything about the guy behind the lyrics is a huge part of his whole appeal and it bleeds into the music Are you guys familiar with the concept of aura aura as in the overall vibe. The magical content you put out on the internet that gives everyone the right feels. No, they're talking about Walter Benjamin, the artist in the age of mechanical reproduction, the erratic quality, the ritualistic relationship that we try and maintain our art even in an age of now digital reproduction. I believe that's what is meant by ARa. Yeah, I don't think I'm talking about eithers. It's not It's not talking about Walter Benjam Ben Ben Hamin. Ben Yamin Benam. Ben Yamin? Yeah It's not the Webster's definition of aura either. There's a new G Z and Gen Alpha definition of aura as a descriptor. somethingomething can have aura. It's a tangible thing that you want People seek out aura. Aura is a sign of being cool. It's a sign of being unbothered. We are in an aura economy. The more aura that you have, the better. And the appeal of T Hallis is that he's like aura personified. It's an appearance thing. He looks like a mythic Lord of the Rings He has super long wavy platinum blonde hair offtten wears a fuck ton of eyeliner to bring out his piercing brown eyes And in an article for Pitchfork, Alphonse Pierre described him as being built like Nose Feratu. Yeah. he's like seven feet tall. What? He has porcelain skin that has never seen the sun. It's very vampiric. And if you put that all together, it is a pretty compelling image for an artist and one that naturally connects with an aesthetic focused generation, of which he is a part of that is engaging with everything including Feral Pop image first So going back to the music, Poster Boy is his most popular song, I think, for a reason, because the distortion on his vocal plays into this idea of him being a mysterious figure who you can't really know too much about Ari, I feel like there's a sonic equivalent to this visual aura that you're talking about because one of the things that all three of these arurists we've talked about in the world of Feral pop all have is this sound which is completely over the top. And I don't mean over the top as a vague descriptor, but as a very specific music technique Let's see if I can demonstrate First of all, we need to open up serum, which is the synthesizer that basically enabled the late stages of DubSep It's the digital setit sizer that everybody uses. When you open up sererum, it's going sound kind of like this Nothing that interesting You can det tune that sound. You can change the timber from that saw wave to one that I see here called Gremlin bunch more oscillators, which are basically sound sources Filter it and add some modulation All right, now you're getting pretty close to like dub step Srill X sound Lots of wubbs. But what's missing is that OTT, that over the top quality and OTT is a style of compression that basically takes all of the loudest parts of your sound and squashes them and all of the quietest parts of your sound and makes those even louder. It's a way of almost like digitally flattening and enhancing everything. So here is the sound with no OTT And here' some MT tea Yeah more effects. You've got a big part of that feral pop sound. That OTT is on everything. Like here's a screaming bass put the OTT on it Yeah, I hate it. You can hear it just makes everything edgier, brighter, more intense completely over the top. And that OTT sound, which started as an Ableton preset on a compressor and is now a plugin that people use on all kinds of synth sounds, that is just common throughout the entire Ferrell pop sound. It's that digital flattening, hyper aggressive sound you hear on all the synthesizers That's really cool because it puts a word to the thing that I've just been calling digital distortion this entire time. There often are forms of distortion on there as well, but what the OTT does is it takes all of those characteristics of distortion and makes them over the top Support for the show comes from AT and T. You know what's great about summer? All those plans we made, they finally make it out of the group chat It seems like there's more time to fit everyone in, whatever you've got in store this summer capturing those moments is a must And you can do that with the iPhone seventeen Pro from AT and T. 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So why not you Try Odoo for free at odoo. com That's OD O O d. com Well, speaking of the top, I think we should listen to the song Flash from the top The song is off of his record star that came out last year and we're hearing more electronic sounds here. The MRI sound that we talked about and Underscore's song, Music is back. and I think there's a lot of similarities between the two tracks. Yeah, that d did They both start with the MRI base as MRI base. haveave these ad libs that float in. you know, they're both going, yeah and stuff like that the sound of computer music This is music that was recorded to the computer with computer sounds recorded in a room There's no sense of like being in the studio. Yeah. It is stuff that is completely made airless on a device, which doesn't make it inhuman by any means Maybe part of what makes Nate uncomfortable is so much the stuff that you gre up loving the deepest. L you can hear the room, you can hear the players responding to each other. This is everything program This is everything manipulated and done in this very flat kind of way where there is no sense of space. It's anechoic pop vacuum sealed Another word for it could be DIY. Yeah, it's very GIY. I mean, it feels like this could be made on a laptop that someone's had for a lot of years and's not running so well anymore and still make some really awesome sounds. Yeah, the vocals on here feel like they're being sung into like the Apple headphone microphone, you know, holding it above your lips. that's not clean by any means And his voice, we could hear it a lot clearer on Flash than we can on Poster Boy, obviously It's very bright and it's kind of giving like boyband pop punky heartbrush M W that co. we went out M a star. C is C me? It's poppy hookie melodies except for it has that DIY quality because it's showing you all of its edits Right? So typically when we record a vocal, we record what we call a comp where you do many, many takes of a vocal and you cut together the very best parts. And you want to do so so that it sounds invisible. You can't tell that it was different takes. Here, Tu Hollis is cutting into himself where one line is starting before the other line ends. It's highly digital. It's clearly made in a nonlinear method and it's showing its methodology by not covering up any of its rough edges. It wasn't so where we are? P you wantna v. It's very chaotic in a way that I find extremely stressful You just need some exposure therapy. We're gonna put two Hous on your headphones as you go to sleep for the next two weeks. You're going to be very red eyed and not well rested But by the end of those two weeks, you're going be converted I believe it. I am acknowledging my ininctxual reactions and The fact that I'm having those reactions signals that Rihanne has been saying is probably true. This is forward looking music It's reaching beyond what I'm comfortable with in a way that is signaling What is to come I hate to call T Hollis the voice of a generation, but I do think he's speaking to a generation of listeners who grew up listening to electronic wrap on the same iPod And he's synthesizing them all at the same time. The way he says in the chorus, cameras on flash Cameras on flash. It's a cadence that you hear a lot in trap music.am We are G me I also describe the Underscores B as futuristic trap music, like trap music beamed from one hundred years into the future and is abstracted so far from what we know trap music to be. That's present on this song as he's rapping. and the lyrics in Flash are on the same wave as Poster Boy. They discuss meta narratives around fame and celebrity. I want to stay on this first verse for a little bit There's the refrain of Holly wantanna Be a star with the idea of this flashing cameras and swarming paparazzi. Hona. M be a star. C is h It's an angle that is almost prophetic, which I find to be another similarity to underscores as we talked about last episode. There's a lot of fixation from these artists on the concept of fame, legacy And a potential reason for this could be that these artists are currently making music and in this time, People are finding it harder to make money and simultaneously, the idea of being famous and being a celebrity looks different than it did ten, twenty years ago And so all of these artists are processing that in their own way. This idea of fame and how T Hllis is situated in it is a lyrical through line throughout Star, the album. He starts it off with visions of grandeur, even preempting the song Flash on the track beginning ent The word flash, the camera flash. It's also on the song sidekick I so beent everyone S Jcy Jaby Camelize by so me can' he can't be v Wow That is so hard to listen to. I am struck that we already heard a song about sidekicks, right? That was underscore. That was underscored. Yeah. Yeah, your favorite sidekick. Interesting. What a surprising theme. C Wh suuperstar running out of mileage can't sleep two AM on a really mind. Bing, bring, pick it up Be a psychic Sidekick is also another piece of outdated technology. A phone called the sidekick. Yeah. So so it comes into that theme. But it's also interesting of this idea of like sidekick, you know, it's such a I don' know, it feels very of the moment to me in some ways. like you know, I'm not going to expect like a deep devoted relationship with someone, it's like I could just be a sidekick. It's very modern. It's very like polycule, friendriends with Benefits vibe. So looking at the Feral pop checklist with regards to flash, we have the lyrical slant. we have the genre bending. You know, this type of sound has been labeled Rve rap for the way it combines hip hop and trap sensibilities with electronic production. And there's definitely that over the top digital crunch to it all, as Charlie talked about On Flash, these textures come through even harder in the back half of the song where we have the build and drop that also makes the connection to Ferll Pop's larger EDM vibes We get the hard style kick here, the bit crush dooes It feels like you're being zapped with a laser, you know, collapses into a full hard style techno beat. This electronic influence is all over T Hollis's catalog He does the same thing on the song Crush j me to every single thing Ssesa . Yeah. Wow That crush is what happens when in Star Wars, they get set down into the trash compactor And in the movie they all get saved. But if you don't get saved and the trash compactor crushes you, that's what happens. That's screaming. screamash So it's clear, you know, T Hallis loves this digital breakdown. and while he's influenced by the same sounds as Nina Deraci and underscores and clearly has an affinity for more hardcore styles of EDM, I was puzzled slightly because it seems so different than the version of EDM that Nina underscores focus on and embody. You know, it's less dub step and more hard style and techno Flash has everything else going for it. You know it has the lyrical elements, it has the genre mashing, it has the digitized elements of Feral Pop in the same song. But I was wondering, where's the Srylls?? re V a star. cameras on. At first I chalked it up to T Hollis being roped into the hip hop community. You know, he opened up for rapper Ken Carson on Tour, has courted a very strong rap fan base, but then I was like, no, Skrills has lots of clout in the hip hop community. He's worked with lots of hip hop artists And then I Googled to Hollis Skrills to see if he had talked about him as an influenc or something. So remember when I said he was an Npo baby, his mom with the PR firm had actually founded a record label with Srills called Ausla Oh yeah And T Hollis says that Srills never mentored him, but come on, let's be real here. I just got to say that even though Vulture Nate Jones coined the term Nepoaby and it is a real thing In the world of music, I really deeply believe that no matter the connections you have, the music also has to hit There's so much music that comes out any given day. We like to always believe that there's someone You, behind the scenes pulling the strings and that's the thing that makes it work Getting exposure is not easy people are really responding to the music shows in Brooklyn sold out people going nuts to T Hollis. When I did a little bit more listening to T Hollis's back catalog I saw that he even made a bonafide Skrills core dubstep song on the twenty twenty four record Boy. It's the track three And people think that the three is in relation to the three lines in Skrillix's logo. That's a little bit too conspiratorial for me, but the song speaks for itself That's the Srill xX Wow That's like the hardcore version of Dubstep because it has the MRI machine thing, which is really like it's a transansgate is the technical term probably. It's got the super microchopped sudden bursts of sound that you don't expect It's got the roaring screaming bass round. definitely. Tu Hallis publicly dedicated the song three to Skrills. and yeah, it makes sense. It's a more low five version of the stuff that Skrillicks was doing, especially in the early twenty ten s on songs like Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites That oh my Godd, courtesy of a YouTube video of cup stacking champion Rachel Nedro, I want to say that's your name. I mean we wrote about this in our book years ago and I might be getting that right. but One of the great samples of the twenty first century. Oh my gosh. Iconic. Shout out to Rachel Nedro, wherever you are stacking cups these days, hopefully stacking paper, but Again, all of the elements of Feral Pop are present in the music of T Hollis He's giving us a refreshing, exciting and youthful take on All the genres he's pulling from trap and rage music from people like Playboy Cardi, Electropunk,lect Crystal Castles, and the image and aura farming of the big rock stars of Yester Year. And there's still the looming influence of scrylllics. This is why I think that he's poised to blow up the most because he is the embodiment of the scene in a lot of ways and also connects with these disparate audiences. like electronic fans love him, rap fans love him, pop fans love him, creating a perfect storm of success. Nate, how are you feeling now? I feel a little disquieted A little concerned And yet feel like those emotions are a signal that everything Rihanna is saying is factually true. This is the music of the future. I'm not ready for it I'm going to try and get on board, folks. I'm going to try to go. Cerl Youthful music is often designed be of its generation and cut out the generation that came before by being aggressive, by being uncomfortable, by being feral And so I just want to point out that like I appreciate you for naming how you're feeling And I think for any of us that have that feeling of discomfort when we hear something, it's often a way of saying, ooh, maybe I should lean in so I can get to know that thing better. Truly, if you just try it a few more times, you're gonna be nodding your head or tearing off all of your clothing, running off into the woods, and going completely feral Yeah, a lot of these artists came of age at a time when the internet was more necessary than ever. I think the global lockdown and everybody having to be online and engage with each other on the internet is a defining factor in the way that Gen Z and Gen Alpha processed the world. And so it makes sense that this music has been extremely successful and connecting this age bracket rom Nina Draci to underscores to T Hollis, I find that there's more than enough reasons for us all to get feral. and I'll be looking forward to seeing what pop music gets undomesticated in the years to come. Social pop produced Branda Cru,edited by Lissa So,gineed by B Farlland, illustrations by Ar Scottleb, a video by Nick Rpps, ourur team of songs is by Zach Danario and Jossie Adams of Arch Iris Remember of the Vox Media podcast Netork and productuction Vulture, which is part of New Yor magazine, You can subscribe to nYMag dot com slash pod Renna you knocked out of the park with your ferreal pop, three episodes in a row. Thank you for doing. This has been so much fun. I feel very enlightened to hear some new music You can check out more music on our podcasts at swwitchonpop. com. We'll be back again next Tuesday. And until then