Genre Blending and Future Directions

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Welcome the S switch Pop. I' producer Anna Cru. I'm musicologist Nate Soane and I'm songwriter, Charlie Harding. This week, we are exploring the future of pop music and the sound bubbling up from the underground that I've come to label feral pop for its ability to be essentially undomesticated pop music. pop that's reverted back to its most wild and primal instincts. Yeah. Today, we're going zero in on the singer, songwriter, and producer underscores and specifically her ability to blend genre and infuse a love for computerized digital sounds into her Feral pop work Let's take a quick listen to a highlight from her latest record, You, the track music to show what I'm talking about. A Nina Diiracci had a fondness for dial up sounds from the early internet I feel like underscores makes music that sounds like an MRI machine You're so right. If you haven't done an MRI, it's one of those more unpleasant all these magnets going That's what I'm hearing underscores. Last time I did an MRI, they let me listen to Lady Gaga as I was getting the MRI. And I feel like maybe the MRI and the pop music I was listening to joined together in my head to make this. Yeah, it's very industrial coded. So yeah, right from the beginning, we have this mechanical plotdting beat in the background, it stutters As if it's an MRI, as if there's a glitch in the synthesizer programming. It's kind of jackhammer like. you know, just thuds away. There's a crunchy hi hat in there as well You had mentioned in our first episode, Sophie as an influence. What I'm hearing is actually the Sophie snare Yeah, which are those really metallic FM synth snnares In fact, that sound, you can go and go and splice and find like the Soophie samples pack. they sound just like that. The things that the Soophie sample pack is given culture. It's like if you went into a rundown factory in Berlin that's been shut down for decades and you went around with a metal pipe and hit other metal pipes and they resonated throughout the entire factory, that's what I think of When I hear theopfy snare? Yeah, it's very metallic, very industrial It feels a little bit like maybe futuristic pop crap hybrid. I don't know. there's this digital kick in hi hat that anchors the song. And even though it's so far removed from what we know as like radio trap music, it feels like what trap music could sound like a hundred years into the future. Well, one of the things that both Dubstep and trp music do is exist in two time domains at the same time. If you're listen to synthesizer, d d d d you' hearing like one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four But if you're listening to the kick and the snare, you're a one T halftime and a faster tempo happening simultaneously. Then there's the highly auto tuned vocals and even the way the voice gets kind of chopped and screwed at certain moments. Yeah I can totally hear how this is indebted to the sound world of trap music, even if it's not lyrically similar. In fact Lyrically, I mean, Nina Doraci was singing love songs to her computer. Underscores is singing love songs to music itself. Yeah, where Nina was singing to a robot This is a weird metaphor, but this sounds like you're hearing the robot talk. for the first time And it's a robot that can only communicate about feelings in technical terms, right? Like music, BPM, harmony. that's all it understands and it's trying to communicate. I also love these vocal chops in the intro where it's just making vowel sounds like e up. You know, it really does give the impression of a robot So Who is underscores, Rienna? So Underscores is my age. She's twenty six years old, same age as Nina Diaci. And the album that Music is Off of You is her third record. She started her career by making Dubstep music on Soundcloud in her early teens the height of Skrillixs' popularity But her breakout moment came in twenty twenty one with her debut album, Fishmonger Throughout her whole career, Underscores has been firmly in the bag of Feral pop by bridging genre seamlessly. and using this digital computer heavy focus to push on the boundaries of pop music. In keeping with the computer connections here, Fishmonger is kind of a beta test of the things that we hear later in Underscore's career on the album You There's electronic rock influence guitars, digitized vocals and big hooks that ground the tracks. A favorite of mine from Fishmonger is the track, yourour favorite side pit. Face it back because I never tried it off the su side pick it up He speaking H Thank giving what is the Nelly song Simy shim me C cocoa puff Country grammar? No It's the same phrasing playful childlike quality of doing, you know, singsong, kids music. It feels almost Avroovine cooded even.. That's my limb, you know, the pop punky. I will be your girlfriend Yeah, the sensitive pop punky world that we find ourselves in here. And I' tooth because youatoth les and this go drink my coool and I. But the kicker of your favorite sidekick that sums up the whole Feral pop vibe and what she's going for is in this tag that keeps coming up throughout the album It's the new wave of the future. It's prophetic. It's shop calling. kind of a proclamation. like we are making music here that is beyond what we know currently pop music to be. I feel like there's no better way to claim your place in pop music than to just say, hereere I am. I've arrived I got to see underscores a few weeks ago. I went to a pink Panther show. It was like a five thousand person warehouse. I swear the audience was there for underscores. It was the hardest hitting music. audience was losing their minds. This is two openers before the lead act and the place was People are really getting onto the sound. So Fishmonger was the debut record. Her second record wall socket leaned into darker, more emo sounds and textures. It was more focused on rock music Conceptually, it was an album about a town in suburban Michigan and featured a whole internet component, including a fake municipal website and an alternate reality game designed to be poured over among fans on forums and social media, again, incorporating these internet sensibilities into her work But her latest album, you goes back to the electronic digital pop sounds that defined her first record and turns them up to eleven as we heard on music Yes As we move from the verse into the chorus, the song opens up. It radically expands. It feels like you hit maximize on a browser window. fell into the computer videoodrome style and are surfing through cyberspace or something. like it's going from this insular communication of emotion into these grand big feelings. When I'm with you, it feels like music and the music grows and swells I find this idea that music itself can be this liberation and this freedom. very powerful and like very in line with some of the themes that I feel like are now developing in this genre of feral pop that we're identifying this desire to sort of like escape or rise above the Mundanity of life in the twenty twenties Technology is a way to do that. Music itself is a way to do that Yeah, and I would be remiss if we talked about a song called music and the core metaphor of music being this lovely, joyful thing that brings people together. And I hadn't mentioned the connection to Madonna.. Yeah in all this music talk. She of course, has both a song and an album, also titled music What is that final lyric? Music mix the bourgeoisie and the rebel? I can't tell if this is a collapsing of class politics For the proletariat has risen and taken over the bourgeoisie Or has the bourgeoisie itself turned into the rebel the latter, I don't know, I see this is a very optimistic song. you know, I think music is supposed to bring people. I mean, the line before it says music makes the people come together. So that's the read that I have on it at least There is no class. Okaykay. Okay, Madonna Music came out the year two thousand the same year that Underscores was born. And I can kind of see a thread between music by Madonna and the birth of Ferrell Pop in both music's metanarrative lyrically with this idea of music as the conjunction factor and in the production of the song, where both musics by Madonna and Underscores haveave manipulation of the synthesizer to be a little bit abrasive and super digital Underscores has spoken on the record about being super inspired by Madonna in the past And one could argue that Madonna has always adopted all the characteristics of Feral pop. You know I see her embodying the conflation of genre and a digital spirit and metayrics, especially on albums like Music and American Life So it's not too far fetched to see the Madonna version of music as a foundational text for the whole Feral pop sound to Founding lyrics We're missing the Srill X Right, Mbe Scrills was influenced by Madonna. Wha There is a fricaking scoop right there Very speculative scoop. The Madonna Sryllic Sophie pipeline Think about it. it's real 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. 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. The center stage front camera framing auto adjusts to fit everyone into group selfies You don't even have to turn your phone, no overcropping or asking strangers to take it. Just the perfect group selfie every time. And AT andT makes sharing those moments with everyone easy because you've got to share the pick or it didn't happen, right? Right now at AT andT, ask how you can get iPhone seventeen Pro on them with eligible trade in. Requires eligible plan. terms and restrictions apply, subject to change visit ATt dot com slash iPhone for details Fd for the show comes from Shopify. 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All vets are in network. Go to fetchpet dot com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet dot com slash save Back to Underscore's version of music, the cherry on top is when the soundscape is switched and we have this didactic breakdown of music and genre H Bass fucket There's Skrill X. We don't give up. everyvery genre Yeah, we have this massive dub steppy drop A she breaks down pop rock, electronic rap, rock and roll. Rck music is twice in there for some reason But the cool connection is that music, the song has all of these genres within it. You know, it has the pop hook. It has the electronic sounds and drops. There's rap influence percussion, as we talked about. The way she's also singing in this post drop outro section evokes the whininess of pop punk and emo music nameame it, read it, tune it, print it, San it, fax it, skip rename it. I love your ability to insert Daft punk into every electronic music conversation. Okay, well let's give Charlie some credit. I mean, I do think there is this robotic voice that Rihanna you mentioned earlier too And that is like a really striking feature of this. In fact One of the fascinating things about this artist is like I can't tell what her voice sounds like fundamentally. It's kind of dislocated in this really interesting way that intrigues me. Yeah, her vocal tone is always shifting and I think a lot of it comes from the breadth of her influences. There's Madonna, there's crylllics That's why I find under scores special, especially in this context of furthering this new Faro pop sound She's able to combine all these sounds and influences with ease and still turn it into fun, exciting and unbridled electropop. And what I said about Skrillk's last episode is that he makes music that blends rock and electronics so easily. resulting in a pop song. She's really good at that. Another song I want to look at on the album You is the track Do it which is cut from the same cloth as music and is another example of underscores going full Feral pop Fairy, Britney Spears, yeo P of You want a piece piece of m? But with contemporary EDM sounds, you the sampled Cash register The acoustic guitar with the synthesizers is very two thousands, even sort of like Timbble in production, or even Destiny's child use a lot of acoustic guitars like that. So it's spanning decades, genres, references all in these like little micro moments Yeah, there's a lot happening in these first few seconds. The song has the same stuttering intro that we heard on music just presented differently. as these vocals on top get pitched higher and higher and it leads us into this acoustic guitar instrumental When it comes in, I love yeah, the cash register sound effects, there's video game noises. I love the Janet Jackson esque breaths that punctuate the song there. It recalls like a little bit of the tactile nature of Feral Pop that I spoke about last episode with regards to Nina Deracci Bringing Sexy back I'm thinking of when we were checking stuff off of our bingo board a couple episodes ago and we were talking about the revival of Timbber in production. and we brought up Pink Panththeris's song Stateside. And I think it's funny that underscores opened up for Pink Panththeras because I do see a similarity between these songs Oh yeah, one hundred percent. Very strong sexy back vibes That reference feels appropriate because Timbland is a producer who who really mixes and brings together a collge of unpredictable samples. A lot of his sound is It's very futuristic M more so than the sort of nineties hip hop sampling culture that was more nostalgic and looking back to earlier stuff. his sounds were always Where am I going into the future? And that's what I hear with underscores. Yeah, I think that tactile nature is also in a lot of Timble in production where you could feel the man crafting it As you're listening, you know, like it's beats that were made with human hands, which as I'm saying, sounds ironic because now he's super on the AI train, but so weird. Yeah. The Timblin that once was was one that I think of fondly for his human creativity. That's because so many of his beats were made as beat boxes first where he makes these weird sounds with his mou It's not even good beatboxing. He's just like, who And he sometimes leaves those sounds in the mix. So it's that combination of very hyper digital sounds with those human textures. And that's exactly what you're calling out in Feral Pop. Another forefather of Feral Pop, Timberland,'re creating a Mount Rushmore. Indeed. crylllics, Timble in, Madonna, we need a fourth. Hopefully they'll come. Episode three. done As you said earlier, Nate, the vocals are constantly morphing and doing different things. But then right under the wire to call back the idea of scrillix EDM The song goes full pop drop passass it synth. Oh, here we go. Vocal chops H What's so internet about Feral Pop two is the flattening of all culture I feel like these artists look at music so differently than I do. in a way that is like really inspiring There's no sense of like hierarchy of temporality of like things that should or should not be reused and re exppressed It's like everything is fair game. All of history, all of culture all global sounds, just like throw them in as you wish, willy nilly Pretty extraordinary. In that way, I feel like this music is indebted to all that EDM and Timberin stuff as it is to contemporary K pop. It feels like the unpolished version of KPop You hear a mash up of multiple genres. A song that begins with the two thousands hip hop R and B beat will then turn into an EDM drop It will incorporate sounds and styles that don't belong in any one place. That is what KPop does. and I think it's not surprising because I believe it underscores We used to be a Kpop blogger. Oh yes. yeah. She's very inspired by KPop So as we've been talking about, underscore songs embody the core tenets of Feral Pop. There's an internet first language, both sonically and lyrically There's fealty to doub step an EDM as we heard on too it. There's a lot of pop forward writing happening in you, and I think that speaks to, as we said, her love of K pop. But there is an amalgamation of genre, the pop rock, electronic rap rock and roll that we hear throughout these songs. I see lots of similarities between the work of Underscores and Nina Deraci. They're the same age, have the same influences, and they both have a fascination with technology and do a lot of theory level thinking about what electronic music is And outside of the music, they're friends. so I can see the influence feed off of one another Underscores Highlights, all of these things shines as a pop star, but along with her and Nina Doraci whose careers have progressed alongside each other in like a helix type formation, there's one other artist running parallel to the two that has had a similar arc growing an overlapping fanbase in the past few years while embodying the feral pop Ethhos