Jon Pareles
Appearances
The Daily
The Year in Music
My number one song on my list was Not Like Us because I thought that really did sum up the whole 2024 mode of tribalism and contention and general nastiness.
The Daily
The Year in Music
It means whatever Beyonce wants it to mean. Beyonce, on this album, has people talking directly about what genre is. She has Linda Martel, who's one of the earliest Black country stars. talking about genre and how confining it is. So the message is sort of right out there on the surface of this album. Beyoncé's saying, you know, I'm from Texas. I heard a lot of country. I can sing country.
The Daily
The Year in Music
It belongs to her. It comes after... a lot of ferment in the country music world about how Black artists were marginalized, sidelined, ignored, and worse. One thing about this album is she has a lot of Black country guests on this album. She has Rhiannon Giddens playing banjo at the beginning of Texas Hold'em.
The Daily
The Year in Music
She's making an alliance with a lot of musicians who have been trying to get into country for years, Black musicians who have been pretty much ignored and sidelined. She put them on the album. So this album puts it out on the table, and because it's Beyoncé, it can't be ignored. I mean, I think that's what makes it a Beyoncé album, is it can't be ignored. She's too big.
The Daily
The Year in Music
Well, I think, you know, Shaboos is from the South, and this is a natural sound for him. This is not some stunt. It's not some experiment. It's music he's grown up on, country and hip-hop, and he's made a fusion of them in his head and in his production. It's like the Lil Nas X record. This music is happening in this generation. And I think there's going to be more of this music.
The Daily
The Year in Music
There's an audience for this. There are people who are receptive to it. But also, Tipsy was a number one hit on country radio. Country radio has been kind of a barrier to this hybrid. But Tipsy broke through. So I think more of that's going to be happening. Unlike Beyonce, who had to go around country radio, Tipsy got played.
The Daily
The Year in Music
And then you have Post Malone, who went straight down the middle, mainstream country.
The Daily
The Year in Music
I mean, it's not just this song. It's the whole album. He got every... name brand Nashville songwriter. He got Tim McGraw. He got Hank Williams Jr. He got Blake Shelton. He got Luke Combs. He got Brad Paisley. He got all of the big names. And Post Malone is a real genre chameleon. He fits in wherever he wants to fit in. For a while, he was... He was rapping.
The Daily
The Year in Music
Then he made a sort of singer-songwriter-y phase. And this country phase is him fitting in with typical mainstream arena-scale country. In a way, I felt like this album was almost a parody of current country. It felt like I'm going to study up and I'm going to write songs that fit so squarely into your genre that your radio people will not think twice about playing them.
The Daily
The Year in Music
And why not? Not messy enough. Not confused enough. Not ambivalent enough. Brat is extremely sophisticated electronically, but also has imperfections and mistakes and edges. And I know that all of this is going to get edited out because it's The Daily.
The Daily
The Year in Music
Well, she likes sex, for one thing. Let's put it out there. I mean, these are songs about having sex and enjoying it and unabashedly enjoying it.
The Daily
The Year in Music
No wonder people like it. I think the other thing about Chaperone is she's also very historically aware. There's Kate Bush in her. There's Lady Gaga in her. There's Cyndi Lauper in her. I mean, there are all these voices and there's her own powerful lung power. She's a real strong singer.
The Daily
The Year in Music
I was initially resistant to this song because I thought it sounded like sort of pale disco. It grew on me. The comedy factor, the totally garbled and wonderful metaphor, I live on caffeine myself, and the fact that she could do it with such sparkle and such giddiness is what put her across, I think.
The Daily
The Year in Music
I just want to sympathize a little with Taylor Swift because she's got her own eras to compete with. It's harder for her to do a song that she hasn't already done. Part of the letdown of Tortured Poets Department was... This is familiar Taylor. She's done this already. We've heard this sound. We've heard this cadence. We've heard the way she double times into the verse.
The Daily
The Year in Music
wonderful, upbeat, electronic, crazy stuff going on in the background, and also an artistic journey through an identity crisis. She was struggling as a artist in her 30s who wanted to be bigger, but also wanted to have a life, but also should she have a baby, but also she really likes to party. So it was very rich in text, subtext, metatext, and internet interaction. I liked the music.
The Daily
The Year in Music
And everybody else is imitating Taylor Swift too. She's that influential, and so she's got her own background to compete with. And how does she stay new? I mean, it's time for the reaction against her just because she's so familiar.