Belle Stardust's Best Songs of 2023 (Part 1/2)
It's not a ranking. It's a collection. (Also sorry this is coming out at the end of February)
As I’ve stated before, I have a tough time with lists and rankings. Call it something of a trauma response from doing work for Allkpop writing clickbait garbage and feeling very bad about it, call it indecisiveness, or call it an unwillingness to be definitive. Wherever this compulsion or revulsion comes from does not matter to me, because I find it more important that I put the art I want to highlight in front of people now.
2023 was a year in music that, much like many recent years, could not be defined by any one trend or movement. As you may know, my primary domain of interest is K-Pop, but for the first time in what feels like quite a while I’ve felt compelled to sing the praises of many a western release this year. Most of the music that moved me this year was either by or almost explicitly for queer people. It has been nothing short of validating to see an entire movement of artists with similar sonic and aesthetic influences to my own, something I began to touch on towards the close of last year but failed to highlight as it was happening this year. In that world, there have been changes and revelations that have me very excited for the future, something I haven’t been able to say for some time. That is all, of course, not to say that there won’t be heaps of NewJeans and tripleS love in this article.
If you came here hoping to see someone split hairs over what kinds of art are valid to discuss alongside each other, you’re in the wrong place. Maybe it’s a side effect of the fluoxetine, but I really do not give a fuck that some people think I shouldn’t bring up something like Kylie Minogue’s “Tension” alongside “serious music.” It is not my job to participate in the elderly hobby of stripping the joy out of everything, nor do I believe it is possible or a worthy pursuit to present one’s own musings as “objective.” Anyway, let’s get right to it…
I put this one first because I knew it would drive a certain type of person up the wall, and that brings me glee. “ETA” is a song that thrives by containing multitudes - it’s got a sticky, repetitive hook and structure that sets you up to want more out of its short runtime, while also doubling down on the melancholy throughout so you never get too comfortable in a sonic dreamland as you might have with “Super Shy.” It reminds me of “Like This” by the Wonder Girls in a very favorable way, because it is playful while dropping hints that said playfulness is a means of distracting from ~the sorrows~. Like many of the best pop songs, it focuses on the tension created by a situationship’s ebb and flow, with members trading lines referencing each other by name and rounding out the chorus with a demand you “lose that boy on your arm.” It attempts to create a world that feels very specific and personal, while also remaining “pop song vague” in a way that would probably make Max Martin blush. All of this happens over one of the best sounding brass samples I can think of hitting the charts in the last decade plus, horns skipping and skittering like a bbgirl take on the Rocky theme.
In a world obsessed with crowning singular “winners” of cultural movements and moments, it can be hard to make room in your heart for an act that isn’t necessarily a “main character.” The charm of tripleS is that the project contains multitudes - often quite literally expressed through member combinations, sub groups, and a barrage of technological trinkets for fans that take the photocard ethos to new and uncharted territory. Some people are repulsed by this and think it lays bare the cutthroat capitalistic intentions of the industry from whence it came, some think it is a natural evolution and hitting all the right points to be “the future,” and people like me are just thrilled that a group is releasing such a voluminous amount of songs in a time defined by blink-and-you-missed-it length EPs and singles.
The first triple S song I want to highlight on this list is “Dimension (KRE Ver.),” a song that defies tradition in many ways. I think the most noticeable unique trait of this song is that the vocal line is pushed almost all the way to the back, at times barely audible over the roar of the instrumental. Anyone with an ounce of familiarity with K-Pop can recognize that this is pretty uncommon in general, let alone for one of the first releases of a “rising” group. The traditional path is safer, clearer, and - brace for it - certainly more cookie-cutter. “Dimension” does for the K-Pop mini album what Akina Nakamori’s “Fushigi” did for the grown-ass-idol LP, which is daring the listener to consider if they like the sum of the parts on a purely musical level, even without someone cooing directly into their ear. It is an approach to music, lyrics and vocal lines that has often been compared to shoegaze, and if you know me at all, you know I eat that up. The world is uncertain, so why can’t its pop songs be as well?
“Seoul Sonyo Sound,” another album track from a tripleS sub group (LOVELUTION in this case), takes a much more traditional and maximalist approach to establishing its groove. One of the most popular sounds in pop music right now is essentially fluffed-up UK Garage, which comes as an utter delight to me having grown up listening to the stuff on pirate iTunes radio stations and hastily-labeled mp3 collections found on Soulseek. There are some people with more direct connections to the region and the sound doing work - you knew I was going to have to mention PinkPantheress at one point or another so here it is - but the sound showing up throughout some of the most well-received K-Pop releases this year has been something of a surprise to folks who weren’t quite tuned in during LDN Noise’s renaissance with SM Entertainment acts nearly a decade ago now. Where LDN Noise tracks often dabbled in the hypnotic, “Seoul Sonyo Sound” has a sense of urgency and immediacy that I cannot help but admire. I don’t go to the clubs all too often (though I love watching a good stream from a place like MOGRA or Forestlimit), but this song feels more closely rooted in actual club music and club play than a lot of title tracks that have made use of garage influence.
I don’t know if you were here last year or at the beginning of 2023, but I’ve been finding a lot of joy in the fact that there is essentially a deluge of queer pop artists now. I’m not talking about the obvious ones quite yet either - we all know Troye Sivan had a little bit of lightning in a bottle with “Rush,” but much like a user who has moved past the smell of VCR cleaners, I need something with a little more edge to fully reach the bliss offered by queening out. That’s where ThatKid often gets the job done.
ThatKid makes music that can best be described as unapologetic. There is no element of respectability politics at play when you title your song “Queen of Sucking Dick.” This is that pure, raw pop, a little treat for people who have moved past irony and playing coy about what brings them joy. “QOSD” is also an act of defiance and solidarity, bringing together ThatKid with the controversial but impossible-to-ignore Ayesha Erotica once again, though this time without fans having to make educated guesses about ghost production and ghostwriting. There is a lot to get into with regards to how this kind of sausage is made, and it’s almost worthy of a newsletter post of its own. To keep it brief, Ayesha had to take some time off, and “QOSD” - along with her own steadily bubbling new collection of solo work - is such a brilliant return to form that it’s practically screaming “you can’t kill me.”
From a production standpoint, “QOSD” feels like a harder take on the kind of pop that acts like 2NE1 and 4Minute were doing at their peak. It is driven by slithering synths and bombastic bass, punctuating the first half of its chorus with a humorous mouth-pop sound that you would never find in the music of the aforementioned squeaky clean, media trained acts. Its humor comes as something of a relief, allowing the person jamming along to step outside of the overly serious. Although it can be argued that this song is something of a pastiche of other great ThatKid moments (his covers of “Kiss Me Thru the Phone” and “Sex2Nite” come to mind), it is so relentless and danceable that it’s hard to criticize with much fervor.
I have to come clean about something. Prior to finding out, somewhat by surprise, that I had committed to tickets to the JPEGMAFIA and Danny Brown show in Philadelphia this year, I had not even had the chance to hear “Scaring the Hoes.” Depression does fucked up things to you, and sometimes that can manifest as being perpetually “not in the right mood” for an album from an artist you saw live so many times in college that it started to read as a little weird (Danny, mind you). Depression can cloud your judgment and stand in the way of dope shit that gives you the will to go on. But when I went through the Franklin Music Hall (formerly Electric Factory, RIP) doors, it was like coming home. A room full of twentysomethings was bopping and sweating to breakneck beats and often bitter, biting lyricism from a pair of rappers with so much chemistry and charisma that it’s a wonder they didn’t find each other sooner. Street Fighter style visuals rained down on the massive stage screens, often giving way to beautiful background art rather than animated action. Some length of time into the show, something very unique happened: Peggy had taken a few songs solo to give Danny Brown time to recoup, and like god cracking the sky open to wave hello, a song sampling anime Escaflowne’s theme started bursting through the sound system. “What is this one called?” I asked my accompaniment for the night. He said, “Kingdom Hearts Key.” The juxtaposition was at once both funny and clever, a nod toward the pool of interests shared by people of approximately JPEGMAFIA’s age who grew up watching bootleg anime and downloading bootleg J-Pop.
There is hope to be found in all kinds of music, and moments in which you can find parts of yourself refracted back at you, kaleidoscope-style. For as much as people like to focus on the idea of JPEGMAFIA as a provocateur, there’s a certain element at play where he’s often saying what others are thinking, or in this case, sounding like what others have long thought of - perhaps with some misty eyed “can’t go back” nostalgia. Certain actions and collaborations have made me question Peggy’s integrity in the time since this post was initially drafted, but I cannot deny that this moment and song made me feel something special.
Thank you for checking out the first part of my favorites-of-2023 collection. The next one will come much sooner than it took for this one to arrive. Although there was an emphasis on Korean pop tunes for this issue, there is still quite a bit more I would like to cover, so if you haven’t found something that speaks to you quite yet I’d advise you to hold on for more options. This post has been sitting in my dashboard nearly complete for the last two and a half months, and it was time to give it one last read-over and set it free. With more clarity and time to have reflected on what music touched me last year, part two is sure to be a satisfying write and read.