The sound of pop music shifted quickly and unpredictably this year: In 2021, ’90s club music made a euphoric return, an Afrobeats song cracked the Billboard Top 10, and hyperpop consolidated while a more youthful offshoot, digicore, staked its claim. Much of this movement happened online, where borders between countries and genres feel porous even as individual scenes and fan communities carve out custom niches. Whether you discovered your new favorite songs on TikTok or on the radio, you joined an international pop ecosystem that’s made the definition of “mainstream” more complicated than ever.
On this speciality pop music list, we bypassed the usual big names (you can find Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish on our main lists) and collected a few of the songs and albums that felt most exciting to us this year. We looked for music that charted new paths between genres, like Amaarae, Kali Uchis, and Moily’s trippy remix of “SAD GIRLZ LUV MONEY”; L-Gante’s dank, bass-heavy bars on “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol.38”; and the information overload of influences on quinn’s “and most importantly, have fun.” Fun, of course, is what pop music is all about—so we tapped into the doe-eyed bliss of Rostam’s “4Runner,” the undeniable flexes of Maandy’s “Hivi Na Hivo,” and the bubblegum rush of MUNA and Phoebe Bridgers’ “Silk Chiffon.”
Below, we round out entries culled from our overall songs list with more tracks, EPs, and LPs just as worthy of your time, which are listed alphabetically.
Check out all of Pitchfork’s 2021 wrap-up coverage here.
(All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our retail links, however, Pitchfork may earn an affiliate commission.)
Amaarae: “Sad Girlz Luv Money Remix” [ft. Kali Uchis and Moliy]
Nothing is sexier than a woman getting paid. “SAD GIRLZ LUV MONEY,” a sleek standout from Amaraae’s 2020 debut The Angel You Don’t Know, indulges in the pleasure of nabbing that “mula-la-la-la” and going dancing; the world-conquering remix featuring Colombian-American pop star Kali Uchis—which became a TikTok sensation and then hit the Billboard charts—only heightens the opulent sensuality. Uchis’ soft, lustrous vocals align seamlessly with Amaarae’s wispy falsetto and fellow Ghanaian-American singer Moliy’s airy purrs as they trade verses over the cool, rocking beat. “I really want to get naughty/I think you’re such a hottie,” Amaarae sings, ever so blunt and coquettish. It’s “fuck bitches, get money,” this time for the ladies. –Cat Zhang
Listen: Amaarae, “Sad Girlz Luv Money Remix” [ft. Kali Uchis and Moliy]
Bad Boy Chiller Crew: “Don’t You Worry About Me”
Besides standing in a wind tunnel and letting the air peel your lips back, there were few more effective ways of stretching your face into a huge, shit-eating grin this year than drinking in UK dance/rap trio Bad Boy Chiller Crew’s speedy fusion of organ house and balls-to-the-wall bass. The boys from Bradford have worked out what they do well (beers, bangers, bikes) and they’re sticking with it. “Don’t You Worry About Me” refines the formula: A whale-sized hook backed up with boisterous bars and a shot of humour to chase it down. Git up. –Will Pritchard
Listen: Bad Boy Chiller Crew, “Don’t You Worry About Me”
Bladee: “Hotel Breakfast”
“Hotel Breakfast” is a quintessential Bladee track: trap hi-hats over sparkly synths and self-reflexive lyrics about existential dread. The enigmatic Swedish rapper and Drain Gang leader begins with braggadocious references to designer clothes and getting litty, but soon he delves into his role as a pop star. He anoints himself King Nothing, merely some “air inside the air,” an empty vessel spouting empty words. He’s allergic to being worshipped for being what he calls a trash star, an idolized figure in the vapid material world. He just wants your sympathy and understanding, and to be left alone while he cries in bed. –Arjun Srivatsa
Listen: Bladee, “Hotel Breakfast”
C. Tangana: El Madrileño
Much of Spain’s pop music in recent years has sought to imitate the success of popular Caribbean genres like reggaeton, trap en español, and dembow—C. Tangana’s previous work included. He eschews that approach on El Madrileño, an unclassifiable experiment rooted in the musical and folkloric traditions of Spain and Latin America and given a pop sensibility through Tangana’s brash delivery and Alizzz’s sharp production. The album’s many Latin American references prioritize specificity over pastiche, allowing a song like “Muriendo de Envidia,” an Andalusian copla based on El Pescaílla’s “Lola,” to burst into a Cuban salsa helmed by Buena Vista Social Club’s Eliades Ochoa and recorded at Havana’s storied Estudios Areito. By isolating popular music’s elements—the unfettered abandon of a flamenco chorus, the longing of a mournful bachata riff—El Madrileño reevaluates its conception of what makes pop so magnetic. –Stefanie Fernández
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
dltzk: Teen Week / Frailty
A heavyweight from SoundCloud’s gloriously chaotic digicore scene, the 18-year-old New Jersey producer dltzk (pronounced “delete zeke”) had an electrifying run this year. Their debut record, February’s Teen Week, offered an explosive ride through adolescence, featuring EDM and jungle drums, bitcrushed vocals and glitchcore stutters, even a sample of Avril Lavigne. Their madcap “dariacore” compilations—think Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles” on speed, with lightning-fast breakbeats and screamo—kicked off a mashup micro-genre over the summer. But the culmination of dltzk’s boundless creativity thus far is Frailty. More melodically-minded and refined than their previous work, the nearly-hour-long opus trafficks in emo, shoegaze, and Passion Pit-style indietronica, just to name a few whiplashing styles. All the while, it retains the same thrilling experimentalism that has quickly become this limitless artist’s signature. –Cat Zhang
Teen Week: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Frailty: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Doss: 4 New Hit Songs EP
Up-and-coming club producer Doss broke through in a big way this year on the strength of 4 New Hit Songs, a sugary quartet of tracks that impress with their stylistic variety and unified vision. Short, impressionistic song titles get the gist across: “Puppy” is an innocently soft rave soundtrack just in time for the TikTok drum’n’bass revival and “Strawberry” is a dreamy shoegaze shuffle with the sunny, indistinct warmth of My Bloody Valentine. Doss’ music has a playful, animated quality that comes alive in her faintly helium’d vocals and the somersaulting synth of “Look,” but the best part of 4 New Hit Songs is how its clever combinations of familiar sounds feel like uncorking a miniature set of brand-new emotions. –Anna Gaca
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Erika de Casier: Sensational
Erika de Casier sings in the light, airy way you might absentmindedly hum along to a tune on the radio. Styles like Y2K R&B, breakbeat, and UK garage echo throughout Sensational like sonar, coalescing in spacious tracks that are allergic to lily-gilding. From two-step bangers to a ballad about a hypebeast’s obsession with wavey garms, de Casier assembles her genre patchwork with sotto voce assurance. –Owen Myers
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Jessie Ware: “Please”
A sequencer, a vocal melody with hints of KC and the Sunshine Band, and the thumpiest of thumps—it shouldn’t be this easy to make a banger. This postscript to last year’s What’s Your Pleasure? continues the transformation of Jessie Ware from an artist who sighed elegantly at the end of relationships into a queen of the dancefloor. A line like “Don’t upset the rhythm tonight” might have appeared as a plea on one of Devotion’s devastating ballads; in “Please,” it’s a giddy come-on after a couple vodka sodas. Her voice wraps around the chorus like a feather boa. –Alfred Soto
Listen: Jessie Ware, “Please”
L-Gante: “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 38”
Argentine rapper L-Gante’s “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 38” is the sticky smash driving a new urbano style called Cumbia 420 that operates at the intersection of cumbia, reggaeton, and weed. Earlier this year, the fiendish track topped Argentina’s pop chart, and it’s easy to hear why: L-Gante’s immaculately sinister croak cuts through a beat that incorporates EDM bombast and an addictive brrrrrp sound effect that could be sourced from a Hans Zimmer movie score. He whizzes through local slang, rapping about the partying and women that make him feel powerful. You don’t have to be a stoner to appreciate the song, but L-Gante’s call to light a porro with him and let go is undeniable all the same. –Gio Santiago
Listen: L-Gante, “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 38”
Lily Konigsberg: Lily We Need to Talk Now
Lily Konigsberg is undeniably prolific. Across a wide variety of acts that span freaky art-punk, synth experiments, and indie pop, the New York-based singer-songwriter allows her inclinations to stretch in every direction. Konigsberg’s solo debut, Lily We Need to Talk Now, wraps these myriad sensibilities into her strongest release yet. Thematically, the record is centered around rebuilding after romantic upheaval, as exemplified on “Sweat Forever,” a soft-rock breakup anthem in the vein of Sixpence None the Richer’s “Kiss Me.” But even in the heaviest moments, Konigsberg has the remarkable gift of turning every song into an earworm. –Quinn Moreland
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Maandy: “Hivi Na Hivo”
Nairobi’s sound is defined by the music blaring out of the raucous minibuses that hurtle down its busy streets. These infamous matatus—covered in graffiti and decked out with powerful subwoofers and flat-screen TVs—are a reliable barometer of what the cool kids are listening to, and for the past few years, the biggest sound has been gengetone, a fusion of 2000s Kenyan hip-hop with dancehall and reggaeton. “Hivi Na Hivo” is one such banger, with fast-rising star Maandy rapping in Sheng (Nairobi’s Swahili and English slang) over a bouncing beat. She won’t be taking shit from anyone, especially not men, because she’s got it all under control: “Kila kitu speedy na simple (It’s that simple).” –Megan Iacobini de Fazio
Listen: Maandy, “Hivi Na Hivo”
Magdalena Bay: Mercurial World
The internet-obsessed rollout for Magdalena Bay’s debut album featured Y2K-style websites, meta music videos, and hallucinatory TikToks—playful gateways into one of the most distinctive pop records of the year. The L.A.-based duo of Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin make music splashed with markers of the past: vaporwave, G-funk, and Max Martin-sized pop are all touchstones for Mercurial World. There are wobbly sugar rushes and glitched-out ballads, but the album reaches its apex on “Chaeri,” a melancholic ode to a crumbling friendship where Magdalena Bay deliver pathos and electro-pop perfection all at once. –Eric Torres
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
MUNA: “Silk Chiffon” [ft. Phoebe Bridgers]
Who’d have guessed that, in the year of our Lord 2021, Phoebe Bridgers would put the words “life’s so fun” to tape—unironically? Even indie rock’s phantom queen got swept up in the giddiness of “Silk Chiffon,” the first single released by alt-pop group MUNA on Bridgers’ own label. MUNA’s songs often center queer love; this one, described by the band as something “for kids to have their first gay kiss to,” is a swirl of stomach butterflies and PG sensuality. But those demure lyrics are backed by bright acoustic chords, fizzy electronics, and a chorus that pops like confetti, making “Silk Chiffon” wonderfully bombastic—a convincing counterpoint in a year of tasteful, understated A-list pop. –Olivia Horn
Listen: MUNA, “Silk Chiffon” [ft. Phoebe Bridgers]
PinkPantheress: “Just for Me”
The aughts revival got serious this year. With confessional lyrics alongside crushed-out 2-step and garage beats, 20-year-old PinkPantheress soundtracked the confessional side of TikTok in 480p resolution, calling back to the halcyon days of LiveJournal. “Just for me” lingers in the cutely obsessive, a diary entry that indulges the kind of vulnerability afforded by the more introverted corners of the internet. –Stefanie Fernández
Listen: PinkPantheress, “Just for Me”
quinn: “and most importantly, have fun”
Over the past two years, quinn emerged as one of the faces of digicore through her brash, boisterous online pop and rap, but in 2021, disillusioned with newfound fame, she began to reinvent herself. On her one-off single “and most importantly, have fun,” she navigates this transition with an evil grin. The intro—“You don’t even know me, you don’t even know me”—feels scornful, but alongside verses describing a wild, drug-fueled bender, it becomes an invitation to join her in the eye of the storm. Jagged bits of culture fly all around: G-funk and drum’n’bass, a Kesha lyric, snippets from CDC director Rochelle Walensky and A Tribe Called Quest. Like quinn’s online presence, the song creates an illusion of familiarity while keeping the listener at arm’s length. –Mano Sundaresan
Listen: quinn, “and most importantly, have fun”
Rostam: “4Runner”
Rostam’s twelve-string tribute to the open road would make anyone swoon, but this love song may hold special significance for queer people. “Don’t wanna be pretty like a girl,” he sings. “I think I’m pretty much your boy.” For anyone who’s ever felt like a foreigner in their own skin, being seen in the right way by the right person—handsome rather than beautiful, say—can feel like a homecoming. In “4Runner,” Rostam and his love make a new home for themselves on the highway, leaving the familiar behind and driving forward into a future that once seemed impossible. –Peyton Thomas
Listen: Rostam, “4Runner”
Smerz: “Believer”
Smerz, the electronic project of Norwegian songwriters Henriette Motzfeldt and Catharina Stoltenberg, released its debut full-length, Believer, early this year. The album’s cold, creeping title track is among the duo’s finest work: The song teeters on jagged synths and rattling polyrhythms, while strings surge from behind at gale force. Stoltenberg’s voice is small and slightly processed, a mechanical purr that somehow feels both vulnerable and detached. Her clipped dispatches on love are pragmatic and icy, but beguiling enough to lure you through each disorienting curve. –Madison Bloom
Listen: Smerz, “Believer”
Tinashe: 333
Tinashe began her career volleying between the polished studio pop sound that topped charts and the darker, weirder songs she pieced together in her childhood bedroom. She made some great tracks—just try resisting the opening tones of her breakout single “2 On”—but chafed under steep commercial expectations. In 2019, she split from former label RCA, and since then she’s leaned into the curatorial instincts she developed as a performer and producer. On 333, the second album she’s released on her own, her experiments feel intoxicating and approachable. This is her widest-ranging album yet: plush synths, frenetic beat switches, gasping choir vocals, and a gleeful, Jeremih-assisted bedroom duet—Tinashe glues each shard of her sound together and douses it all in glitter. –Dani Blum
Listen/Buy: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal
Tkay Maidza: “Kim” [ft. Yung Baby Tate]
Kim Possible, Kim Kardashian, Lil’ Kim—Tkay Maidza roleplays all three on “Kim.” With choppy synths and quaking sub-bass, “Kim” strikes like a symphony of lightning flashes. The grimy rhythm feels propelled by swagger alone, while Yung Baby Tate ups the ante with a high-energy guest verse. Maidza raps with her chest, not dissing her haters so much as asserting her dominance: She doesn’t want to steal your man because she’s already ghosted him. “Bitch, I’m, bitch, I’m Kim,” she brags in the chorus, a namedrop so powerful it needs no further explanation. –Kelly Liu
Listen: Tkay Maidza, “Kim” [ft. Yung Baby Tate]
Tokischa / Rosalía: “Linda”
On “Linda,” Spanish pop star Rosalía and Dominican firebrand rapper Tokischa meld bulería, dembow, and hip-hop into a dizzying club banger. The pair allegedly crafted “Linda” in just a few hours, but not a hair is out of place on this propulsive, lightning-in-a-bottle collaboration. Rosalía meets Tokischa’s madcap energy verse for verse, while the latter infuses the song with a dollop of menace and a flirty camaraderie: “No’ besamo’, pero somo’ homie’,” she raps in a high-pitched flow. “Linda” is an unmissable summit meeting between two distinct performers who flaunt their femininity and sexuality with unswerving confidence. –Eric Torres
Listen: Tokischa / Rosalía, “Linda”
UNIIQU3: “Microdosing”
UNIIQU3 knows she’s coming on strong—sorry, did you think this song was about actual microdosing? It’s a come-hither club heater that matches the psychedelic treatment du jour with the bed-rocking, floor-shaking gallop of a Jersey club beat and a little ’90s trance diva glamour. The choruses have the colorful blur of dry-ice fog, but UNIIQU3’s verses are razor-sharp and direct, as if she’s locked eyes with the object of her desire and is prepared to call all the shots. By the time her chopped-up “take a dose of me” begins to morph into something that sounds more like “dopamine” and “do-si-do,” the dancefloor is packed. –Anna Gaca
Listen: UNIIQU3, “Microdosing”
Water From Your Eyes: ““Quotations””
Water From Your Eyes’ ““Quotations”” manages to seem offhanded and rigorous at once, moving restlessly but with almost neurotic precision. As the Brooklyn art-pop duo stitches disconnected observations—legs stretching on grass, something in the air flying by—the music comes together as an alien collage, with errant elements meticulously arranged: bubbly synths, fractured percussive clicks, a disorienting vocal loop, a sprawling breakbeat. When the track ascends to its abrupt ending, it is as though a portal has opened up, and we’re suddenly sucked back to reality. –Kelly Liu
Listen: Water From Your Eyes, ““Quotations””
WizKid: “Essence” [ft. Tems]
When it first appeared on Made in Lagos in October 2020, WizKid’s “Essence” barely made a ripple, but by the following summer, the song’s melody broke through like the sun spilling from a bleak winter’s grasp. The song thrives off of the musician’s talent for slickly blending various shades of Black music, mixing Afrobeats with the sweaty R&B radio duets of the aughts. It radiates sensuality, from its beatific production to the way the track’s leading pair lustfully stretch their syllables over the instrumentals. But really, this is Tems’ showcase. When she sings her hot-blooded, “You don’t need no other body,” she wraps us all in her yearning, lovers and strangers alike. –Brian Josephs
Listen: WizKid, “Essence” [ft. Tems]
Xenia Rubinos: Una Rosa
Raw spirit courses through Una Rosa, Xenia Rubinos’ third and best album. Thematically split into halves—one fiery, the other cool—it offers a commanding blend of Latin rhythms, icy synths, and live-wire vocal takes. Rubinos contends with spectres of life and identity—the liminality of being a Caribbean woman in the United States, the inevitability of death and grief—as she slices through their omens with a cleaver. At times, Una Rosa feels like an ideal version of a modern-day telenovela: dramatic and juicy while never losing sight of its necessary commentary. –Gio Santiago
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
Yaeji / Oh Hyuk: “29”
Earlier this year, the New York City-based producer Yaeji and Oh Hyuk, founder of Korean indie band HYUKOH, convened in Seoul to work through mutual “musician’s block.” One of the resulting tracks, “29,” finds fuel in their frustration. The song opens with heavy, throbbing drums and a weary dispatch from Yaeji: “I been a bit/Held up with shit/Draining my energy left and right.” But suddenly, the exhaustion evaporates and “29” bursts into tropical sunshine. “I gotta go, I gotta go, I gotta go,” Yaeji chants, but “29” is a breakthrough worth lingering in. –Quinn Moreland
Listen: Yaeji / OHHYUK, “29”
Yeule: “Don’t Be So Hard on Your Own Beauty”
From their celestial singing voice to the Final Fantasy character who inspired their stage name, Yeule often invokes the fantastical world of anime RPGs. On “Don’t Be So Hard on Your Own Beauty,” singer-songwriter Nat Ćmiel balances on the knife-edge of escapist melody and devastating realism. They sing about bloodied guts and crawling on the bathroom floor, but also about someone who sees them in a more forgiving light. As Yeule wraps the song in cozy acoustic strums and flickers of Auto-Tune, they remind us of the world’s kinder ways. –Kelly Liu
