” is everywhere. Since its release in April, it has become a Top 5 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, and outside the U.S., it’s already the. And these are just ripples from Carpenter’s larger takeover of the memeosphere. Her delivery is assured and alluring, the melody falling in desultory “My give-a-f—s are on vacation” wisps over a rhythm driven by syncopated synth bass and steady handclaps, all atop two rich chords that share a buoyant common tone.
Every genre is a collection of sonic tropes—common musical behaviors shared by songs in a particular category. What are the things we hear in our ear that make, for example, a disco song sound like “disco”? Let’s listen: Disco songs usually have a stomping kick drum on every beat and a hi-hat that opens and closes on every beat as well. You’ve probably heard folks make fun of disco by chanting “in alternating high and low octaves.
Hip-hop changed the racial calculus of pop music in the 1990s, and for young artists today, the lines between the pop world and the Jim Crow–born–and–still–extant Black or “Urban” segment are more consistently porous, so much so that many talk about the “death of genre.” But chart balance and sonic sharing aren’t as revelatory about how the industry works as is Billboard’s, an executive cadre whose denizens remain, as ever, mostly white and male.
“Espresso” is a bop, and it’s pop. So too were the countless other songs from the early ’80s that sounded just like it. They were, like “Espresso,” irrepressibly happy music. Sadly, the pop designation for the genre with no name came too late for its originators, many of whom are now underground in the literal sense of the term. This summer, I hear music in the streets, and it makes me smile. But I also can’t stop hearing another song, a ballad of irretrievable loss.