If 2020 was the year of the kitchen disco, what will 2021 bring us? With Covid-19 keeping us safely tucked up at home, it is surely going to mean more bedroom pop, more introversion and more social commentary, to varying degrees of success. Here is our pick of the 10 artists to keep an ear on as this strange era progresses.
Griff
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“Sarah Griffiths isn’t that glamorous [a name], I sound like I have a mortgage and four kids.” Nothing could be further from the truth for Griff, whose blend of teen drama and excitable hooks are going to be inescapable this year. You can hear the soul and gospel her parents brought her up on fighting Taylor Swift’s Fearless for dominance in every song.
The tension between the genres creates some truly exciting sounds emanating from her bedroom, even as the songs themselves are stripped back to just one or two elements. She can do a decent ballad, too, as Disney found when they put her on their Christmas advert last year. Get you a pop star who can do both, if you ask us.
Song to check out: ‘Sound of Your Voice’
Boys World
Don’t be fooled by the name: Boys World are in fact a much-needed new girl group slowly dismantling the boys’ world one toxic trait at a time. They only have one song out at the time of writing, but it is a pristine pop anthem. Harking back to early 2000s R’n’B-influenced pop, “Girlfriends” hits you with the perfect hook for obsessive adolescent friendships: “You know girls stan girlfriends over boyfriends”.
They found some early success on TikTok but they’re going for a Gen Z Spice Girls vibe, having been scouted and put together for their various idiosyncrasies – there’s the femme one, the street-savvy one, the pop-punk one… but strip back the marketing speak and you still have a massive banger and some incredible production behemoths on their side.
Song to check out: ‘Girlfriends’
Baby Goth
The deliberately mysterious Baby Goth seemed to emerge from nowhere on a track with Soundcloud rap heroes Lil Xan and Trippie Redd last year, but in fact she had been peddling woozy alt-pop for a while before the collab took off on streaming.
She won’t tell you her name but she will sing about pretty much anything from her life, mining her bisexuality, wild childhood and experiences with drugs to loll across benzo beats and doomy synth hooks. It smacks a little of bedroom pop that was actually made in a fully funded studio, but that doesn’t stop it from appealing to the angsty teen within.
Song to check out: ‘Afterparty’
Greentea Peng
Greentea Peng is the nom de plume of Aria Wells, a heavily tattooed green-tea enthusiast from east London. Her mix of psychedelic sounds and louche rap comes heavy with the scent of weed and incense; there is something very hippie-ish about her, despite the fact that her music couldn’t be further from that dippy 60s sound. In fact, it’s more like hanging out in a jazz club on youth night, noodling sax woven deep into the mix, with Peng’s Lauryn-Hill-esque vocals floating on top. It feels calm and mind-expanding: the aural equivalent of microdosing.
Song to check out: ‘Ghost Town’
Viji
“Are you in my head? Are you in my head?” Vanilla Jenner, aka Viji, asks on her debut EP (left) – and if she isn’t now, she will be by the end of it. The catchy choruses belie a more intricate songwriting style, with the titular song winding from the sunshine and lollipops of Noughties pop to the crunchy guitars of 90s grunge, tempos racing and slowing like a manic episode. It makes sense that she is newly signed to Dirty Hit, the record label affiliated with The 1975 and home to The Japanese House and Beabadoobee, shades of all of whom can be found in Viji’s music – impressive, then, that it also manages to be something wholly of its own.
Song to check out: ‘Are You in My Head?’
Do Nothing
After a year of no gigs and no getting together to noodle about, guitar bands are thin on the ground as we enter 2021. But if you find yourself lusting for the new Idles, you’d be wise to check out Do Nothing, Nottinghamshire semi-punks whose frontman Chris Bailey is more of a Beat poet than a singer. His deadpan delivery dips into a dizzying array of cultural reference points (The Simpsons, snooker player John Higgins’ match-fixing controversy, nursery rhymes) as he laments the way we live. It’s not brain-melting rock but it will make you yearn for a pint sloshing half down your arm as you thrust it in the air.
Song to check out: ‘LeBron James’
Cookiee Kawaii
You might not know the name but if you’ve spent even five minutes on TikTok in the past six months you’ll know Cookiee Kawaii as the “Vibe (If I Back it Up)” girl. But the viral hit isn’t all she has to offer: distilling Jersey club sounds after a decade of music-making, the entire Club Soda EP is worth digging into. Slender club music and glitching hooks galore – you’ll find yourself wanting it on as loud as it will go.
Song to check out: ‘Vibe (If I Back it Up)’
Flo Milli
If 2020 was Megan Thee Stallion’s year, 2021 is going to be Flo Milli’s. The 20-year-old rapper has the obligatory TikTok sensation (“Beef FloMix”) and the fully deserved flex of her debut EP title (Ho, Why Is You Here?) under her belt, which both speak of greatness to come. Generally annoyed by men and taking no shit from anyone, her relentless rhymes aren’t chasing pop hooks or radio play, but are destined to find her a place in record libraries filed alongside Cardi B, Nicki Minaj, Megan Thee Stallion and Beyoncé.
Song to check out: ‘May I’
Jim-E Stack
Another artist who has been on the scene for a while but poised to break out is Californian Jim-E Stack, whose mostly instrumental work in previous years has now been usurped by a gorgeous album of collaborations with the likes of Empress Of and Bon Iver. Ephemera, his 20-minute EP released at the tail end of 2020, is a charming and fun journey through bits and bobs of his work from the past few years, mixing classic house, indie-pop and 80s electro sounds. If you hear a song on Netflix’s next achingly cool Gen Z drama and you’re wondering what it is, odds-on it’s from Jim-E Stack.
Song to check out: ‘Can We’ (featuring Kacy Hill)
Gracey
Brighton singer Gracey has an incredible voice. It’s almost impossible not to compare her to Lorde; the two singers share a husky warmth and something of another world about their vocals. Gracey’s songs tend to be less baroque than Lorde’s, though: cleaner, maybe less oblique than her New Zealand peer’s. Having started out as a writer-for-hire, she has developed her sound into something interior as well as universal – songs about imposter syndrome, her heartaches and finding her way in the world sit easily beside one another.
Song to check out: ‘Empty Love’
Frances Forever
It is strange when you become super-familiar with a song from a snippet relentlessly shared on TikTok and then discover the full track; but that’s exactly what’s happened with Frances Forever, whose “Space Girl” is inescapable on the video platform. But the woozy, psychedelic tune stands its ground without a legion of dance videos with it, and if you dig into more of their catalogue, you’ll find sweet indie-pop and a kind of early Noughties folk all tied up in self-certainty. With “Space Girl” their only 2020 release, we’re expecting more dreamy intergalactic pop from Frances – but we won’t be disappointed either way.
Song to check out: ‘Space Girl’
