▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. Remi Wolf: "Grumpy Old Man"
Thank you, Olivia Rodrigo, for picking the 28-year-old alt-pop star Remi Wolf as one of your openers and reminding me how much I loved her zany, hilarious and absurdly catchy 2021 album, "Juno." This is still my favorite track: a tuneful showcase of Wolf's audacious personality that sounds, in all the best ways, like some long-lost '90s novelty hit.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. PinkPantheress: "Internet Baby (Interlude)"
"I am not your internet baby," the 22-year-old viral sensation PinkPantheress warns on this electro ear worm from her 2023 debut full-length, "Heaven Knows." I believe I lost the respect of some of my colleagues when I admitted how few roller coasters I was able to handle when I interviewed this noted and very brave thrill-ride enthusiast at a theme park last year. (The answer is one.)
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. Chappell Roan: "Hot to Go!"
I appreciate the frenzied energy of this single from "The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess," which was produced by Rodrigo collaborator Daniel Nigro. Roan has said of the track, fittingly, "I wrote this song so I could live out my cheerleader fantasy!"
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. The Breeders: "When I Was a Painter"
The Breeders' 1990 debut, "Pod" — which Kurt Cobain called one of his favorite records — was the group's only LP to feature Tanya Donelly, the former Throwing Muses guitarist who left the Breeders to start the band Belly. (Olivia Rodrigo, please cover "Feed the Tree.") The "Pod" songs are rawer and airier than the tighter pop-rock of "Last Splash," but they showcase another side of a great band just the same.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. Paramore & Remi Wolf: "You First"
I love what Wolf did with this Paramore song on "Re: This Is Why," a remix compilation of songs from the band's 2023 album "This Is Why." The original is dark, oblique and subdued, but Wolf transforms it into a fist-pumping, Technicolor-bright blast of power-pop.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
8. PinkPantheress: "Just for Me"
This dreamy, looping 2021 track, later sampled by the rapper Central Cee, was one of PinkPantheress's breakout hits and remains one of the most quintessential demonstrations of her singular sound. The vertigo-inducing ride Kraang Prime Pandemonium! was, indeed, just for her, because there was no way I was getting on that thing.
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