#7 - Hemlocke Springs - "Girlfriend"
“Girlfriend” sprang onto my TikTok feed one day soundtracking an edit of a cat as it was digitally discombobulated: its body parts compressed into a ball with a tuft of white hair, then its limbs warped around until it became a kangaroo. I was initially more engrossed by the video, but I kept seeing the song attached to all these wondrously weird clips, an inventory of eccentric sweetness—an elderly woman reading manga, a greyhound with bald thigh syndrome wrapped in a sweater, a tribute to the cuteness of capybaras—and “Girlfriend” slowly hooked me.
Hemlocke does so much with her voice here—it’s like the dense ad-lib-panopticon of late-stage trap but for homespun synth-pop. She sings smoothly, like she’s lost in reverie, and then drops into a fiercer, more operatic tone; she hollers the line “Oh my god I love you!!!” in a voice that sounds like post-puberty Elmo, and adds a vigorous “stab, stab, stab” murmur at another point. My favorite part is the bridge, a spree of multi-toned lines that sound like she’s having a micro-dialogue with the cynic and optimist voices dueling in her brain: desperately confessing what she desires and then doubting, in a funnily grumbly tone, whether she’s ever gonna get it.
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Hemlocke Springs’ lore—she's a medical student, she found her pseudonym through a random name generator, she has only ever released two songs and they both leapt to TikTok stardom—makes the music’s silliness and Jack Stauber-meets-Marina sound feel even more fun and serendipitous. This isn't some cash-hunting label or veteran musician posing as quirky. “Girlfriend” almost never even entered our world—she said in a TikTok video she made the song over three years ago and once “abhorred” it, thinking she would never post it.
The list:
#25 - Destroy Lonely - “NOSTYLIST”
#24 - elusin - “Elksling”
#23 - skaiwater - “#miles”
#22 - Wednesday - “Bull Believer”
#21 - islurwhenitalk - “pink neon lights”
#20 - Two Shell - “home” & “Memory” (tie)
#19 - Luci4 - “ON GANG”
#18 - Harto Falión - “{*______*}” (prod. evilgiane, whitearmor, Gud)
#17 - lecie - “ex post facto”
#16 - Yung Lean ft. FKA twigs - “Bliss”
#15 - DJ:ReCode - “adhd” ft. tobre & “keeper” ft. goji! & BIO (tie)
#14 - Uffie - “dominoes”
#13 - Yeat - “Still countin” & “Out thë way” (tie)
#12 - Ame - "Degree" (prod. Royal, y2tnb, Brycenknwn, Ame)
#11 - Sudan Archives - “ChevyS10”
#10 - Asian Doll ft. Bandmanrill - "Get Jumped" & Bandmanrill - "BANDTHOVEN" (tie)