The rise of surrealist pop: KATSEYE and ADÉLA

Live show announcement

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Catchphrase pop and Cats Eye

1:14Nate, have you ever seen the 2016 movie Popstar, Never Stop, Never Stopping? Not only have I seen it, I have been listening to the Lonely Island and Seth Meyers podcast religiously, so I am here to dish about all things pop star. Okay, I'm glad, because while it is a satire of the pop music industry, there's a song in it by the fake pop star Connor for Real, which is referenced as the catchphrase verse. And it's named that because, as I'm sure you remember, Andy Samberg just lists off catchphrases.

1:49This kind of bitch say word, do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do bird, doink-do-doink, sorry dad. Dinky nuts, squirrel jam, hats, balance in my check, book, serbert in the sherbet, twerk, 100 gift baskets, you're now rocking with the Tesla boys. So good. So good. I love that track, Turn Up the Beef, featuring Emma Stone. And why bring this up, you might be asking? It's not just because I love pop star, which I do. It's because that song is what I think of every single time I listen to a track by the global girl group Cat's Eye.

2:26Oh, we're in a session tonight, gang gang. Oh, we'll join us tonight, gang gang. Oh my God, this song's so late. Congratulations. Now you've been like, yeah.

2:36Straight on up.

2:42Welcome to Switched On Pop. I am producer Rihanna Cruz. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. I'm so happy we started off with that, Nate. Yeah, maybe we'll have an excuse to play Finest Girl Bin Laden song at some point. But I'm curious to learn more about the catchphrase pop idea. Well, I feel like no group does that catchphrase pop like Cat's Eye. Eagle-eared listeners might remember us discussing them at the end of last year with regards to their hit song, Gnarly, which I think is a shining example of that.

3:17They could describe everything with one single word. You know? Like, nobody. Gnarly. Tesla. Gnarly. Fried chicken. Gnarly. Party to Hollywood Hills. Gnarly. This song. Gnarly. Oh my God, that new beat. Gnarly. Gnarly. God, is this real? Catchphrase pop. I love it. That song was released in the middle of 2025. And I think for a lot of us, myself included, Cat's Eye was a kind of flash in the pan. Right? Like, this song is funny. It's humorous.

3:48It doesn't really make much sense. And I thought Cat's Eye would be in and out in the pop music world. But since Gnarly, their presence has only continued to grow. The group just performed on SNL. They were nominated for two Grammys, including Best New Artist. And their newest EP, Wild, which came out this August, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, featuring songs like Animal. Nobody knows you're out of control, but I see a side behind the closed doors.

4:21They get a glimpse here on the dance floor. You move like an animal. Nobody knows you're out of control, but I see a side behind the closed doors. They get a glimpse here on the dance floor. You move like an animal. This rise to stardom doesn't come without some personal challenges for the group, namely the current loss of two of their six members right now due to, quote unquote, hiatus. But it's clear that something about Cat's Eye is connecting with people in some capacity.

4:57And something I've noticed is that people talk about Cat's Eye the way that they do, I think, most K-pop artists. You know, they focus on the visuals, the aesthetics, the fan base. In the specific case of Cat's Eye, the changing tide of members is always in the discussion. And that all makes sense to me, considering the group's origins with the South Korean conglomerate HYBE and the TV show Popstar Academy, where the group was created in efforts of making a global group from the K-pop model.

5:28But while there are some critics writing about Cat's Eye, it does frustrate me that people aren't really talking about the music as much. I'm guessing this is where we come in. Absolutely. I'm someone who's trying to understand why Cat's Eye has been so successful and continues to grow, when especially on first listen, I felt like songs like Gnarly were a little juvenile. I thought it was kind of nonsense.

6:10I struggled to understand who it was for and where it lands on the spectrum somewhere in the middle between Club Rat and, like, children's radio. Some might say the best thing to come out of Gnarly was the viral Christmas Carol parody version, where they substitute Marley, as in Jacob Marley, the protagonist of that, and have lines such as Party at the Fuzzy Wig House. Party at the Fuzzy Wig House. This song. Marley. Oh my God, you're a ghost.

6:41Marley. Oh my God, is this real? Oh, we're going haunted tonight. Gang gang. Oh, we're going out tonight. Gang gang. We are on such a different side of social media, Nate, but respect to the Jacob Marley fans out there. We're healing generational divides on this podcast. Absolutely. Always. Me and you, Nate, we're hashing it out in real time. Okay, but so that was your initial impression of Gnarly, but now it sounds like you're seeing the song more favorably. I think so.

7:11I think there's an element to electronic music that tends to lean into the simple and the nonsensical. We could hear it in other Cat's Eye songs on the Wild EP, like Hootie Fruity. I know you like that Hootie Fruity on your tongue, Hootie Fruity on the lung, Hootie Fruity if you want to come and get it for a fun. Hootie Fruity all the way, Hootie Fruity every day, Hootie Fruity like the $20 smoothies in a... Certainly a spiritual successor to Gnarly, I would say.

7:44Absolutely. And I won't lie, I was a little confused thinking about Hootie Fruity, you know, conceptually. But Nate, I'm here to say today, I think that very confusion is the point. Ooh, okay. I'm into this way of entering the music because we just did a 500th episode where we talked all about, you know, embracing music that you might initially have an adverse reaction to. And I feel like now in episode 501, we're modeling that.

8:15So couldn't be better timing. Today, Nate, I want to look at the music of the Cat's Eye Cinematic Universe, including Adela, another artist in the group's orbit. Look at how they're approaching music and figure out what that approach says about the future of pop. Let's do it. Sweet.

Dadaist pop and Marcel Duchamp

8:34And right off the bat, I'm going to make a bold claim. I've given this much thought, Nate. I think I've gotten to the bottom of Cat's Eye's whole shtick. Ooh, here we go. I think they're fully self-aware. I think they know what they're doing. And though I'm not a philosopher nor an art historian, okay, I think Cat's Eye is pioneering a new wave of pop music that I will refer to henceforth as Dadaist pop. Oh, I couldn't be happier to hear those words.

9:05My wife, Whitney, is an art historian. She has taught me well in the surrealist lineage. And I have to say, I kind of surprised myself here. I don't watch a lot of, you know, reality shows, but I have seen every episode of Pop Star Academy. And I do feel invested in this group, Cat's Eye. So I'm strapped in. All right. I never could have expected this from you. So again, not an art historian, but let me see if I could summon my bachelor of fine arts degree real quick to give you a definition of Dada.

9:40The Dada movement is an avant-garde art movement from the early 20th century where artists in response to the chaos and the relative insanity of World War I made work that both rejected logic and was seen as anti-art due to its approach that felt nonsensical and unstructured to many. It's the beginning of postmodernism and Dada work could be sculpture.

10:10It could be sound. It could be poetry. And with that in mind, I now turn to global girl group Cat's Eye. Let's take a deep, hard listen to the lyrics from last year's Gnarly. You know, like nobody. Gnarly. Tesla. Gnarly. Fried chicken. Gnarly. Party to Hollywood Hills. This song. Gnarly. Oh my God, that new beat. God, is this real? We have lyrics that, like we said earlier, are a little nonsensical.

10:44Right. And the things that they're saying move from the mundane boba tea to the technological Tesla to the meta where they're like, this song is gnarly. They're just listing things. But the way that the girls are doing it is inherently absurd and ironic. I don't think you would describe boba tea or fried chicken as gnarly. I don't know. Would you, Nate? Uh, no, I, I tend to save that adjective for, uh, you know, like a really big wave that I'm about to surf, perhaps.

11:24Totally. Uh, shocker, bro. I'm always, I know I'm, I'm always out there hanging ten. So, so, so, yeah, that's more when I would deploy it, personally. Right. You wouldn't use gnarly to describe these mundane things. And yet the juxtaposition of those concepts between gnarly and something so random is where the interesting tension lies. And that tension, I think, is Dada-ist and thus gnarly is Dada-pop. Cool. I think I need an anchor image for Dada right now, Rihanna.

11:55Is there, like, a famous Dada piece you could supply me to, to sort of orient myself? So, I think probably the eminent example of Dada art comes from the artist Marcel Duchamp. And Duchamp had a series of pieces that he called ready-made, which are regular objects manufactured and mass-produced, but placed in a context in which it could be considered art, right? And this could be anything from a coat rack to a comb with a phrase etched into it to a literal shovel.

12:32For example, I think the most iconic piece of Duchamp's, I'd say, is his ready-made work, Fountain, from 1917, in which he presented a porcelain urinal with the signature R.mut written on the side as the work. That's the piece. So, if I've got this right, the way Duchamp transforms these everyday objects into artistic spectacle is analogous to Cat's Eye taking, say, boba tea and imbuing it with this artistic aura.

13:12I would say so. I love it. To go into a Cat's Eye song, I think much like the ready-mades and Dada work in general, you need to challenge the process of thinking rational thought. And you need to lean into the absurdism of what you're hearing.

13:46Yes. You have to be willing to surrender a certain amount of logic and conscious thought and enter a more, I guess, id-driven experience of the world. Charlie is away, so Rihanna and Nate will play. Oh, yeah. I know. Finally, that guy is out of the picture, on vacation in Santa Fe. And Rihanna and Nate can just dig deep into urinals and Dada and Duchamp.

14:16Oh, yeah. And I don't think it's particularly out of pocket to make the connection that Cat's Eye is Dada. Because you think about what I said about Dada artists making work that defied logic in response to the chaos and the turmoil of World War I. When you look at the context in which this music is being released in, there is deep unrest socially and politically. So maybe I don't think it's out of the question for Cat's Eye to be dabbling in similar aesthetics to contrast what is going on in society the same way that Dada artists emerged in post-World War I Europe.

15:00When I listen to the song through that lens, I start to hear things a little differently. Throughout the first verse, there are these violent sounds, knives being sharpened.

15:14There's these kind of orgasmic outbursts. When I listen closer, I can hear that turmoil and unrest sort of penetrating the surface of the song somehow. Whatever is being used sonically has that metallic, Sophie-esque sound to it that sounds like you're kind of banging pots and pans. Or in this case, as you said, like sharpening a knife. Yes. Very face-shopping, coded.

15:45Another, or Sophie, another artist who feels deeply in a surrealist lineage. My face is the front of shop.

15:54My face is the real shop front.

15:58My shop is the fake side front.

16:02I'm really much on my face. I don't know, Nate. Maybe we're the first people ever in history to say that when I listen to Cat's Eye, I think of Marcel Duchamp. But when Duchamp described his ready-mades, he, I'm coming with quotes today, I'm coming with history, Nate, I'm coming with it all. Duchamp described a ready-made work as, quote, an ordinary object elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist.

16:33Now, in modern parlance, we could call a ready-made something bland, something corporate, something not super thought out. Human-made, of course, but it only exists as art because we decide it's art. With that in mind, here's a quote from the Pitchfork Review of Cat's Eye's Wild by Kieran Press Reynolds, quote, The sum of this band is not worth more than its parts, especially when the parts are arranged and optimized by the Hybe-Geffen machine.

17:09They go on to write, quote, These songs have a beautiful hollowness that comes from making music about things that could have been performed by anyone else and mean nothing to you. So Cat's Eye is the ready-made. Is that... Cat's Eye is the ready-made, right. Deep. Maybe Cat's Eye is the fountain of pop music. In this metaphor, I guess this makes Hybe Duchamp and the various Cat's Eye songs are the ready-mades?

17:41No, no, no. I think... You're close. I think Hybe is the urinal manufacturer. Mmm. I like that. Cat's Eye... I really hate to say this sentence, so just please don't clip this out of context. This is not reductive. Cat's Eye is the urinal. Cat's Eye is the fountain. How about that? Cat's Eye is the fountain. Totally. And you are Duchamp right now because you're putting the fountain in our minds, in the gallery of our minds as the aesthetic object.

18:12And I don't know how the song fits into this itself, but something like that maybe is the calculus. Well, when I listen to a track like Animal off of the Wild EP, I do understand what Kieran is talking about in their review, where they talk about how the song is manufactured and processed and it means nothing and it could have been performed by anyone else. Nobody knows you're out of control, but I see a side behind the closed doors.

18:43They get a glimpse here on the dance floor. You move like an animal. Nothing really out of the ordinary here in the chorus. Standard metaphor, being an animal on the dance floor. But if Cat's Eye is the fountain, right, the fact that the song is so standard is the object of interest to me.

19:21The song has to demonstrate some level of formula in order to serve its purpose as the commodified object. Bingo. I could do this all day, Rihanna.

Analyzing Animal and Fifth Harmony

19:34Okay.

Analyzing Animal and Fifth Harmony

19:35Let's listen to the verse of Animal.

19:50There's a lot of toxic vibes in here. Just incidentally, I need to mention that.

20:02So looking at this verse, right, we have an anchor in this vocal hum, the mmm, which, Nate, you think sounds like Britney Spears' Toxic. I mean, not that part exactly. I think what sounds like Toxic is the drums, especially.

20:20They're like kind of lightly swung in this way. And then there's part of the melody that reminded me of Toxic. There's a little bit of that minor third motion there. So, yeah, maybe some light inspiration there. I'm not sure. Baby, can't you see I'm calling? A guy like you should wear a warning. It's dangerous. I'm falling.

20:51I see what you mean. I don't think I necessarily agree. What Animal reminds me of with this, like, boom chuck beat, it feels like it's pulling from a mid-2010s soul R&B revival thing. It's giving me Shawn Mendes. It's giving me a vibe adjacent to, like, Portugal the man's feel it still. Oh, okay. Yep. Ooh, I'm a rebel just for kickstand. Let me kick it like it's 1986 now.

21:22I'll be over now, but I feel it still. So that's definitely in there. But it really reminds me of a song by another girl group, one that peaked in the mid-2010s, the group Fifth Harmony. Oh. And I think Animal sounds like their track, I'm in love with a monster. Oh!

21:45You buy me a thorn before you buy me a rose. Be covered in dirt before I'm covered in gold. He's trying it hard, yeah, he's taking me off. Say what you want, but I won't ever be told. Cause I'm in love with a monster. Yeah, I'm in love with a monster. Yep. Both songs, they have the same kind of vocal stim that becomes an earworm. Similar melodies. Let's listen again to Animal.

22:15You're the boss. You run the circus, baby. Take it up a notch. You're so sophisticated. Don't want to be on a schedule. You're on your own time.

22:27They both have a certain amount of blues inflection. They have those lightly swung drums. They have, even have, you know, passing the vocals around the group like that. Yeah, I can definitely see the overlap here. And I feel like for me, Fifth Harmony is indicative of the larger musical trends of the mid-2010s.

23:01Like, I remember that era is coming off as very sanitized, very corporate, very processed on the mainstream pop charts. You know, coming off of the sleazeball vibes of the late 2000s recession pop 2010 era and moving into, like, Pharrell's Happy, which was the number one song of 2014, and Bruno Mars' Uptown Funk, which was the number one song of 2015. You could see that shift, and Cat's Eye is pulling from that corporate, sanitized era of pop music.

23:36The lyrics second that. The lyrics are nothing that I haven't heard before. They're very basic. They're not really full of substance. The opening lines are, These are common metaphors, and they feel like non-sequiturs, as if you were trying to build a pop song from, like, bare principles.

24:08Yeah. You run the circus sounds like a phrase people say, but I don't think that's ever, I don't think that you're like, oh, yeah, that guy, he runs the circus. You know, you're like, that's not a thing. It's like, ooh. Well, you wouldn't call the head of a circus a boss. You would call the head of a circus a ringmaster. Right? Ringleader. Or what do you call it? A ringmaster? Don't let me in that song camp, because I would not get it right either. But maybe that brings merit to your Britney Spears connection, Nate, because maybe the circus reference is trying to connect it to Britney Spears' song, Circus.

24:42Okay, so not toxic as I was initially thinking, but perhaps another Britney cut. I feel the adrenaline moving through my veins. Spotlight on me and I'm ready to break. I'm like a performer that danced for Christmas stage. I mean, there's certainly some conceptual overlap here, because I feel like in this stage in her career, Britney Spears is acknowledging her own status as a kind of ready-made pop star.

25:21And that was, I think, what people found so compelling about this album. Like, this song is actually acknowledging the fact, like, yeah, you look at me as though I'm this product. Right. And you look, you don't even see me as a person. You see me as a sort of archetypal- As a circus act. Pop star, yeah. So there's kind of a maybe spiritual link between these two in some ways. Totally. They're channeling this corporatized energy, maybe implicitly and explicitly. And I want to bring it back to Dada for a moment and Duchamp's ready-mades, which are manufactured objects that become art.

25:59And in the case of the fountain, which is the urinal piece, it's generic in concept. You see it every day, you know, when you're out in the world. And to be blunt, it is something that you piss on, right? And I don't mean this in a reductive way, but right, like, cat's eye is the ready-made. Right. At T-Mobile, the new iPhone 18 Pro is here with a big leap in battery life. And you can get it for nothing up front. With so many reasons to choose T-Mobile, you'll want to talk about it. I heard at T-Mobile, you can get iPhone 18 Pro for nothing up front and get $1,000 off.

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28:09Learn more at HubSpot.com. And I realize, like, this argument is totally out there. It's out of left field. And I may be making an argument that could unintentionally extend to all sloppy, corporatized pop music that is churned out on an assembly line from the flavor of the week pop star. But the difference here is I've Been Cat's Eye is in on the gag, which makes all the difference.

28:40Yes. There's a line in their song, Pinky Up, off the Wild EP that kind of lays it all out for us.

Socrates and Pinky Up

29:00Wow.

29:03What do they say? The only truth is knowing you know nothing? The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing. Paraphrasing, with a wink, that famous Socrates quote that's like, I know nothing. Yeah. Wow. I did not expect that song to go there. And yet, you're right. It's like, this is a peek behind the curtain. We know what we're doing. We know this is, you know, hollow, to quote the Pitchfork review. But maybe that's exactly the point.

29:35Maybe that's where true wisdom lies, when you forfeit the idea of trying to create some deeper meaning. Right. And I love how the line is delivered by Cat's Eye member Megan, as if she's booming, coming down from the clouds, like a voice of God type thing. There's a bit of a, like, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure vibe here.

30:09Like, Socrates, all we are is dust in the wind, man. Socrates, the only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing.

30:24That's us, dude. Oh, yeah. But I think even Bill and Ted, like, knows what they're doing when they do that. Truly, yeah. I mean, that's the idea, right? The true wisdom comes in the places you're not expecting it. Like Pinky Up by Cat's Eye. Like Pinky Up by Cat's Eye. And it tells me that Cat's Eye is willing to incorporate philosophical and artistic themes and concepts into their work. So let's zero in on Pinky Up for a second, because I think this is another example of how the group can be Dada's pop.

30:55I bet it goes like this. Pinky Up. Up. Pinky Up. Up. Pinky Up. Up. Up. Up. Pinky Up. One. Two. One, two, three, four.

31:15That last section feels very Europop to me, which is appropriate, I think, as a deeply kind of surreal genre of music in general. It is a sample of a 1997 trance song called Meet Her at the Love Parade by Dahul. Oh, that's why it sounds familiar. By Dahul. Very like, doof, doof, doof, doof, doof.

31:47So is Pinky Up a phrase similar to Gnarly that kind of serves this anthemic purpose while not really signifying anything in particular? I think so. I think it relates to the etiquette concept of keeping your pinkies up when drinking tea and all of that. But the lyrics that follow the statement of Pinky Up, Up, Up, Up are, it's a state of mind.

32:18I bet it goes like this, which really, again, does not mean much of anything. What is this state of mind? I, I, I, I bet it goes like this. Pinky Up. Up. Pinky Up. In a more mundane way, it also gives them a dance move to do. I mean, they do a lot of hand dancing. I remember that from their first, like, hit, Touch, as well. They do. There's a lot of, like, stuff happening. A lot of hand jive. When I watch Cats I Perform, it feels like, and I mean this with love, like I'm in a dystopian

32:55movie, and this is the entertainment that's, like, beamed in onto every screen. Oh my god. It is, like, what would play at the, um, Capitol and the Hunger Games, for sure. Like. Exactly. And they're putting, like, messages into the song, so you just walk around going, Pinky Up, Up, Up, Up, you know? That's the duality of this music. Like, it is corporate, centrist, conservative pop, and at the same time, it has this surrealist

33:26anarchy to it. Right. And the verses of Pinky Up even advocate for that kind of anarchy. One day soon the world's gonna end, I'm gonna make out with my new bestest friends, I wanna live large right before it all burns down.

33:43Pinky Up. Go hard like we're robbing the Louvre, we mama. Lisa, with the cute attitude, I wanna get high right before we're in the ground. So we have making out with your best friends, robbing the Louvre. Later in the song, they talk about getting arrested and killing people, juxtaposed again with the chorus, which is Pinky Up, etiquette, being prim and proper. Wait, Rihanna, there's an even deeper bombshell here. What do they say after robbing the Louvre?

34:16We Mona Lisa with a cute attitude. What artist has a famous parody of the Mona Lisa? Is it Duchamp? It is Marcel Duchamp. Hell yeah. His piece L-H-O-O-Q, which takes a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, and he draws a mustache and beard on her face.

34:37And I wanna say in French, L-H-O-O-Q means something like, she's hot, or something very crude like that. It might be even dirtier than that. She has a hot ass, is I guess what it translates to. But yeah, talking about galaxy brain, I mean, maybe they're hip to this Duchamp reference, and they're kind of sprinkling it in to Pinky Up. Maybe. The promo for the song, I remember, was a shitty AI-generated photo, but it was of the Mona

35:11Lisa holding a cup of tea with her Pinky Up. So there's this pendulum between anarchy and corporatized control. Where does this leave us as listeners, as consumers even? I think it leaves us contending with the idea of anti-art. You know, Dada was lambasted as anti-art because of its rejection of the traditions and the principles of modern art as we knew it.

35:43And when we listen to this chorus that's like, just the words Pinky Up over and over again, as if it's a nursery rhyme, it is reductive. And I think that could be an insult, but also, in this context, the purpose of the song. We're not shooting for the stars here. It is reductive, and it is catchphrase pop. But as we're learning, catchphrase pop does have merit.

Tootie Fruity and cut-up lyrics

36:14Their song Hootie Fruity follows a similar formula. I'm so excited we're talking about this song because as a music historian, I'm thinking about what its antecedents might be as well. And my mind immediately goes to Little Richard, Tootie Fruity.

36:46I feel like that is the predecessor to Hootie Fruity, another song that is essentially a series of nonsense rhymes. Of course, one can't help but draw the connection between Little Richard and Cat's Eye.

37:20Nonsense words have been in pop since the dawn of pop music. And sometimes they also cover up a deeper truth. I mean, I'm pretty sure the original lyrics of Tootie Fruity were Tootie Fruity, good booty. And many people understood it to be a song about anal sex. And there's a lot of layers to that song, even though it sounds like nonsense. And perhaps we could find similar depth in Hootie Fruity.

37:50I'm not sure. Or depth. I don't know if that's quite the right word I want to use, but certainly multiple layers of meaning. How about that? Right, right. Well, that goes back to what I said earlier, Nate, where I told you that the first time I listened to Cat's Eye, I was very confused because you could see it in Hootie Fruity. The lyrics are sexual, but it uses this repetitive hook that is seen as childish.

38:23It's nonsense words. And that back and forth between adult themes and juvenile presentation is a contrast. And there's a hallmark of pop music dating back to Tootie Fruity and probably earlier as well. Thought we could come up with some nonsense songs from the 19th century. There's moments of lyrical genius in here.

39:03Hootie Fruity on your tongue. Hootie Fruity all night long. My favorite line, Hootie Fruity like the $20 smoothies in LA. Facts. Facts. Someone needs to do something about those. That's an Erewhon reference, I'm guessing. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. You know it. But looking at the lyrics of Hootie Fruity, the funny thing is I do think these lyrics are Dada and there is a merit to the way that nonsense lyrics are written within the Dada practice.

39:34One particular Dada's technique is the cut-up technique, which was popularized by the poet Tristan Shara in the Dadaist Manifesto. Yes. And he says to make a Dadaist poem, you know, there's a series of steps, but essentially you take a newspaper and scissors, cut out an article in the paper, cut out every single word from that article, shake it all up in a bag, pull whatever words and phrases out in a certain order, and that order is your poem.

40:05When you listen to a Cat's Eye song, doesn't this sound like it could be their approach to lyric writing? A hundred percent. I love that. The cut-up method of lyric writing. I like my multi-tranched in chocolata.

40:21Let's play some truth or dare. Tell me what time you want. You think I'm unaware, but I don't want you one. You came for something bad. I'll put it on your tongue.

40:34I know you like that Hootie. And if that is the approach, they're in good company. I mean, David Bowie in the 90s made this machine with, I think Brian Eno called the verbisizer that would generate essentially random phrases for him to use in his lyrics. And I think he might have even been inspired by that same cut-up method. So this is kind of an interesting lineage they're part of if we start to view the lyrics that way. William S. Burroughs used this method to write his books.

41:06David Bowie has talked about using it. Kurt Cobain has used this method. And even Tom York from Radiohead has used the cut-up technique to write the record Kid A. So you don't really see this in mainstream pop music. And I think it's a cool way to think about nonsense lyrics. You know, through these cat's eye tracks, I'm getting the impression that this is a new approach to mainstream pop. The artists that we mentioned, none of them are bubblegum pop artists.

41:37You know, I don't think of Tom York as like chart-topping pop star. This approach throws caution to the wind a little bit and leans on the techniques of absurdism to craft good pop songs. And I think the method is working.

Adela and musical nihilism

41:56I'm also moved by the work of another artist in the cat's eye cinematic universe, as I mentioned, the pop star Adela, who actually auditioned to be in cat's eye on the pop star Academy show and was sent home. It feels like, in her work, she's pulling from the same playbook. But instead of leaning into full Dada, her work skews a little bit nihilistic, where nothing has truth, purpose, or meaning.

42:28Stay with me, Nate. She evokes this vibe sonically, I think, on her track Ain't in L.A., which contains a nearly one-to-one copy of the intro to Miley Cyrus' We Can't Stop. Here's We Can't Stop. It's our party, we can do what we want.

43:00It's our party, we can say what we want. It's our party, we can love what we want. We can kiss what we want, we can screw what we want. It's our party, we can do what we want. Here we go. So in a very reductive explanation of nihilism, it kind of boils down to this idea that nothing matters. And I think We Can't Stop by Miley Cyrus is kind of the millennial nihilist vortex, to use a term that you taught me about, Nate. Sorry, I've made you so insufferable since joining this podcast.

43:33Clearly. But here, Adela shows us, by copying We Can't Stop to this degree, using the same man that delivered the chopped and screwed section on We Can't Stop, nothing matters, including copyright law. Yeah. Why worry about lawsuits if we're all going to die anyway? Exactly. And I think this idea is hammered home on her song, Nicole Kidman, a track that is anchored by lyrics that I find not to mean really much of anything.

44:04Every single night, I pray that my tits are sitting right, my lawn rouges, my corset is so tight, baby girl in control, I feel like Nicole, and every single day, I wake up, the world is my buffet. That's so interesting. Even the way she's singing is almost nihilistic. It's like she's not putting any emotion into it. It's devoid of feeling, the way she's describing these things.

44:35It's like you don't know how she feels about it. It's just like reciting these words and experiences, but she's somehow dissociated from them. Right. What does it mean to be Nicole Kidman? What is the connection between these lines? Does anybody care if there's connection between these lines and these sounds and her affectation? Like, probably not, but like Cat's Eye, I think that makes these songs profound.

45:07Like, they're intentional nonsense, you know? Like, Adele is leaning into the fact here that in modern society, the society in which we live, nothing really has meaning. People just be saying whatever. Lyrics be saying whatever. And that's cool. We've gone from the sort of playful and somewhat tongue-in-cheek surrealism and Dada movements to something a little darker, the Antonin Artaud Theater of Cruelty, perhaps, is where we've

45:41arrived with Adela. Oh, yeah. And I feel like her visual aesthetic is kind of in that vibe as well. Everything's very sort of grungy and torn and kind of rough around the edges. So, if we go back to where we started, I guess we see, whether it's the, you know, the Cat's Eye or Adela end of the spectrum, it's like these are responses to a world that has seemingly

46:11lost its sense of order and logic, and why not embrace something that is chaotic and inchoate and sort of subconscious.

Two modes of modern pop

46:27I mean, Nicole Kidman is in the Billboard Top 10 right now, so people are clearly connecting with it. And what I will say is that I think there is a chasm opening up in modern pop music right now, spurred by our societal unrest. Lately, I've been noticing that as a listener, there's kind of two modes of songwriting that you can go in if you want a pop hit. You can adopt either a very diaristic approach, you know, your Taylor Swift's, your Phoebe Bridger's, your Olivia Rodrigo's, where you speak from the heart as if the lyrics are lifted.

47:02Right from your journal, you're talking about feelings, you're kind of putting your deepest thoughts on the mic. This is a very successful method and feels very 2020s to me, feels very tied into the rise of TikTok and singer-songwriter culture. We've talked about successful artists like that constantly in recent months. But the alternative, as we see in Cat's Eye and Adela, interests me. And that's on the other side of the chasm. And that's to do the full nonsense mode, catchphrase pop, Dadaist approach.

47:39And clearly people like that philosophical nonsense, catchphrase pop, Dadaist approach. Cat's Eye's EP went number one on Billboard. Adela continues to climb the Hot 100. And I think we're all riding the tide of Sabrina Carpenter's Me Espresso. Oh, wow. Talk about Urtext. So to close, because I feel like this is an argumentative essay that I would write in college. Duchamp made art because he was frustrated that painting was for the eyes and not the mind.

48:13Obviously, painting still has its merits. And for the sake of the metaphor, I don't want to go so far as to say Cat's Eye is like a thinking man's girl group. But maybe Cat's Eye also makes music for the mind, not necessarily the ears. I feel like you've given me a new way to listen to this group. And that's a good thing because my feeling is they're not going anywhere.

Credits and wrap up

48:38Switched on Pop is produced by myself, Rihanna Cruz, edited by Alyssa Soap, video by Nick Ripps, engineered by Brandon McFarland, illustrations are by Iris Gottlieb, and our theme music is by Jossie Adams and Zach Tenario of ArcIris. We are a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network and a production of New York Magazine, which you can subscribe to at nymag.com slash pod. Yes, we will be back next week with a brand new episode.

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