#sub focus

content warning: language, discussion of sex, depression and - sigh - Drake

Rundown

The rest of the top five consists of songs that were already charting, but got a very solid boost from the snow melting: “APT.” by ROSÉ & Bruno Mars at #2, “Messy” by Lola Young at #3, “Sailor Song” by Gigi Perez at #4, and even Chrystal gets her first top 10 with “The Days” at #5, a weird song to peak that high in my view. To add to the post-Christmas confusion, “It Can’t be Christmas” by Tom Grennan held on the highest at #30 for no good reason, but other than that, we have gains, returns and debuts, so I’ll talk about those categories in that order, but bear with me, it will just be listing songs, even if it is interesting to see how high certain songs are, how much traction they gained over the holidays and how much of a semi-artificial boost they get from this week’s rejection of all things wintry.

For our notable gains, we see boosts within the top 20, namely “Nice to Meet You” by Myles Smith at #13, “Bed Chem” by Sabrina Carpenter at #11, “Defying Gravity” by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande at #10, “Die with a Smile” by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars at #8, and as for the returns… well, it’s the rest, and plenty of these are new peaks or close to it as well. For ease, I’ll split it between vague genres and if you don’t like my categorisation… fair enough, I don’t either, genre is a myth.

For hip hop and R&B, we have Tyler, the Creator with “Sticky” featuring GloRilla, Sexyy Red and Lil Wayne at #70 and “Like Him” featuring Lola Young at #35, “Oscar-Winning Tears.” by RAYE at #68, “Empty Out Your Pockets” by the late Juice WRLD at #55, Kendrick Lamar with “tv off” featuring Lefty Gunplay at #38 and “luther” with SZA at #28, “Thick of It” by KSI featuring Trippie Redd at #22 and, sigh, “Timeless” by The Weeknd and Playboi Carti at #12, which allegedly has AI vocals – I don’t personally see the clear evidence yet, but if you believe it… hey, maybe my disgust with that song rings even truer.

As for the hodge-podge of everything encompassed by “rock”, folk, country and whatever counts as alternative these days, we see the re-arrivals of “Favourite” by Fontaines D.C. at #72, “All My Love” by Coldplay at #69, “Casual” by Chappell Roan at #60, “Headlock” by Imogen Heap at #57 (not complaining about this resurgence), “The Emptiness Machine” by Linkin Park at #53, “I Had Some Help” by Post Malone featuring Morgan Wallen at #51, “Burning Down” by Alex Warren at #49, “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers at #48, “The Sound of Silence” by Disturbed at #47 (really, we’re still doing this?), “Stick Season” by Noah Kahan at #31, “Stargazing” by Myles Smith at #29, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” by Shaboozey at #25, “Too Sweet” by Hozier at #24, “Beautiful Things” by Benson Boone at #21, “People Watching” by Sam Fender at #19, and, hey, why not? Let’s slot Billie Eilish in this category too with “WILDFLOWER” at #16 and “BIRDS OF A FEATHER” at #14.

Finally, for pop, dance and Afrobeats, we say welcome back to “Cruel Summer” by Taylor Swift at #75, “Indestructible” by Andy C and Becky Hill at #73, “BACKBONE” by Chase & Status and Stormzy at #71, “365” by Charli xcx at #67 – “Guess” featuring Billie Eilish is at #65, “Sympathy is a knife” featuring Ariana Grande at #50 – then “Who” by Jimin at #64, “Disease” by Lady Gaga at #61, “Ma Meilleure Ennemie” by Stromae and Pomme at #56, “Move” by Adam Port, Stryv and Malachii at #54, “Kisses” by BL3SS, CamrinWatsin and bbyclose at #52, “2 hands” by Tate McRae at #45, “This is What You Came For” by Calvin Harris featuring Rihanna out of seemingly nowhere at #43… it peaked at #2 in 2016, behind Drake’s “One Dance” featuring Wizkid and Kyla, which was #1 for like half that year it feels. Moving swiftly on from whyever that’s there, we have “it’s ok i’m ok” by Tate McRae at #41, “NIGHTS LIKE THIS” by The Kid LAROI at #40, “Austin (Boots Stop Workin’)” by Dasha at #39, “Close to You” and “I Love You, I’m Sorry” by Gracie Abrams at #36, “Diet Pepsi” by Addison Rae at #34, “PUSH 2 START” by Tyla at #33, “What is This Feeling?” with Cynthia Erivo and “Popular”, both by Ariana Grande from the Wicked soundtrack, at #27 and #26, “Dirty Cash (Money Talks)” by PAWSA and The Adventures of Stevie V at #20, “Taste” and “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter at #18 and #15, “HOT TO GO!” and “Good Luck, Babe!” by Chappell Roan at #32 and #17, “Somedays” by Sonny Fodera, Jazzy and D.O.D at #9, and finally, whilst he probably counts more as soul, he’s got three songs real high so Teddy Swims, probably a big star of 2025 that I’m placing all my bets on, has “Lose Control” at #23, “Bad Dreams” at #7 and my favourite, “The Door” at #6. Welp, that’s all good and fun, but what did that door let in when it was left open? Let’s take a look.

New Entries

#74 – “30 for 30” – SZA and Kendrick Lamar

Produced by J. White Did It and Michael Uzowuru

I’m somewhat torn on SZA’s new deluxe reissue of her album SOS. Whilst basically a new album in terms of quantity, it’s not nearly as finished as you’d expect from an album teased for years, and LANA is still, according to SZA and her management, going to be updated with improved mixes and bonus tracks. Given how barebones, lacking in powerful or hooky refrains – definitely nothing as sticky as “Saturn” – these new tracks are, and given how SZA sounds damn near underwater on all of them, this is less like an everchanging work of art being improved for the fans and more like, well, VULTURES 2. The quality is about as mixed of a bag too, with two tracks debuting from the album this week, the first being the big viral moment with Kendrick Lamar and it may be his first complete miss this year because I don’t know about the general consensus on this, but this is clearly a demo to me. I’ll be keeping much of this episode short – it’s already late and filled to the brim with the big first-week-of-the-year resurgence of songs – but part of that may just be because of how little these songs, especially SZA’s, give me to discuss. I’m not surprised that J. White Did It, mostly known for lazy piano-led trap, produced this, because the same dead-eyed minimalism is present, just in an even less covert and purposeful way. To put it simply, this is the “Throw Some D’s” beat thrown in a blender and rapped over by Kendrick and someone who’s really not a rapper. Whilst R&B group Switch’s 1979 track “I Call Your Name” has been sampled plentifully, Polow da Don’s flip with Butta on Rich Boy’s 2006 Stateside smash “Throw Some D’s” remains the most iconic and exciting to this day, with Rich Boy’s stuttering, gang vocal-backed take ensuring that once that driven swell rushes in, there’s no breath to be taken, it’s an all-time 2000s hip hop one-hit wonder. In “30 for 30”, the sample is flipped near-identically, with this newer version sounding somehow more feathery – as if some EQ or AI stem separation took all the bass out – and the stabs Butta and Polow created are even jerkier, almost sounding delayed. Most criminally, it’s missing nearly any drums until a basic, terribly-mastered bass rumble and very clicky drum, comes in to remind you this was produced by the aforementioned J. White. It’s not that SZA and Kenny do much to help here either, because this is four minutes of them goofing about aimlessly, dissing Drake in weak subliminals that serve more to detriment Kendrick’s victory than hurt Drake. “Some of y’all just look lost”, he murmurs on a first-take vocal going back and forth with a frankly embarrassing SZA performance and elongated vowels that remind me of… well, Drake. The lazy, well-known sample with lazy trap-adjacent drums, it’s a Drake thing to do, the sing-rapping about vague pettiness directed towards no-one in particular (massive asterisk applied), it’s a Drake thing to do, as is the terrible mixing where you can tell obviously where SZA punched in a vocal and Kendrick’s ugly ramble about “conservative girls” and their sexual activity, followed by some flubbed rhymes in his half-baked outro. There’s so much space left here and “filled in” by aimless bars or dragged-out delivery, and given how much of the track is effortless, unrelatable flexing and posturing towards someone who doesn’t even pose a threat, there’s only so much of SZA asking what “chat” thinks before I can say that this is dreadful and reflects badly on the attempted victory lap Kendrick had me fully on board for in GNX. This seems like a complete misunderstanding of everything that made Kendrick win that battle and I think partly due to the influence of those who wish to play both sides. This is trash, it shouldn’t have been cleared for release – that sample couldn’t have been cheap enough to waste on this.

#66 – “Bug” – Fontaines D.C.

Produced by James Ford

Irish post-punk band Fontaines D.C. had a great year with their album release in 2024, and residue from that success seeps into the next year as a cut that previously spent some time below the top 75 rushes back in after the Christmas freeze. I’m overall mixed to positive on what I’ve heard from them – still didn’t check out the full Romance album, sorry – so I didn’t really know what I should expect. I was met with a dusty post-punk jangle that drummer Tom Coll said was an easy jam with everyone in the studio, and I believe it because this is a very focused song you could imagine comes from a simple, back-to-basics studio session, though with some very professional guitar and vocal mixing that adds that extra level of detail, particularly that wiry fuzz in the second verse and the backing vocals behind singer Grian Chatten that aren’t that much of a presence, but provide a great favour to the content which could otherwise seem self-absorbed and whiny. After what appears to be a breakup, with Chatten functioning as a miserable, envious lurker who feels wronged by his ex-partner doing very well without him, he’s still somewhat obsessed with her, like a parasite linking on his brain that he can’t help but maintain some probably unwarranted contempt for. There’s a sense of holier-than-thou delusion that feels like the middle point between lying to yourself and genuinely moving on that pokes through the song, especially in the repeated conceit of being “higher than anyone here”, and in a concise three minutes, Fontaines point towards an arc rather than seeing it through. A very misty and temporal track, especially with all the reverb, but a surprisingly straight-forward one at that, this might be my favourite so far, no pun intended. Maybe I do need to listen to these guys, I do become more impressed and intrigued each time, even if the grand scheme of the genre and scene, this isn’t pushing many boundaries. It’s just a damn good story told in a great indie rock song, not often you get that in the charts outside of Sam Fender. Can’t complain about this one at all.

#63 – “Push the Tempo” – Sub Focus and Katy B

Produced by Sub Focus and Punctual

Katy B, long time – no see. An English singer known for EDM hits in the early 2010s, she was heavily associated with mainstream dubstep from that era and produced plenty of hits with her as a vocalist, though surprisingly hadn’t been picked up for a drum and bass revival track yet in the 2020s, which seemed like a missed opportunity until the pretty excellent producer Sub Focus comes along with Katy B’s first charting track since 2016. Much like a lot of successful production from this new set of drum and bass tracks, the jump-up groove is the eventual result of a slow, atmospheric ascent that Katy B doesn’t fully fit into with her vocals not as manipulated as they probably should be. Sure, it may sound human, but she isn’t the the beyond-Earth diva or anonymous wispy presence that she could be, finding a middle-ground that leaves some inflections a bit awkward but adds a welcome human touch to the build-up. The track fizzes into a simple piano hardcore line that soon encompasses all the tropes you’d expect, before the title drop and the expected sparks from the bass plummeting in. I’m a sucker for this genre, it’ll pretty much always work for me, but Sub Focus isn’t on autopilot here with the slides and really grimy sound design that pushes that fuzzy synth bass right back into Katy B’s territory alongside her echoed fragments of vocal that take up a lot of space in the mix during that second verse, it’s really overwhelming and euphoric. I wish the second drop was a bit less copy-paste, especially given the lyrics about losing control and pushing the tempo – I know you don’t want to ruin a club track by being too on-the-nose, but if it’s well-done, a shift in pace or a flip into some hardstyle patterns here could have made it even more exciting… though maybe that’s just because Sub Focus did do this on the absolutely killer “Ready to Fly” with Dimension, which I still find just as much joy in now as I did on release. Yet again, Sub Focus brings a detailed drum and bass track with a few less surprises this time but an attention to detail that’s never left, and most importantly, it’s incredibly fun to listen to and write about. I know most people who read this are here for the pop and rap songs high in the chart, or the novelty memes that end up here (more on that in a bit), but these middling EDM debuts are absolutely my favourite reviews to write. Sound design is beautiful, the songs are often wonderful, and I never truly know exactly what to expect.

#59 – “Peggy” – Ceechynaa

Produced by Extendo Beats and Rupa Beats

On social media, I tend to stay in whatever echo chamber the algorithm decides for me, especially given how relatively private I am on my personal, non-cactus accounts. Hence, I thought nothing of the woman parading around London in an outfit that’s ought to be cold that I saw reposted constantly on X – my interest in pop music leads me down Stan Twitter rabbitholes I’m too old and normal for at this point, and I figured this was one of their underground faves, so much so I never even turned the volume on when I saw that video pop up time and time again. Turns out it’s charting! Also turns out the beat isn’t very good, kind of a lazy Jersey drill track with a menacing choral loop that does not fit the playfulness of these bars at all. Ceechynaa literally name-drops Phineas from Phineas and Ferb, why is it this aggressive of a beat? To be fair, there’s definitely a violent sexuality to this, treating men with as little respect as possible, especially in the bed, and I do understand the appeal, especially with her distinct vocal delivery. The lyrics are clunky as Hell, though, made for memes, pop culture references and reactions rather than an actually worthwhile song, with that “outro” and the aborted structure of the song overall making it evident where the priorities of it lie. That’s fine, novelties have always been charting, I just think there is some potential and untapped market in this, especially in UK drill, that might leave a track like this looking a bit lacklustre very soon if this is allowed to take off the way it seems primed to be.

#58 – “Filthy Rich” – Ella Henderson

Produced by Nicolas Rebscher and Sean Cook

Sure, Ella Henderson – somehow on my favourite hit song of 2023 and my second least favourite of 2024, Henderson rarely provokes emotion from me herself, it’s usually a combination of writing and production ideas whilst she acts sort of like a blank canvas, which can be promising given how many EDM hits she’s played a part in. What interested me, however, were the producers here. Rebscher has worked with AURORA and Alice Merton, and Cook with cats like Shaboozey and Hozier, so this at least won’t be something we’ve heard before from her. My head was swirling between “interesting attempt at branching her sound” and “cheap, pathetic stomp-clap rip-off”. Then I heard this dance-pop singer from Lincolnshire talk about her “momma” over a country banjo, mentioning “Georgia” – a ride-or-die friend that would double as the state if this was, say, Megan Moroney, but loses all of that extra detail with this kind of singer, who has never shown any interest in this sound or even lyrical content before. Since when was the house diva who sings about love on club tracks by David Guetta and Joel Corry going to release a track about allegedly not needing money to be “filthy rich”? Not only is there nothing filthy about this song’s production, there’s nothing authentic about it and whilst I love when singers play characters, this is so plainly a ploy produced for a petty part of the pie and it’s pure nonsense. It’s not your friends and family back home in the “sticks” that are preventing you from being a “broke-ass bitch” (seriously in the chorus!), Ms. Henderson, it’s the track you made with Rudimental sampling the deceased Coolio’s biggest hit for streaming points and sucking away all the context that makes it powerful for vapidity. How’s that for “filthy rich”, ma’am? Go back to performing for Tories, I’m sure Kemi Badenoch is itching for anything to take away from Reform’s share of the vote right now – Hell, Nigel Farage and Lee Anderson may have a more convincing grift on their hands than whatever this shit is. Get this the fuck out of here before people buy into it.

#46 – “Indigo” – Sam Barber featuring Avery Anna

Produced by Joe Becker

Over the winter, this previously mildly successful country singer Sam Barber broke out with a viral duet featuring an even less well-known country singer, Avery Anna, and whilst it seems out of nowhere, this kind of relatively independent country or folk song going viral the way a rap or dance song would seems very normal in 2025. It’s a double-edged sword: we get inauthentic wagon hopping like the song above us, but also, we often get a much more sincere track that charts above them. Sure, you have your commercial tracks from Myles Smith, but Noah Kahan and Shaboozey are some of the biggest names in British pop music alongside guys like Sam Fender who are on the outskirts and helped blossom this new trend, which I mostly welcome with open arms because it seems to reflect pop music listeners desiring something more human. That’s exactly what “Indigo” is, a pretty depressing cut about the colours of Barber’s life fading away from him over solemn pianos and an acoustic guitar rollick that distracts from the slower elements of the track in a unique way, so it never finds a confident footing on a groove. The song’s lost, questioning God’s plan, and even when the typical organic country drums come in for the chorus, it remains a drunken bar-stool swing to it, with a chemistry between Avery Anna’s more expressive vocal and Barber’s drooping old dog voice that reminds me of Zach Bryan’s duets. There are hints towards a breakup between the two narrators having kickstarted this period of depression, but I more so interpreted the song as about losing yourself, with Anna seeking a higher power based on her own optimism that someone still cares up there, and Barber dragging that hope through the mud like a foregone conclusion. The piano solo and its staggered build-up genuinely gave me goosebumps, and the mix is dynamic enough to accommodate that crash into the final chorus – Anna sounds like a Goddamn star on this, by the way, if I’m hedging my bets on 2025, it’s her as she’s got a traditional rasp and grit to her that goes beyond smoky indie girl voice into something really raw and beautiful. I feel like with age, I’m becoming even more in tune with my dad’s affection for sappy ballads, this hit me kind of like a truck. In a perfect world, this sees an “I Remember Everything” run – it may sacrifice that song’s lyrical and anecdotal detail but for a melodramatic arrangement that resonates with me just as much. I couldn’t recommend this more.

#44 – “BMF” – SZA

Produced by Carter Lang, Blake Slatkin and Omer Fedi

And we end with our second cut from LANA, and sadly still not one of my favourites – “Kitchen” and “Love Me 4 Me” are my picks from the new crop of songs. This doesn’t mean “BMF”, originally titled “The Boy from South Detroit” and intended to feature Lizzo (glad that didn’t pan out), is bad though – far from it. It’s definitely safe, with a guitar pluck fully in the realm of its producers Slatkin and Fedi, not doing anything to separate this from a prior work from them outside of the “Girl from Ipanema” interpolation. That’s already an oft-implemented song, whether it be samples, covers or reinterpretations – the original peaked at #29 in 1964 – so there’s little to find that’s all too new about this song, which is completely what you’d expect! It’s practically a compilation of glossed-up demos or ideas stretched out into deluxe tracks, so the fact that SZA is clear on most of this (there are definitely some watery or mumbling moments) and the lyrics are generally charming, describing this bad boy type and how she can be a ride-or-die partner, but it’s still just a fluttery indie pop-adjacent bedroom shuffle with stock drums, pleasant but empty sound design and a performance that has its peaks and troughs. The song even fades out by the end and that feels like a signifier that the song just wasn’t there, wasn’t developed beyond a cute idea. With a unique arrangement or even just better production, it could work, but there’s not enough to compel me here, and I find the dents in the construction of the track a lot more distracting when vibes and a perky hook are pretty much all it has.

Conclusion