It has been a week since Los Angeles’ devastating wildfires began, driven by powerful winds that have made the blazes highly difficult to fight.

More than 40,000 acres have already burned, with at least 24 deaths; by comparison, the entirety of Washington, DC, is 43,000 acres. More than 12,300 structures have been destroyed, and at least 90,000 people are without power. Disinformation is skyrocketing as influencers peddle questionable products, right-wing commentators blame the devastation on ‘wokeness,’ and landlords look to profit. AccuWeather estimates the total damages and economic losses at more than $250 billion.

President Biden has promised six months of full federal funding for California’s efforts to combat the fires, while top-level Republicans continue to discuss placing “conditions” on federal aid to California. The Trump administration has a history of withholding aid in disasters, and Trump was quick to cast blame on California Gov. Gavin Newsom (and a fish). 

Observers across party lines have criticized Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass over the crisis, some critiquing Bass’ presence in Ghana on an official trip for the inauguration of its new president John Dramani Mahama on the first day of the fires. Others, like Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia and city fire chief Kristin Crowley, have criticized the city government’s recent $17.6 million budget cuts to the Los Angeles Fire Department, which led to the loss of 61 positions as calls for service went up.

Meanwhile, more than 22,000 emergency personnel have been activated to fight the fires, including more than 900 incarcerated firefighters working for for barely $10 a day.

California’s recruitment of wildland firefighters from prisons has faced sharp criticism in the past week, despite Californians’ rejection of a November ballot measure that would have banned all prison labor, including firefighting. Many incarcerated and formerly incarcerated firefighters have spoken positively about the program. Others point out that it’s simply better than being in California prisons.

Officials expect the true death toll to exceed the two dozen fatalities, a figure that inclues multiple disabled residents, documented so far. United Nations research shows that disasters kill disabled people at a rate two to four times that of the general population.

What actually sparked each of the three fires is under investigation; while misinformation about arsonists spreads online, experts are investigating the role of power lines and embers from fireworks.

But the fuel—including strong Santa Ana winds, low rainfall, and climate change—is undeniable. There’s “no question…that climate change is exacerbating our fire regime and affecting fires,” Jon Keeley, a fire ecologist with the US Geological Survey and adjunct professor at University of California, Los Angeles, told Mother Jones‘ Jackie Flynn Mogensen last week.

Of the three active fires in Los Angeles, the Hurst Fire in San Fernando is 97 percent contained, at 799 acres; the Palisades Fire, which has gotten attention for devouring celebrity homes in particular, is just 17 percent contained, and has already burned more than 23,000 acres, making it the most destructive to ever hit Los Angeles County. 

Finally, the Eaton fire, which has burned over 14,000 acres in and around the city of Altadena, is 35 percent contained. As the Civil Rights Movement chipped at pervasive redlining in the Los Angeles area in the middle of the 20th century, Altadena became known as a place where Black residents faced fewer obstacles to homeownership. Today, the Black homeownership rate in the city is higher than 80 percent, almost double the national average among Black households. Multigenerational family homes have been lost, and a coalition of Black organizers has raised over $10 million to support displaced Black families from the area.

A prominent resident of Altadena was MacArthur “Genius” grant–winning science fiction author Octavia Butler, who wrote an eerily prescient novel in 1993, The Parable of the Sower, that predicted massive wildfires in Los Angeles—including Altadena—in 2025, alongside the rise of a far-right president with the catchphrase “Make America Great Again.”

In an essay titled “A Few Rules For Predicting The Future,” Butler wrote that a student had asked her whether she believed they were in for the futureshe’d predicted. “I didn’t make up the problems,” she replied. “All I did was look around at the problems we’re neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters.”

Butler was laid to rest in 2006 in Altadena’s Mountain View Cemetery, which caught fire last week.

Ketan Joshi did not mean to become the manager of all things climate on Bluesky, the fast-growing social media platform that’s trying to compete directly with Twitter.

GreenSky was designed to be this overarching, overall thing that encompassed all the communities. I see that emerging through the GreenSky feed, because you see people from very disparate communities talking to each other.

The 39-year-old Australian expat who now lives in Oslo, Norway has spent his career writing about green energy as a communications specialist for renewable energy companies and author of Windfall: Unlocking a Fossil-Free Future, but found it especially hard to share climate information on platforms like Instagram and Twitter. Those sites seemed built toward sowing discord and had secret rules about what posts would do well. Immediately, he noticed that Bluesky was different.

Built as an open-source decentralized network, Bluesky’s architects, which included Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey, wanted to create something that was user-led rather than company-led. (Dorsey is no longer involved and the project is led by Jay Graeber, who promises to “billionaire proof” the site.) What it means is that Bluesky has no all-powerful algorithm directing content. Instead of trusting a privately-owned, sometimes-biased, often-inflammatory and increasingly misinformed system, users can choose multiple feeds from thousands of mini-algorithms built by users. Or make their own.

Early on in the project Dorsey, who is no longer involved, stated: “Existing social media incentives frequently lead to attention being focused on content and conversation that sparks controversy and outrage, rather than conversation which informs and promotes health.” Bluesky’s goal was to change that.

The appeal seems to be working. The platform now has 25 million users, and counting. In the days following Donald Trump’s re-election in a campaign that was supercharged by Elon Musk, who owns Twitter , over 1 million new users joined the site.

Joshi has been on Bluesky for a while–since the site had less than 100,000 users. He built up his climate community on Bluesky by searching manually for folks involved in climate change work. He followed and added their names to spreadsheet to keep track

At first the spreadsheet was just for Joshi, but quickly there was interest from those in his network, so he shared it widely. 

(Nowadays, Bluesky has improved on the spreadsheet sharing with a function where users can curate lists of other users called Starterpacks with the option to “follow” or “block” all of them.)

Joshi also created a feed that congregated all the posts from users on his climate list. It, like many other early Bluesky feeds, like Blacksky and BookSky, combined a keyword with sky—”GreenSky”—each varying in capitalization. The result was a unique space where everyone was talking about the environment. 

GreenSky is a “Top-50” feed with near-constant engagement and frequent debates as those in different climate camps come face off on policy disagreements in real time. In early January, in the midst of devastating fires in Los Angeles, posters used the feed to stay up to date, grapple with how climate led to their ferocity, and sift through misinformation. Top climate voices, like energy transition engineer Jesse Jenkins and Farhana Sultana, author of Confronting Climate Coloniality, are members and frequent posters.

Mother Jones spoke to Joshi about the unique climate dialogues emerging on BlueSky, facilitated by GreekSky, how he is trying to manage it, and the role that social media plays in climate engagement broadly.

How has GreenSky changed since the early days, beyond sheer growth?

I added a keyword filter which limits posts to [77] climate keywords only. But Bluesky is such a flexible, open platform, so I created a second version that is just the unfiltered thoughts of everybody on that list, if you desire to have it that way. And then, a friend on Bluesky decided that he liked green sky, but wanted a different filtering on it, so he created a version that not only filters for the keywords, but also filters for sort of popularity and engagement. 

It’s a basic thing that people can riff off. They can make their own version. I think that’s really quite wonderful. 

You have a presence on several social media platforms, and seem to be in the habit of making a climate community on each one. How did that experience translate into managing climate posting on Bluesky?

The key thing that I find on the other sites, very consistently, is that in the process of trying to find your people and then communicate with your people, you’re kind of swimming against the tide.

Instagram is a nice example where there’s a sort of this behavioral culture of people trying to act and speak and present their content in a way that pleases a secret formula. And I’ve done that. I’m there googling the type of thumbnail to use and the type of description to use and the perfect length to please the sort of secret algorithms.

So Bluesky is quite different?

One thing I have noticed is people are very quickly unlearning the habits of trying to please the algorithm. Other websites down rank hyperlinks because they don’t want people leaving the website. They don’t want the eyeballs of the people going away from the website and away from advertisers. That doesn’t happen on Bluesky unless somebody makes a feed that has the formula inside it. But no one’s going to subscribe to that feed because we all love seeing each other’s work. That really stands out to me, where there’s a lot of sharing of work, there’s a lot of sharing of reports, people link to other places on the internet. Bluesky is a conduit.

Bluesky gets the critique of being an echo chamber a lot, but I’ve noticed a huge diversity of opinions in the climate side of Bluesky. What are your observations?

The climate community has its own bubbles: climate science and ecological sciences, energy technology and investment innovation, indigenous rights. I don’t wring my hands about [this]. You see this anxiety about cross chatter between communities and or even Bluesky being a silo but it’s just, it’s simply not the case? That’s not how communities form on a well designed social media site. What you get is people cluster with topics they want to hear from and people they want to hear from, and then they sort of cross through each other, sometimes often in bad ways, often in good ways.

GreenSky was designed to be this overarching, overall thing that encompassed all the communities. I see that emerging through the GreenSky feed, because you see people from very disparate communities talking to each other.

What do those debates look like on Greensky?

I very intentionally designed it so that replies show up in the feed so people are replying to each other. I want it to be a little bit noisy. I want it to be a little bit overwhelming. 

I’ve seen debates occur in very refreshing and unique ways that are passionate, but they never default to hate and personal invective. You can tell that the blood pressure is high and that people feel strongly when they’re replying. It’s not dispassionate or boring. But, I have not seen it sort of like falling to insults or to snide, snippyness, like we have seen on other sites.

It’s a nice style of interaction, because it’s a fight. It’s a proper fight, people mean it, but at the same time, they’re not full of hate or developing beef. 

People who have been on X for a while now, they’ve been subject to the design of the website, which is obviously encouraging conflict as much as possible as a way to keep people on there. 

I’m sure there are many examples of actual, proper, personal, interpersonal hate on arguments in Bluesky and even in the climate space. But I would say, as a general thing, it feels like an improvement.

What are some of the biggest debates on GreenSky right now?

Permitting reform, the abundance agenda, gas terminals, Biden’s overall agenda. 

A big one is how to deploy clean energy in the US. On one side, you’ve kind of got the people who say wind power and solar power should be somewhat deregulated and rolled out in a faster way to achieve quicker, deeper emissions reductions. It’s justified on the grounds of: this is an urgent problem, and when you have too much process, then you end up with people like blockers and NIMBYs, and they sort of block like wind funds and solar farms. 

And then the other side, which I’m a little bit more aligned with is like: “Yes, permitting needs to be reformed, but it should be reformed in a way that encourages more community engagement and community benefit sharing, because that will actually result in the quicker roll out.” 

These two sides of the debate are like red hot right now, because the political change was so clearly stressful on a lot of people who are allies but have a different idea about how to reach the same goal, and so the intensity of these debates has increased. 

What about management? How have you handled the influx of billions people onto Bluesky and thousands of people to your feed?

This is something that I’m a little daunted by because my criteria when I first started making this list, was literally “climate people,” and that can mean quite a lot of things. It can mean somebody who doesn’t work in any professional sense in climate, but is extremely interested in it. I always told myself that the keyword filtering will do the job. 

I actually haven’t updated it with the new opt-in requests from the great surge of earlier, so it’s going to get a lot noisier in the next couple of weeks. It’s probably going to double in size or so. 

I monitor the feed pretty closely to see who’s posting in it and what type of topics get filtered through the keyword filter. It seems okay so far. 

One thing I really want to try and preserve is how diverse the climate community is across those different groups, while at the same time sort of acknowledging who’s missing. There’s quite a few groups missing, and it’s because they haven’t really joined Bluesky yet. Climate activists who rely very much on strong preexisting networks. They can’t just quit their network and then just hope that everybody else will run behind them. That’s going to take longer, but the clusters of people will expand pretty significantly over the next year or so. 

What about moderating bad stuff?

One day somebody’s going to request to join, who is, for instance, sailing close to the wind of being a climate denier or a delayer.

The initial policy that I had on GreenSky was “no dickheads,” which is an Australian term. I will only kick somebody off the list if they’re either abusive, if they’re breaching any of Bluesky’s basic moderation rules, or if it’s a pretty cut and dried case of mis- or disinformation spreading.

The feed is probably going to grow. It’s going to need to have a lot more transparency around how I deal with a lot of those questions. I am thinking about a log of content that has been flagged.

I guess that makes me a forum moderator type due, and that is not something I’ve ever done before. That’s the only thing I wish I had prepared for, but I’m lucky. I’ve got access to a huge community of people who will offer good advice.

What is the future of climate online, Bluesky or otherwise?

I’ve spoken to climate activists about the social media they’re using and what they prefer and what they and what they’re interested in. I think someone once jokingly referred to it as a millennial retirement home when it was first set up. That just cut deep out of its sheer truthfulness. 

Something that occurred to me when they told me about that is that they don’t need to join Bluesky. This is an open protocol. It should hypothetically, eventually be such that it would be incredibly easy to set up your own [social] server. 

Some people really need video. Some people really need a network that is secure and can’t be taken down by an authoritarian regime. 

I’m imagining a future for different climate communities where it’s not about Bluesky or GreenSky, but the protocol that enables interconnectedness between different purposes and needs for the community.

At least 10 people have been confirmed dead as wildfires continue to torch through Los Angeles County in the region’s most destructive fires in history. Officials warn that strong winds will persist into Thursday, further hampering ongoing firefighting efforts.

As of this writing, 180,000 people are under mandatory evacuation orders. Thousands of structures and entire neighborhoods have been destroyed. While fire officials are still investigating the causes, the fires have undeniably been fueled by the Santa Ana winds which at one point surpassed 100 mph. The National Weather Service has also attributed the extreme weather to low humidity levels and dry vegetation.

A 2023 study found climate change to be a significant contributor to California’s record-breaking wildfires over the past two decades.

One of the areas worst hit is the affluent Pacific Palisades neighborhood, where a main shopping center is owned by billionaire Rick Caruso.

This is what’s left of the Pacific Palisades. The mall survived. Most everything else is gone. Homes, apartment complexes… businesses. pic.twitter.com/Vfz721V48J

— Jonathan Vigliotti (@JonVigliotti) January 8, 2025

In direct response to the threat of water shortages, which officials fear could significantly hurt firefighting efforts, Mark Pestrella, director of Los Angeles County Public Works, emphasized that the hydrant system in the area was not designed to fight wildfires. “That’s why air support is so critical to the firefight and, unfortunately, wind and air visibility have prevented that support,” Pestrella said, urging residents not to use water to fight the fires to conserve it for firefighters.

“It is really quite futile to attempt to fight fire with your hose at your house,” he added.

Dozens of schools in LA County remain closed. Alberto M. Carvalho, the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, said, “We make the decision of closing schools with a very methodical and science-driven manner,” citing considerations such as air quality.

“National Weather Service has predicted a continued red flag weather event with strong winds and low humidities, placing all residents in Los Angeles County in danger,” said Marrone in an 8 am PT briefing Wednesday.

Marrone made a point to share that they had already arrested two people for looting. “If you are thinking of coming into these areas to steal in these residences you are going to be caught, you’re going to be arrested and you going to be prosecuted,” said the fire chief.

The first responders at the same press conference urged residents to comply with orders and stay vigilant about the fast–evolving emergency.

“Lastly we want to make sure everybody understands we are not out of danger yet, with the strong winds that continue to push through the city and county today, I will tell you we are all committed to our first responders to protecting lives and property” Marrone emphasized at the briefing.

Meanwhile, high-profile conservatives and President-elect Donald Trump have wasted no time blaming Democratic lawmakers for the fires. Trump claimed Gov. Newsom, whom he referred to as “Newscum,” wanted “to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California.” Elon Musk and Caruso have also weighed in to criticize current democratic Mayor Karen Bass, who is in Ghana for the inauguration of Ghana President John Mahama. Bass is on her way back to LA as of Wednesday.

Caruso, who was Bass’s challenger in 2022, notably ran without a climate plan.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy.

When I listened to Chase Strangio, the co-director of the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project, become the first transgender lawyer to argue in the US Supreme Court, the moment was surreal. Here I was, wearing pajamas about 2,800 miles away from where he was making history. 

In United States v. Skrmetti, Strangio argued on behalf of the petitioner that banning medications like puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy for transgender, but not cisgender, youth is a case of sex-based discrimination. Experts argue that the ruling could affect not just trans health care but legal access to birth control, IVF, and abortion. 

While the Supreme Court is meant to determine specifically whether sex-based discrimination took place, every step of the case and its arguments was steeped in the question of the treatment and its efficacy. Strangio could not help but embody this argument, writing in a New York Times op-ed, “My presence at the Supreme Court as a transgender lawyer will have been possible because I have had access to the very medical treatment at the center of the case.”

“My presence at the Supreme Court as a transgender lawyer will have been possible because I have had access to the very medical treatment at the center of the case.”

I can’t pinpoint with certainty the moment I first heard about Strangio. When I was a teen, still donning the pleated skirt of my all-girls school, I didn’t understand why it all felt so deeply uncomfortable. (Spoiler alert: the reason was transness.) I suspect that was around the same time when he was first thrust into the national spotlight as a lawyer in multiple landmark trans rights cases back in 2017. But I can say with certainty that Strangio was the first trans man I knew about specifically. While Laverne Cox and Jazz Jennings were figures I had seen for years, trans men only seemed to exist in an abstract, blurry background. Strangio was in sharp focus every time he spoke about his clients. With that energy, he has always made his height of 5-foot-4 seem imposing. 

Born 42 years ago into a Jewish family outside of Boston, he transitioned during law school, embarking on a career amid highly gendered expectations. Ultimately, he wrote, “I found peace in my body, which allowed me to find peace in the world.” Now, he is a father and lives in New York City. Last fall he stood up to make his kid’s school district safer when Moms for Liberty tried to encroach.

Raised on the uplifting stories of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Thurgood Marshall, I was primed by my lawyer mother to find revolutionary attorneys heroic and compelling. That may be part of why I was so taken by Strangio as a teen. But while his lawyering is obviously impressive, the essence of Strangio’s heroism always has been his bravery in being an openly and prominent trans man, and his feeling of personal responsibility in lifting others toward living their truth.

A Mother Jones 2017 profile of him does not follow him in court but at a tailor’s fitting with teen client Gavin Grimm. At the time, Grimm, a trans man, was seeking access to the men’s restroom at his high school. He sued his school, and the case nearly made it to the Supreme Court—which was the reason for a visit to the tailors—before it was sent back to a lower court, which ruled in 2020 that the school had violated his constitutional rights.

It is no exaggeration to say that Strangio has been involved with pretty much every monumental LGBTQ case of the last decade. He was lead counsel for Chelsea Manning, the WikiLeaks whistleblower who petitioned for access to gender-affirming health care in military custody. He also was counsel in the ACLU’s challenges to North Carolina’s bathroom ban and Trump’s trans military ban. This was Strangio’s first time presenting oral arguments to the Supreme Court, but it wasn’t his first time in the court. He was one of the lawyers involved in the 2018 case, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. EEOC, which led to the historic SCOTUS ruling finding that the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s prohibition on sex discrimination in employment extended to discrimination against LGBTQ workers. So it was only natural that when it came time for an attorney to argue the Skrmetti case, he would be selected. As Cecillia Wang, ACLU legal director, said, “Chase Strangio is our nation’s leading legal expert on the rights of transgender people, bar none.”

Journalist Evan Urquhart was one of a handful of trans people in the court on December 4, 2024, for the arguments. As he watched, he wrote, “Trans stories, and the lives of ordinary trans people, kept coming back to my mind, as I listened to nine cisgender justices debate with two cis lawyers and Chase Strangio about the finer points of what does and does not constitute a law that makes sex-based classifications.”

Those “ordinary trans people” gathered virtually and in person to watch Strangio make history and assess the potential outcome of a case that will have lasting consequences on both transgender and sex-based discrimination. Outside the court, trans people and advocates were bundled tight and practically huddled together to protect themselves against the bitter cold.

After the arguments ended, Strangio left the court and told hundreds of trans folks and allies, “I know we have been the subject of relentless and unjustified attack. But here is the thing, we are in it together.” I watched this clip much later, after an exhausting day of reporting and speaking on trans rights. And even though I am proudly out and surrounded and supported by my trans community, my work in covering the attacks on trans rights—much like being a lawyer championing these issues—can be draining. 

No matter how the case is resolved—which looks bleak amid a conservative majority—Strangio bravely living his truth remains one of the most powerful aspects of the day in and outside the Supreme Court. “If nothing else, I’ve lived this health care. It has enabled me to stand before them at that lectern,” he told New York magazine before the arguments. “So that is a truth that is undeniable, that will be present in the courtroom, that certainly the other trans people who will be present in the courtroom will understand.” 

As we await the assaults on our identity that are sure to come, knowing he’s around offers me the same reassurance as when I was a teenager. Strangio just makes me feel braver. “I love being trans,” he said to the crowd outside the Supreme Court. “I love being with you. And we are going to take care of each other.”

The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy.

Camo hat, orange letters. The ever-present “Hot to Go!” dance. VMA alien makeout. Beyoncé covering Dolly Parton—and Dolly loving it in return. Feuds. Flirting. That shade of green.

There was a lot of buzz around pop music over the past year, and our younger colleagues have assured us that it wasn’t all hype. The music, especially the pop music, was legitimately good.

Even the numbers back it up. The data shows that 2024 was the year of the “pop star (re)emergence.” But the trend extended to other genres, from country to musical theater and the ’80s power ballads, experiencing a resurgence thanks to their association with pop stardom. The common denominator throughout? Women were at the forefront of all of it:

• Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter rocketed to stardom (and brought sapphic energy with them).
• Charli XCX turned the internet green.
• Only for Ariana Grande to then turn it pink and green.
• Beyoncé revolutionized country.

We won’t attempt to explain all of the moments. Impossible! But plugged-in colleagues—Sam Van Pykeren and Henry Carnell, Mother Jones’ digital producer and fellow, respectively—take a crack at explaining why pop stars were so compelling and what about the music that kept our team returning.

Okay, hello, I am once again your stand-in Old Person (a la our Brat explainer—remember that!?), and I’m here, at the end of the year, to talk about pop. First question: Was it good this year? 

Sam Van Pykeren: I mean, I had a good time with this year’s lineup! Dare I even say a great time?

Henry Carnell: This was the first time a pop artist has ever been my No. 1 on Spotify Wrapped, which I think says I liked it.

Obvious question, Henry. Who was top?

Henry: Do you even need to ask? I’m a Gen Z queer person. It was Chappell Roan.

Great, as an Old, this gets to one of my key questions. What is a Chappell Roan, and why is it happening in my neighborhood?

Henry: Chappell was a breakout pop star—though she makes sure everyone knows she has been working at this for a long time—known for extravagant drag outfits and explicitly gay music.

Sam: THE diva, THE moment, a queer woman from Missouri who is arguably making some of the best pop in the game.

Henry: Sam’s response is better.

Sam: You nailed it with why I think she’s happening in the neighborhood. She’s quickly risen from a general unknown to amassing millions of fans worldwide.

Henry: The consensus is that Chappell changed the genre on multiple levels.

I’m scared, but go on if you have more to say about Ms. Roan. I am curious how she “changed the game.”

Henry: Musically, she imbued new sounds into the genre. She plugged synth, rock, disco, early-2000s punk, ’80s power ballads into the genre kinda all at once. Visually and lyrically, she brought queerness to the forefront. She performs in drag, she sings about queer clubs, explicit sex, and coming of age. And with viral moments around her canceling shows due to mental health, refusing to endorse Kamala Harris due to genocide, and calling out fans for creepy behavior—she has brought a “take no shit” energy that isn’t necessarily new but nevertheless noteworthy.

Sam: She was one of my top artists as well, and I had the privilege to be one of the hundreds of thousands who have seen her IRL this year. I think the excitement is warranted! One of the reasons is her dedication to theatricality and unflinching queerness—as Henry notes, the drag is not a gimmick, which can’t be said of many other artists these days. That, coupled with actual live vocal talent, brings an authenticity to her music in an era where we’re all craving more of that.

Who else this year for you both brought something to pop music that felt new?

Sam: Well, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my No. 1: Beyoncé.

Henry: You may sense a trend for me, but Sabrina Carpenter and Billie Eilish. I want to hear Sam’s words on Beyoncé, though.

Sam: I mean, she’s Beyoncé. I don’t know if I have anything original or unsaid to add. But Cowboy Carter was a hit for me. I’ve always been a Beyoncé boy, and getting to be alive as she releases these projects and continues to push entire industries with projects like this and Renaissance (another top 10 album of the year for me) just feels like something really nice when the world is really hard. And, coming from a community where country music is hyper-masculinized, associated with racism more than not, and all that, it was nice to be reintroduced to the genre I’ve grown up with through her eyes.

Sam: I mean, because of her, I got really into Shaboozey, Tanner Adell, and Linda Martell. Which is what I think is really fun about pop. It’s a gateway into other communities and types of music. Even with Chappell and her queerness! I find even when it seems like the culture is pushing one way, the popularity of people like her and Beyoncé and others reminds me that many, many others in this country feel like I do! 

Henry: There is a lot of discourse about pop being superficial. But it is grappling with social and political change more so than other genres. I was thinking a lot this year about how “I Kissed a Girl” (circa 2008, and which Katy Perry has distanced herself from) felt so scandalous at the time. But now we have Billie and Charli singing “Guess.” There is a lot of movement and growth in the space. 

Sam: So, sorry to be the millennial in the chat, but “I Kissed a Girl” is a classic.

I like that song.

Henry: While I get the criticism of the lyrics, there is something undeniable about the impact of that song. Hearing it as a kid created space for the possibility of queerness in the world. Also, it’s a bop.

On present-day pop: You have given me a lot of names. I am excited to research these stars. But I want to talk about the other person you mentioned above. What is going on with Sabrina Carpenter?

Sam: She’s probably my biggest blindspot. I enjoy her and the hits when they’re played. But I’m not seeking out her entire album.

Henry: The quick bio: Sabrina was a Disney star–turned–Mean Girls lead–turned–pop icon. Sabrina’s song “Espresso” was the top-streamed song globally. Though Charli and Chappell have gotten a lot of pop-girl airtime, I actually think there is a strong case that Sabrina is 2024’s Pop Girl of the Year. I think her work is really summed up by her recent Christmas special, which adds lyrical quips to classic Christmas songs alongside skits. She is very clever and silly with her music.

Sam: I do think her whole Catholic scandal thing is pretty iconic.

Henry: Her response to that scandal—“Jesus was a carpenter”—is so irreverent, but also smart. Her songs are full of those fun turns of phrases. I’ll give the example of “Switch it up like Nintendo” from “Espresso,” too.

Sam: Her coming from Mean Girls, it really was the year of musical theater. I feel like that’s a separate hero. 

Henry: SO much to say about our girl Ariana and Wicked. I do think the crossover of musical theater with pop feels new, too. It was the year of pop finding harmony with other genres.

Sam: With Wicked, but that’s a WHOLE other can of worms. But there is Eternal Sunshine, which wasn’t a top listen of mine until I revisited it after seeing Ari as Glinda. And upon revisiting it, I wish I had given it a second chance sooner! But Chappell is also so musical theater-coded!

Henry: I would argue drag is the love child of pop and musical theater. Pop has just gotten more campy.

Sam: I think I would agree myself, and the history of the art of theater is dressed in drag.

Can I say one thing about Sabrina?

Sam: Please.

In the supermarket, I heard her sing a lyric that made my brain feel bad. And that was: “(Yes), I know I Mountain Dew it for ya.” My question is: That lyric is not criminal? If so, why is it not against the law?

Sam: I mean, “Wiggle Wiggle” by Bob Dylan exists, so I don’t get your point. ;)

Moving on. Don’t talk about him. I feel like we’ve talked about the Big Stars: Sabrina, Beyoncé, Ms. Roan, etc. Do we need to say anything about Taylor? Can we skip that this year?

Sam: I plead the 5th.

Henry: I don’t want Swifties to come at me, but the Eras Tour lasted for over a year. It had a lot of moments already.

Briefly, this has been discussed at length. But: Brat. How do you all feel about it after summer has faded and as winter takes hold? (Sam, I don’t care that you live in California, pretend you have weather.)

Sam: You’re talking to an original Angel here. Charli is always on repeat, Brat or no!

Henry: I was never huge on Brat. I will say that Brat was dampened by it being co-opted by Kamala, as discussed in the previous pub the chat. It is hard for a cultural moment to feel potent when it becomes a marketing strategy.

Sam: Glad she’s getting the recognition, the partnerships, the everything! She deserves it, and those who know, know! But I get she’s not for everyone, and I’m ready for her next stuff.

I am still a Cooker. I A. G. Cooked.

Sam: Those who know, know.

My Dad loved Britpop—like a lot. He talked about it a great deal.

[Cue confusion as we distinguish Britpop the album from Britpop the genre.]

Anyway, can I ask you all about a bigger idea? Something that…you’ll have to give me some leniency here.

Henry: I love a big idea.

Here’s my issue: When I listen to a lot of pop music, the weight of how it is synthesized to be sold feels heavier and burdensome. In the music itself, I feel like I can literally hear the capitalist machinations, and that makes it irredeemably mid. That’s true for a lot of stuff, but god, it feels prominent in pop music. And so I am curious, for you both, how you feel about how pop music is so marketed and so much about marketing. Does that tinge your experience?

Sam: I guess feel that way about everything, so pop music doesn’t feel particularly burdensome over things like reading the news, watching a film/television, even just going about my day. Every piece of our lives has been calculated to sell us something, so I guess it just blends into that noise.

Henry: I also think you forget that the artists work in medium knowing the bells, whistles, and scandals accompanied with it. Some pop artists are just bad and bogged down by that stuff. But the best ones, the ones we are talking about, use their skills to activate the marketing to say and do interesting things.

Henry: For example, Sabrina’s music video for “Taste” was so over the top in a way that wouldn’t be possible in any other genre. And so clickbaity in many ways. Pulling in [Jenna] Ortega, the horror, the kiss. But it was aware that it was doing all of that. I think there is some inversion of the aforementioned capitalist machine going on, too. 

Sam: Pop music, for me, feels like one of the few spaces where artists can still actively grapple with their awareness of such heavy commodification and use it to their advantage. Beyoncé and Chappell are probably the best examples.

Henry: I do think part of the reason Chappell soared is because she was intentional about how and when she marketed herself. She has a performance persona that she curates expertly, but she also holds complete creative control over it, as far as I can tell. There is something very authentic about that.

Sam: Chappell using this machine to introduce deep queerness into the mainstream…

Sam: Beyoncé using it to remind us of country’s roots…

Henry: Ultimately, they are performers. They don’t need to be “real.” But they do need to do real things with the performance. If that makes sense.

Sam: I see the critique, and I feel it. But I think I’ve only ever known music as an industry to sell us things.

That makes sense. Well, we can solve how to take pleasure under capitalism next year—finally. But for now, any artists we missed you want to shout out?

(In terms of pop and not the jazz bullshit I listen to, I was actually really charmed by “I LUV IT” by Camila Cabello and Playboi Carti.)

Henry: Nemo was the first nonbinary artist to win Eurovision. They are doing some cool and interesting things with genre and pop. They included opera, which I didn’t think I would love and did.

Sam: Have to shout out “JOYRIDE” by Kesha, one of my favorite singles of the year, and has me excited for her album next year! I also adored Omar Apollo’s album God Said No and Dua Lipa’s Tame Impala-produced Radical Optimism (the extended versions though!). And I would be amiss to not mention Doechii’s Alligator Bites Never Heal as another album I’ve had on repeat since its release (and so glad to see her get her flowers this year!).

Great stuff. Thanks for talking. The only thing left for me to say is everyone should listen to “Saaheem” by SahBabii. See you all next year?

Henry: I’ll put it on my queue right now. Happy New Year!

Sam: Thanks, old man!