Superbloom 2023

Three years ago, over the Christmas holiday, PinkPantheress started uploading songs to TikTok. Before long, she had gone viral a few times, inked her first record deal and started playing gigs. As if that wasn’t a clear enough indication that the pulse of modern music was beating on social networks, Ice Spice was experiencing a sort of parallel rise. The Bronx-based drill rapper with unmistakable orange curls got a surge of success after she uploaded her song “Munch (Feelin’ U)” to TikTok, where Drake spotted it and shared it on his Sound 42 radio show. A record deal soon followed. Then, in late 2022, PinkPantheress was looking for someone to jump on a remix of her already-viral hit “Boy’s a liar”, a go-to soundtrack for social media videos about bad ex-boyfriends. Ice Spice had recently followed her on Instagram, and the wheels started turning. Given that the artists occupied a similar space—two original Gen Z voices, raised online, reinventing ’90s sounds for modern ears—linking up seemed natural. They DMed. Ice Spice delivered her verse a few days later. And “Boy’s a liar, Pt. 2” became one of the biggest songs of the year. But it isn’t just the way the remix came together that signalled a shift in how modern music mobilises. It’s also evident in how the song sounds: a bouncy, jittery twist on bubblegum and hyperpop that’s nonchalant and deceptively cutesy, like two friends exchanging voice notes about a breakup. It’s reminiscent of the wry, experimental sounds of PC Music and Charli XCX. But while PC Music primarily flourished in electronic music’s arty underground, “Boy’s a liar, Pt. 2” rode the waves of social media right into the mainstream, creating new pathways for internet-born pop. On Superbloom, we celebrate artists who think about music—how it’s conceived, recorded and circulated—differently. Here’s our roundup of the songs that shaped the playlist in 2023.