One album, three fans, plenty of tea.
Pop Girlies is an album-per-episode review show in which Drew, Maria and Levi open with a pun on the record's title and sign off by riffing on its songs. Between the bits, the opinions are real: which half of a Kacey Musgraves album holds up, why a St. Vincent record invites a Bowie comparison.
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Pop Girlies is an album-review podcast in which three hosts, Drew, Maria and Levi, take a single record and talk it through from first track to last. The shape holds across the recent run. Each episode opens with wordplay on the album's title: a welcome to the fruit garden for FROOT by Marina and the Diamonds, a yee-haw from the middle of nowhere for Kacey Musgraves, a promised mass seduction of the ears for St. Vincent. A check-in follows, sometimes a favourite-fruit poll, sometimes a rant about doing badly that the ranter immediately retracts. Then the album itself. The hosts take turns with their history of the record, whether they heard it the week it came out or know nothing going in, and one cheerfully flags a coming album as a first listen. Song-level praise is held for what they call their holy trinities. The sign-off is a running bit of its own: each host leaves by announcing where they are headed in the words of the album's songs, off to the smoking section, off to climb their mountains, off to the heart of the woods. The selection roams past chart pop. Recent episodes cover Grimes and Art Angels, St. Vincent and MASSEDUCTION, and a multi-episode pass through Kacey Musgraves, with Deeper Well and Middle of Nowhere done and earlier albums still to come. The vocabulary is pure stan: tea, period, girl, diva, come on. Underneath it the hosts commit to opinions. One calls a Kacey Musgraves album far stronger in its second half and wishes the vocals carried more colour, setting Miranda Lambert up as the emotive counter-example. Elsewhere a host argues that a St. Vincent record is her most accessible and most poppy, then reaches for Bowie to explain the album-to-album swerves, drawing a line between artists who show new facets of themselves and one who builds a new character and world each time. The Grimes conversation lands on the Venus Fly video, admired as stunning visual work even as the admirer notes it is partly an advertisement for the software behind it. Personal history threads through: a Marina album remembered from the height of daily-vlog YouTube culture, a Kacey release heard within its first week because a co-host picked it and support was owed. Tangents run to Saturn returns, whether the Deeper Well photos were shot in Iceland or Ireland, and the case for bringing back the stocks. The giggle fits stay in. So does the occasional swear. It is a show that treats an album as an excuse for a hangout, and the hangout as an excuse for an actual argument about the music.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants album talk in the register of a group chat rather than a magazine review, and who enjoys a sidebar about a music video or a Saturn return as much as the track-by-track itself.
What sets it apart: Most album-review podcasts keep the frame neutral; Pop Girlies stages its episodes as bits, from the title pun up top to sign-offs built from the album's own songs, and still lands a specific, sometimes unflattering, verdict on the record.
A Katycat. A Little Monster. A Swiftie. A podcast. Pop Girles is a new podcast for those who eat, sleep, and breathe music. Join Drew (resident Katycat), Maria (head Little Monster) and Levi (premier Swiftie) as they break down a different album each week. Come for main pop girl stanning and stay for nuanced, thoughtful, and hilarious conversations about music.
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A relaxed, affectionate pop conversation that keeps Musgraves' calm, controlled voice at the center.
Kacey Musgraves' Deeper Well is the anchor for a relaxed, funny pop talk that moves from Saturn returns to Iceland, Bjork, and stan Twitter without ever feeling boxed in.
Chicago critics DeRogatis and Kot pair new-album reviews with deep dives into records like Rumours.
Annual Songlines Music Awards ceremonies spotlighting global artists, from Afrobeat to sevda.
A high schooler's music diary — Grammys press pass stories to family concert interviews.
Stephen Hyden and Ian Cohen argue about indie rock, one Metacritic score at a time.
Pop Girlies examines Marina and the Diamonds’ FROOT through its self-written songwriting, co-production with David Costan, and themes of identity, independence, mental health, and a relationship’s end.
Pop Girlies reviews St.
Pop Girlies reviews Kacey Musgraves’s sixth album, Middle of Nowhere, her first release on the relaunched country label Lost Highway.
Pop Girlies examines Grimes's 2015 album Art Angels through its production, expanded live instrumentation, and rejection of fixed genre categories.
Pop Girlies spends most of Episode #79 on Kacey Musgraves' Deeper Well, with the hosts opening by dating the album to March 15, 2024 and naming Electric Lady, Ian Fitchuk, and Daniel Tashian.