#7 - Hemlocke Springs - "Girlfriend"

Dec 23, 2022

“Girlfriend” sprang onto my TikTok feed one day soundtracking an edit of a cat as it was digitally discombobulated: its body parts compressed into a ball with a tuft of white hair, then its limbs warped around until it became a kangaroo. I was initially more engrossed by the video, but I kept seeing the song attached to all these wondrously weird clips, an inventory of eccentric sweetness—an elderly woman reading manga, a greyhound with bald thigh syndrome wrapped in a sweater, a tribute to the cuteness of capybaras—and “Girlfriend” slowly hooked me.

Hemlocke does so much with her voice here—it’s like the dense ad-lib-panopticon of late-stage trap but for homespun synth-pop. She sings smoothly, like she’s lost in reverie, and then drops into a fiercer, more operatic tone; she hollers the line “Oh my god I love you!!!” in a voice that sounds like post-puberty Elmo, and adds a vigorous “stab, stab, stab” murmur at another point. My favorite part is the bridge, a spree of multi-toned lines that sound like she’s having a micro-dialogue with the cynic and optimist voices dueling in her brain: desperately confessing what she desires and then doubting, in a funnily grumbly tone, whether she’s ever gonna get it.

@milwaukeepubliclibrary When you're around I got arrhythmia (literally). I'm on multiple medications for it. #Girlfriend #HemlockeSprings #OldPeople #Elderly #Manga #Comics #Anime #fyp #FlippingOff #Birdie #MiddleFinger #FlipTheBird

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Hemlocke Springs’ lore—she's a medical student, she found her pseudonym through a random name generator, she has only ever released two songs and they both leapt to TikTok stardom—makes the music’s silliness and Jack Stauber-meets-Marina sound feel even more fun and serendipitous. This isn't some cash-hunting label or veteran musician posing as quirky. “Girlfriend” almost never even entered our world—she said in a TikTok video she made the song over three years ago and once “abhorred” it, thinking she would never post it.

The list:

#25 - Destroy Lonely - “NOSTYLIST”

#24 - elusin - “Elksling”

#23 - skaiwater - “#miles”

#22 - Wednesday - “Bull Believer”

#21 - islurwhenitalk - “pink neon lights”

#20 - Two Shell - “home” & “Memory” (tie)

#19 - Luci4 - “ON GANG”

#18 - Harto Falión - “{*______*}” (prod. evilgiane, whitearmor, Gud)

#17 - lecie - “ex post facto”

#16 - Yung Lean ft. FKA twigs - “Bliss”

#15 - DJ:ReCode - “adhd” ft. tobre & “keeper” ft. goji! & BIO (tie)