Hater's Delight – 2024 Edition
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Back by popular demand, Hater’s Delight returns for one last ride through the depths of 2024. While we retired the column for most of this year, by the time December rolled around, the Swim Team realized there was more than enough material to constitute a roundup of our collective displeasure.
If you’re just now joining us for the first time, Hater’s Delight was a recurring micro-review column we ran throughout 2023 intended to be a space where our team of Swim Into The Sound writers could vent about the things online, in music, and in culture that got under our skin.
Each writer gets a paragraph to bitch about their chosen topic, then, once we expel the Haterade from our systems, we all go back to loving music and enjoying art. Speaking of which, if you’re more in the mood for some positivity, check out our staff’s favorite albums of the year or our 2024 Song Showdown to see what we actually enjoyed this year. Swear it’s not all bad vibes.
Enough being tempered; let’s get into the hatred. From the bland and banal to the offensive and insulting, let’s take a look back at all the things we’d prefer to leave in 2024.
Zach Bryan’s Waste of a Great Idea
My litany of grievances with Zach Bryan is long. From the credible accusations that he’s a manipulative and abusive boyfriend to the fact that his head looks like a LEGO, the sin which warrants the below column is Bryan’s penchant for making the most mealy-mouthed milquetoast records and giving Country music a worse name.
The roll-out for Zach Bryan’s The Great American Bar Scene set the tone. Bryan announced that “select cuts” from the album would be played in “23 bars across the country that embody the spirit of American culture.” From Iron Horse Saloon in Oologah, Oklahoma, to Saratoga Lanes in St. Louis, Missouri (a bowling alley that still allows cigarettes inside), the selected bars represented a sort of divey blue-collar cash-only vibe.
Direct references to real-life bars and the inclusion of background noise like pool balls clacking are pretty much as far as the Great American Bar vibe goes—and the din gets quickly abandoned after a few tracks. If the goal was to create an album that tells a story about “Real Americans” and the watering holes at which they gather, this album is not quite that. If the goal was a collection of a few too many tracks with a loose thematic rubber band around them, that’s closer.
Sonically, The Great American Bar Scene is an overstuffed collection of Zach Bryan’s signature sound: mid-tempo meandering with brushed drum shuffles and the occasional Stom-Clap-Hey chorus. It’s mumbly SaddBoi low-energy background music with maybe one or two genuine upbeat foot-tappers. At 19 tracks and over an hour, the album is far less Happy Hour and far more Marathon Bender–and the hangover is just as bad.
This type of low-effort and lower-interest bullshit is not surprising coming from Bryan. What is so galling and frustrating is that he wasted a fun, exciting, and interesting concept like “an homage to dive bars” by just dipping back into his signature deflated sound. Sure, every great bar needs some dirgey sad bastard music, but there’s just nothing here worthy of slugging shots to. For an album that set out to honor the Great American Bar, one would expect more Molly Hatchet and less Damien Rice. Americans pine to link arms with their fellow barflies and scream catchy choruses together. Unfortunately, The Great American Bar Scene sounds more like silently sipping neat gin under a naked lightbulb.
So, on top of being a bad boyfriend, Zach Bryan also squandered an amazing opportunity to make a kick-ass saloon classic. And for that, may Merle and Waylon never forgive him.
Caleb Doyle – @ClassicDoyle
AI-Generated Album Art: Every Day We Stray Further from God’s Light
While my 2024 bingo card didn’t include Tears for Fears releasing a new album, it certainly didn’t include them releasing an album featuring abysmally ugly AI-generated cover art (if you can even call it art). An astronaut? In a field of sunflowers? What is this, 2011? You’re telling me that NONE of you had a throwback photo, concert shot, or a starving artist you wanted to commission? Pretty embarrassing for them.
Even worse, the band doubled down on their decision and defended it online. It was cringe-worthy to see, especially considering that “Mad World” is one of my favorite songs of all time. You will never be able to convince me that AI art is a better option than hiring a living, breathing, feeling human being to create something for you. “But it’s so convenient! Computers are forever! AI is shaping the future!” SHUT UP! As the modern sage Caleb Hearon said, “The beauty [of mortality] is that the cup runs out.” Impermanence is part of being alive. It is part of the human experience. It is part of creating art.
Tears for Fears’ decision is sloppy, distasteful, and thumbs its nose at the very essence of being an artist of any kind. And you know what? I like Gary Jules’ cover of “Mad World” better anyway.
Britta Joseph – @brittajoes
Katy Perry Explaining Satire
“Girlboss Shit!” exclaims the demon that sits on my chest at night as I try to fall asleep. It’s referring to a video of Katy Perry rising from the ashes of the crumbling institution of the American Brain to explain the concept of satire to the mouth-breathing masses. Dressed like an oiled-up construction worker projecting the simulacrum of sexuality, Ms. Perry lets us know that it’s okay, she’s not being serious about sexuality and femininity. Or maybe she is? Either way – it’s satire! You dumb fuck. You mushy-brained numbskull. How could you think for a second that she believes this or doesn’t believe it? Whatever “It” is. The inscrutable politics are a statement on… women? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. As she stands in front of a line of silent, sexualized Black women, Katy Perry says something about the male gaze before retreating to her trailer to write a lengthy defense of her producer/notable rapist Dr. Luke before going to vote for Republicans to execute unhoused people in the streets of LA. Sorry, honey! That’s satire. She’s like the white Paul Beatty or the American Coralie Fargeat.
As America was sweating through the designer-drug-fueled heat of Brat Summer, Katy Perry was busy constructing her own world. It’s a Woman’s World, you see. And we’re lucky to be living in it. Eagle-eyed fans might have noticed that this Woman’s World was filled with imagery stol– uh, borrowed – from other women. Women like Arca – whose transhumanist iconography Katy claims as her own “idea of feminine divine.” But the beauty of Katy Perry’s world is that everything is fair game. Interestingly, as Katy explains in this video, her ascension to the divine requires the literal smashing of Black working-class women. What happens to them? Doesn’t matter! Girlboss Shit!
As our handle on nuance continues to slip day by day, it’s heartening to know that there are people like Katy Perry out there, doing the lord’s work by loudly exclaiming that you can project your own meaning onto them. The lack of perspective is the point.
As I am finally about to drift off to sleep, I hear a sincere-sarcastic whisper in my ear: “You go, girl.” Thank you, Demon That Sits On My Chest, that means a lot.
Joshua Sullivan – @brotherheavenz
The Insurmountable Greed of Taylor Swift
Look, I like Taylor Swift a lot. I’ve been following her career and enjoying her music for well over a decade now. According to last.fm, I’ve racked up nearly 2k plays on her music. Last year, I snuck a bottle of wine into my local theater to enjoy The Eras Tour on the big screen. Five years ago, I went as Lover-era Taylor Swift for Halloween, complete with a glitter heart around my eye and a blonde wig atop my head. I’m laying all this out because, again, I like Taylor Swift. That said, she hasn’t exactly been on a hot streak lately. While I was initially on board with “Taylor’s Versions” as a concept and loved that she was reclaiming her work, after she butchered my beloved 1989, the sheen started to wear off. Then there was the middling Midnights and, this year, the insipid Tortured Poets Department. To me, the 16-song base version was bland enough, but then one day later, Swift dropped a 31-song version of the record, effectively turning it into a double album that brought TPD to an unwieldy two-hour runtime. If that wasn’t enough, she spent the year dropping 36 different variants of the album, sapping her audience of all disposable income, and keeping other artists from reaching #1 on multiple occasions in a way that feels more strategic and insidious than accidental. Shrewd business moves aside, this just seems like pure gluttony on Swift’s part, and all this for what’s easily her snooze-worthy album. The worst part is that it worked. Her tour made billions of dollars, her janky-ass book is a best-seller, and diehard “auto-buy” Swifties lined up to buy each version in droves, so what incentive does Swift have to change? It’s art as consumption carried out to its logical extreme. This is no longer about the music or even the artist; this is about owning all the things you possibly can. This is the type of greed they talk about in the bible.
Taylor Grimes – @GeorgeTaylorG
Being Shamed For Using Apple Music By Spotify
It’s funny how every year, on the first Wednesday after Thanksgiving (it’s an official date, people), Spotify users take the opportunity to brag about their “in-depth” Spotify Wrapped and subsequently use that opportunity to exclaim how much better they are than Apple Music users. To an extent, sure, Apple Music doesn't have the most advanced UI, and the streaming service is only linked with Apple products, but come on. When compared to Spotify, Apple Music pays about double per stream, has much better audio quality, and, to my knowledge, doesn’t add any of their in-house AI monstrosities onto their own playlists. But sure, go ahead and talk about how you had a bubblegum-house-daydream March or whatever while you post Taylor Swift in your top five artists for the fifth year in a row.
Samuel Leon – @sleonpics
Stan Culture: Internet Feudalism Without Sick-Ass Trebuchets
I think we’re done here, y’all. I think it’s time for some internal accountability. I think it’s time to emulate the love and light that you so loudly claim to absorb and bathe in from your faves. It’s time to osmose some humility and grace from that single you’ve been stream farming. In the last decade or so, I’ve watched a simple dig at people who take their love for artists too seriously morph into a wild, uncountably headed hydra that has wreaked real-world havoc on innocent people with dissenting opinions. Frankly, it serves no one and nothing. Acting as a roving band of marauders for someone you basically treat as a liege lord has become so unrepentantly weird, heinous, and toxic that if it becomes a psychological diagnosis in like 10 years, I wouldn’t be surprised. I am begging you to decouple from centering a person who doesn’t know you exist and not to use your redlined dopamine receptors as your compass when acting on your punitive impulse to act against people who critique or vocally express distaste for someone who creates subjective art. I know I’m painting with a broad brush here, and that’s unfair to those stans who are actually normal people who understand how to react to another human being on the internet. But we neeeeeeed to start really pushing back for all of us, baby.
Elias Amini– @letsgetpivotal
Internet Irony-Poisoning at Concerts
Photo credit: King of the Hill, me
I'm going to keep this short. I'm going to keep this sweet. Take off the cowboy hat at that show. Don’t wear a shark costume to the gig. Don’t bring a Nintendo DS to a concert for the sole purpose of holding it up for a grainy picture. If any of this was funny, it was funny in the IRL meme-saturated days of, like, 2017. I just checked my calendar, and it says it's December 2024. It's embarrassing, and I’m telling you this because I love you. I really love you, and I want you to put the sarcastic approach to everything you love down. Like...why are you wearing that costume anyway? Because it’s ironic? Because you’re being sarcastic? It's not like it's comfortable, and now you’ve committed your whole night to what? Being a banana? Do you just want someone to take a picture of you, post it online, and say you’re funny? Post it online and say you’re funny? Does everything have to be a joke to you? Do you have to be the center of attention constantly? Can't you just enjoy yourself? Are you scared of being earnest for two seconds? Is this music so brutally honest to you that you have to wear a big, funny hat about it like weird armor from Amazon dot com? And now I can't see the stage, jackass.
This also applies to sarcastic pit-starting, filming yourself crowd surfing, and most Lightning McQueen merch at MJ Lenderman concerts this fall.
Caro Alt – @firstwaveemo
Hater-dazed, Psychedelic, Mood-core, Genre-Identifier Daylists
At the beginning of 2024, people would head to social media to share the latest daylist Spotify had generated for them. Suddenly, descriptions like “soccer-pilled, high school senior, emo afternoon” and “piano-keyed, dandelion-farmed, folk evening” began to appear everywhere. At first, the genres seemed like a fun way to let an evil corporation roast you with nonsense. And then, it became inescapable. Clueless-closet, rainy 90s, grunge-core afternoons bled into fork-in-socket, indie-haze, orchestral rock nights. The one consistency? None of these words were ever in the Bible.
The entire thing was a way to monetize a larger trend in music: the subgenre-ization of subgenres. It was no longer enough to be shoegaze. It had to be doomgaze or countrygaze or something else entirely. This trend in categorizing wasn’t new, but the hyper-specific approach seemed to take on a meteoric rise with the constantly generated playlists. Let me be clear: I'm not against breaking genres down a bit further than the typical labels of “rock” or “hip-hop” or “indie folk.” Categorizations are necessary when searching for new bands or recommending beloved artists, but at the end of the day, Spotify’s method was total nonsense. It served as their way of forcing a feeling of fomo by creating something new that wasn’t necessarily good or coherent.
So, if you need me in 2025, you can find me shaking my fist at the cloud-core, sleeper-heavy, frustrated morning sky.
Lindsay Fickas – @lindsayfickas
Disheveled Alt-Mullets on Men
Once upon a time, mullets were mock-worthy. Now, they are everywhere, on all types of people, worn to widely varying degrees of success. But the one strain that really pisses me off is the wannabe-Mac DeMarco mullet. You know the one: greasy, unkempt, worn by a guy who is 85% likely to have a trust fund. The guy who is cosplaying being a slacker with a dose of feigned childishness. Despite being so Quirky and Goofy, he is somehow too cool to talk to you at the local indie rock show. His girlfriend is a lithe, oddly successful ceramicist. Like every other dude with the exact same scraggly, unwashed cut, he can't be burdened by society's onerous male attractiveness standards. He and his ilk are pioneers in an aesthetic that no one before them has ever tried: irony. What better way to show you are too cool to care than a purposefully ugly haircut? Well, I see right through you. The shag doth protest too much.
Katie Hayes (Wojciechowski) – @ktewoj
Drake Lawsuit
What happened to the game I love? Drake, coming off an embarrassing defeat at the hands of Kendrick Lamar in the Great Rap War of 2024, is now suing his own record label for cooking the books with “Not Like Us,” the song that dealt the final blow. I understand wanting to go after the evil empire of record labels; they’re all corrupt, so it’s the right act but the wrong messenger. Let me get on my Al Pacino Devil’s Advocate horse real quick, for argument's sake, and say the books were cooked; Drake benefitted from this same foul play for years on end from this same record label. When the result finally doesn’t go his way, he throws a temper tantrum.
In 2001, Nas rapped about Jay-Z “being 36 in a karate class,” he wasn’t taken to court for slander accusations. There was no opening testimony from Jay-Z speaking to a judge, “Well, your honor, I was actually 32, and it was a taekwondo class.” He took his loss on the chin and kept making great music. Drake needs to take a page out of every other rapper’s book by taking the loss and moving on. Lose with a little dignity, why don’t you? And I like Drake, so this is coming from a place of love like a concerned cousin. But damn…. even Ja Rule didn’t even go out this pitiful.
David Williams – @davidmwill89
BRAT-Overdose
No record had a bigger cultural impact in 2024 than Charli xcx’s BRAT. When Charli began painting the town lime green with her wildly successful album rollout, BRAT felt like the culmination of a decade-plus of pop music experiments. After years as a poster girl for Pop’s Middle Class, a hero to funemployed twinks, and “the ‘Boom Clap’ Girl” to your coworkers, Charli made what could in some ways be considered the anti-pop star pop album. On BRAT, she sings about her inability to fit into the mold occupied by more conventional and commercially successful pop artists, the pressure to compete with other musicians who occupy a similar niche as her, and her admiration of another cult pop hero who was ahead of her time before her life was tragically cut short.
As a young woman in a creative field who is lucky enough to be friends with many other young women in creative fields, the songs on BRAT resonate with the part of me that knows well what it’s like to be brimming with both pride and jealousy for a friend’s talents, or to stand around nervously sipping my drink instead of networking at a party where I feel glaringly out-of-place. I love BRAT in the same way that I love getting a text from a confidant that reads, “can i be a total bitch for a minute?” It’s the Hater’s Delight of pop records!
Brat Summer was fun at first. When “360” first dropped, I played the video on a loop each morning while getting ready in the morning for a week straight. I dashed from a BRAT listening party to a Wild Pink show like a true Gal About Town. The coolest thing you could be was a girl with thick, curly hair, a wardrobe full of black clothing, and a resting bitchface—I was in my element.
I loved Brat Summer up until the infamous “Kamala IS Brat” tweet and Charli’s subsequent breach of niche containment. Don’t get me wrong, it’s wonderful to see Charli get her flowers after all this time. The album really is that good! And so are the remixes! But something shifted when lime green became the unofficial color of the DNC. Now that Kamala was Brat, everything was Brat. And if everything is Brat, nothing is.
If you’ve been on the Girls ‘n Gays side of the internet this year, you’ve probably heard of the term “khia,” which, first of all, put some FUCKING respect on Khia’s name—“My Neck, My Back” is a banger! And second, the line between “khia” and “niche” is thinner than Gabbriette’s eyebrows. Is that C-list pop girl khia, or is she a cult hero? Who among us wouldn’t love to be Carly Rae Jepsen-famous—a one-hit wonder to the general public, the People’s Pop Star to those who can truly appreciate her brilliance? Maybe being everything to everybody is overrated and being “famous but not quite” is actually where it’s at.
Runner-Up: I wrote about this for Paste a few months ago, but can we all please agree to be more normal about Chappell Roan in 2025? I don’t think people realize how jarring it is to go from being a fucking camp counselor in suburban Missouri to being one of the most famous pop stars in the world in just a couple of months. That’s a massive change, and almost no time to adjust to it; you’d probably be yelling at photographers too if you were her.
Grace Robins-Somerville – @grace_roso
Enemy Of The Music Business
Everyone’s an easy target. I could write about how I still don’t understand the post-Lana Del Rey underperformance of Billie Eilish, or the post-Lady Gaga third-rate cabaret flamboyance of Chappell Roan, or the promotion of underage alcoholics who get their news from TikTok of Olivia Rodrigo, but they all make children’s music for children, so what reason do I have to be mad at them? I could write about how the new Foxing album is for kids who were too smart to join theater but too dumb to take calculus, or how the new Vampire Weekend album is for people who criticize jam bands and hippies but listen to music more void of substance than the worst selling Dick’s Picks concert release, or how the new Tyler, The Creator album is for people who think about thinking about maybe one day having a deep thought on culture or society but never actually get there and instead try to tell me what the highlights are on Vultures, but I’ve never bought my girlfriend’s dad a shirt he hated that he can’t return, so that’s not really worth my time. I could write about how Jack White has stumbled and failed to reach the same immediacy of The White Stripes ever since the band broke up and only ends up becoming a Tim Burton reject version of Prince, which frankly is more of an insult to Prince, or how Green Day has been canonized as dad rock for fifteen years, releasing songs that sound like they discovered their sons’ diaries with introductory knowledge on anarchy, and how they look like washed up Social Distortion tattoo havers telling their grandkids about a hip band from back in their time they used to listen to called Green Day, or how Kings Of Leon transitioned from being a cocaine-fueled, cousin-kissing, southern rock Strokes spinoff into a band that hardly qualifies as music, now putting out albums that are even less noticeable than the Goodwill new age cassettes I bought last week, but if you think any of these bands still qualify as rock music, then there’s nothing I have to offer you. I guess enjoy the new Rian Johnson mystery movie next year? Some artists just aren’t for me (Clairo), some artists I will never understand the hype for (St. Vincent), and some artists I think objectively make shit from a butt (Father John Misty). But I’m having a way better time lately defending music others are criticizing than hating on music others are praising. Is this progress? Am I growing as a person? I’ll be 30 in 2025, and maybe it’s a sign I can’t spend all day online tweeting (blueskying?) at people about how they’re braindead simpletons for enjoying Fontaines D.C. or MGMT. I listened to almost 500 new releases this year, so trust me that I’ve earned the haterade I regularly drink and spit out, and the reality is that I listen to more music I like each year than music I don’t. But come the fuck on, you people actually think Beyoncé made a worthwhile country album and not just another bland pop-rap album with slide guitar? Please.
Logan Archer Mounts - hate mail can be directed to:
1122 Boogie Woogie Ave, PO Box 42069
Pitchfork and the Record Economy
For the last ten years, I’ve had Cindy Lee’s Act of Tenderness in my Discogs wantlist. You know why? I’ve been a fan for that long–I just can’t (and don’t) buy every single album whenever I want it. Some records get prioritized, and others remain on the wantlist until the mood strikes. Since Cindy Lee was relatively niche and their records were always around the $20 mark, I figured I had all the time in the world. Then, the worst thing possible happened–critical acclaim.
Now, I am fine that Cindy Lee is finally getting some money, and I’m more than happy that Cindy Lee is gaining new fans–I’m not that kind of hipster. What sucks, for me, is the vinyl record economy and how Pitchfork inadvertently affects the market.
^Not this type of hipster.
240% increase of Cindy Lee’s 2020 record.
On April 12, 2024, I went to Pitchfork dot com to see the glowing 9.1 Diamond Jubilee “Best New Music” review for Cindy Lee’s 3xLP opus. And because I am a nerd, I immediately went to my Discogs wantlist to snatch up copies of Cindy Lee albums I had wanted yet neglected to buy for years. The flipping had already begun. What were once $20 records had already doubled in price by 2023. Now that Diamond Jubilee was deemed worthy of everyone’s attention, the prices of Cindy Lee’s previous albums had doubled again. As the months went by, the cost of Act of Tenderness just kept rising–recently selling for $112 in November.
“I hate you, Discogs record flippers. You suck the joy out of my favorite hobby. You don’t deserve my money at all!” I say as my cursor hovers over the Add to Cart button. Click.
Russ Finn – @dialup_ghost
You’ve been homogenized.
PICTURED: The recommended songs for the playlist exercise outlined below. Is this exploring?
Log into Spotify right now. Make a new playlist. Go ahead and add a couple of songs you love most. The ones you feel epitomize you and your taste. The kind of song you only hear once in a lifetime. For me, it was these. When you’re done (nine or ten is all you should really need), scroll to the bottom of the page and peek at the recommended songs section. What do you see?
Now for the interesting part. Take a screenshot, send this column to a friend, and have them repeat the exercise. If their taste is anything like yours, compare notes. What do you see?
The same fucking songs. Every goddamn time. No matter the vibe or the current content of the playlist– it could be entirely The Shaggs, and the algorithm would still serve up “Waiting Room” or “Grave Architecture” in an effort to serve some binary command such as “SATISFY CUSTOMER.” It makes a mockery of the discovery process, the magic of digging through stacks of fanzines or flipping through the “alternative” section of your local record store and finding something worth more than solid gold. It removes the chance of real connection beyond the surface level–that feeling of true resonance when the right song plays on the college radio station, on the bar’s jukebox, in your friend’s kitchen at midnight, at the show with five touring bands.
What’s worse than the automation of emotion is the automation of industry. Records are a novelty, and the stores that sell them rarely have the funds to invest in selling local bands’ records or lesser-known national bands. What they do have in abundance is sixteen crates full of Taylor Swift and Charli xcx, the canonized indies’ 30th-anniversary box sets, and some secondhand Stax albums ignored in a corner. People are losing their jobs in vinyl pressing plants, record labels, stores, venues, and even talent scouting to the encroaching online music industry. It’s all been relegated to social media campaigning, Ticketmaster queues, Christmastime Amazon orders, massive overseas factories dedicated to replicating Brat green–and even to a recommended section dedicated to homogenizing your taste.
Face it, we don’t explore the way we used to musically. Our society has accepted the idea of algorithmic control part and parcel, making the jobs of money-grubbing executives easier every day. As consumers lose their say in the music industry, we’ll be left with absolutely nothing. We’ll be living in a cultural desert, completely surrounded by inflatable dolls of pop stars gushing water–and there will be nowhere else to drink.
I hope Daniel Ek is next.
Michaela Doorjamb – no applicable Twitter
Unsportsmanlike Conduct
Pictured: racks on racks on racks OR my crush fund
When Pity Sex’s first set in New York since 2016 back in August ended, I clapped for approximately one second before sticking my arm straight out, begging for a setlist. The band handed out two of their three setlists and walked off. I left my arm stretched as their crew came out when some college kid got on stage and grabbed the remaining setlist. At that moment, I felt shame for the sport.
The thrill of getting a setlist is in being chosen by the crew or the band to get this coveted piece of paper. The joy of showing one off comes from the fact you may not have gotten it. My most beloved setlist is from the first time I saw Crush Fund because I asked for it, and it spawned a deep relationship with the band. By getting on stage to grab a setlist, you cheated not only the setlist, but yourself.
At the secret Jeff Rosenstock show at Baby’s All Right last year, a friend grabbed one off the stage for me while John DeDomenici was reaching for it to give away, and I got embarrassed. Embarrassed enough to give it to the person next to me who didn’t mantel the stage? Not a chance in hell.
If you’re getting on stage, it should be to jump off IMMEDIATELY (when there are enough people to land on), not to cherry-pick the setlist.
Lillian Weber – @Lilymweber
