Hey, y'all, DJ Louis here just dropping a preview of this week's Pop Pantheon All Access episode. If you enjoy this snippet and you want to hear the rest of the episode, you can subscribe at patreon.com slash Pop Pantheon, click the link in the show notes of this episode or subscribe for the audio only directly in the Apple Podcast app. Welcome to Pop Pantheon All Access, the podcast, where we do even more over-analyzing of all your favorite pop stars and do other stuff too. This is your host, DJ Louis, the 14th. Thank you all so much

for being subscribers. Russ is here. Of course, Russ, good morning. How are you? Hi, Louis. I'm fantastic.

Will you be playing Tate McCray at Maine Pop Girls? Isn't that the question? It's actually

something I want to get into because I can't figure out exactly like who

the fans are, but they are clearly multitudinous because she's streaming largely this

week despite having not real hits, but we'll get into it.

We will get into it.

Very excited because my Canadian pop princess just dropped a album. And we have Friend of the Pod,

Stephen J. Horowitz, senior music writer at Variety here. Stephen, thank you for coming to talk

about so close to what? I'm so excited to talk about everyone's favorite new pop star.

So what is she so close to?

Just close to what?

Does she not know?

Is that what that title is implying?

What does the title even mean?

Maybe by the end of this conversation, we can figure out what Tate is so close to because

I'm not sure she even knows.

I want to ask a question to everybody before we get into the details of this record, which is so close to what?

So close to what? Which is something I've been thinking about that sort of like Tate needles that for me,

but is not her, like, it's not related to her specifically, but I think she's sort of emblematic of,

which is, what does pop music in 2025 sound like? You know what I mean? Like, I keep thinking

about how in past eras, and I think we all know this, like, you can point to, like, this is

...