The background: Last summer, to celebrate the 100th edition of Now That's What I Call Music, I put together a special Popjustice Edit — the best song from each edition, in order. 100 songs that told the story of pop music from the 80s to today. Click here for the playlist, it's incredible.
The updates: With each subsequent Now That's What I Call Music album, I've been adding the best song. Last November I selected The 1975's TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME, and in April I added Mark Ronson and Miley Cyrus' Nothing Breaks Like A Heart. Which brings us to…
The latest addition: Now 103 is out next week and the tracklisting (which, sidenote, is a mess) throws up several worthy additions to the Popjustice Edit playlist. Among them are Ariana's break up with your girlfriend, i'm bored and Camila and Shawn's Senorita, but the two songs that best showcase what pop can do in the summer of 2019 are Lil Nas X's Old Town Road and Billie Eilish's bad guy. Both those songs are by artists who've subtly rewritten what popstars can/should be like, and neither song sounds like anything else in the chart. In the end bad guy makes it onto the list: it sounds like pop music from a different time (maybe only 7–9 months in the future, but that's enough) and a different planet and like bury a friend it still, after all this time and all these listens, somehow takes you by surprise when it tumbles out of the radio.
