Ending the week on something big…
[Video]
[7.80]
Wayne Weizhen Zhang: Massive, earth-shattering pop catharsis that explodes with lyrical subtext, clever interpolation, and a perfect media moment, albums in the making. It’s held together by Slayyyter’s vocal performance: equal parts heartbroken, spiraling, acerbic, and, ultimately, triumphant. The best part of queer culture in 2026 has been listening to this song with others and reliving the days of 2010s pop diva monoculture.
[10]
Al Varela: In which Slayyyter brings back the spirit of early 2010s pop music better than any pop star before her. It’s not just about the thumping beats, it’s about the release of emotion that comes from that maelstrom of heartbreak and euphoria. She sings her damn heart out over this huge instrumental, delivering a roof-raising banger while damning this unfaithful guy at the top of her lungs. The party girl sloppiness that was present on Wor$t Girl in America is still very much there, but you see some of that facade melt away through the sheer betrayal and hurt she’s going through. Now she’s just sloppy, sad, completely broken. A part of you pities her, but a part of you hears that intense emotion and the way she still becomes the life of the party and you think “she’ll be alright”.
[9]
Tom Feckerdt: Weird to see Wikipedia stylize this like “Brand New Chanels.” Rare L for the W. Anyway, this is a rare vindication for us zillennial poptimists who spent our late teens squeezing as much emotional juice out of Kesha deep cuts and the second half of Roman Reloaded as possible. That particular era of songs masking sad feelings at the club involved a lot of subtext and cultural projection to make an emotional impact, and they at least evoked and inspired movement. “Brand New Chanel$,” by contrast, comes off a lot bleaker: the chords barely feel resolved, the hummed motif aches in the background while echoing a chorus that flattens its own melody in the last second, the vocals are sung in a drunk slurry, the vocabulary is cocky and vindictive in the verses and sorrowful in a blasted-mix chorus. Slayyyter’s career arc has oscillated between looking towards the future, with her early work reluctantly fitting the ‘hyperpop’ category, or the past, with the ’00s-themed anger management therapy of Wor$t Girl in America finally helping her make her proverbial millions. But with the early-’10s as groundwork for emotional exorcism, the feel is that of someone struggling to make sense of either: how the past came to be, or how it shapes her present and future. Why else would you bring back the old song’s hook if not to wallow in how its meaning has been altered, for the worse, during what’s supposed to be a moment forward? Verily, standing still.
[9]
Hannah Jocelyn: Somehow, the cool it-girl of 2026 made a song that sounds like Twenty One Pilots, and somehow, it’s one of her best singles to date. There’s a specific volume jump at 2:31 (yes I have that memorized) that’s my answer to the “best two seconds of 2026 pop music”. I’ve already written about this twice, and I’ll do it again! I get the complaints, but just kidding no I don’t.
[9]
Alfred Soto: Huge singalong would-be pop with a hook Slayyyter could have bought anywhere in 2015. She’s good at belting and even better at rarin’ herself up for the belting. As usual I appreciate the dialectical tension between the anonymity of the voice and the personality that most human beings are capable of summoning.
[8]
Callie Petch: If Wor$t Girl in America was for the late-’00s iPod rave freaks, and those too young to experience said parties first-hand but who still loved the tunes regardless (it me), “Brand New Chanel$” from the yet-to-be-announced deluxe edition/companion album is for the early 2010s radio dance-pop girlies. The ones trying to find love in a hopeless place cos baby you’re a firework so gimme that boom-ba-ba-ba-boom-ba-ba-ba-bass. Compared to the abrasion, lyrically and sonically, all over the parent album and song it’s riffing on, this is an immaculately gleaming number that sounds like stumbling home from the party in a bittersweet haze as confetti spins through the air. That said, Slayyyter’s lyrics are way more vulnerable and heartbroken than on “Beat Up Chanel$,” continuing the arc of Wor$t Girl’s last three tracks by dropping the swagger to reveal the wounded hurt at her character’s core. It does feel like a genuine sister song, sharing as it does the same euphoric hit when the chorus first kicks in, the same exhilarating sensation in the extended outro, and several moments where Slayyyter’s vocals do surprisingly affecting somersaults. As someone who still listens to “I’m Actually Kinda Famous” minimum twice daily, this isn’t my preferred mode of Slayyyter, but I’m not gonna pretend like those synth-pop-rock melds aren’t also honey to my ears.
[7]
David Allun Jones: “Brand New Chanel$” offers a fascinating tour through ‘00s pop yesteryear, cleverly calling back to “Beat Up Chanel$” with the stylistic spirit of the hands-in-the-air EDM-pop strides of ‘10s-era Katy Perry, Rihanna and Ke$ha. Even more effective is how it scans as the next chapter to the text of Destiny’s Child’s “Say My Name”. Where that record toiled in the paranoia of suspected cheating, for Slayyyter, proof has been made and now she’s left to spiral alone in the emotional mess, flicking away apology texts while knee-deep in the self-torturing cycle of remembered past conversations (“She was at your party/You said not to worry”) and questions surrounding how the affair went down in her own home (“Did you hide all of our pictures in the kitchen?”). The forward-thrusting production and upward swells in the chorus act as the best friend encouraging her things are going to be ok, but Slayyyter never really bites, at track’s end resigning to echoes of “Beat Up Chanel$”’s “I want sex, money, bitches and the stickiest weed” (here, evolved to “He want sex, money, bitches and to lie through his teeth”) as if to suggest she somehow inspired the adultery. A solid addition to the Class of ‘26 Pop Girlie Bops.
[9]
Will Adams: Follows in the tradition of “Part of Me” — a propulsive, post-breakup anthem that comes off the heels of a breakthrough success — while making it sound magnitudes more massive. The build on “Brand New Chanel$” is impeccable. As Slayyyter rattles through her grievances and anxieties in the pre-chorus, the echoes swirl around her until she’s nearly unintelligible, before the floor drops out and she’s left alone: “I’m holding it alone just for tonight,” she cries, and then a double snare announces an explosion of major key resolve. From there, the song blazes ahead with unstoppable force. The sadly hummed melody in the intro becomes a soaring electric guitar, the “Beat Up Chanel$” hook is interpolated into one final fuck you, and the song ends in a cascade of firework smoke. A brilliant follow-up to the self-destructive grit of Wor$t Girl in America, “Brand New Chanel$” is a burst through the clouds.
[9]
Jel Bugle: I did listen to the Slayyyter album as a top-tier music expert should, but didn’t really think much of it. This one is quite peppy, a bit like Katy Perry’s “Firework”, innit.
[6]
Nortey Dowuona: Wild how white women love to adopt the bravado, brashness and pride of black women to break out of the timid, mousy and passive box they are raised to fit inside from birth to death, then show those same women nothing but contempt and resentment. If only they could act with as much grace and frankness as someone like a Slayyyter has… oh, wait. This is not the song. Never mind then.
[0]
Katherine St. Asaph: This is the problem with releasing your expanded bonus reworks album less than a year after your real one. Slayyyter pandered so hard to me specifically with WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA (she even named it after me!) that it’s going to be genuinely hard to pick just one song-of-the-year from it between the likes of “I’m Actually Kinda Famous,” the closest any mainstream pop star has come to Marie Davidson; “Dance,” which sounds so world-destroying over stadium speakers it could spawn a rationalist cult; and “What Is It Like to Be Liked?,” most terrifyingly relatable chorus from the least likely source. Like the best early-’10s pop singles, they are superficially frivolous, even trashy electropop that draw their power from an apocalyptic and often textual death drive. They sound like the void has already consumed everything beneath the third layer of glitter. That’s why “Brand New Chanel$” is so disappointing, because it does not. Like the worst early-’10s pop singles, it bounces glibly with assumed success, and “my boyfriend cheated on me, which admittedly was completely in character” just doesn’t hit as hard as “life is hell, and so is humanity, and most of all myself.” In that spirit, I will now do some fatal psychic damage to any Gen X readers: Slayyyter’s new single sounds like selling out.
[5]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The kind of big, earnest anthem that works best when played at high volume in a car moving at high speed. I cannot deny its many charms — I’ve had just the Gap Band-drum fill into the chorus stuck in my head this week — but for better or for worse, I am at heart a pedestrian, and for those purposes I prefer my “Chanel$” beat up, actually.
[8]
Claire Davidson: Slayyyter rose to prominence thanks to her brash persona and even more abrasive hyperpop soundscapes, but “Brand New Chanel$” is a banger of a different stripe. The song is no less bludgeoning in its impact than something like “Crank,” but this is less thanks to a palette of grinding static-synths than a mix that feels cavernously huge in its command of scale. The song begins modestly, with Slayyyter taking an ex to task over sparse, washed-out guitar strums, before increasing its intensity on the pre-chorus with the unruly synths and pinched snares one would expect from any left-of-center pop track. Most songs — indeed, most Slayyyter songs, up to this point — would have opted to stop there, content to revel in the manic energy of lambasting her ex’s dishonesty and shallow new partner. The arrival of the chorus, though, transforms the song from a flippant diss track to a work of righteous fury, as Slayyyter belts with a spitfire rage that’s equal parts lovelorn and absolutely pissed that she let herself get played by someone who wanted no more than an object to spoil. Ordinarily, the blithe vocal fry that Slayyyter employs would put me at odds with her performance, but here, it’s the perfect tool to express that multi-layered resentment, giving her words a visceral, groaning quality that sounds all the more titanic on the hook, where her voice is placed second to a soaring guitar line that imbues her anger with a sense of resolute triumph. I knew Slayyyter had leveled up in a big way with Wor$t Girl in America, but even I — someone who was extremely skeptical of her work prior to that album — could have never predicted she’d best herself again so quickly. “Brand New Chanel$” is one for the books, folks.
[9]
Charlotte Gaze: There are two phases for every artist who “makes it”: before they know they’re famous, and after. It’s common for even some of my favorite success stories to lose something significant in the transition, as the self-awareness takes over and they know exactly who to impress, so my guard does not let itself down easily. But the best antidote to that sort of “audience creep” into your artistic image is fairly simple: it’s to remember who you are. On “Brand New Chanel$”, Slayyyter takes measures to protect her identity. She rejects the man who made her doubt herself and forget herself. She rejects the expectation of a woman in the public eye to smile through it all, owning the stillness that encompasses her even as her star continues to rise. And yet, she embraces making a fucking anthem like she damn well should, unrestrained from doing so by anything life throws at her. A resilient indicator for the Slayyyter we’ve grown so fond of to make it through it all.
[9]
Ian Mathers: I think “Beat Up Chanel$” is great, but this is the kind of song that makes one apologize for being unfamiliar with an artist’s game. Too many songs that have a nice build don’t manage to shift into a higher gear as convincingly as this song does at about 1:25, and too few pop stars would be able to take the relatively frothy language and imagery of their last big single and invert it all into a massive “fuck you” to a horrible partner. If you look up other versions you can hear that in the single version she’s actually holding herself back a bit, compared to how she can absolutely belt it out; both a good idea in terms of how her singing fits into the denser backing here, and it also probably means this one goes over big live. And probably not the first time lyrics have used “standing still” to evoke both stasis and survival, but one of the most successful. But all those notes on craft are secondary to the thrill I felt playing “Brand New Chanel$” a dozen times in a row. I simply can’t think of anything I dislike about it.
[10]