PC Music might've officially closed up shop in 2023, but the wildly influential hyperpop label continues to echo throughout popular culture. Onetime label boss A. G. Cook is more famous now than he's ever been; you gon' jump if he made it. Now, longtime PC Music secret weapon GFOTY is back with a new surprise album.
GFOTY is the alter-ego of singer and producer Polly-Louisa Salmon, and you probably already figured out that the name stands for Girlfriend Of The Year. She makes exaggerated, adrenaline-charged dance-pop that delights in its own artificiality, and her lyrics can be seriously funny and mean. We haven't heard much from GFOTY since the 2016 mixtape Call Him A Doctor, but she's just come out of nowhere with the surprise return album Influenzer. Good title! Good record, too!
The abrasively sleek sound of Influenzer is enough to sweep you right back to PC Music's halcyon era and to remind you that pop music is still catching up to what those freaks were doing a decade ago. The album bursts with energy and hooks, and I am enjoying the living hell out of my first listen. I love the chopped-up metal guitars on "CONGRATS.." almost as much as I love the perfectly bitchy lyrics: "Why you playin' James Blake while you walk down the aisle? That's kinda gross, babe/ That's kinda vile!" But parts of the record are much softer and more vulnerable, too, and those bits are beautiful. Stream the album below.
The self-released Influenzer is out now.
