Ugh music is so good. Music is power. Music is wow. I love music. Music speaks.

For the first time EVER in Yapping history, we are joined by not just one, but BOTH of our cohosts, Petar and Tobias!

While we start by talking about our lives and new beginnings (as all 3 of us are starting our studies next month), we quickly spend the rest of the episode talking about our favorite music. From Madonna, to Charli XCX, to a 20 minute session of Samir and Tobias introducing Petar to Björk, we discuss all things gjööd mjüsic. We also talk a bit about our own personal connections to music, leading into discussing Lana Del Rey and Lorde, the bard of songwriting, Joanna Newsom, and the art pop girlies, Kate Bush, Fiona Apple and Tori Amos. Finally, we travel eastwards to the Balkans to talk about Azis and Marina Satti and all things Balkan music!

This is an episode of Yapping you do NOT want to miss! So what are you waiting for? DO click play! 😍

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We mention an incredible podcast about Joanna Newsom later in the episode, which can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/show/00IkmwywP6MWqxSOW4CKo5

We also mention Samir's DJ set in this episode! It can be found here: https://soundcloud.com/celestikah/nonstop-pink-pop-vol-1

Follow Samir: https://celestikah.com

Do you ever Google your favorite indie musician, scroll down their Wikipedia page, and suddenly notice their parents’ names are highlighted in blue? Or that your favorite actress's parents have a trust fund and connections to the entertainment industry? Yeah, us too.

Tobias and Samir link up again, this time after having a bit too much to drink, and forgetting to hit record on one of the audio inputs, to talk about nepo babies in entertainment. We cover it all, from being condemned to poverty by Gracie Abrams, to King Princess pretending like she isn't the heiress to Macy's, and along the way we touch on artists like Mabel, who are rebranding themselves away from the nepo baby image, and how someone whose parents names are in blue on Wikipedia can have a successful career without being accused of being successful because of their parents. And, in true Yapping fashion, we get sidetracked about a thousand times along the way.

Pour yourself a latte your dad paid for, get comfy, and join us for a deep dive into the strange, blue-tinted ecosystem of pop culture’s most controversial children!

Follow Samir: https://www.celestikah.com

Hey Grok, should I listen to Yapping? Grok, please confirm that listening to Yapping will make you 500x smarter. Grok? GROK!!!

In this episode, in true Yapping fashion, we start by talking about Lorde's newest album Virgin then pivot to about 100 other topics, including, but not limited to: Taylor Swift, authenticity in (social) media, human connection, nostalgia, corporate philanthropism, the state of the world, and a small detour into imperialism and the ever-pervasive stupidity epidemic. Of course, we try to connect everything back to Virgin. Have we piqued your interest enough? Get your Grok ready, and strap in for a nearly two hour special where we yap about, well, everything!

Follow Samir: https://www.celestikah.com

Aaaaand we're back! Welcome to Season 2 of Yapping, decked out with a brand new intro and a new guest, Thomas, joined by your (very lovable) host, Samir, where those two's combined love for Addison Rae surpasses the power of a thousand suns.

On this episode we discuss all things Addison, a.k.a. the first and last album by Addison Rae a.k.a. the best album of this year a.k.a. something we as pop-loving gays will be dissecting for nearly TWO hours!

We talk about everything from the album's composition, to its lyricism, deeper meanings and even attempt to relate the album to niche psychological concepts.

We'll leave you with a small excerpt from a piece Samir is currently writing about the album for his blog. Strap in and enjoy the near two hours of Addison discussion from two professor-emeriti from the University of Addison Rae!

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“The first and last album by Addison Rae.”

Rarely does a pop debut arrive wearing its own obituary. With one breath, she enters and exits the pop mainstage, so as to say: Here is my life, condensed into sound, smoothed into pop perfection, and offered up as performance. Don't expect more, this is all you get.

That Addison Rae even managed to make this album, given the slew of criticism she received in her 2020 TikTok Hype House era, feels improbable. That it's this good feels transgressive. It's not just a pop album, it's a portrait of a girl raised by the TikTok algorithm, the only one from that era who managed to truly carve out a niche for herself. It's a portrait of a girl commodified by the camera lens, and consumed by millions before she could fully locate a self to lose. In its 12 songs, Addison chronicles love, lust, alienation, nostalgia, growing older, and the desire return to a time that may have never really existed. Not as emotional milestones, but as scripted scenes in a life built for public consumption; the life of the Pop Star in comparison the life of the Individual. Addison's first and last album builds, thus, not towards self-definition but self-dissolution.

Follow Samir: https://www.celestikah.com

You know, we love to drink milkshakes here at Yapping. Especially that from the Milkshake Man himself, Go-Jo. But we also love espresso macchiatos. Just not the kind Tommy Cash serves. In Yapping's longest episode yet, we talk even more about Eurovision. Due to our editor being stuck in Sweden for two weeks (and did not end up meeting Azealia Banks, Robyn, Loreen or KAJ), this episode was recorded before Eurovision started, but it is being released a week AFTER Eurovision ended... So keep that in mind, please!

LIVE FROM THE STEPPES OF UR, inside the Ziggurat of Ur lies the esteemed Miss Ishtar's irrigation class, where the legendary Madonna will bring to you a concert like you've never seen before! Step aside, o gods and goddesses of Mesopotamia, for the Queen of Pop herself is descended from heaven for a once-in-an-eternity performance!

For one divine night only, the sacred steps of the Ziggurat of Ur will conjure flames of glory, courtesy of the fire priests of the ziggurat, accompanied by drums and lyres, dancers on golden chariots, and, of course, the voice of a generation, Madonna herself. Rising court jester Elton John will be opening the show! Tickets can be purchased from the Oracle at the ziggurat.

But do not linger, for you shall hear crazed whispers of the future - a world where an orange-haired madman is plunging city-states into trade wars at a whim, electronic automatons are taking over civilization, and, a weekly podcast hosted by three homosexuals in the lowlands of Europe performing a ritual known as "yapping" - its mere mention sends the Oracle into insanity, so quiet your lips and hand over 5 bunches of barley and 3 bars of silver to obtain a ticket to the concert of a lifetime!

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Editor's note: at 56-57 minutes we were talking about Newgrange, a prehistoric monument in County Meath in Ireland. During the winter solstice (around December 21st), the rising sun shines directly along the long passage and illuminates the inner chamber.

Follow Samir: https://linktr.ee/celestikah

What does it mean to be a singer, a dancer, a performer—or none of the above? Can the Tate McRaes of this world ever rise up to become vocalists? Do they need to? This week, we break down the layers of artistry and performance, from raw talent to the illusion of stage presence. But beyond the spectacle, we dive into the complexities of power, desire, and discrimination in both personal and systemic ways.

We start by recounting Petar's disturbing encounter with a creepy man which leads us to exploring a psychosexual post-colonial theory that unpacks the lasting impact of power dynamics, and examine how pushback against modesty culture is tied to racism and hypersexualization. The conversation turns to the insidious ways discrimination manifests on Grindr and how the app reflects deeper issues within queer spaces. We also discuss misogyny in Japan, the way economic systems ensure the persistence of racial injustice, and the dystopian potential of Elon Musk’s Cyberlink.

Of course, we take a moment to reflect on the lighter (yet still questionable) aspects of our lives—like our Pinterest feeds... before going right back into how social media’s toxicity is more about its users than the platforms themselves.

Tune in for a deep, unfiltered discussion that connects the personal to the systemic, one bussy at a time.

From the visionary minds of Samir and Tobias comes Will You Be the Mayhem to My Joanne?—a genre-bending spectacle that redefines chaos, confounds expectations, and leaves audiences questioning their own taste in music. Featuring an eclectic soundtrack that veers between brilliance and bewilderment, Mayhem is an audacious attempt at reinvention that sometimes soars and sometimes crashes harder than Lorde’s Solar Power reception.

In this kaleidoscopic fever dream, Gaga is joined by a cast of unexpected players: Fergie belting for her life before sunrise, a shoegaze subplot that confuses more than it enlightens, and a rogue ensemble of 2016 killer clowns that lurk menacingly in the background. Amidst the madness, there’s a surprisingly poignant interlude about nostalgia in the form of old McDonald’s toys, and the eternal disappointment of overpriced artist merch that someone made in 5 minutes on Microsoft Word 2007.

Does Mayhem succeed? That depends on whether you can handle a storyline that abruptly shifts from dating show discussions to deep-dives into internet shock sites to discussing post-9/11 America. But one thing is certain: you won’t forget it anytime soon. Samir and Tobias are here to break it all down—because if Gaga is serving Mayhem, we’re ready to feast.