The Year in Pop

It’s no coincidence that ballet flats and cardigans came back in fashion the same year we met Audrey Hobert—after a few years of pleather-jacketed indie sleaze, it’s finally safe to be adorkable again. The L.A.-born daughter of a television writer, 26-year-old Hobert pivoted to music from a nascent television career of her own with the help of her longtime friend and fellow entertainment-industry gentlewoman Gracie Abrams. The two ladies co-wrote several tracks on Abrams’s 2024 album The Secret Of Us, including Abrams’s biggest song to date, the hyperverbal breakup anthem “That’s So True.” Now Hobert has struck out on her own with Who’s The Clown?, a collection of similarly chatty tunes that shoots straight for the heart of anyone who would rather eat the plastic cup holding their Erewhon smoothie than ‘get back on the apps.’

Despite her L.A. upbringing, which could have easily steered her toward Less Than Zero-style depravity, Hobert’s lyrical subject matter is fairly wholesome—she’s serving up something for the girls with early bedtimes, journaling habits, and strong feelings about Friends characters. On “Bowling alley,” she dreams of leaving a party to go home and put on a nightgown, and on “Sex and the city,” she wonders “What’s it like to be admired? / Hot and desired?” before hooking up with a guy who won’t even fetch her a pizza pocket. Hobert’s brand of pop star styling is purposefully awkward (her Tonight Show performance of “Sue me” resembled an eighth grade talent show, with a touch of the “Canned Heat” closer of Napoleon Dynamite) and there’s something quite clever about going all-in on relatability over glamour, especially as the lines between sitcoms and storytime vlogs and podcasts and group chats continue to coagulate into one enormous swamp of Content. Hobert, steeped in the tradition of TV, understands that the reliable way to hook an audience is to give them a likeable underdog to root for.