Shower, Summer, Becky G

Becky G looks like someone ran JoJo and Selena Gomez through a blender and added California sun and a gap between her front teeth wider than any I’ve seen on a pop star since Lauren Hutton was working. She’s from Inglewood, was writing songs before high school, got signed to a major before she was old enough to drink. Shower is her 2014 breakthrough: three minutes of bubblegum R&B about a crush so relentless it follows you into the bathroom. The lyrics are not complex. La di la da la da. That’s a complete sentence in this song.

What it does—and this is the thing about the songs we dismiss while humming them—is set up camp in your hindbrain and charge rent. Friday was inescapable because it had the quality of a minor hallucination. Call Me Maybe was inescapable because it was actually perfect, which nobody wants to admit out loud. Shower sits somewhere between the two: too lightweight to defend but too adhesive to escape. The annual earworm harvest has a new entry.

I played it once as a bit, on a drive, windows down, summer heat. Someone else in the car knew every word. The situation had the internal logic of something unplanned that you can’t quite regret.

Becky G went on to have a real career—Spanish-language crossovers, a long run in Latin pop, a whole second act that most people who dismissed her in 2014 probably missed entirely. Shower is still the entry point. The hook is still there. Still paying rent.