i tried to learn about all of the 2026 VMA Best New Artist nominees and then i got upset

When the MTV Video Music Awards announced the nominees for Best New Artist, my favorite podcast Who? Weekly said it all by simply retweeting the @PopBase tweet of their names with no commentary.

As a deep-fried millennial whose pop cultural consciousness-raising came pretty much directly from watching the VMAs every year, I've taken MTV's shift away from music video programming personally. [Ed. note: I have done some video editing work for Viacom in the past, figured I should note that for journalistic reasons.] But artists are still making music videos, bless them, and they are still being honored, which is nice. However: I consider myself on the more tapped-in side of music awareness, yet I only know who three out of the seven artists on this list are. That's totally my bad. I need to tap in harder. I Promise I Will Never Stop Tapping In.

But if I am confused, you probably are too. Let's find out who these people are?

Bella Kay

A 20-year-old from Houston with a couple of viral hits, she has opened for both Noah Kahan and Gracie Abrams, and seems to come from a similar Acoustic Guitar Bedroom Confessional Zone. I watched the videos for "iloveitiloveitiloveit" and "i deserve better."—the latter of which shows Kay wearing a pair of voluminous pants that might mark the natural zenith of our big pants moment—and the songs are fine, non-offensive indie-ish folk-ish, but I would encourage Bella Kay's label Atlantic to, now that she's been nominated for a VMA, give her some budget for her videos. "Bella Kay is sitting in and/or trapped in a single room" is not the best we can do for this blossoming diva.

CORTIS

CORTIS sounds like a new drug for moderate to severe plaque psoriasis ("Ask your doctor about CORTIS") but is actually a K-pop boy band. A BigHit Music venture—that's BTS's label, of course—the band got their name from "six letters taken from the phrase 'Color Outside the Lines.'"

COloR OuTsIde the LineS

oookay gotcha. moving on

I listened to their song "REDRED" and...oh ya, I really enjoy this. Droning, hypnotic electro beats, syncopated shouting that has echoes of rage rap, this is a little something for Molly. Because I have terrible taste, my favorite era of K-pop is from 2017 when every song sounded like seven Black Eyed Peas songs crammed into one; "REDRED" isn't quite in that realm, but it is certainly more chaotic than the lukewarm UK garage that has been trendy lately...anyway, do these guys like Future?? The music video shows the group bumming around a commercial area, eating KBBQ, trying on coats, and playing arcade games. The oldest member of CORTIS, James, is 20 years old!

Magnus Ferrell

Magnus Ferrell is simply the son of the comedic actor Will Ferrell. Here's a video of him singing "Creep" at his dad's benefit show at the Greek two years ago. You do not need to click it and I will actually say, DON'T click it, not if you want to stay in a good mood. I try to see the positive in everything, there's a silver lining to every cloud, bla bla bla, but this guy is terrible. Thom Yorke should ask for this video to be deleted. It is more than a li'l pitchy, dawg...it is a lot pitchy. It does not sound like has improved much since.

His more recent "New Sensation" is sort of an electro-funk thing, I guess. He's like Robin Thicke's worse cousin, Robin Thin. I have complicated feelings about nepo babies but sometimes the answer is simply NO, no further discussion. Also how do you get nominated for a VMA before you have your own Wikipedia page? (He does technically have one, but it's in Swedish, maybe because he appeared on Swedish television.)

Malcolm Todd

I know this guy! He is Audrey Hobert's brother. He just got in trouble with Spotify for some suspicious stream number manipulation related to the 'prediction market platform' Kalshi. He also just was in a GAP ad where he sang the worst cover of Robyn's "Dancing On My Own" I have ever heard. Not even going to link that one, as a favor to you. And you know what? I'm not going to listen to any more of his music. I respect myself that much. Audrey Hobert's great though, DJ Louie XIV has correctly been banging the gong for her.

Myles Smith

Myles Smith is a British singer-songwriter who is 28 years old. I just wrote about Noah Kahan's show at the Rose Bowl and called him a son of Mumford & Sons, and Smith is definitely another son in the Mumford family. I tried to watch the video for "Hold Me In The Dark," which depicts a father caring for his daughter who has been hospitalized with cancer, and I could not complete it, because ever since I had a baby, I basically cannot watch bad things happen to children in any filmic format. (Last winter I avoided seeing the movie Hamnet, which I understood portrayed the death of a child, and instead saw the movie The Testament Of Ann Lee, in which four babies die...that was fantastic, for me.)

Anyway, I did not realize Smith sings the song "Stargazing (Take My Heart Don't Break It)" a song that I have heard a bunch this year but assumed came out in 2013. He seems fine! I have no problem with Myles Smith.

Sienna Spiro

You know the Miranda rights? We should have the Winehouse rights: "You have the right to a soulful singer with a '60s bouffant and a rebellious attitude. If you cannot afford a soulful singer with a '60s bouffant and a rebellious attitude, one will be provided for you." We've barely recovered from the discourse tornado that was Jessie Murph, and now there is Sienna Spiro, who has a powerful (if a little unpolished) voice and an early Lana Del Rey-meets-Madison Beer aesthetic. I listened to her most popular song on Spotify, "Die On This Hill," (300M+ streams wow) and it's okay but also definitely in the category of, as Rolling Stone staff writer Larisha Paul so aptly put it last year, "Why Does Everything Sound Like An Audition Song For The Voice?"

For Spiro, I have the same music video budget request as for Bella Kay. Like, the setup in this is cool but generally I think we could use a few more for her. Just asking, you don't get anything if you don't ask.

Stella Lefty

The daughter of Groupon billionaire Eric Lefkofsky, Stella Lefty has a big song this summer, "Boston," a song I finally brought myself to listen to for this blog. I think the reason "Boston" works well in songwriting is because it has a good selection of rhymes both direct and slant ("lost in" "crossed him" "awesome") and because Boston is such a maligned city, which inspires a lot of good emotional friction. Off the dome, the best song about Boston is "Boston" by Augustana.

Lefty's "Boston" interpolates Noah Kahan's song "Stick Season." The thread that ties a lot of these Best New Artist nominees together is a shared reverence for and derivation from Kahan's earnest, crunchy thing; stomp-clap-hey music might be bigger now than it was 15 years ago. I'm not immune—I even started drinking IPAs again.

My friend Matthew recently used the term "post-Swift" to describe a genre of music, and Stella Lefty is post-Swiftian in a very particular way, in that, at least on "Boston," she has affected a country drawl even though she is from a wealthy Chicago suburb. I have to ask, are country music people truly okay with this? This doesn't bother people at all, the down-home affectation that belies a life of unimaginable privilege? In a way, I understand the rise in popularity of hyper-manufactured groups like KATSEYE and, yes, CORTIS, because at least you don't have to pretend like these people had to Get It How They Lived It. They're just great at singing and dancing, and they train very hard, and then they can record electroclash Playboi Carti songs for the surprise and delight of at least one music blogger.

I respect people who grind for their dream, even as a cog in the song machine. But faking a Southern accent for some dirt road clout when your father is one of the 1000 richest people alive...falling flat as a pancake on the showstopper note of "Creep" at your famous dad's variety show at the Greek fuckin' Theater and getting rewarded for your trouble with a VMA nom just a couple years later...I don't know, man, it bums me out. It bums me out! It bums me out.

ANYWAY STREAM CORTIS!!!!! But also: stream Sun Kin; joel vs. joel; Josaleigh Pollett; Comprador; Kaffo, the Sensei; midnight dive; Rebounder; first president of japan...all artists I have covered on this blog who make amazing music (and music videos). I can always find solace in the work of independent artists, who remind me it's beautiful to make music even when the playing field is uneven and the odds are stacked against you.

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