\nDo you ever wonder what it might sound like if Playboi Carti made quiet storm music? Joji\u2019s \u201cPixelated Kisses\u201d might be for you. This is melodic rage. Or maybe it\u2019s like amped-up trip-hop. All these kids that are going to the Carti tour, the OsamaSon tour, what are they going to want to listen to five or 10 years from now that reminds them of the music of their childhood, but also has classic enough songwriting that it defies any kind of particular time or era? \u201cPixelated Kisses\u201d feels like the answer to that question. There\u2019s still something that\u2019s a little bit unknowable to me about Joji. Joji\u2019s been releasing music really for a decade, but his discography is kind of scant. It always feels like he\u2019s arriving, dropping a few really, really elegantly crafted songs and then just kind of disappearing. So each time he comes back, it feels like a reawakening. Joji did not actually get his start making music. He was a YouTube prank comedian. He used to go by Filthy Frank doing a bunch of gross stuff on the internet. To me, the signature Joji song to date is called \u201cGlimpse of Us.\u201d It is so calm that knowing his back story, every time I listen to it, I was like, there\u2019s surely no way that that guy made a song that was this unerringly pretty. And yet he did. His biggest songs have been traditionally song pop and R & B balladry, and have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of plays. This new song, \u201cPixelated Kisses,\u201d seems to want to split the difference between that kind of classic song approach with what is the sound of the now.<\/p>\n<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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<\/template><\/template><\/template><\/nyt-betamax-poster><\/nyt-betamax-cover><\/template><\/nyt-betamax-overlay-controls><\/template><\/nyt-betamax-ads><\/nyt-betamax><\/div>\nThe critic Jon Caramanica\u2019s latest Song of the Week is \u201cPixelated Kisses\u201d by the viral figure Joji, an unlikely source of such beauty.<\/span><\/p>\nBy Jon Caramanica, Arjun Srivatsa and Joe Coscarelli<\/p>\n
November 13, 2025<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nytimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"new video loaded: From YouTube Pranks to Melodic Rage Music transcript Back transcript From YouTube Pranks to Melodic Rage Music The critic Jon Caramanica\u2019s latest Song of the Week is \u201cPixelated Kisses\u201d by the viral figure Joji, an unlikely source of such beauty. Do you ever wonder what it might sound like if Playboi Carti […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2155232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[379481,21800,357243],"class_list":["post-2155231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-joji","tag-music","tag-pop-rock-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/From-YouTube-Pranks-to-Melodic-Rage-Music.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2155231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2155233,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2155231\/revisions\/2155233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2155232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2155231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2155231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2155231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}