Why Mona

Pop duo Why Mona have a unique place in the pre-history of a new era of music. Their unusual electronic covers of generational pop songs -- including the Spice Girls' "Wannabe," Queen's "We Will Rock You," Britney Spears' "Oops!...I Did It Again," and the Turtles' "Happy Together" -- helped serve as a trial balloon for a new kind of viral earworm: those emerging from the algorithms of short-form social media video apps in the late 2010s. Lil Nas X may have proved such apps could generate genuine hits with the unprecedented success of "Old Town Road" in 2019, but Why Mona's sonic selections gave root to another subgenre of familiar but slightly unplaceable sounds blaring out of phone speakers.