Has a pop star ever just snuck up on you out of nowhere? How weepy is that new Sombr song? Get in. Let’s talk about it. Six months ago, I, you, maybe no one, had ever truly reckoned with the artistic output of Sombr. And right now, Sombr has two songs in the Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100. Sombr just turned 20. He’s tall. He’s got razor-sharp cheekbones. This is someone who is a full package before you even know that you’ve received the package. Every Sombr song is about hookup culture in some way, but mostly it’s about how sad hookup culture makes you feel. It’s about how dark it makes you feel. It’s about how it puts you in a tunnel of emotional emptiness. Oh come on, dog, this song is a feeling. It’s saying, “We did this thing. It didn’t work out. Now what?” Is it little bit dry to listen to? It is. The emotional palette is not that wide here. All of Sombr songs are in this kind of, like, moody gray color. The way that it marches, it’s almost funereal. The foggy quality of the music really reminds me of CHILLWAVE but if it was made for arenas, not smoky little rooms. There’s also a bunch of ’90s Britpop in here, that tunefulness really recalls a lot of the best British bands of that era. The real question for me is why is Sombr so popular right now? Sure, I hear a lot of Sombr on TikTok: breakup TikToks, sad news TikToks, family trauma TikToks. But to me, that doesn’t account for the broad-base popularity that he’s experiencing. As a critic, part of what I do is try to understand what takes something from a curio to a phenomenon. Sombr, and “Back to Friends,” is clearly heading towards phenomenon territory, but it’s still vague and fuzzy to me. Dog, there’s a Hobby Lobby down here? Wild.