This are just dumbed down phones in a sense: I don't want my mp3 player to be running android. I want a minimal piece of software that lets me quickly navigate to the songs that I want, and physical buttons to do it. I've look long and hard for something like this and cannot for the life of me find it. I'm really sad that I lost my Ipod classic 10 years ago.

Surfans F20 HiFi MP3 Player / HiFi Walker H2 fits your description.

Both are compatible with rockbox, so if you install that you can be sure they aren't running android: https://www.rockbox.org/

Sony also has 'dumb' - and incidentally cheaper - MP3 players: https://electronics.sony.com/audio/walkman-digital-recorders...

That model looks a lot like what the iPod nano did.