FEATURE:
Flat Pop
PHOTO CREDIT: olia danilevich/Pexels
Is the Incredible Genre Dominated By Big Names and Lacking Fizz?
_________
ONE of the dangers of having…
IN THIS PHOTO: Taylor Swift
nostalgia shows and themed radio shows/playlists that celebrate the best Pop of the 1990s and 1980s is realising that the landscape has changed. I don’t think that is a bad thing. It is much broader than it has been in years past. K-Pop, Pop sounds from Latin America and nations away from the U.K. and U.S. are fusing together with a bulk of different and diverse artists from major territories. It is not only uplifting or chorus-heavy songs. The nature of Pop music has changed in terms of its lyrics and sonics. Whilst there may be fewer artists producing the same sort of instantly memorable, hook-y songs that lodged in our head back then now, there is more depth and the personal coming to the fore. I mention this, as there is a recent article that argues Pop is in a bad state and has lost its fizz. That a few mainstream artists dominate. Apart from that, there is a lack of future legends coming through. Maybe a lack of current legends making music right now (there are some anticipated albums and possibilities, though nothing solid as yet). I shall come to that. From The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards saying Pop has always been awful to this 2023 feature showing how tastes in Pop have changed with the culture, it is a tough debate. I prefer the Pop music of the 1990s and early-2000s, though I think there are so many strong artists around today. Maybe there is some homogenisation and a wave of artists who are roughly on the same wavelength.
Stereogum are sure to present their thoughts regarding the state of Pop in 2023 very soon. They made some interesting observations last year when looking at 2022’s Pop. If some say that Pop has evolved and diversified in very good ways, others might say it is stuck in a rut and reliant on nostalgia and massive artists:
“Just as 2021 cemented a new nostalgia cycle for millennial and Gen Z pop artists, the proliferation of streaming and global access has also unleashed the crossover success of Afrobeats. About five years ago, Nigerian artists like Wizkid, Burna Boy, and Davido were household names in their home country, with US and Canadian performers like Drake and Chris Brown mining their influence to write their own tropical pop anthems like “One Dance.” Today, however, Burna Boy has won a Grammy for his 2020 album Twice As Tall (in the Global Music category, alas), and WizKid and Tems’ “Essence” is the first Nigerian song in history to crack the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100. Again, Nigerian pop is nothing new, but as far as crossover recognition goes, it’ll be fascinating to see if those artists can replicate that level of success as 2022 plays out.
Indeed, the continued mainstream success of Latin pop and K-pop could serve as a prime example of how global music trends are not so much industry flings as they are long-term relationships. In 2021, though Latin pop appeared less prevalent on the Hot 100, save for the ever-present Bad Bunny, this past year demonstrated a major wave in rising Colombian and Colombian-American pop stars, like Camilo, Morat, Manuel Medrano, Las Villa, Henao, and Morelli. Meanwhile, pairing American- or Canadian-born pop stars with Spanish-language singers used to be more of a novelty (say, *NSYNC singing “Music Of My Heart” with Gloria Estefan); now it’s standard practice, as English-speaking pop stars regularly collaborate with Spanish-speaking singers from a vast array of backgrounds. As CNN has noted, we are (still) living in the reverse-crossover era. Latin pop in general may not have had as big of a boom year as it did across the last five years, but you won’t find anyone accusing it of irrelevance as they were so quick to do after the ’00s Latin pop explosion.
Then there’s the enormity of K-pop kings turned chart powerhouse BTS. Just a few years ago, the seven-piece might have looked like a gimmick to historically xenophobic US majors, but BTS have had the last laugh many, MANY times over. Today, songs like “Dynamite” soundtrack car commercials and get covered on Emily In Paris. Their stans have the ability to send a song to #1 at will. Artists like Coldplay barnacle themselves to BTS for cheap chart wins (“My Universe”) — a clear reach for relevancy, not terribly unlike Paul McCartney teaming with Kanye and Rihanna seven years back.
Speaking of collabs, the ubiquitous Abel Tesfaye ended 2021 with a bumper crop of those, with everyone from Swedish House Mafia to Rosalía to FKA Twigs joining forces with the “Blinding Lights” singer. Even Grimes has teased a collaboration with the Weeknd, who didn’t even release an album in 2021 but dominated the conversation nonetheless: calling out the Recording Academy for corruption when his chart-conquering 2020 album After Hours got snubbed at the Grammys; pulling off an elaborate, pop-noir Super Bowl halftime show, pandemic be damned; and watching “Blinding Lights” become the biggest Hot 100 hit of all time. With his currently-in-production HBO drama The Idol set to debut in the coming year and new album Dawn FM dropping this week, the Weeknd’s pop hegemony is surely not going anywhere.
The only pop star who arguably had a bigger year than the Weeknd was Adele, with her utterly absorbing fourth album 30. In a sense that I can only describe as Dolly Parton-esque, Adele has a way of unifying generations; older fans snatch up physical records and send album sales soaring while enjoying Adele’s lived-in take on midcentury jazz and soul, and younger fans no doubt connect to her blood-and-guts confessional lyrics. As a figure in the pop music industry, Adele stands alone, unbound by genre trends and equally welcome on CBS as she would be on, oh, I don’t know, Twitch.
Comparatively gargantuan is Taylor Swift: In re-recording her older albums, Swift took an (mostly) unprecedented career gamble. Re-recording older work is not new, exactly — the Everly Brothers, Frank Sinatra, Def Leppard, King Crimson, and Kraftwerk have all done it for various reasons. But Swift opted to re-record multiple eras of her career, each of which have their own look, feel, and coming-of-age story. Swift — in a wildly meta fashion — actually tapped into her own nostalgia cycle in asking fans to relive her Fearless and Red eras this past year. In addition to making their own TikTok memes around Swift and Phoebe Bridgers’ “Nothing New,” fans got busy retelling decade-old Swiftian stories from the year Red came first out (2012), even at one point causing “Jake Gyllenhaal” to trend. If that’s not owning the narrative, I have no idea what is.
And now we come to my favorite part of the pop music discussion: discovery. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, but TikTok remains a towering influence on the industry at large, to the extent that older artists have slowly but surely made their way onto the platform for a chance at having one of their hits be rediscovered, or, better yet, go viral.
There’s no question that the platform’s stronghold on pop music has only tightened: As TikTok itself has pointed out, “Over 175 songs that trended on TikTok in 2021 charted on the Billboard Hot 100, twice as many as last year.” The (new) songs that saw viral success on TikTok do eventually trickle down to Spotify and radio, so much so that this past summer, SiriusXM launched TikTok Radio.
This past year should also prove that a TikTok hit can launch a performer to bona fide pop star status (PinkPantheress, Doja Cat, Loren Grey), but I would argue that it’s up to the star themselves to keep the interest alive. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of Lil Nas X, one of the earliest examples of TikTok virality translating to chart success with 2019’s “Old Town Road.” You’d be forgiven for assuming “Old Town Road” would mark the beginning and the end of Lil Nas X’s journey, but instead the rapper has enjoyed one of the most successful and groundbreaking careers in pop. The openly gay rapper makes every song, video, and performance a celebration of Black, gay love and, in his extremely online way, trolls the trolls by pretending to “give birth” to his debut album, Montero. He does not do this to be a martyr or a progressive symbol; he is only living his truth”.
I think that 2023 has been a year dominated by artists like Taylor Swift. I shall not talk about her too much in this feature, though her Eras Tour and record-breaking success has taken headlines. I guess we have to decide what we define as ‘Pop’. Is it simply a style of music and particular sound or is it what we define as anything that is ‘popular music’?! Some may say Taylor Swift straddles multiple genres. However, when it comes to 2023’s Pop, her name is very much at the top. She has dominated. Other artists like Billie Eilish have had a big say and share. DAZED shared a feature recently that looked at a monopoly from artists like Billie Eilish, Taylor Swift and Dua Lipa. Things have changed again since 2022, leading me to believe that any flatness will go and we will see Pop change once more in 2024 – and it may be more balanced in terms of mainstream artists and newcomers on an equal level. It does seem that 2023’s Pop is imbalanced and owned by the very biggest artists:
“Swift’s dominance is unparalleled. She is currently the most listened-to artist on the planet, breaking not only box office records following the release of her concert film, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, but chart records, too. Following the release of her latest album, 1989 (Taylor’s Version), Swift became the first artist in history to secure six number one albums that have sold over one million copies in their first week. At the time of writing, she holds eight of the 10 spots on the Billboard Hot 100 (she actually replaced herself at number one after her song “Cruel Summer”, originally released in 2019, topped the charts), marking only the second time that no male artist has appeared in the top 10 (the only prior time it happened was following the release of Swift’s album Midnights in 2022). As Bloomberg Businessweek prophesied all the way back in 2014: “Taylor Swift is the music industry.”
Undoubtedly, much of her current ubiquity stems from her re-recording project. After Swift was allegedly denied the chance to buy the masters for her first six albums (they were sold by her former label, Big Machine Records, to Scooter Braun for $330 Million; Braun later sold them to investment firm Shamrock Holdings for $405 million), Swift announced her intention to re-record her old albums in order to create new masters that she owns fully (she already held the publishing rights). So began a long (and lucrative) endeavour. Each new iteration of Swift’s past recordings would be tagged “(Taylor’s Version)”. Not only that, they would include songs “from the vault”: unreleased tracks that were discarded during the original recording process. They would be released with fanfare, multiple vinyl variants, and merch. There would be ‘The Eras Tour’, a three-hour spectacle that would celebrate Swift’s catalogue. As it stands, only 2017’s Reputation and Swift’s 2006 self-titled debut are left to receive the “Taylor’s Version” treatment.
Throughout all this, Swift has continued to share new music, too. In 2020, just before the first re-recording was released, she dropped two albums, the Grammy-winning Folklore and its sister album Evermore. In 2022, she released Midnights; it sold 1.05 million copies in the US in its first week. We might all have the same 24 hours in the day as Beyoncé, but Taylor Swift must have the ability to bend time as she sees fit.
As a Swift fan myself, I admit I have welcomed the success of one of my faves and luxuriated in the deluge of new material; as Swift herself would say, “I’m the problem; it’s me.” Still, before I am a Swiftie, I am a pop music devotee. As such, it’s difficult not to see Swift’s omnipresence, at least in part, as a symptom of a stagnating pop music ecosystem.
It was not so long ago when pop was filled with healthy competition. A decade ago, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, Lorde, Britney Spears, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift were all operating concurrently. It was an era of titans, many of whom were willing to take bold creative swings in order to secure their space in the pantheon of pop: Gaga threw everything at the wall with Artpop, vomiting paint during promotional performances, while Beyoncé changed the game with that digital drop, reinventing visual storytelling in music and ripping up the rule book of release schedules.
It's not outlandish to suggest that such innovation (and absurdity) flourished because pop was healthy with competition. Not every aspect landed (see: the short-lived ARTPOP app and Miley Cyrus twerking with Robin Thicke), but there was an element of risk-taking that felt genuinely thrilling. It was a great time to be a pop fan.
But it can feel, at times, that these artists are waiting on the bleachers. However, the major players aren’t on the pitch, either. Rihanna remains MIA. Lady Gaga prevented the pandemic from becoming a total borefest with Chromatica, but returning to pop appeared to be more of a chore compared to selling cosmetics and starring in the sequel to Joker. Ariana Grande is busy filming Wicked. Nicki Minaj has a cousin in Trinidad whose friend’s testicles allegedly became swollen after having the COVID-19 vaccine. And Miley Cyrus gave us “Flowers” but failed to truly follow through. Only Beyoncé has shown up for us (albeit with no visuals).
Instead, only a select few tread pop’s playing field, which has become overgrown with weeds. And as they continue to dominate, the ground becomes littered with the detritus of viral TikTok sounds, tired collaborations reliant on interpolations of hooks from better songs, and Ed Sheeran. Every so often artists like SZA, Olivia Rodrigo or Lil Nas X might bulldoze through, sowing disruption in their wake, but they are the outliers now, their ascension to pop’s Mt. Olympus a rarity”.
If you look at some of the best Pop albums of this year, there is a mixture of major artists and smaller ones creating wonderful music. I do agree with some of what DAZED say. There is a bit of a transition where we have a lot of same-sounding artists together with dominance from mainstream greats. A lot of the major artists can tour far and wide, whereas many Pop artists cannot have that same exposure and opportunity. There was the pandemic and the aftermath of that. I feel we are catching up in a lot of ways. Artists who were recording during that time unable to strike and release the kind of music that offers realistic and authentic excitement and colour. Now we are starting to come out of this and move on, I do wonder whether that will lead to a wave of new artists adding new dynamics and brightness to the landscape. More and more newer artists are being personal and open. More and more try to connect with their listeners by being vulnerable and deep. Also, consider the news and state of the world. It is a grim place indeed. It is getting harder and harder for artists to find optimism. Even if most aren’t addressing the state of the world and being as proactive in that sense, there is also a natural stagnation of the biggest and boldest Pop anthems from new artists. The likes of Dua Lipa and Olivia Rodrigo are exceptions - yet I also think the Pop landscape is so vast that it is impossible to define a particular trend or sound.
Things will change and move as Pop always does. This is a time of flux against massive international conflict and darkness. I think other genres are favoured this year. Tastes are slightly changing. I do feel there are a lot of TikTok artists who actually are injecting a lot of life into Pop. The issue is streaming sites are still putting chart acts and popular Pop artists in playlists and not including enough newer acts. The charts are defined and guided by streaming figures, so we get this one-dimensional view. I don’t think that enough oxygen is given to the full spectrum of the genre. It is a slightly odd moment where we have seen such hegemony from a few names. Let’s hope that next year – when huge tours from Taylor Swift and the like end – opens up a more equal and balanced field. I have not given up on Pop at all. More playlists and articles need to be dedicated to newer acts that are coming through and making truly terrific music. I do agree that we are lacking a degree of bangers and classic choruses. Maybe Pop has become a little more downbeat or homogenised. Against the blackness around us, Pop artists might be finding it hard to come up with the goods – or they may find it hard or inappropriate to produce escapism. There is still a lot of nostalgia in modern Pop. Artists nodding to the 1990s and 1980s for inspiration. In spite of this, sites like DAZED are discussing a crisis, however temporary, throughout Pop music. I feel things will improve in 2024. There are undoubtably scores of amazing artists – many of whom I have spotlighted this year – that are coming through, building on early promise and, like all artists, adapting after lockdown and pandemic years. I am confident that 2024’s Pop will arrive…
WITH more fizz and flavour.