The Hyper-reality of Hyperpop

If you haven't heard the word Hyperpop yet, I'm about to be really annoying.

What do Kylie Minogue and 100 Gecs have in common? They make the same kind of music. HEAR ME OUT. For those who don't know, Hyperpop is known as an emerging genre of music, at the forefront are songs drenched in bubblegum vocals and party beats. I've been thinking about Hyperpop for the last few weeks since it was one of the genres on my Spotify Wrapped for 2020. But what is Hyperpop? Who makes it? Will it really be the future of the music industry?

The answer can be as long or short as you want it to be, but I am going to talk through what I think Hyperpop means from my perspective (I'm correct) and what I think a lot of the people who have already spoken about it are missing, so I implore you to read my thoughts and come back in a few years, or even months when the industry has made further leaps forward and this article is already outdated.

Let's start at the beginning. Kind of.

The (sort of) beginning: PC Music

30-year-old British music producer AG Cook (He's on the right. Also, until yesterday, I always pronounced it AJ cook? Dyslexia??) is almost unavoidable when it comes to any of the artists I'm about to mention, he is truly the Jack Antonoff of Hyperpop. PC Music is AG's record label and art collective founded in 2013 focusing in creating innovative sounds and exaggerated pop music, songs like Hey QT, released by an artist that doesn't actually exist, to promote an energy drink represent everything that I think of when I think Hyperpop. It's exaggerated, it's over the top, it's camp. But we will get onto that later. Around the same time artists such as SOPHIE began producing tracks with textures that are almost palpable, songs you can touch and feel and dance your heart out to.

The Charli XCX Ecosystem

Another artist who had their career sky-rocket around this time was Charli XCX. I could pretty easily talk about Charli XCX all day long, all week probably, so I will try and keep this short. Charli XCX is probably the most important artist of our generation. This is a woman who has spent half of her career in the charts and can switch between songs like Boys and Pink Diamond like it's nothing. After writing and singing mega-hits like I Love It and Fancy, Charli felt unfulfilled and realised that the "Britney" level of pop-based success she was heading for wasn't what she wanted, she realised there were other ways to be successful and around this time enlisted AG Cook to be her creative director. A couple of years later, 2016 brought us the career re-defining and industry-changing Vroom Vroom EP, followed in 2017 by two mixtapes and song-of-the-summer Boys. To consistently release so much music in such a short time, and have it adored by fans in the way that Pop 2 (the sequel to the pop music genre, of course) in particular is was completely unprecedented. As of the end of 2020, she has another two stellar albums under her belt and a steady stream of random singles like Girls Night Out that wouldn't be out of place at any party across the country.

So what does this have to do with Hyperpop? Well, I'm not sure that the genre could be defined at all without Charli sitting at the centre. Her career spans so many different styles sonically that it encompasses everything that Hyperpop is and can be.

I made this handy Venn diagram to show what I see as the Charli XCX ecosystem, no I am not saying that these people are copying Charli, I think it shows which artists come under the Hyperpop umbrella and where they fit in the genre. It's also important to note there are probably another thirty popular artists who could be on that diagram, it's definitely not extensive. We have masterpieces like the debut record SAWAYAMA (Yes, album of the year) which talks about gender issues, consumerism and generational trauma over catchy hooks that you can't help but sing to, compared with 100 Gecs, potentially the worst thing to happen to the music industry. Both are Hyperpop in different ways, but there are a couple of things that link them together.

Charli XCX's music spans across the genre and whilst she may not have been a pioneer for the sound she has used two of the key traits of Hyperpop; high pitched vocals and experimental production, more consistently and publicly than most. I think the third major trait of Hyperpop is another that Charli embodies in every single piece of work she releases, and that is collaboration. Charli views much of her music as something she created with her friends, and when her and Noonie Bao were partying with their friends every night in Sweden, they wanted to create more tracks to party to. That's how Vroom Vroom EP was born.

I think that if I had to explain what Hyperpop meant to me to someone who wasn't here in 2020, I would have to show them Click by Charli XCX feat. Kim Petras (And Slayyyter/Tommy Cash depending on whether you have good or bad taste). Just one listen and I guarantee you'll want to call your friends and go out clubbing. Lines like "You can't fuck with my clique" and "my clique running through my mind like a rainbow" from Click's sister song c2.0 are irresistible and turn what could have been just a song into an anthem. And it helps when you have someone like Kim Petras on a verse.

Although still relatively underground, Kim Petras' bubblegum pop aesthetic is intoxicating, her dreamy vocals and addictive hooks are now a signature of her sound, and although it isn't necessarily important to her music, I think it's worth noting how important it is that she has had such a significant career already as a trans artist. You see, her music isn't about being trans, but her transness is an intrinsic part of what Hyperpop is about.

Identity Politics and Camp

Hyperpop is intrinsically linked to the LGBTQ community and people of colour. I think this brings us to the crux of what Hyperpop is. So far it is has been viewed as a genre of music, but I don't think Hyerpop is a sound, it is a community. It is a set of beliefs and a hunger for innovation that can only exist in this weird social-media fuelled world we live in now, Hyperpop is about controlling your own narrative, about forming a chosen family, about being able to flourish knowing that you'll never be fully accepted. Hyperpop is for the people who couldn't see themselves represented in the artists in the top 10 charts. There is a reason why Charli XCX is at the center, she is renowned for working with such a wide range of people, most of them queer and all of them doing something that no one else is. We know it wouldn't be as popular, but I really don't think Hyperpop could exist without the LGBTQ community, we crave artists who perform Camp, we respect artists for pushing the boundaries regardless of whether they succeed or fail. Hyperpop takes us to a world that embodies everything that matters to us, and this didn't start in 2013 with AG Cook. Hyperpop allows us to exist outside of conventional norms in society, just look at Charli's performances of Shake It where she invites queer performers on stage with her, uplifting them into the spotlight.

My comparison between Hyperpop and Camp wasn't by accident, I think they are similar in that they are both so hard to nail down and put into a box solely because doing so is against their very nature, defining Hyperpop goes against the very ideology that brought it to the world, like writing a list of rules and calling it freedom. Hyperpop is a performance of self-expression, telling the world "here I am in all of my excitement, sadness, loneliness, vulnerability, confidence, take it or leave it".

I want to be careful in assigning the label of Hyperpop to artists with long and enduring careers, but if you take all of the common themes across the genre, then listen to Kylie Minogue's 2020 album DISCO, you can't deny that they share similarities beyond sonics, Minogue is also an undeniable gay icon!

So is everything that the LGBTQ community likes Hyperpop? Well... kind of! But also no. Hyperpop is still finding its feet, but with the volume and vigor of the artists creating within the framework, I don't think it will be too long before we have a more concrete idea of what Hyperpop is and what it means, and whether it will truly be the future of the music industry. Whilst I don't think we will ever see Charli XCX dominate the charts in a place she might have been if she carried on the trajectory she found in 2014, I do think we will see mainstream artists... 'adopt' the Hyperpop aesthetic. If you look to Dua 'Jetsetter' Lipa's 2020 album Future Nostalgia, you'll see a pattern of catchy vocals, near-parodical lyrics and a sound that I can only describe as catnip for gays. Seriously, they went crazy for it. Combine that with her remix album featuring The Blessed Madonna and its clear that the sounds Hyperpop have been using for years are beginning to creep into the mainstream.

Hyperpop is a non-stop party, complete with the ups and downs. but it's a place where we are ultimately all invited and accepted.

'Til the next one

Naz

Xoxo