Is Pop Boring Now?

I’m well aware that, normally, the only kind of people who tend to moan about the state of popular culture are either the strange, baby-faced small and upper-case c conservative types (dudes of the Paul Joseph Watson genus; the type of lads on Tinder who have an eye-roll emoji in their bio, following a sentence like ‘swipe if your (sic) not boring’ or ‘6’1 cos apparently that matters’). They’re not usually some girl with a mild TikTok addiction (even if that was only downloaded in a vain attempt at keeping up with the kids), who started her life on Twitter as a Lady Gaga stan account, and would, back in the day, bought Now! CDs like they were collector’s items. Usually, it’s those who’ve always been somewhat removed from pop culture who complain the most about it. I personally have never been inclined to, not even at its supposedly most scandalous moments, like when Nicki Minaj dropped ‘Anaconda’ (God-awful as it was in retrospect), or when Miley started swinging on a massive wrecking ball (her Terry Richardson photoshoots are another story) and certainly not when Lady Gaga wore that meat dress, because Lord, were we not entertained?

But in the past year or two I’ve noticed myself becoming disillusioned towards so many figures in pop. When I turn on the radio, instead of liking, say, eighty per cent of the songs played, it’s more like ten.

And part of me knows that this is a product of growing up; I’m twenty-four now, very aware that the likelihood of Harry Styles somehow falling in love with me is slim to none; I am, surprisingly enough, not a regular viewer of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, so that Olivia Rodrigo song really came out of left field for me; I’m also not exactly a KSI stan, much as he is unerringly likeable. Pop music is a constantly-shifting, ever-changing landscape, easily manipulated and extremely fickle. The emergence of internet personalities and part-time DJs peppering the Top 40 was only an eventuality.

But I can’t help but feel it’s not just my emergence into adulthood from adolescence that means I’m left cold when browsing the charts, or checking out the YouTube trending page. I know we’re in a pandemic, and a global recession, and we’re all worried about the environment, but things seem to have gotten really dreary. 2008 had a recession and global warming, too, but Estelle and Kanye still dropped ‘American Boy’ like it was 1999. Nobody was crying about their driver’s license back then.

There are a couple of main culprits as to why – in my opinion – pop’s gotten so boring lately. Here they are.

1. Boring pop girls

Pop is full to the brim with boring female solo artists right now. There, I said it.

In many ways, the likes of Gaga, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj and Katy Perry spoiled us back in the day. If you wanted to watch a bizarre overly-produced music video in which your fave is dressed as an alien, or getting sacrificed in a bath tub, or acting like a zombie back in 2009, you were spoiled for choice. In 2021? Not so much. Everyone just wants to be hot these days. Dua Lipa might look like an absolutely worldie in the ‘Levitating’ music video, but will any of us actually remember it in years to come?

We in the UK seem to churn them out: Dua Lipa, Anne Marie, Mabel, Jess Glynne. The 2020 BRIT awards were so boring that, if it hadn’t been saved by the performances of Lizzo, Dave and Stormzy, I’d have fallen asleep. While the UK grime scene has so much to say, and succeeds in saying it, its nerve and passion remnant of the gobby ‘90s Britpop bands we as a country used to pump out in our sleep, our pop sphere is, by comparison, woefully unimaginative.

There are some newer pop girls really pushing the boat out these days – save for the aforementioned – but they are often overlooked. Rina Sawayama, Christine and the Queens, Charli XCX, and FKA Twigs spring to mind when I think of innovative and interesting UK-based musicians; but they don’t grow on trees, and, even if they did, I doubt they’d be any less overlooked.

2. Tik Tok

Like I said: I love TikTok. But we can’t ignore the absolutely monumental impact it’s had on the music industry, whether that’s for good (Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams re-entering the charts for the first time since 1977 in October thanks to Ocean Spray Guy; and this mash-up of Charli XCX’s ‘Unlock It’ and Alice Deejay’s ‘Better Off Alone’ is, to me, the definition of rent-free) or the not-so-good (‘Savage Love’ was…certainly a song!).

The problem with TikTok songs is that they don’t have to be even slightly good to do well. In fact, it’s often the bad songs that catch the most attention, used as sounds over and over again in challenges and remixes and beyond. Please listen to ‘3 Muskateers’ by NextYoungin and ppcocaine and tell me that you think it’s good with a straight face. ‘Door Dash’. ‘Chicken N Grits’. In fact, just scroll down any number of TikTok Spotify playlists and have a listen if you’re curious. There are a couple of gems in there (personally, I’m a sucker for that ‘Put Your Records On’ cover), but for the most part, it’s a dire bunch.

You also then have the problem of already-established artists like Drake catching on and releasing tracks tailor-made to be robotically danced to by fourteen-year-olds in leggings. You have enough coin to not stoop to this level, Aubrey. Come on.

And I’m no killjoy: I bloody loved ‘Gangnam Style’ back in the day. And remember ‘What Does The Fox Say’? Those guys went on Ellen before going on Ellen was universally considered a bad idea! Pop can be stupid and still be good – in fact, more of it should be stupid. Who’s being stupid, right now? Quickly? Not even KSI’s being stupid any more, and that’s how he got millions of subscribers in the first place.

I’m happy that it’s a platform that newer artists can use to get their first viral hit and, hopefully, the attention of record labels, but otherwise, I’m sort of just waiting for this to die out.

3. The Lorde Effect

In 2013, young genius Ella Yelich-O’Connor released one of the formative albums of my youth: Pure Heroine. It sounded like nothing else I’d ever heard before, and, at sixteen, it was basically my Bible (along with Electra Heart by Marina. I wasn’t okay, if you were wondering). It was sparse, and weird, and melancholy: Lorde herself was a little weird and melancholy too, and she didn’t seem to act or look like a lot of the other artists performing around that time.

This kind of ‘sad girl pop’ which Lorde defined has, unfortunately, produced numerous copycats. I won’t name too many names here, but they tend to be singly-named and throatily-voiced; their lyrics don’t hold a candle to the artful oddness of Ella and more often than not come across as – there’s no other word for it – cringey.

You can argue that I’m being harsh, and you might have a point. My issue with most Sad Girl Pop (SGP) is how one-dimensional it is; it suits a singular mood and little else. And once you’re out of that mood, then it’s just really dull.

Halsey, an artist I initially considered to be a post-Lorde SGP basic, has proven me wrong. Her track ‘Experiment On Me’ is borderline screamo; she also did a really cute track with BTS. Spreading her wings into different genres has shown her versatility, to her credit. But it’s not something I can see many others of Lorde’s ilk achieving.

About ten years ago, there was an epidemic of Sad Boy Pop: you couldn’t move for White British Boys With Guitars who were usually called Tom or James and had about three hits before fading into obscurity. This might just be the female renaissance. But it doesn’t make it any easier on the ears.

In summary

Obviously, I can’t talk about the goings-on of ’20s pop without covering Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s ‘WAP’, which was — I don’t think I’m overselling it — something of a cultural phenomenon. Though I was lukewarm on the track itself, the controversy, outlandish music video and general chaos it brought was a breath of fresh air, particularly in our stricken mid-pandemic times. It harkened back to similar chaotic moments in pop culture that we look back on fondly now, and it revived in me the hope that not everything has to be the kind of twee, ad-friendly pop that labels and execs like to inundate us with. We’re supposed to be the sensible generation, apparently, yet we got ‘bring a bucket and a mop’ played on the radio! They literally had to play it almost entirely bleeped out because it was too popular! This is just like when Rihanna’s ‘S&M’ came out, or Britney’s ‘If U Seek Amy’! Pop suddenly wasn’t all about Taylor Swift’s cardigan and whatever Lewis Capaldi had going on! Did we ever get an answer as to why his album was called that, by the way?

So yeah: I’m not a pessimist. I’m certain that, eventually, the more outlandish pop star will take precedent over the more manufactured, safe-playing acts currently littering the Top 40. And maybe punk rock will make a comeback, too, just to really kick things off; and maybe because it’s the ’20s we’ll all get really into jazz, and every other song on the radio is a Miles Davis cover; and then maybe when Donald Trump finally dies we’ll make ‘Fuck Donald Trump’ number one in the charts like British people did when Thatcher died (not that song, obviously, though that would’ve been funny) for longer than Wet Wet Wet and break a new world record. I dunno: pop music is a constantly-shifting, ever-changing landscape, and anything can happen. Let’s just hope the right people get pissed off when it does.