On certain corners of the internet, “The Loveliest Time,”
Canadian singer Carly Rae Jepsen’s seventh album, could be confused for the
biggest album of the year. But the average Top 40 radio listener probably
hasn’t heard it. And when the Billboard 200 chart posted the week after its
arrival last month, “The Loveliest Time” was nowhere to be found.
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Jepsen’s very active online fan base is part of the
ecosystem known as stan Twitter. A spin through obsessively curated social
media “update accounts” such as @PopCrave and @chartdata leads to the
impression that we’re living through a golden age of pure pop, akin to the
period of the 2010s in which Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna reached
commercial dominance with songs constructed from monster hooks and pounding
synths.
Online, conversation constantly bubbles about a set of
singers — Kim Petras, Ava Max, Sabrina Carpenter, Bebe Rexha, Rina Sawayama,
Rita Ora, Troye Sivan and others — who are debated and adored, often becoming
trending topics. To their loyal fans they are, in the parlance of the internet,
pop stars.
They are undoubtedly celebrities, with considerable social
media followings. They may have tasted a version of popularity — a Hot 100 hit,
a moment of TikTok virality or simply a very faithful (though modest)
collection of devotees that allows them to sell out concerts at midsize venues
around the world. But they have yet to make the leap to, or have failed to
remain at, music’s mainstream center.
Instead, they build careers off hooky, vividly toned
meta-pop — songs that seem to actively address and play with the tropes of pop
history — and with the help of fan bases that treat them as if they were as big
as Taylor Swift. For these artists, pop stardom isn’t a commercial category,
but a sound, an aesthetic, and an attitude.
The streaming economy has essentially created a swath of pop
stars who may never muster the virality or the major-label support required to
reach the upper echelons of the charts or sell out stadiums, but nonetheless
have devoted fan bases and consistent income from touring and licensing —
essentially, the kind of model that indie musicians have relied upon for years.
It may be miles away from the spectacle and flash usually associated with pop
music, but it does provide a path toward something that, for decades, has
proved elusive for a lot of aspirant pop stars: career sustainability.
Some of these musicians, like Jepsen and Charli XCX, minted
a hit (or a handful) early in their careers before settling into pop’s middle
class; others, like Rexha and Max, consistently net genre hits, often in dance
music, but have as yet failed to cement themselves as household names. Ora, a
genuine chart success in the United Kingdom, has built a cultish fan base based
on the fact that she seems unable to get a foothold in the United States. (Her
most recent album, “You & I,” didn’t chart after its release in July.) As
with many of these stars, Ora’s fans love her precisely because she is
unsuccessful — a niche concern who operates with all of the pomp and pageantry
of an A-lister.
Artists like Sawayama and Caroline Polachek make music that
has little commercial impact, but they have manipulated a pop-leaning sound
that allows them to mount pop-style live shows and toy with pop aesthetics,
while artists like Sivan and Carpenter always seem as if they’re teetering
right on the edge of genuine megastardom, occasionally getting a hit to the
lower echelons of the Hot 100, but rarely any higher.
The common thread linking these musicians is that they don’t
treat “pop music” as a commercial category, but as a discrete musical lineage
with its own codes and conventions to be plundered and reinterpreted. It’s a
point of view made possible by the kind of fame the internet has built and
fostered: the idea that the term “pop star” is a measure of clout or name
recognition, not a badge that directly correlates to commercial success.
These pop stars essentially make genre records. Unlike those
of bygone eras, who pillaged the underground in search of new sounds to bring
to the mainstream, this brand of musician is fixated on pop’s own history. In
many ways, it makes sense that they would read as capital-P Pop Stars to the
denizens of a world as reference-obsessed as stan Twitter; much of this music
feels as if it were made by and for a hard-core fan.
In many ways, pop itself is shrinking. The Hot 100 is
currently populated by country musicians (Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs), purveyors
of regional sounds (Rema, Peso Pluma) and rap stars (Travis Scott, Gunna).
Aside from a few holdouts like Swift and Miley Cyrus, relics of an era in which
mainstream music was dominated by world-beating megawatt pop stars, there are
few pop singers on the charts right now.
For other contemporary pop stars, the act of releasing music
itself feels incidental to their celebrity status. In recent years, Kesha — one
of the dominant commercial forces of the 2010s, securing 10 Top 10s in the
first four years of her career — has become known less for her music than for
her longtime legal battle with producer Dr. Luke; still a Twitter (now known as
X) and tabloid fixture, her music is often the least-discussed thing about her.
“Gag Order,” her latest album, debuted at No. 187 in May, selling the
equivalent of 8,300 copies its first week.
And then there is Charli XCX, who spent a large portion of
her career making outré, abrasive records with a bevy of collaborators from the
worlds of hyperpop and experimental electronic music. Once a true commercial
prospect — during the early years of her career, Charli scored a handful of Hot
100 Top 10s, including the No. 1 Iggy Azalea collaboration “Fancy” — it seemed,
for a while, as if Charli had willfully recused herself from the pop music
Olympics, perhaps as a way of insulating herself against the major-label
industry’s callous and often cruel whims.
As it turned out, it was actually far simpler than that: She
was just taking an aesthetic detour. Her mainstream-skewing fifth album
“Crash,” released last year, was described by Charli herself as her “main pop
girl moment” and debuted at No. 7, her highest Billboard 200 position yet. This
month, her single “Speed Drive,” written for the “Barbie” soundtrack, became
her first Hot 100 entry in nine years. It drove the point home: She can be a
big-time pop star, if she so chooses.
