GutterPutter

By the mid-2010s, pop music felt a bit too repetitive even for a genre that’s centred around its listenability to the mainstream. Boy bands, sex symbols, the same bass drop whether the chorus pops up, the top 10 singles of the week would have felt too similar to pick out a favourite artist as they all sound the same. Not helping is how heteronormative they all feel; very rarely do you hear of a chart-topper which tackles love from a perspective of a different sexuality or from a non-binary perspective. All the songs follow the very familiar structure of short verses that precedes the chorus that would make you want to dance to its tempo. All the singers tend to be conventionally talented with their high notes and ability to remain pitch-perfect throughout their songs. There’s little about them that would help each one to stand out.

They all feel a bit ‘corporate’, utterly devoid of creativity or experimentation to truly wow its listeners. The artists feel like they’re just products to satiate whatever trending interest has been around for a while instead of being treated as human beings. With reality shows and soft news being fixated around them, the kind of music they put out ends up feeling a tad bit unauthentic. You can relate to them on a superficial level but you are unlikely going to find yourself in the same shoes as the subject matter in the song.

Then, as the decade gets close to the end, a couple of artists start to appear online as unexpected favourites. With musicians from PC Music having a head start for their unorthodox creativity, a cult following is starting to form. Zoomers and millennials are starting to gather around the music movement for how alien their approach is towards the very tropes and conventions that have plagued pop songs throughout the 2010s. In their albums and mixtapes, autotune and vocal manipulation takes precedence as the electronic beats and instrumentation sees itself become a hyperactive volcano of noise and cuts. Studio tinkering is prevalent in using the sampling of the leading vocals and ‘featured’ rap verses often looks deep into relationship troubles and queer awakening instead of fortune and success. How did a handful of underground singers and songwriters rise up to be some of the most beloved names in the late 2010s?

Origins

Before hyperpop becomes the internet’s phenomenon in LGBT+ music and avant-pop popularity, representation for younger music lovers often feel oversimplified. The name dates back to the 1980s with reference to Cocteau Twins’ innovations, but that leads nowhere in defining the Scottish band’s dream pop style. Sure, you have Avril Laivgne back in the early 2000s and Ariana Grande throughout the 2010s, but they don’t feel like they have the staying power to the techno-experienced generation. They bicker about teenage romances and the power of independence. Unfortunately, there’s next to no songs which truly feel as if they’re making full effect of the growing use of the internet in our daily lives. 

And why won’t they? It’s no lie that the digital world has some damaging connotations from the fear of being chronically online to how it can elevate stranger danger to a whole new level. There are arguments and statistics that help to pinpoint how they can have a negative influence in your life if they’re handled negatively. Yet, the internet helps to provide a new platform for those to express themselves in a way that they might not be able to in real life. This is especially big for those who are undergoing a feeling of gender dysmorphia as they are then given the platform to be able to be their more comfortable gender. 

As mentioned on Them, Laura Les of 100 gecs (also known by her moniker of osno1) starts her music career off in uploading tracks to SoundCloud as a way to come into terms with her gender identity. The nightcore-esque vocal manipulation and deliberate autotune is shown to challenge the typical perception on what gender is and how that manifests in the songs that we listened to. As a result, many artists deliberately go with an androgynous kind of vocal performance to continually question how gender fits in the convention of music.

The beats, on the other hand, are a lot more varied in where the context lies with regards to them being represented in numerous albums in the genre. On one hand, bubblegum bass, the original name which refers to PC Music’s typical style, exaggerates the twee parts of electro-pop in the early 2000s while mixing it with the post-industrial abrasiveness of deconstructed club music. Thanks to artists like A.G. Cook who founded the movement, bubblegum bass finds itself a niche market to become a favourite within. However, not every album in the genre takes inspiration from the movement with other albums instead looking into pop punk, emo rap, and alternative R&B with an unconventional twist of glitchy production and digitalised vocal performance. 

What one could reasonably argue as a fine example of proto-hyperpop is Born Gold, the unconventional electropop project of Cecil Freda that has a small following between 2011 and 2017. The debut record in Bodysongs in 2011 might not tackle themes of gender identity and feature ironic commentaries on young adult problems, but its production often adopt 8-bit sounds while relying on clipped vocal samples and audio skipping. Thanks to Freda’s passionate singing, the album manages to cultivate its own fandom for how familiar it is to your typical pop song – and just about different from it at the same time.

At Its Prime

While the internet gives way to self-exploration and experimentation, it’s a long way off for hyperpop to take shape. Technically, it doesn’t exist as a genre until 2018 as many of the artists who are seen as contributors to it were simply seen as part of PC Music. When you have yourself a deliberately overproduced track which feels like a parody of a top 10 love song single, you would more likely think that they’re produced by AG Cook and the likes. Yet, there is one standout artist who is lauded for providing a platform for bubblegum bass to transition into hyperpop – SOPHIE. 

Initially rising to fame as the producer behind contemporary Charli XCX’s 2016 avant-pop EP Vroom Vroom, SOPHIE’s magnum opus arrives in the sole album of 2018’s OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES. The production is bombastic with metallic percussion for beats, abrasive backing vocals and textures, and the vocals always tend to be altered for bonus effects. As a transgender woman, SOPHIE’s lyrical themes always tend to either allude to the prospect of how we choose to look as a true indication of who we identify as or she puts the two sexes against each other to show how complex gender identity can be. The shameless exploration of sexuality and subversive take on electropop showers SOPHIE with acclaim and a following who wanted to replicate the album’s magic. 

Even with the unfortunate incident in 2021, SOPHIE continues to inspire many to be more open with their queer identity all the while shooing away the need to conform to the typical conventions of pop music. The style of OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES makes for a model for many to follow due to its then-unique style; thus begins a new era of indie music wherein its popularity is comparable to the likes of post-punk revival. Unpredictable, oftentimes metallic beats and altered singing to the point of parodic extremes is starting to become the norm for many young musicians and artists. 

Among the most notable names in the genre include Dorian Electra, a genderfluid singer-songwriter from Texas whose debut album garners acclaim for its queer themes and its EDM-influenced production. 2018’s Flamboyant is seen by many as one of the numerous hallmarks in hyperpop. Meanwhile, Underscore’s Fishmonger (2021) sticks out for its more explicit adoption of indie rock and R&B elements which, in turn, enables the artist to have his own fanbase. There are other contemporaries such as webcage, Frost Children, and dynastic; they all are notable names who rose to fame for following the genre’s expanding fandom. They all pale compared to one name: 100 gecs.

2019’s 1000 gecs could well be to OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES what Loveless is to Psychocandy back in the 1980s. It’s the platonic ideal (discretion be noted!) of everything that what many would consider to be the founding album for how abrasive, self-expressive, and attuned with the internet it is. Laura Les and producer Dylan Brady have made what some would consider to be a meme of an album even if they might disagree with the label. From the infectious ‘stupid horse’ to the subversive love song in ‘ringtone’, much of the record’s tracks turns heads when it comes to what we deem to be listenable. In turn, 100 gecs emerge from their debut album’s release date with an unexpected, yet loyal fanbase which numbers in tens of thousands. The divisive nature of their style would lead to a meme where fans would joke about how they sound horrible even as they keep on going back to them. 

Hyperpop would eventually reach its peak in popularity during the Covid pandemic. With many people starting to become chronically online to deal with lockdown measures, more amateur producers and musicians opt to use the noisy style of the genre to become definite standouts. However, popstars also do turn to the genre’s unconventionality with Charli XCX being the prime example. Her fourth LP, 2020’s How I’m Feeling Now, is partially inspired by her mental struggles from staying inside from the pandemic. One unique twist that she incorporates is that rather than turn to more established names, her producers for the album are all part of hyperpop much like SOPHIE with Dylan Brady and A.G. Cook being among her most prominent. With a more visceral direction to take her album towards, Charli cements herself as one of the most innovative pop artists of her time thanks to her constant boundary pushing even if it makes her album relatively inaccessible. 

The End of the Line?

For all the excitement that hyperpop is receiving despite its extremes, many of the associated artists and musicians have started to gradually turn from it. Just over a year after How I’m Feeling Now’s release, one of Charli XCX’s Instagram posts alludes to a change in genre specialisation as her description reads “rip hyperpop?”. Only numerous months later in March 2022, her fifth album CRASH was released with virtually no trace of hyperpop’s unpredictability and experimentation. Meanwhile, other artists like 100 gecs continue to make music that sounds much like their usual style of hyperpop, but have shown a clearer fondness of divergence towards pop punk.

Moreover, the simple definition of hyperpop as an exaggeration of your average pop song divides up many artists for how vague it is. Some prefer the term ‘digicore’ as it puts a clearer focus on the retro-styled, 8-bit production on top of being a clear electropop variant. Dazed records how the vagueness of the genre stems from the forced attempts to classify the largely avant-pop musicians with varying views and styles in their own composition. Once the autotune characteristic becomes more common and queer themes start to manifest itself in more ways, how can you confidently say which album is hyperpop feels more like labelling for the sake of it. 

Thus, by 2022, the hype around hyperpop has died down as the fans start to rally around their favourite artists who might flirt with another genre. Nevertheless, the genre’s legacy is formed with many of the LGBT+ crowds taking pride in their left-field tastes and songwriting while the more well-known names have helped unknown musicians reach a wider audience. The hyperbole might be a gimmick that makes the record more obnoxious than it does fun, but that doesn’t deter many from loving it. Rarely do you hear of a movement that encapsulates the online world as vividly as hyperpop.