| Hyperpop | |
|---|---|
| Other names | Bubblegum bass[1] |
| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | Early 2010s, United Kingdom[dubious –discuss] |
| Typical instruments | |
| Other topics | |
Hyperpop (sometimes calledbubblegum bass) is a loosely definedelectronic music movement[2][3] andmicrogenre[4] that predominantly originated during the early 2010s. It is characterised by an exaggerated ormaximalist take onpopular music,[3] and typically integratespop andavant-garde sensibilities while drawing on elements commonly found inelectronic,hip hop, anddance music.[5]
Deriving influence from a varied range of sources, the origins of the hyperpop scene are commonly traced to the output of English musicianA. G. Cook and his record labelPC Music, as well as associated artists such asSophie andCharli XCX.[5] The approach received wider attention in August 2019 when Glenn MacDonald, an employee ofSpotify, used the term "hyperpop" for the name of a playlist featuring artists such as Cook and100 gecs.[4] The style gained popularity among younger people throughsocial media platforms likeTikTok,[6] which boosted its exposure particularly during theCOVID-19 pandemic.[7] After the term "hyperpop" began to be commonly used, many artists associated with it rejected the label, and by the early 2020s, it was considered by many to be a "dead" genre.[8][9]
Hyper-pop embodies an exaggerated, eclectic, andself-referential approach topop music and typically employs elements such as brashsynth melodies,Auto-Tuned "earworm" vocals, and excessivecompression anddistortion, as well assurrealist or nostalgic references to 2000s Internet culture and theWeb 2.0 era.[5] Common features include vocals that are heavilyprocessed; metallic, melodic percussion sounds;pitch-shifted synths; catchy choruses; short song lengths; and "shiny, cutesy aesthetics" juxtaposed with angst-ridden lyrics.[5]
The Wall Street Journal's Mark Richardson described hyperpop as turning the "artificial" parts of pop music up to an extreme level, creating a "cartoonish wall of noise" that is full of catchy tunes and memorable hooks. The music moves between beautiful and ugly, with shimmery melodies crashing into mangled instrumentals.[10] Joe Vitagliano, writing forAmerican Songwriter, said hyperpop is an "exciting, bombastic, andiconoclastic genre — if it can even be called a 'genre'" and has "saw synths, auto-tuned vocals, glitch-inspired percussion and a distinctivelate-capitalism-dystopia vibe."[3] Artists in this style mix theavant-garde andpop music, often balancing between being addictively fun and a bit too much, according toPitchfork's Kieran Press-Reynolds. He added that in 2024, hyperpop had become a "Frankensteinian macro-genre."[11]Irony and humor are also important in this type of music.[12]
According toVice journalist Eli Enis, hyperpop is not so much about following music rules, but "a shared ethos of transcending genre altogether, while still operating within the context of pop."[2] Artists in this style like to bring back semi-obscure music genres, and they enjoy messing with what is "cool" or "artistic."[5] Hyperpop can mix many different kinds of music, likebubblegum pop,trance,Eurohouse,emo rap,nu metal,cloud rap,J-pop, andK-pop.[5] Hyperpop also mix sounds fromcloud rap,emo,lo-fi trap,trance,dubstep, andchiptune. The style has strange and surprising parts taken from hip hop since the mid-2010s.[2]The Atlantic said the genre "swirls together and speeds up Top 40 tricks of present and past: aJanet Jackson drum slam here, aDepeche Mode synth squeal there, the overblown pep of novelty jingles throughout," but also said "the genre's zest forpunk's brattiness,hip-hop's boastfulness, andmetal's noise."[13][2]
Hyperpop is often linked to theLGBTQ community and aesthetics.[5] Several of its key practitioners aregay,non-binary, ortransgender.[13] The microgenre's emphasis on vocal modulation has allowed artists to experiment with thegender presentation of their voices,[5] as well as to deal withgender dysphoria, and hyperpop artists such as Sophie and 8485 have explored gender fluidity and selfhood in their lyrical content.[11]
Digicore and glitchcore are contemporaneous movements that are sometimes conflated with hyperpop due to its overlapping artists.[14]
The first instance of the term "hyperpop" was seemingly coined in October 1988 by writer Don Shewey in an article about the Scottishdream pop bandCocteau Twins,[15] stating thatEngland in the 1980s had "nurtured the simultaneous phenomena of hyperpop and antipop".[16]
The origins of hyperpop are a bit unclear, like many things created on the internet. Sophie Walker fromComplex said that it's hard to know exactly where it came from.[14] The term "hyperpop" was sometimes used as a genre descriptor in thenightcore scene onSoundCloud.Spotify analyst Glenn McDonald said he first saw the term in 2014, referring to the UK label PC Music, but he did not think it was amicrogenre until 2018.[2][4] Even though other artists likeMeishi Smile andMaltine Records helped shape the style, many people say hyperpop started with the music fromPC Music in the mid-2010s.[17][4][18] Many hyperpop artists are connected to or inspired by this label. Will Pritchard fromThe Independent said, "it's possible to see [hyperpop] as an expression not just of the genres it borrows from, but of the scene that evolved aroundA. G. Cook's PC Music label (an early home to Sophie and Charli XCX, among others) in the UK in the early 2010s."
There were many artists before hyperpop that helped shape the genre, as Pritchard explains, "to some, the ground covered by hyperpop won't seem all that new."[5] He mentioned "outliers" from the 2000snu rave, likeTest Icicles, andPC Music contemporariesRustie andHudson Mohawke, who did similar things. About these two artists, he said their "fluoro, trance-edged smooshes of dance and hip-hop are reminiscent of a lot of hyperpop today." Another artist who helped influence hyperpop isYasutaka Nakata.[17] Heather Phares fromAll Music said thatSleigh Bells' music "foreshadowed hyperpop" and other artists who "brazenly ignored genre boundaries and united the extremes of sweet and heavy."[19] Ian Cohen from Pitchfork also said that the term "hyperpop" describedSleigh Bells before it became a popular genre.[20] Eilish Gilligan fromJunkee creditedKesha for impacting hyperpop, pointing out that her "grating, half-spoken vocal featured inBlow and all of her early work, in fact, feel reminiscent of a lot of the intense vocals in hyperpop today." She also mentionedBritney Spears, saying that her "2011 dancefloor fillers 'Till The World Ends', 'Hold It Against Me' and 'I Wanna Go' all share the same pounding beats that populate modern hyperpop."[21]
Spotify editor Lizzy Szabo referred toA. G. Cook as the "godfather" of hyperpop.[2] According to Enis, PC Music "laid the groundwork for [the microgenre's] melodic exuberance and cartoonish production", with some of hyperpop's surrealist qualities also derived from 2010s hip hop.[2] She states that hyperpop built on the influence ofPC Music, but also incorporated the sounds ofemo rap,cloud rap,trap,trance,dubstep andchiptune.[2] Among Cook's frequent collaborators,Variety andThe New York Times described the work of Sophie as pioneering the style,[22][23] whileCharli XCX was described as "queen" of the style byVice, and her 2017 mixtapePop 2 set a template for its sound, featuring "outré" production byAG Cook,Sophie, Umru, andEasyfun as well as "a titular mission to give pop – sonically, spiritually, aesthetically – a facelift for the modern age."[2]
Aliya Chaudhury fromKerrang! explained thatcrunkcore,metalcore, andnu metal were key to creating hyperpop.[24] She said nu metal's "hybrid ofhip-hop,metal, funk, industrial and beyond lends itself perfectly to the hyperpop ideology," withRico Nasty drawing from it and100 gecs remixingLinkin Park's "One Step Closer."[24] Chaudhury also pointed out thatRina Sawayama's debutSawayama "draws fromLimp Bizkit andEvanescence," helping bring backnu metal.[24] Forcrunkcore, she notedMetro Station andCobra Starship "created exaggerated pop songs that mixed inrock,hip-hop anddance influences," whileBreathe Carolina "used heavy electronics to create catchy pop tunes."[24] Chaudhury believes3OH!3 "created the main blueprint for hyperpop"[24] with their "ability to parody pop and take it to bewildering extremes," using "blown-out synths, and modulated vocals." Lastly, she mentioned metalcore's "most electronic-leaning artists"[24] influencing hyperpop, highlightingDorian Electra's albumMy Agenda, which includes the song "Monk Mode" with black metal bandGaylord.[24]
In May 2019, hyperpop duo100 gecs released their debut album1000 gecs, which amassed millions of listens onstreaming services and helped to consolidate the style. In Pritchard's description, 100 gecs took hyperpop "to its most extreme, and extremely catchy, conclusions: stadium-sizedtrap beats processed and distorted to near-destruction, overwrought emo vocals and cascades of raveyarpeggios."[5] According toVice andThe Face, a second wave of the genre emerged in 2019 following the release of1000 gecs.[25][26]
In August 2019, Spotify launched the "Hyperpop" playlist which further cemented the microgenre, and featured guest curation from 100 Gecs and others.[4] Other artists featured on the playlist includedAG Cook, Popstar Patch,Slayyyter,Gupi,Caroline Polachek,Hannah Diamond, andKim Petras.[27] Spotify editor Lizzy Szabo and her colleagues landed on the name for their August 2019 playlist after McDonald noted the term in the website's metadata and classified it as a microgenre.[4] In November, Cook added artists includingJ Dilla,Nicki Minaj,Iggy Azalea,Lil Uzi Vert andKate Bush to the playlist, which caused controversy due to these additions pushing out smaller hyperpop artists who relied upon the playlist for their earnings.[4][28] In addition, David Turner, a former strategy manager at SoundCloud, noted a "spike in March and April 2020 from new creators," on the platform, many of which were making hyperpop-adjacent music.[29]
The microgenre began to see rise in popularity in 2020, with the prominence of the Spotify playlist and its spread within younger audiences on social media, such as onTikTok,[6][30] particularly "alt TikTok", one of the maincountercultures on the app.[31] In 2022,Ringtone Mag suggested that part of the reason the microgenre rose in popularity across the platform was due to its nature of favouring heavy beats to which creators could dance and make transitions.[32]Pitchfork has credited the isolation of theCOVID-19 pandemic for its rise.[11] Hyperpop albums like Charli XCX'show i'm feeling now (2020) and A. G. Cook'sApple (2020) appeared on critics' 2020 end-of-year lists.[5] Hyperpop artistElyOtto's song "SugarCrash!" became one of the most popular songs in the app's history, and was used in over 5 million videos on the platform by July 2021.[15]
Subculture, a "hyperpoprave", gained prominence alongside the rise of the microgenre and continued during the pandemic through six-hour long "Zoom parties", welcoming over 1,000 guests at its peak and hosting raves in cities across the United States after the pandemic. In 2023, the rave gained attention fromRolling Stone for its mix of PC Music artists and others under the hyperpop umbrella, including rap-influenced artists from SoundCloud, as well as its significant LGBTQ inclusion. The raves operate as a usefulnetworking event for artists that attend.[12]
Internationally, hyperpop gained notoriety inHispanic countries, such asArgentina,Chile,Mexico andSpain, particularly withSpanish-speaking artists and producers.Nylon's Ben Jolley citedPutochinomaricón as one of the "biggest names in the scene."[33]
Questions concerning the potential decline of the microgenre, the corporate influences upon it, and the meaning of the 'hyperpop' name, began to be raised in 2021.[14] Charli XCX, in August 2021, posted a tweet asking "rip hyperpop? discuss".[26][34] In 2022,Dazed noted that since 2019, the word 'hyperpop' "has since become a catch-all phrase for any and all forms of extreme pop music," and that "sonically, you'd be hard pressed to find any internet-born music made in the last decade that hasn't been retroactively brandished as hyperpop", also stating that "almost all of those given the label have grown disillusioned with the term, or grown irritated by its constraints."[35] The same year, prominent hyperpop musicianGlaive stated that he andEricdoa were "working on killing" the movement,[25] though three months later stated that it "will never die."[36] The packaging of the community within the name 'hyperpop' for profit led to its music becoming "algorithmic" over time.[29] Subculture organisers Gannon Baxter and Tyler Shepherd expressed mixed feelings about their use of the term "hyperpop", but Shepherd stated that their use of the term was "just a tool to quickly convey what realm of music we’re talking about".[12] In June 2023, PC Music announced that after that year, the label would not be releasing new music, instead turning to archival projects and special reissues.[37] In September 2023,Underscores, another significant contributor to the microgenre, stated that it was "officially dead".[38]
In October 2024, Kieran Press-Reynolds ofPitchfork commended the past success of the hyperpop scene but remarked that "none of [its] artists [had] soared in an enduring way" and that "the 'pop' in hyperpop proved a total bust". He credited this "dispersal" to several factors, including "conflicting visions of its practitioners, the lifting ofCOVID-19 lockdowns, and the fact that some of its most promising musicians didn’t want fame and actively recoiled from it."[11] Despite this, Charli XCX's albumBrat, which had a successful commercial performance in the US, UK and Australia,[39][40][41] and according toMetacritic had the highest ratings of 2024 from critics,[42] has been described as hyperpop.[43][44]
Bubblegum bass, credited as hyperpop's first "era" byPitchfork,[11] is sometimes used as a term to define the specific sound associated with art collectivePC Music.[1] Artists in this wave includeHannah Diamond,GFOTY andA. G. Cook, all contributors to the PC Music label.[11]
Digicore is a microgenre related to hyperpop.[45] The term ("digi" is short for "digital") was adopted in the mid-2010s by an online community of teenage musicians, communicating throughDiscord, to distinguish themselves from the preexisting hyperpop scene.[14] This microgenre saw a rise during theCOVID-19 pandemic.[11] It differs from hyperpop mainly by adding 2020s trap-rap influences but there remains a degree of crossover between the scenes.[14] Digicore artist Billy Bugara wrote that his colleagues "pull from genres as wide-reaching asmidwestern emo,trance, and evenChicago drill."[46] The beginnings of digicore are rooted in internet culture and many popular producers from the microgenre are between the ages of 15 and 18.[46] In 2018, Dalton (a digicore artist relations figure) started aMinecraft and Discord server called "Loser's Club" that became a haven for several of the most popular artists within the digicore scene such asQuinn,Glaive,Ericdoa andMidwxst.[46] This sense of community and collaboration have become key tenets within the scene, and have contributed to the rise in the popularity of the microgenre as a whole, with a majority of the scene preferring the idea of rising in popularity as a collective rather than as individuals.[46] In 2021, the digicore albumFrailty byJane Remover received praise on mainstream music sitesPitchfork andPaste.[47][48]
Glitchcore, a microgenre related to hyperpop[45] and digicore (sometimes characterised as a subgenre of both styles), is often characterised by high-pitched vocals, sharp808s, and frequenthi-hats. As Kyann-Sian Williams ofNME stated, "glitchcore is hyperpop on steroids",[49] referring to the exaggerated vocals, distortions, glitch noises, and other pop elements present within glitchcore. One of the most defining elements of glitchcore is vocal glitch patterns, created by rapidly repeating a section of a vocal sample. 100 gecs played a significant role in establishing the sound of glitchcore music by blending various genres and pushing the boundaries of sound experimentation.[50]
Stef, a producer of the popular hyperpop and glitchcore collective Helix Tears stated that there certainly is a difference between the two microgenres, saying, "Hyperpop is more melodic and poppy whereas glitchcore is indescribable".[49] Glitchcore is typically made up of artists that share stylistic similarities to 100 gecs, rather than the musicians signed to PC Music.[51]
TikTok played a key role in popularising glitchcore, through video edits to two viral glitchcore songs "NEVER MET!" by CMTEN and Glitch Gum and "Pressure" by David Shawty and Yungster Jack.[51] Glitchcore has also been associated with a specific visual aesthetic where videos are typically accompanied by glitchy, fast-paced, cluttered, colourful edits that are even marked with flash warnings in certain cases.[51] Some popular digicore artists like d0llywood1 even refer to glitchcore as "an aesthetic, like the edits", rather than an actual music genre.[52]
Hyper mandelão,[failed verification] orhyperfunk,[53][54] is the result of the fusion of mandelão, a subgenre offunk carioca andslap house, with hyperpop and influence ofindustrial music. The main artists of this style are DJ Mu540, DJ Ramemes[55] andPabllo Vittar.
Dariacore, also known ashyperflip, is amicrogenre related to hyperpop.[45] It was coined byJane Remover following her 2021 albumDariacore and its two sequels,Dariacore 2: Enter Here, Hell to the Left andDariacore 3... At least I think that's what it's called?. The microgenre gained popularity onSoundCloud in 2021 and 2022. Dariacore is characterised by sped up and pitch-shifted samples from pop music and other popular media,breakbeats, andJersey club influence.[56] The genre was described by Raphael Helfand ofThe Fader as "an entire genre in and of itself, taking hyperpop's silliest tendencies to their logical conclusions".[57]
Although the American dariacore scene has been in relative decline, the Japanese scene is thriving as of 2025. According to Pitchfork's Kieran Press-Reynolds, this movement in Japan has been largely driven by thenetlabel Lost Frog. Founder Haruo Ishihara attributes the style’s popularity in Japan partly to the country’s established song remix and OtoMAD meme culture, as well as the frequent sampling of familiar anime and J-pop hits.[58]