Hyperpop: Why We Love To Hate To Love It
If you’ve kept up with online music trends in the past two years, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of hyperpop. Often regarded by non-listeners as something like a bedazzled assault on the ears, the project of hyperpop seeks to identify all the flashy, over-the-top tropes of pop music and amp them up to eleven. Its artists throw subtlety out the window in favor of screeching synths and earth-shaking drum lines overlapped with vocals processed beyond recognition. As such, hyperpop is not for the faint of ears. In early 2020, when I first heard a song by 100 gecs – the ever-so-popular duo that has become the unofficial face of the subgenre – my automatic reaction was to physically recoil, then laugh, as I wondered aloud who the hell would choose to listen to that.
So how, then, was 100 gecs my top artist on Spotify later that year? And why, despite my undeniable affinity for their music and the emerging cultural pocket they represented, did I find this fact incredibly embarrassing? To answer these questions, we must explore the origins of the subgenre itself and its entry into popular culture.
The making of pop music is a deceptively scientific endeavor. The mainstream music industry carefully curates songs that latch onto listeners’ brains in ways so satisfying that even the most ardent of haters can’t shake them. Lyrical hooks are often uncomplicated and widely relatable, and most singers who make it to the top of the charts capture audiences with pleasant, naturally capable voices. Hyperpop, by contrast, requires a thorough dissection of the standard pop song – chopping it up, removing those qualities that make it easily listenable, and leaving a carcass of heavy production and glitz, which is then further twisted and embellished to create a ridiculous parody of itself.
The late musician-producer SOPHIE was a pioneer of this style during her lifetime. She made the art of electronic music completely her own, crafting unconventional sounds and effects – such as popping bubbles, clanging metal, and shattering glass – into pieces that expressed a novel, somewhat cynical take on pop music. Her aim was to burst the bubble, so to speak, of popular music’s obsession with the material, commercial, and artificial, while still holding fast to its danceable, pleasurable qualities with carefree lyrics and sweet melodies. This message is perhaps exemplified by the track “Immaterial” off her 2018 album Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides, where Cecile Believe’s pitched-up, youthful voice sings about embracing the fluidity of one’s identity outside of material and corporeal constraints. “You could be me and I could be you / Always the same and never the same / Without my legs or my hair / Without my genes or my blood / Tell me, where do I exist? / We're just immaterial.”
SOPHIE’s signature style influenced many producers and artists who sought to create their own extreme interpretations of pop music. This nascent community, which grew out of the PC music scene, was particularly inviting to transgender and genderfluid musicians, including SOPHIE herself; the style’s affinity for overly pitched and processed vocals created an opportunity for artists to extend the capabilities of their own voices. Laura Les of 100 gecs and Dorian Electra are examples of transgender artists who take after SOPHIE in their use of vocal manipulation as a tool to elevate their sound. Though this method isn’t unique to trans artists, it has created extensive opportunities for them to explore various presentations of gender, or even to divorce their music from expectations of gender entirely.
The maximalist aesthetic embodied by this new style, in combination with the fact that many of its predominant artists were themselves trans and/or queer, appealed significantly to young LGBTQ+ audiences. With catchy melodies and uptempo beats that are impossible not to dance to, 100 gecs, SOPHIE, and Charli XCX especially began to rise in popularity within online queer spaces. These groups embraced the style’s proximity to the idea of “camp” – an important sensibility in queer media and culture that, according to theorist Susan Sontag, “revels in artifice, stylization, theatricalization, irony, playfulness, and exaggeration rather than content.”
The “irony” piece became especially salient in listeners’ conception of the music style, which led many to view the entire goal of hyperpop as simply to poke fun at popular music and trends by being as sonically abrasive as possible. Audio clips from songs such as 100 gecs’ “money machine” and SOPHIE’s “Faceshopping” have become the backing tracks for memes and TikTok trends, which further led to the memeification of the songs themselves. It has become common for people to insist that they simply listen to hyperpop as either a joke or a way of engaging with the music’s subliminal commentary about capitalism and the perils of postmodern society. Other hyperpop listeners turned to self-deprecation in order to justify their enjoyment of the genre. I admittedly did this for much of my own listening; my primary reason for finding it entertaining was often “because it’s bad” or “because it breaks my brain” or, especially, “because I’m unwell.” I certainly wasn’t (and am not) alone in that, if TikTok has anything to say about it[1].
But while the origins of the genre were indeed rooted in social commentary to some degree, not all hyperpop seeks to exist solely as a parody of itself. Laura Les has expressed her own opinions about the “irony” that people project onto the music she and Dylan Brady produce as 100 gecs. “People think that we’ve staked our entire career on the fact that we can be ironic really well. I’m like: ‘Nobody can do that!’ Who’s a parody artist who makes music similar to ours? [...] We’re not fucking being ironic,” she says.“We’re having fun. Really serious fun. Intense fun.”
I was forced to push past the thin veneer of “irony” when my 2020 Spotify Wrapped stared me in the face and told me that I spent more time listening to 100 gecs than any other artist. I like hyperpop, sometimes because it’s funny, but mostly because it’s fun. It made me feel excited and energetic. I held a deep appreciation for all the incongruous pieces – drawn from pop, ska, punk, trap, emo rap, and electronica – and how they came together to create such a chaotically lovable product.
So I implore my fellow hyperpop fans to be brave. Peel back that thin veil of “irony” and just admit you like it for the ridiculous thing it is. Crediting hyperpop on its own merit can help us acknowledge that music doesn’t have to be lyrically sophisticated or deeply imbued in hidden commentary to be good. Sometimes it can just be fun. Seriously, intensely, absurdly fun.
Citations:
[1]: t4ttessa on TikTok , tylerbxrnett on TikTok , odivse on TikTok , amaraevangelia on TikTok , digital.star on TikTok
Edited by Jennifer Morse, editor of Bird’s Eye View
Cover art by Louise Gagnon