Hyperpop
Hyperpop (sometimes called bubblegum bass)[1] is a loosely defined electronic music movement[2][3] and microgenre[4] that predominantly originated in the United Kingdom during the early 2010s.
[5] Music associated with this scene received wider attention in August 2019 when Glenn MacDonald, an employee of Spotify, used the term "hyperpop" for the name of a playlist featuring artists such as Cook and 100 gecs.
Hyper-pop embodies an exaggerated, eclectic, and self-referential approach to pop music and typically employs elements such as brash synth melodies, Auto-Tuned "earworm" vocals, and excessive compression and distortion, as well as surrealist or nostalgic references to 2000s Internet culture and the Web 2.0 era.
[5] Common features include vocals that are heavily processed; metallic, melodic percussion sounds; pitch-shifted synths; catchy choruses; short song lengths; and "shiny, cutesy aesthetics" juxtaposed with angst-ridden lyrics.
[7] Joe Vitagliano, writing for American Songwriter, said hyperpop is an "exciting, bombastic, and iconoclastic genre — if it can even be called a 'genre'" and has "saw synths, auto-tuned vocals, glitch-inspired percussion and a distinctive late-capitalism-dystopia vibe.
[9] According to Vice 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.
"[5] He mentioned "outliers" from the 2000s nu rave, like Test Icicles, and PC Music contemporaries Rustie and Hudson Mohawke, who did similar things.
She also mentioned Britney 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.
[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] Among Cook's frequent collaborators, Variety and The New York Times described the work of Sophie as pioneering the style,[19][20] while Charli XCX was described as "queen" of the style by Vice, and her 2017 mixtape Pop 2 set a template for its sound, featuring "outré" production by AG Cook, Sophie, Umru, and Easyfun as well as "a titular mission to give pop – sonically, spiritually, aesthetically – a facelift for the modern age.
"[21] Chaudhury believes 3OH!3 "created the main blueprint for hyperpop"[21] 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"[21] influencing hyperpop, highlighting Dorian Electra's album My Agenda, which includes the song "Monk Mode" with black metal band Gaylord.
[4] Other artists featured on the playlist included AG Cook, Popstar Patch, Slayyyter, Gupi, Caroline Polachek, Hannah Diamond, and Kim Petras.
[24] 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][25] 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.
[28] 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.
He credited this "dispersal" to several factors, including "conflicting visions of its practitioners, the lifting of COVID-19 lockdowns, and the fact that some of its most promising musicians didn’t want fame and actively recoiled from it.
"[8] Despite this, Charli XCX's album Brat, which had a successful commercial performance in the US, UK and Australia,[36][37][38] and according to Metacritic had the highest ratings of 2024 from critics,[39] has been described as hyperpop.
[40][41] Bubblegum Bass, credited as hyperpop's first "era" by Pitchfork,[8] is sometimes used as a term to define the specific sound associated with art collective PC Music.
[42] The term ("digi" is short for "digital") was adopted in the mid-2010s by an online community of teenage musicians, communicating through Discord, to distinguish themselves from the preexisting hyperpop scene.
[11] Digicore artist Billy Bugara wrote that his colleagues "pull from genres as wide-reaching as midwestern emo, trance, and even Chicago drill.
[48] 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.
[55][56][57] Krushclub music combines bitcrushed electrodance beats with melodic pop rap vocals that are layered with autotune and distortion, creating a distinctive "Hexxed" sound.
[58] Krushclub musicians such as Lumi Athena, Odetari, cade clair, asteria, Britney Manson, 6arelyhuman,[59] 9lives, removeface, jnhygs, xxanteria, kyszenn, and kets4eki saw niche success thanks to websites like SoundCloud and TikTok.
