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Hyperpop
Electronic music genre From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Hyperpop is an electronic music movement and loosely defined microgenre that originated in the early 2010s in the United Kingdom. It is characterised by an exaggerated or maximalist take on popular music, and typically integrates pop and avant-garde sensibilities while drawing on elements commonly found in electronic, rock, hip hop, and dance music. The origins of hyperpop are primarily traced back to the output of English musician A. G. Cook's record label and art collective PC Music, with associated artists, Sophie, GFOTY and Charli XCX, helping to pioneer a musical style that was later known as "bubblegum bass".[1]
In 2019, the genre experienced a rise in popularity with the virality of the song "Money Machine" by 100 gecs,[2] and was further proliferated by Spotify, whose employee Lizzy Szabo launched the influential "Hyperpop" playlist, after spotting the term "hyperpop" on the platform's metadata, which had previously been added by data analyst Glenn McDonald in 2018. Following this, the style gained wider popularity among Gen Z through social media platforms like TikTok, particularly on Alt TikTok,[3] which boosted its exposure during the COVID-19 lockdowns. After hyperpop entered the mainstream in the early 2020s, the label was rejected by artists originally associated with the scene, which led to an overall decline in emerging musicians.[4][5]
Hyperpop's influence was endured in the development of subsequent internet-based microgenres that emerged or primarily developed during the early 2020s, such as sigilkore, jerk, rage, hexd, and krushclub,[6] as well as the indie sleaze revival.[7]
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Characteristics
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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".[8] Artists embody 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.[9] 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 or ironic lyricism.[9][10] Hyperpop has been described as "post-internet".[11]
The movement is often associated with the LGBTQ community, drawing primary influences from queer culture.[9] Several key artists identify as gay, non-binary, or transgender.[12] The microgenre's emphasis on vocal modulation has allowed artists to experiment with gender presentation in their voices,[9] as well as deal with gender dysphoria. Artists like Sophie and 8485 explore themes of gender fluidity in their lyrical content.[13]
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.[14] 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".[15] Artists in this style mix the avant-garde and pop music, often balancing between being addictively fun and a bit too much, according to Pitchfork's Kieran Press-Reynolds. He added that in 2024, hyperpop had become a "Frankensteinian macro-genre".[13]
The Atlantic said the genre "swirls together and speeds up Top 40 tricks of present and past: a Janet Jackson drum slam here, a Depeche Mode synth squeal there, the overblown pep of novelty jingles throughout," but also said "the genre's zest for punk's brattiness, hip-hop's boastfulness, and metal's noise".[12][8]
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Background
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Etymology and forerunners
The earliest known use of the term "hyperpop" was made in October 1988 by writer Don Shewey in an article about the Scottish dream pop band Cocteau Twins,[16] stating that England in the 1980s had "nurtured the simultaneous phenomena of hyperpop and antipop".[17] In the late 2000s, the term "hyperpop" was sometimes used as a genre descriptor in the nightcore scene and later associated with the artists surrounding the London-based PC Music record label and art collective in the early 2010s. Subsequently, Spotify data analyst Glenn McDonald, responsible for the genre database Every Noise at Once, as well as the inclusion of the label "hyperpop" to the platform's metadata in 2018, said he first saw the term in 2014, in reference to PC Music, but he did not think of it as a "microgenre" until 2018.[8][18]
Subsequently, various artists acted as influential precursors to hyperpop, helping in shaping and developing the genre, as Will Pritchard of the Independent explains, "to some, the ground covered by hyperpop won't seem all that new".[9] He mentioned "outliers" from the 2000s nu rave scene, like Test Icicles, and PC Music contemporaries Rustie and Hudson Mohawke as pursuing similar approaches; of the latter two artists, he noted that their "fluoro, trance-edged smooshes of dance and hip-hop are reminiscent of a lot of hyperpop today". Ian Cohen from Pitchfork claimed the term "hyperpop" was originally used to describe the music of Sleigh Bells.[19][20] Followed by, Heather Phares from All Music claiming Sleigh Bells' music "foreshadowed hyperpop".[21] Other artists like Meishi Smile and record label, Maltine Records also contributed in shaping the style. Followed by Japanese DJ, Yasutaka Nakata.[22] Journalist Aliya Chaudhury believes 3OH!3 "created the main blueprint for hyperpop" with their "ability to parody pop and take it to bewildering extremes," using "blown-out synths, and modulated vocals".[23]
Additionally, mainstream pop artists such as Kesha were credited by writers like Eilish Gilligan from Junkee as influential precursors, writing: "[Kesha's] grating, half-spoken vocal featured in Blow and all of her early work, in fact, feel reminiscent of a lot of the intense vocals in hyperpop today". This was followed by a mention of Britney Spears, stating: "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".[24]
Influences
Hyperpop initially emerged out of the artists surrounding the PC Music record label and art collective in London, during the early 2010s, the original scene drew influences from ball culture, alongside 1990s and 2000s electronic music genres which were sometimes associated with early internet culture, such as trance music, Eurohouse, future bass, electropop, Euro-trance, UK bass, dubstep, nightcore, chiptune and balearic beat as well as bloghouse-related music which included nu rave, electro house and electroclash.[25][26] Other influences included bubblegum pop[27] and emo,[8] alongside heavy metal genres like crunkcore, nu metal, and metalcore.[23]
The genre later incorporated broader influences during its second wave in the late 2010s, drawing influence from contemporary meme and internet culture,[28] as well as production and musical styles lifted from hip-hop like emo rap, cloud rap and lo-fi trap,[8] contemporaneous movements like digicore and glitchcore became primary influences, as both scenes were sometimes conflated with hyperpop due to overlapping artists.[9] Other influences included J-pop, and K-pop.[8]
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History
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2010s
Origins
Hyperpop originally emerged out of the PC Music record label and art collective in the early 2010s.[22][18][29] Spotify editor Lizzy Szabo referred to A. G. Cook as the "godfather" of hyperpop.[8] 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.[8] She states that hyperpop built on the influence of PC Music, but also incorporated the sounds of emo rap, cloud rap, trap, trance, dubstep and chiptune.[8] Among Cook's frequent collaborators, Variety and the New York Times described the work of Sophie as pioneering the style,[30][31] while Charli XCX was described as "queen" of the style by Vice, her 2016 EP Vroom Vroom[32][33] and 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".[8]
Late 2010s-2020s
Second Wave
According to Vice and the Face, a second wave of hyperpop following the original PC Music scene, emerged in 2019, spearheaded by hyperpop duo 100 gecs, whose viral hit "Money Machine" helped reinvent and popularize the genre. In May 2019, they released their debut album 1000 gecs[34][35], which amassed millions of listens on streaming services. The Independent described 100 gecs as taking hyperpop, "to its most extreme, and extremely catchy, conclusions: stadium-sized trap beats processed and distorted to near-destruction, overwrought emo vocals and cascades of ravey arpeggios".[9] In August 2019, Spotify launched the "Hyperpop" playlist, led by senior editor, Lizzy Szabo, which later featured guest curation from 100 Gecs and others in the scene, helping to further popularize the microgenre.[18] Other artists featured on the playlist included AG Cook, Popstar Patch, Slayyyter, Gupi, Caroline Polachek, Hannah Diamond, and Kim Petras.[36] Szabo and her colleagues landed on the name for the playlist after stumbling upon it on the platform's metadata, which drew from the site Every Noise at Once, ran by data analyst and Spotify employee Glenn McDonald, who was credited with adding the term in 2018.[18][37] In November, Cook added non-hyperpop artists such as J Dilla, Nicki Minaj, Lil Uzi Vert and Kate Bush to the playlist, which caused controversy due to these additions pushing out smaller hyperpop artists who relied upon the playlist for their earnings.[18][38] 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.[39]
In 2020, the microgenre began to see a greater rise in popularity, which was linked to the COVID-19 lockdowns,[13][40] albums like Charli XCX's how i'm feeling now (2020) and A.G. Cook's Apple (2020) appeared on critics' 2020 end-of-year lists,[9] while the movement saw a broader cultural influence amongst Gen Z on social media platforms like TikTok,[41][42] particularly "Alt TikTok", which Rolling Stone described as "one of the main countercultures on the app".[3][43] On September 25, 2020, Pitchfork cited Alt TikTok as having an influence on wider music trends, stating: "Alt TikTok’s music is now a hot zone for major record labels, pushing it even further into the mainstream".[44] In July 2021, Hyperpop artist ElyOtto's song "SugarCrash!" became one of the most popular songs in TikTok history, and was used in over 5 million videos on the platform.[16] 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 to.[45]
During the pandemic, Los Angeles-based virtual "hyperpop raves", simply entitled "Subculture", gained prominence through six-hour long "Zoom parties", welcoming over 1,000 guests at its peak and later hosting raves in cities across the United States after the end of the COVID-19 lockdowns. In 2023, the raves gained attention from Rolling 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, with the raves operating as useful networking events.[10] Subculture organisers Gannon Baxter and Tyler Shepherd expressed mixed feelings about their use of the term "hyperpop", but Shepherd stated that it was "just a tool to quickly convey what realm of music we’re talking about".[10]
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In 2024, Charli XCX's album Brat, released on June 7, peaked at number 3 on the Billboard 200 and saw commercial success in the US, UK, and Australia,[46][47][48] while also earning the highest critical ratings of 2024 on Metacritic,[49][50][51] becoming the most commercially successful hyperpop album of all time, with strong chart performance and inspiring fashion trends like "Brat Summer".[52][53][54] The albums visual aesthetic and lyrical content were later reappropriated by Vice President Kamala Harris during her 2024 campaign.[55][56][57] The album was followed by a remix album featuring collaborators such as A. G. Cook, Troye Sivan, Addison Rae, and the Dare.[58][59]
However, Kieran Press-Reynolds of Pitchfork remarked that other pioneering artists in the scene had not gained any commercial success since its initial rise. 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".[13]
Regional scenes
Internationally, hyperpop gained notoriety in Hispanic countries, such as Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Spain, particularly with Spanish-speaking artists and producers, as well as in São Paulo, Brazil with the development of "hyperfunk", also known as "hyper mandelão".[60][61] Nylon's Ben Jolley cited Putochinomaricón as one of the "biggest names in the scene".[62]
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Decline and legacy
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In August 2021, Charli XCX, made a post on Twitter, asking "rip hyperpop? discuss".[35][63][64][65] Following this, Dazed noted that since 2019, the term 'hyperpop' "had 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".[66] That same year, prominent hyperpop musician, Glaive stated that he and Ericdoa were "working on killing" the movement,[34] though three months later stated that it "will never die".[67] Underscores, another significant contributor to the microgenre, stated that it was "officially dead".[68] Other sources cited online streaming algorithms, as pigeon-holing the genre into conventions that led to a decline in further developments and innovation.[39] In June 2023, PC Music announced that the label would no longer be releasing any new music, instead focusing on archival projects and special reissues.[69]
On September 17, 2024 Google displayed a Google Doodle, as a tribute to hyperpop pioneer, SOPHIE on her birthday.[70] Following this, on June 1, 2025, in celebration of Pride Month, Google displayed a Google Doodle inspired by hyperpop, focusing on LGBTQ+ artists as the pioneers of the genre.[71][72]
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Related genres
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Bubblegum bass
Bubblegum bass (also known as PC Music) is an experimental style of electronic music associated with the PC Music record label and art collective, influenced by 1990s and 2000s electronic music scenes, music associated with the early internet, as well as bloghouse-related genres.[23][25] It has been credited as hyperpop's first "era" by Pitchfork, as well as establishing the sound that would later "morph into hyperpop".[1] Notable artists include Hannah Diamond, GFOTY and A. G. Cook, who made releases on the PC Music label.[13][73]
Digicore
Digicore is a microgenre that originally developed alongside hyperpop.[74] 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.[28] This microgenre saw a rise during the COVID-19 pandemic.[13] It differs from hyperpop mainly by adding 2020s trap-rap influences but there remains a degree of crossover between the scenes.[28] Digicore artist Billy Bugara wrote that his colleagues "pull from genres as wide-reaching as midwestern emo, trance, and even Chicago drill".[75] The beginnings of digicore are rooted in internet culture and many popular producers from the microgenre are between the ages of 15 and 18.[75] Collectives like NOVAGANG and helix tears have been considered influential.[74][76]
In 2018, Dalton (a digicore artist relations figure) started a Minecraft and Discord server called "Loser's Club" that became a haven for several of the most popular artists within the digicore scene such as Quinn, Glaive, Ericdoa and Midwxst.[75] 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.[75] In 2021, the digicore album Frailty by Jane Remover received praise on mainstream music sites Pitchfork and Paste.[77][78]
Robloxcore
Robloxcore is a microgenre offshoot of digicore. The style was pioneered in late 2020 by artists such as lungskull and lieu, both of whom began by uploading and "bypassing" music into the popular online game Roblox, with their songs “Foreign” and “Threat” gaining wider popularity online. The scene's popularity was attributed to TikTok as well as Roblox audiomaker games like DigitalAngels and CriminalViolence, with tracks like Yameii Online’s “Baby My Phone,” peaking at No. 2 on the Spotify Viral 50 in March 2021.[79][80][81]
Glitchcore
Glitchcore is a microgenre that originally developed alongside hyperpop[74] and digicore (sometimes characterised as a subgenre of both styles), is often characterised by high-pitched vocals, sharp 808s, and frequent hi-hats. As Kyann-Sian Williams of NME stated, "glitchcore is hyperpop on steroids",[82] 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.[83]
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".[82] Glitchcore is typically made up of artists that share stylistic similarities to 100 gecs, rather than the musicians signed to PC Music.[84]
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.[84] Glitchcore has also been associated with a specific internet visual aesthetic where videos are typically accompanied by glitchy, fast-paced, cluttered, colourful edits that are even marked with flash warnings in certain cases.[84] Some popular digicore artists like d0llywood1 even refer to glitchcore as "an aesthetic, like the edits", rather than an actual music genre.[85]
Hyperfunk
Hyperfunk (also known as hyper mandelão),[60][61] is a fusion of mandelão, a subgenre of funk carioca and slap house, with hyperpop. Notable artists include DJ Mu540, DJ Ramemes[86] and Pabllo Vittar.
Dariacore
Dariacore, also known as hyperflip, is a microgenre related to hyperpop.[74] It was coined by Jane Remover following their 2021 album Dariacore and its three sequels, Dariacore 2: Enter Here, Hell to the Left, Dariacore 3... At Least I Think That's What It's Called?, and Grave Robbing. The microgenre gained popularity on SoundCloud in 2021 and 2022. Dariacore is characterised by sped up and pitch-shifted samples from pop music and other popular media, primarily drawing influences from breakbeats and Jersey club.[87] The genre was described by Raphael Helfand of the Fader as "an entire genre in and of itself, taking hyperpop's silliest tendencies to their logical conclusions".[88]
By the mid-2020s, the dariacore scene rapidly declined, though was later revived in Japan by the netlabel 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.[89]
Sigilkore
Sigilkore is a microgenre and electronic music style that started on SoundCloud in the late 2010s and combines aspects of cloud rap and trap music, contrary to its sound, derived from hyperpop.[90] Digital stereo effects and incredibly intricate DJ mixing, frequently applied in-post over recorded vocals, are often its defining characteristics. Lyrical themes in the genre revolve around dark themes,[91] including occultism,[92] blood and vampires.[91]
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References
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