Left: Chappell Roan attends the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards at UBS Arena on Sept. 11, 2024, in Elmont, New York. Credit: Mike Coppola/Getty Images for MTV via TNS. Center: Charli XCX performs onstage during the iHeartRadio Z100 Jingle Ball 2021 Pre-Show on Dec. 10, 2021, in New York. Credit: Gary Gershoff/Getty Images for iHeartRadio via TNS. Right: Sabrina Carpenter performs onstage during the Outside Lands music festival in San Francisco on Aug. 10, 2024. Credit: Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group via TNS
This story is the first installment of a three-part series discussing major changes in popular music throughout the course of 2024. Today’s story focuses on the current state of pop music.
This year will go down as one of the most important years for popular music in the past decade.
Since Jan. 1, listeners have seen — or rather, heard — popular music rapidly change and set the tone for years to come. One major shift has occurred in pop music, where new female artists have risen to captivate listeners of all audiences.
Most importantly, music buffs are observing the return of the “Pop Queen” archetype initially popularized in the 1980s with stars such as Madonna.
Pop music has always been dominated by strong, independent women who’ve changed the landscape of popular music, but this particular decade has been commanded by new kinds of stars willing to challenge the basic notion of what listeners believe pop music to be.
To digest this sense of newness, one must examine recent pop stars, evaluate the current music landscape and consider where pop music is headed next.
Academic experts share their perspectives on an ever-evolving entertainment industry and 2024’s distinct musical contributions.
Before diving head first into 2024, one star must be discussed. She has become the face of popular music in the 2020s and will likely continue to be one of — if not the most — dominant forces in the larger industry; this is, of course, Taylor Swift.
Dan DiPiero, associate professor of music studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a comparative studies Ph.D. graduate from Ohio State, said it’s hard to underestimate the sheer influence Swift has on modern-day pop music.
“It’s not just about people listening to her music, being inspired by it and then sort of incorporating something about it into their work,” DiPiero said. “It’s also about [Swift] as a business venture, as a model of how to navigate a shifting record industry. There’s nobody, arguably, who’s been more successful than she has at that.”
DiPiero attributes Swift’s success to her creative songwriting and ability to connect with musicians across all genres.
“There’s this real cross-genre influence that I think has a lot to do with just the power of songwriting and the power of a good melody that most young popular musicians have been influenced by in some way or another,” DiPiero said.
DiPiero said this skill relates to an aspect of pop music that is still actively developing: the power of pop stars to bend genres and attract mass audiences.
Mary Grace Salvatierra, a fourth-year in psychology and social chair of Ohio State’s Rock Music Club, said one of the biggest genre-bending stars from the 2020s has been Olivia Rodrigo, a singer-songwriter who has successfully combined rock influences with pop music.
“For [Rodrigo], I think she reminds me a lot of artists like Alanis Morissette from the ‘90s, and Avril Lavigne,” Salvatierra said. “It’s kind of, like, a more angstier sound, so I feel like people from that generation can appreciate it but also younger people too.”
DiPiero said now more than ever, pop stars can heavily experiment with different genres to establish specific moods for their tracks
“Artists, when they’re pissed off, they often will reach for rock for a song or two; even a hip-hop artist like SZA does this,” DiPiero said. “They pick it up selectively, they experiment with it and then they put it down when they want to do something else.”
DiPiero and Salvatierra said they agreed this new style of genre-bending doesn’t stop at pop-rock.
In 2024, three artists who have operated within the music industry for years have experienced meteoric rises to even greater fame: Charli XCX, Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter.
DiPiero said all three pop stars possess an uncanny knack for riffing on the music they grew up with.
“They’re not just reproducing [music] and copying it for a new generation,” DiPiero said. “They’re intervening in it. They’re saying, like, ‘I love all this stuff about it, but I want to change certain things.’”
DiPiero also said these three acts, though different from each other in many ways, all explore themes that resonate with varied audiences and communities.
“What I see [Roan] doing, for example, is, like, drawing on synth pop that she loves but making space in it for an overtly queer, sapphic presentation that wasn’t there in the 1980s,” DiPiero said.
When it comes to Carpenter, DiPiero said her ability to deliver campy performances while still incorporating underlying tones that critique men and her experiences with them has made her a major success.
“She does this bubble-gum pop,” DiPiero said. “It’s super cute. It’s super sexy on the surface, but when you peek under the hood, it’s all about how s***** men are, and that’s not the kind of thing that Britney Spears was singing about.”
Similar to that of Carpenter and Roan, Charli XCX’s music combines electronic influences with serious topics, DiPiero said.
“The beautiful thing about what she does is she smashes up EDM with lyrics that are about the social lives of women and girls, which is usually topics that are more reserved for singer-songwriters or indie rockers who are, like, in a sort of confessional, personal mode,” DiPiero said.
Salvatierra said these musicians’ individual personalities likewise play a critical role in their success.
“I think you look at somebody like [Charli XCX], and she’s very, like, club, like she’s got the sunglasses on and, like, the black jacket and hair pulled back, and then somebody like [Roan] is super colorful, very crazy, a lot of costumes and makeup,” Salvatierra said. “I think everybody’s kind of able to find their person that they match with, like the image that they kind of align with.”
DiPiero said today’s pop queens convey their experiences of being women in the United States — while simultaneously challenging mainstream norms and expectations associated with femininity — without stepping on each other’s toes, which is key to their continued success.
“They’re all in some way making music about that, whether it’s heterosexual dating with [Carpenter], or trying to thrive as a queer person with [Roan] or trying to figure yourself out as a young person, which is [Rodrigo’s] thing,” Dipiero said. “Their perspectives are very different, but they work in concert to help people feel seen and recognized.”
For DiPiero, this line of thought leads back to Swift and how listeners see parts of themselves in her discography.
“I think it’s just a different level of fandom when, like anybody can love good music, but when good music reflects your own experience back to you and makes you feel validated and seen, especially if you’ve been struggling to get that recognition in other places, then that takes fandom to a whole other level,” DiPiero said.
As far as the next five years are concerned, DiPiero said he believes pop music and its figureheads, like never before, will become defining voices of the decade.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if something shifted in a notable way, in an obvious way, and the reason I say that is obviously just because of electoral politics,” DiPiero said. “I think that all of these artists, Swift, less so, but [Roan], [Carpenter] and [Charli XCX], for sure, all three of them are using music to make a critique of and ask questions about what it means to be a quote, unquote, ‘normal woman.’”
DiPiero said as the nation’s political landscape changes, pop music must keep up.
“I cannot imagine that these artists would not need to shift in order to respond to that change in American culture,” DiPiero said. “That power structure has always been there, but six months ago, it wasn’t in the White House, and now it is. And I think pop music does nothing if it doesn’t respond to our changing political circumstances.”
