Welcome to the Hannah Montana Generation of Pop Music

What are the women of pop music up to this summer? Being brats, Spencer Kornhaber writes.
It may sound like an insult, “but when the hipster diva Charli XCX titled her new album ‘Brat’ … she crystalized a cultural mood: Seeming a little immature, a little selfish, a little nasty, has taken on an air of glamour,”... See more
instagram.comIt makes sense that norms are shifting in this direction as Gen Z’s influence spreads. Raised on social media, with access to once illicit bad-taste touchstones like Rocky Horror just a click away, they’ve largely replaced IRL subcultures with a constellation of aesthetics—cottagecore, dark academia, Y2K—to be performed, then discarded or demoted... See more
judy berman • Welcome to the Era of Unapologetic Bad Taste
Whether it be sex with exes, dirty rhyme schemes, or being hot, a clown, or the other woman, Carpenter’s surprisingly long career has been seriously devoted to never taking things too seriously. With an SNL appearance on the horizon, and her airy track looking to be the inescapable song of summer — on Friday, May 17, Carpenter released an “Espresso... See more