Welcome to the Hannah Montana Generation of Pop Music

It 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 t... See more

The three are among a cohort of former child stars, many from Nickelodeon and Disney Channel shows from the 2000s, who have started podcasts as a way of connecting with a nostalgic Gen Z and millennial fan base. In doing so, they are embracing roles that they played as children and teenagers — characters that some had spent years trying to move bey... See more

Rogers was one of the first pop stars to achieve fame by unintentionally captivating the Internet, and, strangely, she was also one of the last. These days, virality is not so much a lightning strike as a marketing scheme, reverse engineered by executives and masquerading as serendipity. A. & R. representatives often scout new talent by dissect... See more

Some commenters scoffed at the sight of celebrities carping about the work of being famous. But these artists have hardly been lazy or reluctant to play the music business’s games. Each of them is known for elaborate music videos, spectacular stage productions, and otherworldly fashion. They’ve hustled, for all of their careers, to seem larger than... See more

There’s been a kind of flattening of the zeitgeist, leading to a monoculture that is understood across generations.

It’s hard to see history when you’re in the middle of it, harder still to distinguish Swift’s impact on the culture from her celebrity, which emits so much light it can be blinding. But something unusual is happening with Swift, without a contemporary precedent. She deploys the most efficient medium of the day—the pop song—to tell her story. Yet ov... See more

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

At first blush, the Rodrigo-Carpenter dynamic doesn’t seem to be that different from the way culture has always pitted pop princesses against each other. Whether it’s Britney and Christina, Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, Brandy and Monica, or Katy Perry and Taylor Swift, there’s always been an inclination that every female pop star needs a rival.