on the pulse of pop culture

“Scandoval” is the nickname for Sandoval’s affair with another cast member, which he had behind the backs of the show’s producers and his girlfriend of nine years. This wouldn’t be interesting or noteworthy except that in 2023, after being on the air for 10 seasons, “Vanderpump” was nominated for an Emmy for outstanding unstructured reality program... See more

Cheer was a pandemic-era smash, elevating the dazzling but little-known sport of college cheer to the level of national obsession and reframing cheer itself from a sideline spectacle at football games to a thrilling and often perilous main event.

Yes, this is 2024, where life increasingly feels like a huge in-joke that started on the internet. Once upon a time we had subcultures: punks and goths, hippies and emos. Now we have Gen Z’s perceptive trendspotters pinpointing a style or a mood that is sweeping the zeitgeist, coining a label for it — often with the suffix “-core” — and sharing it ... See more

With Barbie , The Super Mario Bros. Movie , and Oppenheimer leading the way, 2023 was the first time in over two decades that the top three box office earners didn’t include a sequel or a remake. (The last time it happened was 2001, courtesy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone , Shrek , and Monsters, Inc .) Granted, adapting an iconic toy bran... See more

It turns out that both of the smash-hit tracks are performed by Chappell Roan, a pop singer who’s suddenly everywhere — and earning comparison to early-years Madonna.

Then T-Pain changed everything. By the time the Tallahassee star performed a Tiny Desk concert, in 2014, his use of Autotune as a musical signature had led plenty of casual listeners to assume the pitch-correcting tool was hiding a weak voice. Even fellow artists complained that he was polluting the industry. (He was depressed for years, he has sai... See more

How did an oddball pop song versed in queer theory get on the Billboard Hot 100? Specifically, how did Chappell Roan, a rising lesbian pop star, get on the Hot 100 for the first time and break the “gay famous” ceiling (as SNL puts it) seemingly preventing likeminded acts MUNA and Girl in Red from crossing over to the main chart?

“The attention economy is the brief focus on nearly any subject as algorithms focus on engagement,” says Jamie Cohen, Ph.D., an assistant professor of media studiesat City University of New York’s Queens College. “This, of course, results in the temporary uplift into mainstream media and a short marketable trend. On the other hand, the fangirl econ... See more

On Monday night, some of the biggest celebrities in the country, dressed in their finest and most outrageous couture, assembled at the steps of New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art for the biggest red carpet event of the year. They entered the museum for a high-profile celebration of fashion — sponsored by TikTok this year — that remained ent... See more