from all the things passed down, from all the apples coming before
Published:
this morning, i was listening to spotify’s “big on the internet” playlist, featuring aespa’s newest track, “whiplash”:
having listened to kpop in its earlier generations, i was surprised to hear its dance and electro-pop flavors. “whiplash” reflects more favorably on its producers than aespa themselves and, honestly, i am happy for whichever marketing employee finally decided to ride the la-cyber-electro-dance-hyper-pop musical wave that’s been forming since at least 2019.
i imagine that they’re riding the charli xcx brat wave, which heralded a crazy shift in mainstream music this year:
this change of musical pace is exciting, but there’s something so frustrating about this iteration of cyber-electro-dance-hyper pop hype. brat is a great album, but i find the cultural reponse bizarre. in the days following its release, brat was being sold as some standalone, innovative, never-before-conceived-of breakthrough. “What Genres Would You Consider Brat to be?” posts Reddit user u/bluezkittles on the r/charlixcx subreddit, receiving responses like “cunt” and “Brat pop. Its own genre.” but charli xcx has always been a huge mainstay of pop music, and anyone with an ear can tell that brat is, in fact, not new. the media conflation of new to the mainstream with genuine originality is misleading.
in political culture, too, “kamala is brat” tropes are embarrassing and exhausting (why are supporters of one of america’s oldest + largest political parties also claiming to be alt???). everyone wants to hop on the brat train; by posting memes or buying merchandise, you, too, could lay claim to the valor of being chronically-online and therefore culturally aware. if you listen to brat, you’re both one of the girls and not like the other girls. everyone has to be alternative in the exact same algorithm-fed ways.
weirdly enough, this digitally spoon-fed conformist individualism is something people actually seem to be aware of, so now we’re down to just being delusional and annoying. before rocking huge sports glasses, alien-like chrome jewelry, and industrial clothing was absorbed by entertainment conglomerates like SM Entertainment (which manges aespa), the musical scenes where trends are born (often piloted by minority individuals and unrecognized artists, might i add) were, definitionally, way ahead of the curve.
certainly not all electronic music is the same, and i don’t mean to imply one underground dnb scene in 2020 stands for all of brat-pop roots. but one glance at what is now vogue in graphic design, typography, jewelry, fashion, music, and influencer lifestyle archetypes makes it clear that the brat cyber-cool-girl is not the hot new thing, but a long-growing artistic movement becoming mainstream.