1 |
That Kid |
"Just Another Day" |
Superstar |
The "hyper" in "hyperpop" was originally an adjective describing the music |
2 |
4s4ki |
"Hyper 5th Dimention" |
single |
only indirectly |
3 |
Alice Glass |
"Lips Apart" |
single |
by way of its relationship with popularity, |
4 |
poptropicaslutz! |
"bittersweet teeth" |
single |
and its embodiment of popularity's tension between advertising and reward. |
5 |
Donatachi |
"fade away" |
single |
Arguably the first generation of hyperpop fully existed inside of the bright conceptual confines of a single song, |
6 |
Mixed Matches |
"reasons" |
reasons +3 |
"Hey QT" by QT, and the associated energy-drink that the song was only sort-of promoting |
7 |
death's dynamic shroud |
"Stay" |
Darklife |
because it only sort-of existed. |
8 |
The Glitch Mob |
"Antireal" |
Antireal / The Flavor 2 |
Hayden Dunham's appropriately and appropriationally Warholesque wig in the "Hey QT" artwork |
9 |
That Kid |
"Red Light" |
Superstar |
recapitulates the project's energy for anybody who experiences media entirely vicariously, |
10 |
GIRLI |
"I Really F**ked It Up" |
single |
through other people's scalps: |
11 |
Ruelle |
"Good Thing" |
Somebody Else 5 |
pop culture is the way we collectively sell ourselves our own glittery illusions. |
12 |
Bye Beneco |
"Daddy's Gone" |
single |
Pop Art tries to turn this commerce inside out in order to prove that there is |
13 |
Ventino |
"No Se Me Ve Tan Mal (NSMVTM)" |
single |
glitter on the inside, too, |
14 |
Ber |
"Boys Who Kiss You In Their Car" |
single |
and thus that the selling itself is also part of the art, |
15 |
Zolita |
"20 Questions" |
single |
and thus of the joy, |
16 |
Jessica Winter |
"Choreograph" |
single |
pop sedition re-co-opting itself, but then still wanting more. |
17 |
Janelle Kroll |
"CANYON" |
single |
Pop Art and hyperpop and critical poptimism all swish around in the same Klein bottle, |
18 |
Softcult |
"One Of A Million" |
single |
formulating a luminous Molotov cocktail |
19 |
Future Teens |
"Doorknob Confessional" |
Self Help |
that you can hurl satisfyingly at The Establishment |
20 |
White Lung |
"Date Night" |
Date Night / Tomorrow 2 |
provided that by "satisfyingly" you mean |
21 |
Pohgoh |
"Hammer" |
single |
"after it has luminously drained out onto your luminous shoe". |
22 |
Lande Hekt |
"Cut My Hair" |
House Without a View |
In this sense Sigue Sigue Sputnik was hyperpop pre-history, |
23 |
Alvvays |
"Belinda Says" |
Belinda Says / Very Online Guy 4 |
but kind of the trick of hyperpop was implicating all of pop as hyperpop prehistory |
24 |
AINSEL |
"Aoharu" |
single |
by asserting ownership of the future. |
25 |
BiSH |
"UP to ME" |
UP to ME +1 |
The future, of course, is not actually owned. |
26 |
BAND-MAID |
"I'll" |
Unleash |
We fear diversity, when we do, |
27 |
KRD8 |
"GOLD" |
single |
because we imagine that it is a probability wave that will collapse on our heads, |
28 |
Appare! |
"Aoi Flare" |
single |
or worse, not on our heads. |
29 |
THE UNCROWNED |
"COLD SIGH" |
WITNESS |
We fear that in other people's future, |
30 |
Daedric |
"Coldharbour" |
Coldharbour 5 |
we ourselves will be obsolete, |
31 |
Sleeping Romance |
"Ghost Shadows" |
Ghost Shadows +3 |
and thus that the fight for control of the future is existential. |
32 |
Eva Under Fire |
"Ghost" |
Love, Drugs & Misery |
Manic convolutionary self-reference, however, is logistically complicated to sustain. |
33 |
Sede Vacante |
"Raindrops" |
single |
It's a lot easier to write a song and then not fabricate a matchingly glossy |
34 |
Avantasia |
"The Inmost Light" |
The Inmost Light +3 |
energy drink that didn't and maybe still doesn't exist. |
35 |
Loch Vostok |
"Black Neon Manifesto" |
single |
And thus hyperpop as hypercollaborational Pop |
36 |
Teramaze |
"For the Thrill" |
single |
necessarily and self-preservationally became hyperpop as hyperactive pop, |
37 |
Borealis |
"Ashes Turn to Rain" |
Ashes Turn to Rain +1 |
a mercifully and tractably musical style instead of a Whole Art performance. |
38 |
Bloody Hammers |
"Phantasmagoria" |
single |
Pop Art becomes a color palette; |
39 |
Disturbed |
"Unstoppable" |
Unstoppable +1 |
Poptimism becomes another canon we drag into the same battles |
40 |
Grimner |
"Helvandrarna" |
single |
we already know how to fight. |
41 |
Frosttide |
"Warrior" |
single |
But this is what happens to everything, |
42 |
Bakahira |
"They Are Coming" |
single |
is how cults are liberated, |
43 |
Petbrick |
"Arboria" |
Liminal |
is how secrets become resonant wisdom |
44 |
Timor et Tremor |
"Of Wolf and Sun" |
single |
and then ominous legends |
45 |
OTUS |
"Through the Flesh" |
Torch |
and then diffident myths. |
46 |
Nordjevel |
"I Djevelens Skygge" |
Gnavhòl |
Dancing carefully in the careless footprints of elves |
47 |
Firtan |
"Fadir" |
Faðir 3 |
is how we learn to approximate their grace, barely. |
48 |
Mo'ynoq |
"Effigies Adorned in Fire" |
A Place for Ash |
Except of course it's the other way around. Our feet are the first. |
49 |
Imha Tarikat |
"Radical Righteousness" |
single |
The elves we imagine are our exaggerated selves. |
50 |
Kuggur |
"يَا لَيْلِ" |
single |
We dream of futures |
51 |
Gaerea |
"Ebb" |
Mirage |
in which our constricting twinges have vanished, |
52 |
Hoaxed |
"Guilty Ones" |
Guilty Ones +1 |
and been replaced with attentive crowds, |
53 |
Frayle |
"Ipecac" |
Skin & Sorrow |
and thus that the choreography of the future is improvisational |
54 |
anewhite |
"Re act" |
single |
and collective. |
55 |
postman |
"Hazy Daisy" |
single |
Movements become styles. Revolutions become aesthetics. |
56 |
Snakefight |
"Wishful Thinking" |
single |
Countries become color schemes. Or were never much more than colors, but we come to them to understand that. |
57 |
Wishbone Wednesday |
"Harap ng Salamin" |
single |
The elves turn out to be Japanese idol trainees, or Pinoy pop-punk bands, |
58 |
Buzzcocks |
"You've Changed Everything Now" |
Sonics In The Soul |
or kids disassembling their own limitless potential with whatever the currently available tools. |
59 |
Jupiter Jones |
"Melatonin" |
single |
The good news, if you hate hyperpop, is that the future will still have guitars and drums that sound like this. |
60 |
Havemeyer |
"Just Say It" |
single |
The good news, if you love hyperpop, is that on Discord the backstreets are infinite and not even back. |
61 |
Isak Danielson |
"Say That Everything Will Be Alright (Music for ''Thin Blue Line'')" |
single |
The future is the name we give to the point in the distance |
62 |
Arliston |
"Hold My Wine" |
single |
where all these kinds of good news converge, |
63 |
Editors |
"Picturesque" |
EBM |
beyond whatever they have to traverse. |
64 |
Jannika B |
"Ihmisen muotoinen" |
single |
When you drink somebody else's energy drink, instead of making your own, |
65 |
Vanesa Martín |
"Quién lo diría" |
single |
you reduce their number for at least a moment, but only. |
66 |
Joven Dolores |
"Claridad" |
single |
We cannot buy our way out of this Ouroborus loop of salesmanship. |
67 |
Umdumazi |
"Ningang'jaji" |
Igeza lendalo -Ningang'jaji |
Consumption never takes the final bite of capitalism and then we are done, |
68 |
Songqongqo |
"Behlulekile" |
Umalal'ephenduka |
restored to our precorrupted selves. |
69 |
UNtuthuko |
"Angisenalo" |
Angisenalo |
These cycles of embracing and rejecting are the piston-motions that keep this particular notional engine running, |
70 |
Blaqnick & MasterBlaq |
"Tafola" |
Seroba |
spewing whatever smoke because somebody stole its catalytic converter to sell to somebody who needs to replace their stolen catalytic converter. |
71 |
PG Roxette |
"Walking On Air" |
Walking On Air 5 |
We escape not by dying, or shedding our names, |
72 |
Shania Twain |
"Waking Up Dreaming" |
single |
but by becoming every glorious and imaginary thing at once. |
73 |
Maria Mena |
"It Was Love" |
single |
We turn our future inside out by accident, |
74 |
Maddie & Tae |
"Well In Your World" |
Through The Madness Vol. 2 |
and then we notice the tags and turn it the other way again, |
75 |
Madeline Merlo |
"Slide" |
Slide +3 |
and toss it into the laundry with our other sweat- and song-drenched clothes |
76 |
Sheyna Gee |
"Lost and Found" |
single |
and hopes. |
77 |
Mabe Fratti |
"No Se Ve Desde Acá" |
single |
Nobody owns the future. You are welcome there. We all are. |
78 |
Christina Vantzou |
"Red Eel Dream" |
single |
That is how we will recognize the future when we arrive: |
79 |
Amon Tobin |
"A Living Room (Music from Meow Wolf's Omega Mart)" |
single |
a room we can inhabit, together, in the process of understanding it instead of as its resolution. |
80 |
Gaerea |
"Laude" |
Mirage |
The good news, if you're scared of the future, is that it's not scheduled to happen today, and tomorrow has probably been booked and danced already, too. |
81 |
Anchors & Hearts |
"Running up That Hill (a Deal with God)" |
single |
The good news, if you miss the things you used to think were the future, is that they're all still as possible and inevitable as they were when you fell in love with them. |
82 |
Eva Under Fire |
"With or Without You" |
Love, Drugs & Misery |
You have been given it all. You are right to want more. |