i mean it was the spotify staff playlist for this stuff that initally coined the term “hyperpop”, and learning that made me rlly feel confident in saying i hate that shit. i hate that shit so much fam. i know im supposed to love that shit as a queer genderfluid 20 year old zoomer but im sorry i have read too much mark fisher in my short life to accept it! the hyperfemininty, in-joke meme lyrics, 2 min runtimes perfect for brainless playlisting, putting even stuff they genuinely in a glossy sheen of surface-level irony, p much a good 95% of it is pure crap.
also the most annoying fans ever, teenage internet shut-ins who spam “minecraft bee hatsune miku trans rights uwu owo” in their twitch chats to each other as if can rlly make the world hate them less. i cant blame them, most of them are probs dealing with much abuse and general lonelyness in their lives irl, and lord knows i was one of them. but goddamn i rlly cant see how this shit helps.
thinking of hyperpop reminds me of one of my fav k-punk writings of all time, Is Pop Undead?, esp in the context of the critical praise that 100 gecs, food house, etc, have able to gain in such short time:
What Pop lacks now is the capacity for nihilation, for producing new potentials through the negation of what already exists. … just because something is current doesn’t mean it is new. saying that Pop was better twenty-five years ago is NOT to be nostalgic; on the contrary, it is to resist the ambient, airtight, total nostalgia that can not only tolerate but delight in the latest regurgitations on the Indie retreadmill.
there is no real nihilation in most hyperpop from what im hearing. p much everything these guys and gals and enbies are doing are just regurgitating everything they had heard in their youth (nu metal, crunk, crunkcore, mallcore, eurodance, early american brostep, lex luger era trap, and ofc the pc music style bubblegum bass presiding hyperpop) and putting it all in a boiling calder to create a stew of obnoxiously overproduction of just generic love songs about being ghosted on twitter and then getting drunk about it. no critical commentary on the economics of the lumpenprole life most of these kids love to roleplay (all members of 100 gecs and food house are nyu alumni, and 100 gecs are currently artists-in-residence at nyc, as if the infamous racist debacle of them opening for pop smoke at the student union stage [which led to all hip hop artists banned from preforming at the college cuz of the white hooligan gecs fans recking the venue and nyc staff ending the show before pop could even preform] never happened), nor rlly any critique of pop music today at all, they all accept it and just appreciate it nicely. what bullcrap.
Let’s dispense once and for all with Popist-Deleuzianism/Deleuzian Popism’s obligatory positivity. The fact we happen to be alive now doesn’t mean that we must be committed to the belief that this is the best time to live EVER. We have no duty to search out entertainment and spread a little excitement everywhere we go. (Think of how hard to please audiences were in the mid seventies, in the midst of a veritable cornucopia by comparison with today’s grim desert; and think of what that dissatisfaction produced.) So, please, no consumerist homilies about the fact that ‘it is always possible to find good records, no matter what the year.’ Yes, of course it is, but as soon as Pop is reduced to good records it really is all over. When Pop can no longer muster a nihilation of the World, a nihilation of the Possible, then it will only be the ghosts that are worthy of our time.
as for their prospects in the future, i think they aint getting out of URL into IRL anytime soon. there’s one obvious reason why that goes for everyone, but also the specific kind of internet culture that produced this stuff will mean even after life goes “back to normal” (lol) i feel like theres not gonna be much culture outside of the same simulated virtual stuff for them. and i dont think they will actually get pop success in any real mainstream matter, the stuff is still too abrasive for iheartradio programmers to accept. maybe ull get dylan brady producing a song or two for arianda grande and that will be it.
(i will say, i do like the “glitchcore” stuff a bit more, those folks are obv doing something more subtle and psychedelic in the drainy veenier, which i appreciate)
completely understand and agree with them to an extent. But it really reminds me of weightless grime / ambient a bit which is probably it’s only saving grace.
Reminds me a few years ago when people from the “wave” scene were throwing a hissy fit when the slightest bit of criticism came their way.