Throughout my childhood, my father loved to show me music that was old to him and new to me. Through sounds of Chuck Berry, the Beatles, the Stones, and, most of all, Bruce Springsteen (or simply a long, low “Bruuuuuuuce”), I was given an education on rock’s evolution through what he considered its Golden Eras. It wasn’t until I was in about middle school that I started branching out and finding music of my own, discovering what I liked.
“What’re you listening to?” My dad doesn’t often find music of this century that he enjoys, but that doesn’t stop him from trying. Occasionally, he’ll ask me for some ideas.
“Oh you probably won’t like it.”
“Maybe not. But what’s it called?”
I decided this could be my opportunity to introduce him to something new and modern the way he used to show me the iconic landmarks of music history from the past. “Um…Money Machine by 100 gecs.”
To his credit, he at least listened to the whole song, which is further than some people get before writing it off as a “bizarre and terrible novelty” (quoting several of my friends). Granted, the intro to that song is a vulgar, bizarre novelty, but it’s far from terrible; nothing that unique could be. That eccentricity is one-of-a-kind, and it intros a song that has remained one of the most iconic in a relatively new, exciting style of music: Hyperpop.
Hyerpop is many things. “Maximalist pop” is a common definition one can find when beginning to research, but that doesn’t begin to cover it. It is less of a genre and more of an internet-subculture that isn’t easy to pin down, even for the fans themselves.
What are the origins?
“Oh, clearly it came from dubstep, just listen to the instrumentals!”
“No, no, obviously it came from night core, listen to the vocals!”
“Guys…Crazy Frog!”
The reason there is no agreed upon origin is because there isn’t any one origin at all, instead being a convergence of right-place-right-time with the internet. It came from “Barbie World” by Aqua as much as it did “On Sight” by Kanye West. It is the amalgamation of musical access found only by the digital age coming together to create something larger than life and cutting edge, exclusive to this smartphone era of music. Through the innovation of many talented minds, it came to life and has been running like a headless chicken since the early 2010s, continually moving forward into new territories.
Its evolution is one of many erratic signatures. A.G. Cook’s PC Music label is generally agreed to be the “template” for baseline Hyerpop, but it wasn’t until the producer SOPHIE came around that something truly culture-shifting took shape. Collaborating with already mainstream artist Charli XCX, SOPHIE produced the Vroom Vroom EP, a foreword thinking collection of music that was the first moment of Hyperpop “breaking through” to general audiences. (Unfortunately, SOPHIE passed away in 2021, her burgeoning career one of the biggest what ifs in modern alt music.) Created and consumed by many LBGT+ individuals, the Hyperpop community quickly became one of “unmarketable” artists thriving in a culture of acceptance, almost similar to 1970s punk rockers in that the music brought together those on the “outside” and made them feel at home.
Further musical boundaries continued to be pushed. In 2019, Hyperpop changed from the techno-industrial precedent set by SOPHIE when two Missourians released their debut album, 1,000 gecs. The duo 100 gecs set the standard of Hyerpop into its pandemic prime, and for awhile the genre became oversaturated with their clones. This led to vulgar, pitched-up vocals with unserious lyrics dominating the space for a short while. But you see, Hyperpop is a modern style in more ways than one. People don’t have time to have time for long-lasting trends anymore; we move quickly.
By the 2020s, Hyerpop had become something of a confused umbrella term for all music people didn’t understand. There are very few similarities between the dreamy rapping of Bladee’s Icedancer and the noisy “Dariacore” of Jane Remover’s album Frailty, yet both were labeled Hyerpop and placed side by side in that official-looking Spotify playlist. This led to an interesting relationship between the term and its artists, many of them finding it annoying and reductive to put all this different music under one “genre.” For example, Charli XCX took to Instagram in 2021 to vent: “Is [Hyperpop] just an umbrella name to place artists making interesting, progressive, genre defying music inspired by a huge breadth of things/sounds under one easily digestible title?” But to me, it is more than just the music that makes something Hyerpop. It is a style, one of internet anonymity, off the wall production, and an emotional rawness (be it through lyrics or music) not found in many other spaces.
Though other artists have also expressed the feeling that Hyperpop is dying (most recently Underscores said something to the same effect), the style it established is one that won’t ever truly be lost. That style of off-kilter production in particular is one gaining plenty of subtle mainstream traction for years. For some reason, people have latched on to Hyperpop staples pervading their ears without even realizing it. The pitched-up vocals and genre-blended nature of Tyler, the Creator’s chart-topping Igor could be considered “Hyperpop” if it hadn’t come from such an established hip hop artist. Those “sped-up versions” of popular songs on TikTok are just an evolution of the Nightcore genre from which Hyperpop was born. The new 100 gecs album, 10,000 gecs, charted at number 59 on the US Billboard 200, which is not a number to scoff at considering how weird the music is on top of the four-year-long break they took between albums.
This year, two fantastic, progressive albums from both Jane Remover and Underscores have proven that Hyperpop is far from dead: it’s still just beginning. It is not a genre, but a style, one that refuses to be put in a box and continues to evolve far more rapidly than other areas of music. As both music consumption and creation become more accessible to people with atypical ideas, the homegrown feel and outsider vibes of Hyperpop will never go away. A costly and official studio is no longer required to create; anyone in their bedroom can make music about whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want.
So let’s get weird.
