The Great Pop Star Realignment

It’s impossible to look back on the year in music without reflecting on the rise of Chappell Roan. To call an ascent like hers “meteoric” is a bit of a cliche, but how else do you describe someone who went from relative obscurity to a platinum record and nominations in all of the “Big Four” Grammy categories — Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Record of the Year and Best New Artist — in less than a year? She blew up so quickly this summer that Bonnaroo had to upgrade her from a slot playing at one of the smaller tents to their main stage to accommodate the massive crowd she’d draw. At a show the week prior, she broke down on stage, admitting how overwhelming her sudden rise to fame was. “I just want to be honest with the crowd,” she said. “I just feel a little off today because I think that my career has just kind of gone really fast and it’s really hard to keep up.”

You don’t get that famous that quickly without tapping into the zeitgeist and resonating with a large swath of people. As an out lesbian who regularly incorporates elements of drag into her performances — not to mention someone whose biggest hit chides an ex for not being accepting of their own sexuality — she of course has struck a chord with the LGBTQ+ community. But statistically speaking, her reach has extended far beyond that group. Even the most milquetoast people alive — the ones whose listening habits don’t extend beyond whatever Top 40 song happens to be playing at the dentist’s office — know “Good Luck, Babe!” or “Pink Pony Club.” The popular kids in high schools across America are listening to the same music as the misfits they’re shoving into lockers. Grandparents are doing the “HOT TO GO!” dance at weddings and bar mitzvahs. Chappell Roan has managed to infiltrate the mainstream in a way that would have been unheard of a few decades ago. And she’s not the only one.

The year’s other big breakout success, Sabrina Carpenter, seems at first glance to have all the makings of your basic, run-of-the-mill pop star: blonde, conventionally attractive, a stint on a Disney Channel series as a teen. But Carpenter didn’t get big by following the path that was laid out for her; it was only when she gained full creative control over her music and was able to experiment with different genres and showcase her lyricism that she was able to blow up. The way she weaves humor into her songs has become her calling card, and she’s not afraid to get weird. Britney Spears famously flirted with a classically handsome-yet-dopey astronaut in the “Oops!…I Did It Again” video, but Sabrina Carpenter’s making out with an alien instead.

Gone are the days of the cookie-cutter pop star. In Spears’s era, Top 40 artists — especially female artists — were all encouraged to look and act a certain way, to appear aspirational instead of relatable. But we’ve moved beyond wanting our pop stars to wear purity rings, and the artists of today feel more empowered to be their authentic selves, whether it’s Charli XCX being a club rat or Ariana Grande being a shameless theater nerd. (The latter’s role in Wicked seems likely to take her career to new heights and, based on how frequently she’s been getting emotional on the press tour, much more creatively fulfilling for her than anything else she’s done to this point.) Even the nods to classic high school tropes in Chappell Roan’s bouncy “HOT TO GO!” video offer a significant twist: she’s not dressed as the cheerleader — she’s the drum major.

In fact, there’s less of a distinction than ever between the mainstream pop world and the artists we typically describe as “indie” (regardless of whether or not they’re actually on an independent label). Artists like Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker — better known collectively as boygenius — are opening for Taylor Swift and performing with Billie Eilish, while a pop group like MUNA is signed to Bridgers’s Saddest Factory Records label. What’s cool, subversive and critically beloved is, somehow, also popular.

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But what do we demand of our pop icons in the year 2024? Chappell Roan sparked some controversy with an Instagram post in August that attempted to establish some clear boundaries between her and her fans. “When I’m on stage, when I’m performing, when I’m in drag, when I’m at a work event, when I’m doing press…I am at work,” she wrote. “Any other circumstance, I am not in work mode. I am clocked out. I don’t agree with the notion that I owe a mutual exchange of energy, time, or attention to people I do not know, do not trust, or who creep me out just because they’re expressing admiration.”

It’s a clear rejection of the toxic “stan culture” that has dominated the past few years and made it so no one dares speak ill of Taylor Swift — be it on social media or even an album review — out of fear of being doxxed or harassed by her obsessive fans. Roan is trying to remind her many fans that the version of her that they get to see, while certainly authentic, is by no means her whole self. Parasocial relationships with celebrities are unhealthy, and by attempting to ward them off, she’s rewriting the rules of engagement and re-centering the focus on what should matter most: her music.

There have, of course, been past examples of the countercultural weirdos finding mainstream success in music. Cyndi Lauper certainly didn’t dress like Tiffany. But now it almost feels as though the weirdos have become the mainstream. Even established pop acts now feel more comfortable to rebrand, reinvent themselves or broaden their musical horizons, whether it’s Beyoncé dropping her country album Cowboy Carter, Mariah Carey repeatedly teasing an official release of the grunge album she secretly recorded in 1995 or even JoJo Siwa attempting to transition to a more adult-oriented persona.

Anyone with an internet connection has access to more music than ever — decades upon decades’ worth of it — and even the ability to throw their hat into the ring and upload their own. There’s so much to sift through, it can be overwhelming — and to be successful, you need to be able to stand out from the rest of the pack. So sure, being a weirdo in 2024 might have been a savvy business move, but it’s also part of an important, long-overdue shift, one where female pop stars are allowed to be themselves and, no kidding, celebrated for it.