What Makes a Good Pop Star?

Authenticity & Nuance in a Mainstream Genre

Camila Cabello’s new “era” via Instagram

On Twitter a couple of weeks ago, the pop culture update account Pop Crave (where would I be without them) informed me that pop singer Camila Cabello is entering a new “era.” After wiping her Instagram page, Cabello posted some grainy camcorder footage of her posing in a mirror with damp peroxide blonde hair, brown lip gloss, and a string bikini poking out of her waistline. An unexpected, “alt” choice for an artist who sits comfortably in the Top 40. Formerly a part of the five-piece girl group Fifth Harmony, Cabello is the singer behind pop hits like “Havana” and “Señorita.” Her stage presence and songs are historically sanitary and catchy, making her a radio- and brand-friendly figure. Her music is upbeat and easy to sing along to. She’s talented and artistically palatable enough to perform at highly commercial events like the iHeart Radio Music Awards and partner with L’Oreal Paris. And it’s worth noting that, while widely recognized as a popular singer, she’s not exceptionally liked - at least not by fervent stan communities online, which is where adoration counts the most these days.

So far, everything about Cabello’s career has felt quite manufactured - her quirky digressions, her relationship with fellow singer and collaborator Shawn Mendes - and none of it seems to be sticking in a particularly meaningful or serious way with the public. In 2019, evidence of her making racist jokes on an old Tumblr account came to light. Just like an outdated company logo, her brand as an artist needed a refresh. Rather than outfitting her in obviously designer clothes in a professional-grade photo shoot, her team opted for a more scrappy, DIY approach, thrusting a camcorder in her hand and smudging some eyeliner under her eyes.

The rebrand feels inauthentic. The camcorder, the blonde hair with visible roots, the white T-shirt - everything about her relaunch video feels as though it was generated by an algorithm tasked with pandering to Gen Z stans on TikTok. Her new look and sound feel machine-crafted, yet pulled from quite real and obvious reference points. I feel like I’ve seen all the pieces before. Upon first glance, the blonde hair seems to sit between a Sabrina Carpenter and Kim Petras imitation - two artists that have ascended in popularity over the past couple of years. The avante-garde nature of the video may feature a pinch of Grimes or Caroline Polachek. But ultimately, upon hearing a preview of her new single “I Luv It,” it’s clear that the most direct reference point is beloved hyperpop darling Charli XCX. Vulture points to the details plainly: “I Luv It” closely mirrors Charli’s “I Got It,” the camcorder emulates Charli’s “How I’m Feeling Now” album art, and Cabello’s promotional footage in cars harkens to the motor vehicle references in Charli’s songs “Crash,” “Vroom Vroom,” and “Speed Drive.” Case closed! 

You can possess all the ingredients to a recipe and follow the instructions to the best of your ability and still produce a product that tastes off. Camila Cabello missing the mark as America’s Next Alt-Pop Girl begs the question: what comprises a good pop artist? Specifically, a pop artist that develops a cult following

Charli XCX’s “How I’m Feeling Now” album art

As a child of the 2000s, I grew up on large-scale, arena pop singers. The requisites to be a chart-topper included being a beautiful woman with a killer set of vocals and a slew of dance moves and performing in productions that felt larger than life itself. Otherworldly set designs, eccentric costumes, throngs of backup dancers, pyrotechnics, gyrating to the point of exhaustion - this is what I came to expect from pop artists like Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, and more, whether it was center stage at the Grammys or on tour.

As the years bled into the 2010s, the fandom landscape went digital. Tried and true pop artists like Taylor Swift, One Direction, and Ariana Grande still dominated the pop charts, but indie niches began quietly blossoming in their respective internet corners. More alternative artists like Lana Del Rey, Marina and the Diamonds, The 1975, and Sky Ferreira accrued massive followings, due, in part, to their lack of popularity. Internet users felt pride in their admiration of artists who weren’t well-known. Meeting other Lana fans filled one with a simultaneous sense of excitement and annoyance, fearing that the artist’s ingenuity would decay if they became more mainstream. In his New Yorker profile, lead singer Matty Healy shares he would often call The 1975 “the biggest band in the world that nobody’s ever heard of.” 

Notably, the line delineating mainstream and indie artists in the 2010s was a relatively blurry one. Many of these niche musicians beloved by the internet made music that could be sonically classified as “pop” and even produced songs that charted. The 1975’s first album hit No. 1 in the UK and Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness” got massive radio play. You can’t listen to Marina songs like “Primadonna” and “How To Be a Heartbreaker” and not unequivocally consider them pop. 

Yet, these artists didn’t chart because of the traditional efforts of a looming, strategic record label per se; their commercial success resulted from their success on the internet. These artists succeeded online because they had a dangerous kind of subversion to them, which married well with quality, pop-like sound. The 1975 croons about weed and sex, Lana glossily paints her relationships with older men and drug abuse, and Marina flirts with suicide in a pastel pink font - all topics that, at the time, wouldn’t be permitted on the radio. The insertion of these mature themes over otherwise enjoyable production, paired with the songs’ dissemination on the internet was a recipe for underground adoration. These artists possessed a rawness that punctured people through their computer screens. Plus, people online love dusting the dirt off what they believe to be a diamond in the rough, an artist they feel like they’ve “discovered.” In actuality, millions are sometimes thinking the same thing.

Lana Del Rey performing at the Eurockéennes Music Festival on July 1, 2012

Pop artists that have similarly captured the public’s most recent attention are paradoxical blends on paper - artists with attention-grabbing personas that also bring a lot of “mess” and vulnerability to their work. Billie Eilish’s raw, stomach-churning vocals are juxtaposed with eccentric hair colors and streetwear silhouettes. Olivia Rodrigo’s epic heartbreak ballads are met with punky teenage angst. Chappell Roan’s candid and sexually free lyrics are sung from a face done up with white clown makeup. What’s acceptable in the mainstream pop space is seeming to expand slightly, at least allowing for more shades of nuance, likely as a result of what the internet’s proven to consume and circulate.

Accompanying the rise of more mainstream pop artists, the internet also expertly fosters what The New York Times refers to as “pop’s middle class.” Similar to the beloved Tumblr music landscape of the 2010s, there are hordes of online communities devoted to pop girls that more offline audiences have either never heard of, or consider one-hit wonders, including Carli Rae Jepsen, Ava Max, Rina Sawayama, and others. It’s these siloed internet fan bases - largely thriving on stan Twitter - that helped elevate artists like Kim Petras, Sabrina Carpenter, and Troye Sivan to a more mainstream, commercial level of success. And it’s also these communities that are typically there if and when the artists slip off the charts, back to the intermediate ranks. 

Regarding pop’s middle class, writer Shaad D’Souza acknowledges the almost paradoxical shift that’s happening among pop singers: “For these artists, pop stardom isn’t a commercial category, but a sound, an aesthetic, and an attitude.” Pop fans don’t just want what’s popular, in the obvious, mainstream sense, they want artists who adopt a familiar, pop-like sound and imbue their underdog stamp. Listeners of the Internet age are connecting with artists who situate themselves in nuanced niches, bending genre and personality to cement a new pop identity or freshly occupy a nostalgic pop space. Artists who are genuinely in touch with the verbiage and behaviors of the internet, who feel at home and accessible, but possess a talent worth marveling at. They aren’t larger-than-life or indie, but somehow both at once.

Pop artists are often painted as “inauthentic.” And while there may be a manufactured aspect of their craft, it’s their intense commitment to a particular niche that makes them soar. Successful mainstream artists today have found the identities that simultaneously look and sound good on them and set them apart artistically, and learn to occupy them at full volume. Whether it’s a parasocial, best friend-next-door like Taylor Swift, an omnipotent queen like Beyoncé, or an edgy, internet pop girl like Charli XCX, the pop singers that thrive are the fully saturated ones. Even as they waver between “eras,” they remain passionately committed to an identity that suits them, even if it’s well-suiting out of subversion. 

As such, seeing as Camila Cabello has always wavered between vague, brand-satisfactory aesthetics and sounds, her recent, full-forced adoption of pseudo-“alt” visual and sonic signifiers is rendered clumsy. Like Sweetgreen co-opting the breezy, salt-of-the-earth aesthetic of a Californian farm-to-table eatery - the reproduction comes out garbled and cheapened. “First-class” pop stars pulling from pop’s “middle class” are destined to produce an unsatisfactory product, as the style appears out of place on them.

Cabello’s newest “era” is a glimpse into what’s to come in a world where “optimization” is prioritized in conversations of art, editorial, and media at large. A world in which “content” becomes ubiquitous with “art.” A world in which said “content” is fodder for brand partnerships, a means of getting eyeballs on an advertiser, rather than poignant work in its own right. 

In a world increasingly rife with content farms, I still choose to believe that admirers of art as simple-seeming as pop music aren’t so easy to fool. Especially younger audiences, who are increasingly comfortable understanding and celebrating nuance in identity and art, due, in part, to the efforts of fan communities that sprouted out of the 2010s blogging days. I’m confident it will take far more than conference room-crafted smoke and mirrors to get young people on board with a sound and look that merely imitates the sounds and looks they love. For burgeoning new artists and those transitioning into a “new era,” learning what niche they can whole-heartedly saturate themselves in will aid them in standing apart from hordes of uninspired brand and label props. Seeking authenticity in a genre long painted as disingenuous. 

Chappell Roan (one of my favorite pop singers at the moment) performing at NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert

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For more on the intersection of art and commercial success, check out my essay “Is Commercial Art a Paradox?”