Since reading this news, I've thought a lot about how much things have shifted in the last ten years in the now porous worlds of pop and hyperpop. When PC Music began, they were pop music gatecrashers whose style was very divisive. I liked reading this thread on LTM from nine years ago about PC Music:

https://www.reddit.com/r/LetsTalkMusic/comments/2epxiu/lets_talk_qt_hey_qt_and_pc_music_as_a_whole/

Hyperpop wasn't even a widely used descriptor at that point, people were referring to the style by the name PC Music, which gives an indication of how much of an impression the collective and label had on the style as it emerged.

Ten years later and hyperpop is now part of the alt-pop landscape: Charli XCX is on festival stages, 100 gecs and Caroline Polachek are on a major labels, A.G. Cook has production credits on the latest albums by Beyoncé and Hikaru Utada. The brash deconstruction of pop of the mid-10s has led to a new pop language that feels more entrenched within pop with every year that goes by.

Every couple of months, I'll return to this video. It's Charli XCX at SXSW in 2016. SOPHIE is DJing. They bring out QT to sing the PC Music-produced energy drink commercial theme song "Hey QT" (QT, who now records under the name Hyd, doesn't sing in this clip, the vocals are pre-recorded - QT doesn't actually sing on the original song anyway). There is very little choreography, the video's audio gets gloriously blown out when the bassline hits, the video ends before the song does. It's an absolute mess and yet you can feel the undeniable uplift of the moment. Everything was possible, this video is the proof.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajpu1piDccg

Looking back on a decade of hyperpop, what are your thoughts on the genre, have they changed in the last ten years, and do you see a future for the style?

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Posted by10 hours ago

How difficult is it to succeed internationally making music in a non-English language?

It has been shown that today the language barrier has been broken, more and more music is heard in different languages other than English. Whether in Spanish phenomena like Bad Bunny or Rosalia or the Kpop fever... but the question I ask myself, what do they have to succeed so much internationally? how did they do it? What do they have that other artists from their countries do not have who may have succeeded, but not at the level of being a global phenomenon.

I suppose the fact that they are within very important record companies will help them in their process of internationalizing their career, and also that today I think that there is more an open mentality and people do not mind listening to music in a language that is not their native language or in English.

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Posted by2 hours ago

Linkin Park was actually a great band unlike their 2000s Nu Metal brethren.

Unlike other 2000s Nu Metal bands, such as Papa Roach, Limp Bizkit and Disturbed, Linkin Park was actually a great and creative band. They released two iconic albums, 'Hybrid Theory' and 'Meteora' and could release even more safe similar sounding albums. But they decided to experiment with their sound.

'Minutes to Midnight' is a good mix of heavy Nu Metal songs and gentle ballads.

'A Thousand Suns' is a great concept album about nuclear war with elements of Prog Rock. It is one of the best albums of the century in my opinion.

Every Linkin Park album has a unique sound and feel. It shows band's musical and lyrical creativity. They were actually talented musicians who ventured far beyond Nu Metal, while other bands from their generation were stuck making the same kind of radio-friendly stuff devoid of creativity.

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Posted by11 hours ago

Ciara As an Artist

What do people think about her music? And why did she fall off? Some have compared her to Beyoncé but a generic version. I am curious why Ciara never broke out beyond her hit "Goodies" in 2004? Does anyone think she could've been a major artist? Did she really break through as a singer? Or were her albums just failures? She seemed to have been dropped by Sony/LaFace. I'm wondering why she didn't have a good team when she was signed to them.

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Posted by7 hours ago

What is the difference between underground and irrelevant?

Pretty much title. I've always assigned the term 'underground' to having some sort of cult following, as I don't think it's fair to class someone as underground because no-one's ever heard of them but I'm not sure if most people would agree with me. I made a shitty, 5 minute rap album when I was 9, am I an underground rapper? Of course not, so I can't understand the difference for most people between underground and irrelevance.

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