The Rise and Fall of the Alt-Pop Superstar

By Ben Copas

The return of the heroin-chic IT girl is long past celebrating its arrival – from the brief reign of the TikTok e-girl subculture, to the rise of dissociative pouting Instagram models and the unprecedented success and hivemind inundation of Charli XCX’s Brat earlier this year, the 2020s have been the perfect time to “be really hot in a scary way,” as microcelebrity Gabriette succinctly put in the aforementioned popstar’s music video for “360.

But as microtrends have drifted towards (performed) individualism, what will cause the inevitable downfall of this archetype? The pendulum of pop stardom is never kind to divas for far too long – look at what has happened to Chappell Roan in these past few months! A year ago, most of this stuff I’d be talking about would be falling on deaf ears. I mean, maybe not in a college radio publication, but this should not be fathomable to your average Joe!

A Tinashe single used to function as a Spotify link for gay men and their hags to pass around through Twitter posts, with captions like, “Why is this lowkey SOTY?”. Now “Nasty” is one of the biggest hits of the year. There was an article published in Vulture about Ivy Wolk, a niche internet micro villain, better known for her small part in Sean Baker’s Anora. She is the type of figure where, in olden times, if you described her sordid online history, people would have told you that you needed to “unplug” and “stop talking to people online so much.” But now this is a form of “discourse” that people have opinions on!

Even “normal” online culture is out of control! “Costco Guys” and “Hawk Tuah Girls” would not have lasted much longer than a week a few years ago. They would be shipped into Ellen DeGeneres’ live studio, do the Harlem Shake on stage, and then be taken out to pasture, never to be seen or heard from again. My older relatives should not know that Kamala IS brat or what the Red Scare podcast is. Is this all because Bowen Yang is on SNL? 

We can handwave these as symptoms of recession, of a pandemic, of microchemicals in our water that are turning everyone into gay men, of the enshittification of social media, but the root of this collective hysteria is not what I am looking to solve; the most important question, is when will it all end? When will it stop being cool to be cool?

Our apocalypto, the harbinger of the return to our neat little boxes, has been right in front of us this whole time: Katy Perry. Since she began to lose her favor as the pop darling of the early 2010s, this quasi-Republican has seemed to fall even further after each rare Icarian return to form after she manages to release a good single again. 

With possibly the most scathing critical reception of the year, her comeback album 143 sits as the worst-reviewed album of the year and may truly be the most harrowing flop of her career. Produced by the notorious alleged rapist Dr. Luke, it is an uncanny simulacrum of scrolling through Instagram reels for hours on end. 

The title track, “WOMAN’S WORLD,” is a hollow, time-displaced attempt at a feminist anthem made for Old Navy commercials, which I must reiterate, is produced by an alleged sex criminal. Across promotional content for the album, a bikini-clad Perry wears cybernetic accessories that look like reconstructions of Arca’s looks drawn from memory. 

In its insincere imitation of the sardonic internet girls who have flooded the internet, there is a sad desperation haunting the release of 314. We have spent so long waiting for art pop to have its mainstream spotlight that Lady Gaga is doing pop music again, and still, these attempts are more hollow than ever. Can Art Angels Grimes exist after her proposition to the communists? Can self-titled Charli exist after the 2024 election? Perhaps there is a bit of protectiveness towards the styles of the mainstream underground going underground, but if the coolest thing is to perform a sincere yet detached commitment to art, how will that continue under the armature of corporate pop?

There is a lot that could be to blame for Katy Perry’s downfall, and in fairness, the fault cannot all be levied against her. The misogynistic, competitive nature of pop stardom makes it all too easy to tear down a forlorn idol. In an interview with Rolling Stone last month, the incomparable Stevie Nicks recalled an interaction with Perry a decade prior.

“She said, ‘So, who are your rivals?‘ I just looked at her. It was my steely look. I said, ‘Katy, I don’t have rivals. I have friends. All the other women singers that I know are friends. Nobody’s competing. Get off the internet and you won’t have rivals either.‘”