It’s 10pm—Do You Know Which Pop Girlie Your Kids Are Listening To??

Get in loser for the 🚗✨😘JOYRIDE😘✨🚗

Jul 30, 2024

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I can’t say I’ve never understood why people are so quick to put down pop music because I do get it, in theory. Everyone feels insecure at times in their lives so it’s natural to find the things that make us feel better about ourselves. Since the 1960s, pop music has largely been associated with fanatical, hysterical, screeching teenage girls—canonically the easiest group to feel superior to.

But we’re not revisiting the fangirl conversation today. No, as we teeter into the time of year unfortunately and horrifyingly known as late summer, we’re skirting around any discussion of who likes pop music because I’ve set my sets on the impossible: figuring out once and for all what the song of the summer is!!!!! How am I supposed to choose?? How can anyone pick between brat and “Espresso” and CHAPPELL ROAN???1

Pop music feels as alive as ever right now, so I wanted to talk about it all with someone who lives, breathes, and works in it. This week, I’m joined by Abi Marin who shares the qualities she looks for when scouting rising stars, why we’re all eating out of the palms of pop girlies’ hands, and, definitively, what she believes is the song of Summer 2024.

Abi Marin is an AMC stubs member, certified LA lover, Subway’s #1 fan, and all around music industry gal. She started her career as an intern at a local CT radio station after falling down the One Direction rabbit hole in 2012 and realized that working in music is what she wanted to do with her life. She’s worked in music marketing, PR, radio, events, management, social media, A&R, and plaque certifications—but ultimately her plans are getting to sit in a corner office overlooking LA and rule the music industry to overthrow the boys club.
Affectionally nicknamed “the people’s publicist” by friends, she knows way too much about pop culture, and enjoys a good Mexican mule, mozzarella stick, and trying to force herself back into reading books.

Before we begin today’s piece in earnest, I wanted to give a little side space to this note from Abi:

I wanted to shout out my college radio station slot I had for four years (I started freshman year at the graveyard slot 1-2 am on Tuesdays) for helping hone my playlist abilities and for shaping my music taste into what it is today. My show was called CBGB LIVES! after the iconic NYC punk club. I started off playing dad rock but devolved into creating weekly themes where I played whatever the fuck I wanted.

Real Brat Girl Shit

You don’t need to be an expert on a subject matter to be interviewed here at Emily For President, but you should have a pretty good handle on the conversation at hand if I am to ever let you talk your shit. The barrier to entry depends on the topic du jour, and the vibe check Abi needed to pass for us to continue today’s piece couldn’t have been clearer:

Emily: Are you having a brat girl summer?
Abi: Yes ma’am!! I started answering these questions after a night out circa 5 am.
I was an early adopter of brat summer—I instantly connected to the album and knew it would be my whole personality. I’m also seeing Charli’s SWEAT Tour with Troye Sivan in October so I will also be having a brat girl fall.

So she’s got the credentials—that does impress me much.

As someone who not only talks the talk but walks the walk to discover up-and-coming musicians, I wanted Abi to explain:

Emily: What do you look for when you’re looking for a new artist?
Abi: Personally, it needs to speak to me right away. All of the artists that I’ve found that have made it “big” (I have a playlist called crystal ball on Spotify of artists that I knew would blow up before they did—some include Chappell Roan, Charlotte Sands, Renee Rapp, Tove Lo, The Dare) had something about them that was wholly unique and so intoxicating.
I know most A&Rs do unfortunately have to consider streaming numbers now—a lot of them won’t even bother if you have under a certain amount of monthly listeners—but I’ve tried to be looser with this guideline when the music was amazing.
Emily: Has what you look for evolved over your career so far?
Abi: Absolutely! I’ve always been a huge lover of music and played my fair share of instruments, but over the past 10(!!) years of working in music, I’ve tuned my ear to what makes a good song and what makes a good artist.
There are also so many facets of making a song—from producing (on a computer program where the sounds are all simulated) versus live recording instruments, to mixing (fixing the frequencies of pitch in a song) and mastering (the final touches of a song that make it feel “professional”)—that the average person doesn’t even think about or notice the difference of, but makes the song complete. I’ve also tuned my ears as to what songs would work better as a single as opposed to a track on an album.
It took a lot of training and listening to thousands of songs to know what makes something extraordinary. I listen to a SHIT ton of music, and we live in a time where the barrier for entry into the industry is lower than ever, so there’s more music than there ever has been in recorded history. It’s hard to find something that cuts through the literal and metaphorical noise, but once it does, you know that’s something special.

asapabi

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Emily: When you’re looking online for artists to sign, what are the key things that scream “star power” to you?
Abi: Now more than ever, an artist’s vision is so important. Creating a visual and sonic world for your album to live in is vital in the time of social media, when artists are being asked to be content creators on top of musicians. A modern example of this is Ethel Cain: the character and backstory of Ethel are integral to understanding the story of the album, Preacher’s Daughter, and the gothic Great Plains imagery truly paints a picture for the listener to EXPERIENCE the world of Ethel.
An up-and-coming artist who also does that extremely well is CHITRA (I deeply believe she’s next up). I found her while doing some artist outreach for a management company I worked for in 2021 and have watched her build a universe around her music. She uses her South Asian heritage to add the melodic scale to her songs, which are Britney Spears meets Jersey club music meets something new entirely. Her newest single “NUMB” is her first to hit 1M streams, and it’s a testament to her dedication to showing the behind-the-scenes of putting together and self-producing such a cool sound.
Another up-and-coming artist is someone I used to manage who has truly become one of my best friends, Karina. She experimented with her sound but has really honed in on this punchy pop—like an edgier, Spanglish Sabrina Carpenter. The first thing she said to me when starting this upcoming project was that she wanted to focus on world-building and visual language over anything else, and how to tell the audience who Karina is as an artist.
We spent weeks planning a 14+ hour-long promo shoot with four different sets and working with a stylist and color grading specialist to keep that through-line throughout each shot.

Naturally, as someone who is still as One Direction-pilled as Abi, I had to ask:

Emily: Do you see yourself as the modern-day Simon Cowell?
Abi: God, I hope not. As someone who owes their career and interest in the music industry to One Direction (and more specifically, reading their leaked contracts on Tumblr at 2 am on a school night), Simon Cowell is the opposite of who I want to be or base my career after.
Simon looks at someone and thinks about how he can mold this person into what he wants and pump out enough serviceable pop music to make him another billion dollars richer. I have really dedicated my career to trying to understand an artist's vision, see how I can align myself with that, and help them achieve their goals. Working with independent artists who are at the beginning of their careers and giving them that confidence in themselves is literally the best feeling in the entire world.
Simon Cowell has never and will never feel that, because he doesn’t care about artistry, just money (see Little Mix’s JADE’s debut single, “Angel Of My Dreams” for why to hate Simon).

Point taken.

Since it’s clear Abi means business about the music industry and cares deeply about the artists that drive it, I was curious to know her thoughts on this summer’s cadre of killer pop girls.

Well, What We Really Need is a Femininomenon

Listen, I’m not going to hold your hand and explain what Charli xcx’s “kamala IS brat” Tweet meant. I’m not Kaitlan Collins—I do not have her level of patience.

What I will say, though, is that the degree to which everyone from Greg Gutfeld to your mother is talking about being a brat just shows the indelible power Charli xcx possesses. We’re in the midst of an iconic moment in pop music that is being led by some of the coolest women in the world. I had to ask Abi:

Emily: What are your thoughts on our current pop girl renaissance?
Abi: I’m thriving in it. Pop girls are the backbone of the music industry—Britney, Taylor, Gaga, Madonna, Olivia, Katy, Dua, Beyoncé (to name a FEW)—and pop music is the tree that every other genre branches out from. If we didn’t have them, we wouldn’t have our finger on the pulse of what is popular, what is important to young people, and what it means to be a human being in their respective current era.
Pop girlies can be used as an anthropological tool—like comparing what made Madonna popular in the 1980s versus what makes Olivia Rodrigo popular today—it can be used to gauge the economy, and it tells you so much about how a person views them self by the music they listen to and WHY they listen to it. I could go on a whole tangent about recession pop and how popular music and what is popular reflects the current state of the collective feelings of where it is popular (can you tell I studied media in college in fucking Washington DC??).
Pop girlies truly rule the world and, without them, we would suffer. Long live the pop girlie renaissance.
Emily: Have we ever had a moment like this in the pop music landscape before and, if so, who were we listening to back then?
Abi: I will die on the hill that teenage girls make or break the music industry. I think the modern pop girlies are finally getting their flowers, but I think the last time we had something remotely similar was Y2K and Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Beyoncé.

Candidly, I initially planned to spend this section focused on the prowess of women in pop music but I ended up pulling on another thread Abi mentioned.

In a 2018 piece for Vox, Scott Timberg wrote about how pop music—like all forms of pop culture—equally responds to the environment it is released into and offers an escape from whatever hardships consumers may be facing. But following the 2008 financial crisis, we saw a trend in music colloquially known as “recession pop” that was pure escapism:

consumerist anthems that assure us we can spend our way to a new reality, sexless songs about sex that reduce physical intimacy to its mechanical attractions and rote motions, and vague empowerment chants that try to lifelessly propel us up off the ground (X).

As I read that section in Akhil Vaidya’s essay from this past April in Hot Knife, I heard “I Gotta Feeling” by The Black Eyed Peas in my head…only for that to be cited as a perfect example of recession pop in a CNBC article. Simply put, the pop music that came out of the late 2000s and early 2010s was “‘all about dancing and having a good time, in contrast to the actual economic circumstances…They were feel-good songs to get us out of a difficult time and they were the medicine we needed’” (X).

Now, you may be asking: why is this relevant? Are we in another recession?

We’re not. At least, I think we’re not.2 As the CNBC article explains, although “data shows the economy is expanding and unemployment is low…economists have wrestled with the growing disconnect between how the economy is doing and how people feel about their financial standing. We’re in a ‘vibecession,’ experts say. On TikTok, some have gone a step further, even summing up the current mood as a ‘silent depression.’”

A silent depression, as Olivia J Bennett explains in Dazed, is

an age marked by an inability to call things as they are, despite truly dire financial circumstances, so it makes sense that we’re seeing this reflected in our music. Periods of recession have typically always been defined by music with faster, frenetic melodies and a hooky lyricism, coloring economic hardship with relentless optimism (think the Great Depression of the 1920s, which saw the popularization of blues and swing, or the UK’s Winter of Discontent across the '70s and '80s, which ushered in punk and disco)…
Young people today are arguably more aware of inequitable structures than ever, yet they feel increasingly powerless, stuck in cycles of shame and outrage perpetuated by the media. Post-pandemic, this generation has moved into what [professor of culture studies Diane] Negra describes as “a new profile marked by extremely high rates of anxiety, despair, and despondency.” In short, many of us don't have enough money, time, or mental strength to bender away our blues in the carefree way most dance music requires.

The logic therefore is: pop music is fun again, so things must be bad. But they’re not bad—they just feel bad. Such is the theory of vibecession which, by any other name, sounds like a weird shade of collective PTSD. And yet, today’s pop music—while inarguably very fun—feels different than that of yesterday.

While recession pop comments can be made aplenty about “Espresso,” Sabrina Carpenter’s other summer bop, “Please, Please, Please” finds her very publicly discussing her boyfriend’s image and, with its release, all but demanding he be better. On brat, as we’ve discussed, Charli xcx grapples with how she feels when pitted against other women in the industry and whether she wants to start a family in the same breath that she sings what might be my favorite lyric of the year: “That city sewer slut's the vibe / Internationally recognized.” And Chappell Roan and Billie Eilish both have viral songs about eating girls out—like let’s go lesbians!3

By all this, I mean to say, yes, the sounds of pop music today are danceable and deeply reminiscent of the days of will.i.am’s music supremacy. But the songs themselves are exceedingly more honest about our lived experiences in a way “Give Me Everything” never was. And sure, you can cite “JOYRIDE,” Kesha’s summer hit which is by many accounts a true harbinger of recession pop as a counterpoint, but even that feels more triumphant than trite in light of the struggles we all watched her endure over the past ten years. And while I regret even uttering Katheryn Elizabeth Perry’s “Woman’s World” (at all and certainly in the same breath as Kesha), we as a society have moved past the need for the 2010s “girl boss” white feminism. We see right through it and, let’s be real, we’ve all seen better.

Every day is a weird time to be alive and I feel like the pop music we’re getting right now reflects that. It’s silly and vulnerable and palatable and real. It’s no small wonder the three women leading the charge this summer are doing so for a reason, but I wanted Abi’s critical take on it all:

Emily: The three main pop artists who are having a major summer—Charli, Sabrina, and Chappell—have all been in the music industry for so long before achieving the levels of fame they’re seeing now. What do you think that says first about the industry itself, about consumers, and about the music they’re each putting at the current stage of their careers?
Abi: People love the idea of an “overnight success” but there’s truly no such thing. People also love to tout “industry plant” as an insult when in reality that’s also not a real thing. Being dubbed an overnight success or industry plant is 99% of the time the result of a strong marketing campaign and the incredibly hard work of an artist honing their sound and finding their niche. Once you find that pocket and you get good at it, that’s when people really start noticing.
Chappell was signed to Atlantic when she was in high school after posting videos online, Sabrina was a Disney machine girlie á là her predecessors Miley and Selena, and Charli was discovered at 14 and wrote some of the biggest songs EVER (“Señorita,” “Same Old Love,” “I Love It,” “Fancy”…) in addition to her own incredible discography.
All that to say: I think people are starting to gravitate toward authenticity. In a society that idolizes celebrity and fame where it’s now been plastered all over social media, we’ve grown disillusioned with the egregious displays of wealth by people like the Kardashians. Artists that used to be labeled as untouchable have to now be brought down to Earth to be accepted by new generations that grew up unimpressed by what they saw online because they could always find bigger.
Gen Z and Gen Alpha both really value being real and raw, and this has definitely partly stemmed from growing up online and now the rise in streaming where you see someone’s uninterrupted, unedited, and unfiltered day.
brat goes from a heartfelt song (that made me SOB the first time I listened to it) about wondering if you’ll miss out on parenthood as you grow up and trying to retain your identity in your relationships to the whiplash of partying and drugs and heavy EDM. Chappell unapologetically talks about what it was like to grow up queer and question your identity within the confines of the conservative Midwest (and does so in the most poetic, vocally gorgeous way possible). And Sabrina’s “Nonsense” outros where she comes up with the horniest way to thank a city for having her let her fans in on the joke.
The girlies are raw and we can’t get enough!!

The vibes may be off but the United States of Pop in 2024 is perhaps the strongest it has been in my lifetime.

There Were Nights When the Pop Was So Good…

Recently, I was horrified to learn that Charli xcx’s—I’ll say it—masterpiece, “The girl, so confusing version with lorde,” debuted at #63 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. 63???? Did the fact that I listened to nothing else for a full 24 hours after its release mean nothing to the charts????

Evidently, I’ve been thinking about this ~~with malice~~ for the past month and since I had a captive expert, I simply had to ask, for my sanity:

Emily: Women in pop have gone platinum in my house but they don’t always end up topping charts like I’d expect. Are these charts truly reflective of our listening habits or are they more like the Electoral College?
Abi: Funny you say that—I now work at a company that creates plaques when an artist gets RIAA certified.
Quick rundown: a gold album or single sold 500,000 copies, platinum sold a million copies, and that can be also something like 3x platinum meaning three million copies, and diamond is ten million copies sold. In the age of streaming where artist makes $0.0008 ish per stream, 150 streams = 1 sale.
We also make Billboard and iTunes chart plaques, and both are a literal reflection of things like airplay (radio), streaming numbers, and social media impressions. Everything is an algorithm and a numbers game these days, and these charts are no different. The electoral college simile is probably the most accurate way to describe it. Of course, it’s still an honor, but you didn’t exactly just win the popular vote—you also played and won the industry game.

Every year, Spotify tries to come up with a new and creative way to tell me in my Wrapped what I already know: I love pop music. I love bangers and bops and ballads. I love being like other girls and screaming the same lines of a Taylor Swift song in my spin class along with everyone else. I love it when a song starts and you hear the sounds of recognition before people start singing along.

The history of pop music isn’t an explicitly clear one, but by most accounts, the concept of it began in the mid-1950s:

During the 1950s and 1960s, pop music encompassed rock and roll and the youth-oriented styles it influenced. Rock and pop music remained roughly synonymous until the late 1960s, after which pop became associated with music that was more commercial, ephemeral, and accessible (X).

Musicologist and critic Simon Frith is credited on the Pop Music Wikipedia page with making the above claim, juxtaposing it with the note that while this development took place in the pop realm, rock music “aspired to authenticity” (X). I found this distinction interesting, given what we covered in the last section, but I wasn’t able to find Frith’s review of brat anywhere so there’s no way to know what he thinks of the more confessional tone pop has started to hit.

Elsewhere, Frith has written that the “three identifying characteristics of pop music [are] light entertainment, commercial imperatives, and personal identification” (X). Presumably, of course, he’s talking about “Please, Please, Please” which hits all three marks. Although I began to research Frith and his commentary after our conversation, it was really interesting to see the alignment between his assessment and Abi’s response to the question:

Emily: To you, what makes a perfect pop song? What’s your best example of one?
Abi: THEE perfect pop song is and always will be “Teenage Dream” by Katy Perry. It has that catchy melody, intoxicating hook, and an air of nostalgia that was present even when the song came out. What makes it so special also is it was written by Bonnie McKee who is one of the hardest working pop songwriters of the last 20 years!! I ended up at her 4th of July party this year (that is so disgustingly LA of me) and went home afterwards to look at her credits to find she’s written some of the best pop songs of my life.
There are certain producers and songwriters that define a generation of pop—Timbaland in the early 2000s, Max Mara in the 2010s, and arguably Dan Nigro (who has worked with Chappell and Olivia Rodrigo) and Jack Antonoff (even though he’s my enemy) for the 2020s—and Bonnie is that of the mid/late 2000s through the mid 2010s.4
Perfect pop just has to be so simple that you hear it and think, “How didn’t I think of that?” but it gets stuck in your head for days. It tells a story through the lyrics that is relatable, nostalgic, and emotional. “Teenage Dream” came out when I was 12 years old, and even though I wasn’t yet a teenager, I could feel the exact emotions that Katy was describing like I’d had those experiences myself.

With that, friends, the moment of truth has arrived. It’s what we’ve all been waiting for.

I asked Abi:

Emily: In your opinion, what is the definitive song of the summer?
Abi: “Espresso,” handedly. As much as I love Chappell Roan and “Good Luck, Babe,” it’s the type of weird pop song you’d never expect to be as popular as it is. “Espresso” exudes summer from the dreamy vocals to the summery guitar riff.
The visuals just add to it, but before we even got that, it sounded like a fresh summer tan after you get home from a long day at the beach. It’s catchy, cheeky, and really solidified Sabrina as a bonafide budding pop star.

There was only one question that felt right to ask to close out today’s piece. I hate to pit women against each other—I really do—but I was desperate to know:

Emily: Fuck marry kill: Charli xcx, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter?
Abi: UGH—this question took me the longest to answer. Fuck Charli (duh, just listen to “Guess”), marry Chappell (I would wake up to breakfast in bed every single morning), and kill Sabrina (unfortunately, I’ve never fully gotten into her work until “Espresso”).

And on that note, I’m H-O-T and it’s time T-O G-O.

Thank you so much to Abi for being so game to do this piece in a crazy haphazard way!!! It’s really amazing that I have the opportunity to reconnect with individuals from completely different phases of my life who have become the coolest people doing the coolest things!!!!

Check out Abi’s playlist of up-and-coming stars she’s rooting for here!!!!