However bad your week is going, Katy Perry’s is worse. The US pop star might have an estimated $350 million in the bank, be engaged to Orlando Bloom, and has an apparent fan in King Charles, performing at his coronation last year. But she’s recently been mercilessly hounded online for making a harmless mistake: deciding to release new music.
“Woman’s World,” her first solo single in three years, was meant to herald her return to the pop pantheon and generate endless excitable headlines about her forthcoming album, 143, set for release on September 20.
Instead, President Trump was nearly assassinated three days later and took over the news cycle; if you’ve listened to the song, you might argue he did her a favor. Unlike the sexy, confident anthems that made her name – “California Gurls” and “Teenage Dream” – “Woman’s World” is a contrived mess, its dire accompanying film (complete with naff faux-feminist messaging) set to challenge The Beach Boys’s “Kokomo” for the title of Worst Music Video of All Time.
Depicting Perry in various patriotic outfits – Rosie the Riveter’s polka dot headscarf, a sequin star-shaped bra emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes – it somehow manages to be both addictively watchable and tragically cringe.
Perhaps that’s what Perry was going for: making the kind of earworm track you can’t get out of your head even though it’s terrible (remember 2005’s “Crazy Frog”, or 2012 South Korean juggernaut “Gangnam Style”?)
It’s not just the fact the song is rubbish that has made it crash and burn in the charts (although the likes of Pitchfork labeling it “unfathomably tepid” certainly didn’t help). Like fellow Noughties mainstay Jennifer Lopez, who recently had to cancel her “This Is Me… Live” tour because of disappointing ticket sales, Perry has entered into battle with a new, younger generation of female pop stars whose personas (both in their music and on social media) and relatable lyrics have made them the voices of Gen Z women. And, by the looks of it, she’s lost.
From Disney Channel actress Sabrina Carpenter, who is riding high from nine weeks spent at the top of the UK singles chart, to the gloriously brash Chappell Roan and British “It girl” Charli XCX, pop music has a new list of VIPs – and they play by their own rules.
Here’s our guide to six female artists currently making waves in the industry.
Chappell Roan
Search Chappell Roan on Google, and the search engine’s autocorrect feature will ask: “Did you mean ‘your favorite artist’s favorite artist’”?
The 26-year-old pop singer supported Olivia Rodrigo on her recent “Guts” tour and has turned from a fringe artist beloved by gay teenagers into a mainstream juggernaut: her debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, released last year, was one of Rolling Stone’s albums of 2023; she has 24 million monthly listeners on Spotify; and her recent performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon went viral.
Far from your usual Disney kid-turned-chart-topper (such as Rodrigo or Carpenter), Roan – who moved from an ultra-conservative, religious small town in Missouri to Los Angeles to make it big as a pop star – makes music for confident, sexually liberated people unbothered by societal judgement.
On “Casual,” she sings “I’ve heard so many rumors / That I’m just a girl that you bang on your couch”, while “Hot to Go!” – a deliciously infectious anthem complete with choreographed dance routine, like a drag-queen spin on The YMCA – sees her declare to a lover: “You don’t have to stare / Come here, get with it / No one’s touched me there in a damn hot minute.”
Aside from her terrific voice and catchy, self-written songs – which have seen her compared to an early Lady Gaga by music critics and fans – Roan’s unwavering commitment to sexual freedom is what has made her a star. Much of her music centers on her experiences as a lesbian, and features references to famous drag performances, queens or tropes; her outfits are just as important as the songs, from her campy spin on the Statue of Liberty at this year’s Governors Ball festival in New York City to the romantic, Marie Antoinette-esque gowns and gloves she showcased on her own recent tour (she will return to the UK for a run of sold out shows this autumn).
She’s bound to rub a certain section of society up the wrong way, but for her legions of Gen Z fans (plus this millennial one – I gave her intimate gig at London’s Heaven nightclub five stars back in December) Roan is the real deal, and is only going to get bigger and better.
Song to listen to: “Red Wine Supernova”
Charli XCX
How’s your “Brat summer” going? If that phrase doesn’t immediately bring to mind quitting your job and staying out dancing until 6am in your skimpiest clothes, a double vodka in one hand and your eyes smudged with last night’s makeup, then perhaps you haven’t seen the endless videos taking over social media related to Charli XCX’s recent album, Brat.
With its slime green cover and club-ready anthems, Brat has transcended chart success – it reached Number 2 in the UK – to become a fully-fledged meme, sparking merchandise, jokes and TikTok videos featuring the starry likes of Kyle MacLachlan, Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones. And at this year’s Glastonbury, which has been criticized for noticeable overcrowding, fans were left furious that Charli’s late-night “Partygirl” DJ set took place at the tiny Levels area. XCX regularly sells out shows in the US and packs out main stages at festivals in Europe – yet, bafflingly, the festival put her on a 7,000 capacity stage, far away from the Pyramid.
The 31-year-old (real name Charlotte Emma Aitchison) established herself as one of Britain’s most exciting new stars more than a decade ago, when “I Love It” (with Icona Pop) burst onto the scene in 2012; the years that followed saw her attempt a commercialized, bubblegum-pop career with the likes of “Boom Clap” and “Break the Rules,” as well as a slot supporting Taylor Swift on her “Reputation” stadium tour in 2018, before the Cambridge-born singer decided to commit to doing what she really loved: making wacky hyper-pop to soundtrack the lives of people just looking to have fun.
After years of Covid lockdowns, when young people were forced to stay home from school or university – parties, festivals and usual markers of adolescent development scuppered – music like Charli’s (and her own party girl persona) provides a call to arms for hedonism. In her own wise words, the best way to channel the spirit of Brat is to buy a “pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top with no bra”.
Song to listen to: “Girl, So Confusing” (with Lorde)
Gracie Abrams
Daughter of Star Wars director JJ Abrams and Lost producer Katie McGrath, Abrams has been plagued by the “Nepo baby” label since she released her debut single, “Mean It,” in 2019.
But the 24-year-old has managed to carve out her own path away from her famous parents, writing introspective, romantic ballads (such as “I Miss You, I’m Sorry,” in which she sings “I miss fighting in your old apartment / Breakin’ dishes when you’re disappointed / I still love you, I promise”) that resonate with her predominately female audience.
Her recent album, The Story of Us, became her first to top the charts in the UK and featured a collaboration with Swift, whom she also opened for on “The Eras Tour” in the US, and she will embark on an arena tour in the spring that includes a date at London’s 20,000 capacity O2 (and Manchester’s even bigger Co-op Live). Like Charli XCX, her effortlessly cool, envy-inducingly stylish persona on social media has helped her progress – not to mention the fact she’s rumored to be dating Gladiator II heartthrob Paul Mescal.
Song to listen to: “Close to You”
Remi Wolf
Like Chappell Roan, Californian singer Remi Wolf – yes, that’s her real name – recently supported megastar Rodrigo on tour, opening her music up to a whole new (and much bigger) audience in the process. The 28-year-old gave one of the most good-natured, enjoyable performances at this year’s Glastonbury, performing a set jam-packed with empowered singles about self-respect, body image and relationships. Discovered on American Idol aged just 17, Wolf’s music positively crackles with personality, humor and raw feeling, and her new album Big Ideas has firmly established her as one to watch.
Song to listen to: “Cinderella”
Reneé Rapp
From Broadway to television (in Mindy Kaling’s HBO comedy The Sex Lives of College Girls), film (Mean Girls’s recent remake) and finally, pop, Rapp is a multifaceted talent. She’s earned almost as much hype for her no-filter interviews as her powerful voice; earlier this year, when promoting Mean Girls, she went viral for laying into a “a—hole” bus driver called Buddy who was apparently “disrespectful and misogynistic” to Rapp and her friends. “I hate you,” she ended the rant, setting herself up as the heir to chaotic pop stars in the vein of Madonna, Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus we’d forgotten existed.
Song to listen to: “Tummy Hurts”
Sabrina Carpenter
The 25-year-old, 5ft-tall former Disney star (of hit tween TV series Girl Meets World) has become the planet’s preeminent rising talent, with her last two singles – “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” – reaching Number 1 on charts around the world. Her level of exposure first exploded back in 2021, when Rodrigo released her chart-topping single “Drivers License.”
The song featured the lyrics “And you’re probably with that blonde girl / Who always made me doubt”, which were widely construed to be about Carpenter’s rumored relationship with Rodrigo’s ex-boyfriend, actor Joshua Bassett. A pop-obsessed corner of the Internet went into overdrive, and, for a time, the abiding image of Carpenter in the public consciousness was a negative one – a woman who had stolen another’s man (it’s interesting that, since Carpenter’s star status has risen, little has been said of her relationship with actor Barry Keoghan, who has a baby son back in Ireland). It was a tale as old as time in the music industry, which has long pitted successful women against one another.
But what followed was proof that although the industry may still operate on the same sexist foundations – the artists now refuse to play by those rules. Carpenter, refusing to take the criticism lying down, released her fifth album Emails I Can’t Send in 2022, containing the Rodrigo-retort “Because I Liked a Boy.” Notably, it also contained Carpenter’s commercial breakthrough, “Nonsense,” a pithy, frothy pop song that builds up to an ad-lib verse laden with innuendo. While performing it at Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Luton in May, Carpenter – apparently pre-warned by the Beeb – opted for the lyrics: “BBC said I should keep it PG / BBC I wish I had it in me / There’s a double meaning if you dig deep”. Sorry, Tim Davie.
Eschewing her squeaky clean Disney image, Carpenter’s live performances of the song – particularly in the support slot at Swift’s “Eras Tour” – have catapulted her to viral fame on social media, making her, along with Roan, the pinup girl for a sexually-empowered generation of girls who refuse to be told what to do.
Song to listen to: “Espresso”
Poppie Platt writes about culture for The Telegraph
