I’ve always enjoyed curating a diverse ecosystem of music. The shining statistic of my annual Apple Music Replay is the number of artists listened to — about 1,500 this year. I liken this particular affection of mine to how gastrointestinal doctors talk about indicators of good mental and physical health. The higher the volume and variation of vegetables you consume, the more you develop rich complex bacteria in the lining of your intestines, helping you thrive holistically. If musicians were my vegetables, I’d be a pretty healthy individual.
However, this December, during my regular inventory of the year’s content, I found myself shocked, even embarrassed at my year-defining artists, songs and albums. For the first time in a long time, pop music indisputably colonized my auditory microbiome.
There is a lot to unpack here. Why were shock and shame my first responses to this observation of my listening habits spit out by an algorithm? Where is the empowering story that you’ll usually find in my column about a woman in my life helping me overcome a hurdle in young adulthood? The answers to these seemingly unrelated questions are surprisingly intertwined and converge around a group of women who shaped the cultural character of 2024. Yes, my friends, I’m talking about the pop girlies, and their victory against the relentless facet of human nature to reject popular brilliance in favour of something undiscovered by the masses.
Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Charli xcx and Taylor Swift dominated global music charts last year. They all released a 2025 Grammy-nominated pop album and appeared on my list of either my most listened-to songs or artists of the year. This may be shocking to readers who know me personally, as I was initially so embarrassed that I refrained from sharing my replay on social media; though it’s typically a source of pride for me. My music taste is and always has been an integral part of my identity and something I strive to make a unique reflection of myself. I think the root of my shame lies in the assumption I’ve held for so long that liking what is “popular” will abolish the individuality I’ve been constructing for the last 20 years. Ironically, I spent last summer teaching kids at my summer camp to reject this idea in the music curriculum I created for them.
In the first lesson of each two-week-long music session, I aimed to deconstruct “pop” as a finite genre. Instead, I painted a picture of “popular music” as an ever-changing entity influenced by time and culture. Pop as we know it today is pink and neon green. Sparkly, catchy and light. But it used to be jazz. Or rock and roll. Or paradoxically, what we now call alternative! I would argue, that at the heart of pop in 2024 was Taylor Swift, a woman both adored and brutally hated all at once simply for existing at the centre of what is popular and thus, what is “simple” or “cheap.” We also discussed the misogyny coded in the rejection of pop music, and how female artists are often dismissed for writing lyrics just about love and relationships or simple but catchy hooks played so many times they drive us crazy. We forget that music is an industry and that simple, catchy writing is exactly what skyrockets these women to fame and commercial success. “That’s that me espresso” sounds like an easy phrase to whip up, but did you come up with it and market it brilliantly like Sabrina Carpenter did? I don’t think so.
Though I’m incredibly aware of the deep-rooted problems with rejecting pop music, I still felt a visceral shame when Apple Music held up a mirror. Lots of us probably did.
So what’s the takeaway? I’m going to hold your hand, and my own, when I say this, fellow Gen Zers: it’s okay to like what lots of people like! And it is especially okay to like what other people like when it results in women triumphing in a big and beautiful way. It’s okay to like whatever you want! Keep feeding your mind a diverse collection of sounds. My only ask is that you don’t avoid a whole collection of objectively well-written and well-produced music simply because the populous is in agreement. Don’t be that girl. Any kind of unification, especially in today’s political climate, is something to embrace.
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