{"id":686915,"date":"2026-05-22T08:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T08:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/686915\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T08:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T08:12:09","slug":"trash-hits-why-a-wave-of-hedonistic-feral-female-pop-stars-are-rejecting-respectability-pop-and-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/686915\/","title":{"rendered":"Trash hits! Why a wave of hedonistic, feral female pop stars are rejecting respectability | Pop and rock"},"content":{"rendered":"

If any year demanded a soundtrack of self-aggrandising female mayhem, it\u2019s 2026. Amid the terrors of war, AI and the climate crisis, women are expected to be symbolic vessels of order and stability: thin, beautiful and perpetually 25 \u2013 a state of perfection newly available for purchase thanks to weight-loss drugs and the deep plane facelift<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Covered unironically in leopard print and rhinestones, a cohort of young female pop stars are defying this familiar con with brash electronic pop, shamelessly hedonistic lyrics, anarchic sexuality and an obsession with what was once dismissed as \u201cwhite trash\u201d. It\u2019s an aesthetic embraced by performers such as Slayyyter<\/a>, Kim Petras, Cobrah, Demi Lovato, Snow Strippers\u2019 Tatiana Schwaninger, Tove Lo and returning scene godmother Kesha.<\/p>\n

On I\u2019m Your Girl Right, the lead single from her new album Estrus, Lo sings \u201cWe fuck all night on Ritalin-lin-lin-lin\u201d. Slayyyter, meanwhile, describes herself as a \u201ctoo drunk, trashy St Louis girl \u2026 extensions showing \u2026 looking kinda crazy\u201d. Thong, a recent single by rising London-based musician Amara ctk100, celebrates barely-there pants (the artwork centres a thong visibly rising above the waistband of a skirt) and a fake-it-till-you-make-it lifestyle: \u201cBenz outside \/ Oh no, I lied.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of this feels like an extension of post-lockdown nihilism,\u201d says Ione Gamble, editor of the forthcoming essay collection The Polyester Book of (Bad) Taste<\/a>. \u201cThings are so bad in a political context that we may as well have fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

What sets this apart from previous moments of hard-partying recession pop is its reckless main character energy and invigorating rejection of feminine respectability. \u201cThe older I get, the more intense the pressure gets around being a \u2018good woman\u2019, and that mould feels so boring,\u201d says Lo, who is 38. \u201cThere\u2019s a confidence in not doing everything perfectly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Five years ago, sad-girl bedroom singer-songwriters<\/a> such as Olivia Rodrigo and Holly Humberstone resonated with a generation spending their formative years in lockdown. Once the pandemic lifted, gen Z reclaimed feckless post-9\/11 underground culture as \u201cindie sleaze\u201d and partied through the rubble of their own wrecked prospects. In came smudged eyeliner, shredded tights and the return of electroclash<\/a> thanks to artists including the Dare<\/a> and Fcukers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That 00s sound is \u201cdefinitely influencing music right now,\u201d says Lo. She celebrates its \u201crawness and roughness\u201d, which she thinks stemmed from \u201cpeople not giving a fuck because they\u2019re not being filmed\u201d in an idyllic pre-cameraphone age. \u201cThat need to revolt against the norm is building inside us like a pressure cooker. The aggressive \u2018getting punched in the face while I scream\u2019 sonic landscape of Slayyyter\u2019s song Crank makes that possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2026, the influence of those scenes has mutated into sleazy electro-pop \u2013 from throbbing drum\u2019n\u2019bass to hyperactive EDM \u2013 delivered with rock-star energy and rap-influenced vocals. The production is aggressively maximalist, all grubby guitars, blown-out synths and addictive hooks. Meanwhile, its energy is rooted in impulsive, raunchy mid-00s US culture: MTV\u2019s Spring Break, Britney with the brakes off, and the proliferation of online porn and reality TV (often both at once, in shows such as Girls of the Playboy Mansion).<\/p>\n

Demi Lovato in in Los Angeles in 2025. Photograph: Richard Shotwell\/Invision\/AP<\/p>\n

Spilling out from Hollywood\u2019s gay club scene, old pop songs by reality TV stars once dismissed as tacky \u2013 by the likes of Paris Hilton, Heidi Montag, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills\u2019 Erika Jayne \u2013 have been reclaimed as trash-pop ur-texts. Whether it\u2019s Slayyyter screaming \u201cI\u2019m actually kinda famous\u201d or Kim Petras flashing a Louis Vuitton bag and hard cash in her Freak It video, these stars are evoking a time when the rules of celebrity were changing and, for some, fame offered a diamante-encrusted ladder out of poverty.<\/p>\n

You can hear early traces of the trash sound in the grimy raunch of early 00s electroclash icon Peaches and the knowing rap-influenced provocations of Princess Superstar, whose 2005 single Perfect had a gen Z-fuelled revival after it was used in Saltburn. Trash-pop was distilled in the mid-2000s Hollywood party scene, when figures such as EDM godfather Skrillex would party next to Hilton, a mix that inspired Porcelain Black. Then a teenage transplant to LA from Detroit, she was making a raucous mix of electro-pop and industrial club music with lyrics about being king of the world and \u201cfucking like a star\u201d. It got her signed to Virgin, who, she says, then panicked about her abrasive attitude and tried to push her into being \u201csomething like Avril Lavigne\u201d. Black refused to comply and defied the label by uploading her songs to Myspace, earning millions of plays. \u201cPeople dream of doing numbers like that online now,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Kesha on stage in London in 2009. Photograph: Equinox\/REX\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t long before the music industry realised how lucrative this archetype was: in 2009, Kesha\u2019s rambunctious debut single Tik Tok chimed with post-financial crisis nihilism and she was crowned the queen of pop excess. Last year, Slayyyter and Kesha<\/a> collaborated with British producer Rose Gray on the club banger Attention! \u201cMy music would not exist without Kesha,\u201d Slayyter has said.<\/p>\n

Two years ago, Charli xcx\u2019s Brat re-energised pop<\/a> with hedonistic club energy, opening the cultural garbage chute for trash-pop to flow through. \u201cCharli is an instigator and not a reactor,\u201d says Lo. \u201cHer sound is so infectious it\u2019s impossible for it not to seep into everything new.\u201d \u201cIt touched a nerve in the zeitgeist,\u201d adds Slayyyter producer Kyle Shearer. \u201cIt hits, it feels good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since Brat was her sixth album, Charli also offered a career blueprint for Slayyyter, whose third album, Wor$t Girl in America, swapped Hollywood glam for denim hotpants and trucker hats, and finally gave her the pop breakthrough she had been pursuing since 2018. By the time Slayyyter played to a huge crowd at Coachella<\/a> this year, she had become one of US pop\u2019s most talked-about artists. Charlie Harding, co-host of the podcast Switched on Pop, says the album represented \u201cSlayyyter going for broke, her last-ditch effort. Pop music often rewards the thing which feels most authentically that person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if mainstream audiences have just caught on, the high camp, unapologetic brashness and full-frontal sexuality of trash pop has always attracted a huge LGBTQ+ audience \u2013 and artists from the community including Slayyyter, Petras, Swedish star Cobrah and US hyperpop rapper and producer (and early Slayyyter collaborator) Ayesha Erotica have been making this kind of music for years.<\/p>\n

Kim Petras. Photograph: Cameron Driskill<\/p>\n

Off the back of this moment, Cobrah is now getting broader recognition for her aggressive, sexually charged club music, and was asked by Demi Lovato to feature on her new song Fantasy. Many of Cobrah\u2019s songs \u2013 the industrial, icy Brand New Bitch, the hedonistic Good Puss \u2013 are about chasing extreme highs. \u201cEverything else just feels very lame and tame,\u201d she says. By leaning harder into her sexuality in her lyricism, she says, \u201cI\u2019ve become more like myself. The opposite of diluted: concentrated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harding suggests that by revelling in hedonism, these artists are \u201cstraddling stereotypes of women being unhinged and hysterical while being the masterminds behind the whole endeavour\u201d. You could read it as a reclamation of the mid-00s era, when dishevelled white-girl stars were assumed to be out of control: we know now that Hilton was just cosplaying as an airhead, although Britney Spears wasn\u2019t so lucky, losing the right to run her own life when she was placed under a conservatorship that lasted 14 years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an \u2018early internet\u2019 type of glamour that until very recently was still considered very low taste,\u201d says Gamble. Slayyyter has named a song Brittany Murphy after the late Clueless and Girl, Interrupted star who died of pneumonia, anaemia and excessive prescription medication use in 2009, age 32. \u201cOnce-maligned women of that era are now being reappraised,\u201d Gamble suggests.<\/p>\n

This week, Slayyyter went on America\u2019s Tonight Show for the first time wearing a bra made of beer cans<\/a>, evoking an infamous scene<\/a> in the Murphy-starring trailer-trash pageant movie Drop Dead Gorgeous<\/a>. The knowing \u201cwhite trash\u201d aesthetic could be seen as reflecting and romanticising the economic reality for many in the US. In 2010, one reporter wrote of Kesha: \u201cShe\u2019s this white-trash celebration. She\u2019s where the lowbrow get to feel like the highbrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prof Robin James theorises that \u201cif \u2018white trash\u2019 names whiteness that is threateningly close to Blackness, then white queer women performing \u2018trashy\u2019 femininity is a way for them to do something like a white girl equivalent of \u2018ratchet\u2019 \u2013 ie a femme sexuality that exists outside the boundaries of racialised, classed respectability.\u201d She notes its debt to rap: \u201cOf course, Black artists like Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B did this half a decade ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Major labels are taking note of how profitable this archetype is. Having started releasing her songs on SoundCloud, Slayyyter signed with Columbia for her latest album. Korean singer Heyoon, a former member of the squeaky-clean pop band Now United, recently released the hyperactive EP Seriously Unserious, reflecting the trash-pop sound\u2019s incursion into the highly lucrative South Korean market. \u201cI grew up a \u2018performer\u2019 which forced me to look perfect and do things perfectly,\u201d she says. Pivoting to what\u2019s \u201craw and messy\u201d allowed her to leave behind the stress of striving for flawlessness. \u201cIt was a healing experience for me,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The sound is now so popular it\u2019s already being satirised. Comedian Meg Stalter \u2013 of Hacks and Lena Dunham\u2019s Netflix series Too Much \u2013 just launched a music career with the knowing Prettiest Girl in America, textbook trash-pop about how hard it is to be rich, famous and beautiful, which features a \u201ctramp stamp\u201d tattoo on its artwork.<\/p>\n

Charli xcx on stage at Brisbane, Queensland in 2025. Photograph: Henry Redcliffe<\/p>\n

While this aesthetic stands in stark contrast to a parallel wave of sleekly retro-styled pop stars such as Olivia Dean, Raye and Sienna Spiro, it arguably risks becoming just as contrived; the trash-pop look might suggest maxed-out credit cards, but underneath are financially savvy pop stars. However, culture critic Philippa Snow argues that gen Z is unlikely to care whether or not these artists are truly putting their crumpled dollars where their mouth is. \u201cAll trends are performative by nature, no?\u201d she says. As for gen Z fans who adopt the look without the tequila habit to match, \u201cmaybe they\u2019re on to something in the long run: we all brutalised our bodies in the 00s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet there\u2019s more driving the trend than just the urge to have a good time. \u201cPeople\u2019s rights are being taken away from them,\u201d says Harding. \u201cQueer people, women, all deserve to be angry. This music turns frustration into celebration and hopefully on the other side, some kind of action.\u201d And Lo says: \u201cJust letting that inner turmoil out and letting it roam is cathartic as fuck. I\u2019m happy many of us are realising that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tove Lo\u2019s album Estrus is released via Pretty Swede\/Virgin on 18 September. Cobrah\u2019s album Torn is out now via Atlantic. Amara ctk100\u2019s self-released single Thong is out now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If any year demanded a soundtrack of self-aggrandising female mayhem, it\u2019s 2026. Amid the terrors of war, AI…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":686916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":["post-686915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/686916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}