There’s a certain grandiosity to which today’s stars aspire - to be not just popular but shiny, synthetic, and larger than life.
Thus, when former underground art star the Weeknd released the brazenly commercial Beauty Behind The Madness this summer, our own Tom Breihan concluded that the album is “a total and unabashed sellout move, and that’s one of the best things about it.” Similarly, Wilson notes the message inherent in Swift naming her “very first documented, official pop album” 1989: “Like ’80s music, it declared, the new Taylor was going to be unabashedly fun, quirky, inventively plastic, and big, big, big.” Nevermind that Swift’s previous album, 2012’s crossover smash Red, was already a pop album in almost every sense. In other words, coolness and bigness have become inextricable. As Wilson sees it, the anything-goes spirit of post-integration MTV and Gordon Gekko’s “greed is good” mantra echo into now in the form of mix-and-match Spotify playlists, the death of the musical middle class, and social media’s imperative to constantly expand your following. In a smart piece that summed up the spirit of the times, Slate’s Carl Wilson recently noted the connection between that “bigger is better” impulse and music’s endless ’80s revival, examining the many ways in which Reagan-era largesse shapes the current generation’s view of pop. At this point going pop is well established as a path to critical acclaim, and being popular is generally viewed as a positive, not a cause for suspicion. It’s no secret that in 2015, many of the old biases and ethics of the underground have fallen out of fashion. The way she chose to describe that move - both “a big pop album” and “an experiment” - is telling. Now, like her fellow Fifty Shades beneficiary the Weeknd, Goulding is attempting to seize her moment with an album designed to cement her status on the pop A-list. Although the song technically charted lower than “Lights,” thanks to Fifty Shades it felt far more inescapable - the kind of song she could belt out as Taylor Swift’s special guest with the confidence that everyone in the audience would know every word. Not until “Love Me Like You Do,” the humongous MOR ballad from this year’s blockbuster Fifty Shades Of Grey soundtrack, did Goulding gain a firm foothold in the public consciousness.
She was sorta cool and kinda famous, but not enough of a cause célèbre to dominate online discourse nor popular enough at radio to be a household name.Įven as she kept landing EDM-era hits like “Burn” and “I Need Your Love,” and slaying festival sets throughout 20 - I count at least three rave reviews in our archives - Goulding seemed stuck in some netherworld between blog stardom and actual stardom, not fully reaping the benefits of critical acclaim nor commercial conquest. She dated and collaborated with Skrillex at the height of dubstep, befriended elusive production mastermind Burial, and brought Arcade Fire rock bombast to her live show. Yet despite the song’s success, Goulding seemed less like a budding superstar than one of many internet-era singers making “pop” with scare quotes. Goulding emerged out of England in 2010 with “Lights,” an EDM-infused synth track that earned rave reviews upon its release and made a surprise dash up the American charts two years later. I made a conscious decision that I wanted it to be on another level.” This is a ridiculous statement, but not entirely ridiculous considering the source.
When Ellie Goulding announced her new album, Delirium, over the summer, the press release included this quote from the British singer: “A part of me views this album as an experiment - to make a big pop album.
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