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Mef every year they wanted the noise of pride aggrandising the destruction of women, and 2026. Between the dangers of war, AI and climate crisis, women are expected to be symbolic vessels of order and stability: thin, beautiful and eternal 25 – a state of perfection that is newly available to buy thanks to slimming drugs and deep plane facelift.
With leopard prints and rhinestones, a group of young female artists are mocking the iconic figure of brash electronic pop, shameless music, sexiness and an obsession with what they once called “white trash”. It is a beauty that is embraced by actors like SlayyterKim Petras, Cobrah, Demi Lovato, Snow Strippers’ Tatiana Schwaninger, Tove Lo and returning goddess Kesha.
On I’m Your Girl Right, the lead single from her new single Estrus, Lo sings “We’re having sex all night long on Ritalin-lin-lin-lin”. Slayyyter, meanwhile, describes herself as “a very drunk, dirty girl from St Louis…extras for the show…she looks like a lunatic”. Thong, the latest singer and singer from London, Amara ctk100, celebrates the missing pants (the artwork puts a visible string above the belt of the skirt) and the fake life: “Benz out / Oh no, I lied.”
Ione Gamble, editor of the upcoming news, says Ione Gamble, that: Polyester Book of (Bad) Taste. “Things are so bad politically that we might as well be happy.”
What sets this apart from previous periods of severe recession is its reckless power and denial of respect for women. “The older I get, the more pressure I feel to be a ‘good woman,’ and the mold is so exhausting,” says Lo, who is 38.
Five years ago, sad girl singer-songwriter like Olivia Rodrigo and Holly Humberstone have also joined the generation that lives their birth years and closes. After the pandemic ended, gen Z took up the post-9/11 underground culture as “indie sleaze” and shared the damage. Came smudged eyeliner, shredded tights and back to electroclash Thanks to the artists included in Dare and Fcukers.
That ’00s sound is “making music right now,” says Lo. He celebrates its “rawness and brutality”, which he thinks comes from “people who don’t take offense because they’re not being filmed” in the age of flashy cameras. “The will to rebel against culture is growing within us like a pressure cooker.” The aggressive ‘punch in the face and scream’ lyrics of Slayyyter Crank make this possible.
In 2026, the influence of these images has changed to electro-pop – from throbbing drum’n’bass to hyperactive EDM – given the power of a rock-star and a voice inspired by rap music. The production is very tight, all grubby guitars, blasted synths and hooks. At this time, its power comes from the fast, dirty culture of the mid-00s in the US: MTV’s Spring Break, Britney and the brakes, and the spread of pornography on the Internet and reality TV (often all at once, in shows like Playboy Mansion Girls).
Coming out of Hollywood’s gay club, the old pop stars of TV shows that were once described as cheating — by Paris Hilton, Heidi Montag, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ Erika Jayne — have been treated like trash records. Whether it’s Slayyyter shouting “I’m so famous” or Kim Petras flashing a Louis Vuitton bag with hard cash in her Freak It video, these stars evoke a time when the rules of celebrity are changing and, for some, fame provided a diamond-studded ladder from poverty.
You can hear the trashy sound of early 00s electroclash icon Peaches and sense the allure of Princess Superstar, whose 2005 single Perfect was revived by the Z brand after being used in Saltburn. Pop trash was dumped at the mid-2000s Hollywood party, when the likes of EDM godfather Skrillex partied next to the Hilton, a mix that inspired Porcelain Black. Then a young transfer to LA from Detroit, he was making music that was a mix of electro-pop and industrial club with lyrics about being the king of the world and “acting like a star”. It got her signed to Virgin, who, she says, were horrified by her aggressive nature and tried to force her to become “something like Avril Lavigne”. Black refused to comply and defied the label by posting his music to Myspace, gaining millions of plays. He said: “People dream of making numbers like this on the internet.”
But it didn’t take long for the music industry to realize how profitable the song was: in 2009, Kesha who sang her first Tik Tok song had a financial crisis and was crowned the queen of pop. Last year, Slayyyter and Kesha collaborated with British producer Rose Gray on the club banger Attention! “My music wouldn’t exist without Kesha,” Slayyter said.
Two years ago, Charli xcx’s Brat re-energized pop it’s the power of the hedonistic club, and opens the garbage chute for the trash to pass through. “Charli is an innovator, not an innovator,” says Lo. “His voice is so contagious that it can’t get into anything new.” “It struck a nerve in the zeitgeist,” adds Slayyyter producer Kyle Shearer. “It feels, it feels good.”
Since Brat was his sixth album, Charli also provided a career plan for Slayyyter, whose third album, Wor$t Girl in America, traded Hollywood glasses for denim pants and trucker hats, and finally gave him the direction he has been following since 2018. Slayyyter played a huge set at Coachella this year, he was one of the most famous artists in the US. Charlie Harding, co-host of the Switched on Pop podcast, says the album represents “Slayyyter’s final run.
Although many people have just started, the big camp, the pride and the sexual eye of the trash has always been there. attracted a large LGBTQ+ audience – and artists from the area including Slayyyter, Petras, Swedish star Cobrah and US hyperpop rapper and producer (and Slayyyter’s first collaborator) Ayesha Erotica have been making music in this genre for years.
Behind this moment, Cobrah is now well known for his violent, sexual music, and was asked by Demi Lovato to perform her new song Fantasy. Most of Cobrah’s music – the industrial, icy Brand New Bitch, the hedonistic Good Puss – is about to hit the highs. “Everything is just deformed and dirty,” he says. By insisting on sexuality in her music, she says, “I’ve become like myself.
Harding points out that by enjoying hedonism, these artists “have an idea that women are static and unsettled while they are at the forefront of the whole work”. You can read it as a retelling of the mid-00s, when white girls’ stars were thought to be incompetent: we know now that Hilton was just playing as the head of the air, although Britney Spears was not lucky, losing the right to lead her life when she was put down. protection that lasted 14 years.
Gamble said: “It’s the beauty of the ‘early internet’ that until recently was considered very small. Slayyyter named Brittany Murphy’s song after Clueless and the late girl, the Interrupting star who died of pneumonia, anemia and drug use in 2009, at the age of 32. “The women who were once scorned from that time are now being read again,” Gamble points out.
This week, Slayyyter went on America’s Tonight Show for the first time wearing a bra made of beer cansincentives a bad event in the Murphy-starring trailer-trash competition movie Drop Dead Gorgeous. Knowing about the “white trash” flavor may seem like a reflection and fun economic reality for many in the US. In 2010, a journalist wrote of Kesha: “This is a celebration of white trash, and the bottom feels like the top.”
Prof Robin James explains that “if ‘white trash’ refers to the whiteness that is next to Blackness, then white women who do “feminism” is a way for them to act like a white girl equivalent to ‘ratchet’ – i.e., female sexuality that exists outside the boundaries of racism, to be respected.” He also says that he owes rap: “Of course, black artists like Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B did this ten years ago.”
A great article looks at how beneficial this archetype is. After first releasing his music on SoundCloud, Slayyyter signed with Columbia for his latest album. Korean singer Heyoon, formerly a member of the squeaky-clean music group Now United, recently released the EP Seriously Unserious, highlighting the intrusion of trash noise into South Korea’s lucrative market. He said: “I grew up as a physical person and it made me look good and perfect. Taking on the ‘raw and dirty’ made him stop worrying about being perfect. He said: “It hurt a lot.
The sound is now so popular that it is already ridiculed. Comedian Meg Stalter – of the Hacks series and Lena Dunham of Netflix’s Too Much – has just launched a singing career and I know. America’s Most Beautiful Girl, a trashy documentary about how hard it is to be rich, famous and beautiful, features a “stamp” tattoo on her artwork.
Although this beauty is very different from the retro stars like Olivia Dean, Raye and Sienna Spiro, it can definitely be fantasy; The appearance of junk may show an excessive amount of credit cards, but underneath are savvy financial professionals. However, cultural critic Philippa Snow says that gen Z couldn’t care less if these artists are really putting their lame dollars where their mouths are. “All behavior is inherently good, right?” He says. As for gen Z fans who adopt the tequila-free attitude to harmony, “maybe they’ll do something about it after a while: we all abused our bodies in the 00s.”
However, there is more to driving the situation than simply wanting to have fun. “People’s rights are being taken away from them,” says Harding. “Stupid people, women, they should all be angry.” This song turns frustration into celebration and hopefully on the other hand, action. And Lo says: “Just letting that inner turmoil out and letting it roam is very difficult.”
