Drinking that She Espresso

Get in, girls! We're saving Madison Beer from becoming a floparina!

I think “Onika Burger” is some sort of contemporary dadaist work.

If you can describe someone’s image in roughly 3 words, that’s a brand! In pop music, image-making is the moneymaker. It’s everything. This principle explains how Madison Beer and Chloe Bailey, despite their high name recognition, considerable talent, and beauty, have low brand equity. I single out these two because they’re both examples of “former gifted kids” who were admired for her potential, but have now been reduced to her looks. Being hot with a great voice really isn't a compelling. Pop artists need an "ownable brand identity."

Madison Beer, instead of leaning into her darkness in the music, has made her insecurity transparent mostly in her inability to be perceived as less than physically perfect. Chloe Bailey, in what seems to be an attempt to shed her child youtube singer identity, leaned into a sexualized image that feels ill-fitting and tacky compared to her sweet, nerdy temperament. I’m not saying there’s no way to be a “hot nerd,” but the HOT DESPERATE SINGLES IN YOUR AREA invasive pop up ad aesthetic was not right for her. It’s not that she needs to cover up; she needs a distinctive personal style where she feels comfortable both musically and visually. Doja Cat’s breezy sensuality works because she remains equally an artistic weirdo. SZA maintains an image as a complex, sensitive woman who is doomed to be hot. Tinashe is the savior of kpop, a would-be ace/center/visual/lead dancer.

Capitalize on my slay mama brainrot, queen!

You don’t even need all that much raw talent to make it. Consider Addison Rae, who went from a charismatic white girl ditz/laughingstock to a bubbly synthetic pop star under the tutelage of Hot Girl Svengali Charli XCX. Music enhanced her natural charm and made her liabilities (”fake” “manufactured” “can’t sing”) into strengths. Addison Rae’s other gift is that she seems unconcerned with the markers of prestige. She is just a young woman from Louisiana (like fellow Pepsi fan Britney Spears) who is here to dance and have a good time. This lack of tryhard energy makes her a perfect candidate for pop’s middle class, whose fans permit everything if the bops keep coming in. The leak of “I Got It Bad” saved her music career. We were completely ready to dismiss her after she debuted with “Obsessed,” which, to paraphrase a hit tweet, sounded like a song designed to torture the floor staff at Forever21. “I Got It Bad” showed us her impeccable taste and references. She took advantage of my “slay mama brainrot¹” and she ATE! In the context of her EP AR, even “Obsessed” was completely redeemed.

What if people have already decided who you are and that they’re not going to like you? Is it too late to change their opinion of you? NO!

With enough finesse, you, too, can do exactly what Miss Polly Pocket did.

After “Drivers License,” Sabrina Carpenter was just “that blonde girl,” with many rooting for her downfall. She was the Jess to Olivia Rodrigo’s Dean (and Joshua Basset’s Rory), if you’ve watched this fanvid of “Traitor.”

Now she’s the cheeky, girly, lighthearted counterpart to Olivia Rodrigo’s self-aware, melodramatic girlishishness. They’re both winning. This transition was likely expensive and time consuming, but it’s paying off! It seems like Island Records is giving her nearly Dua Lipa levels of investment from costuming to merch to Spotify payola.

Refashioning Fame: Sabrina Carpenter’s Style Revolution

By employing dreamy silhouettes and pastel colors, her styling creates an image that is both sweet and chic. Frequently styled in soft pink, blue, and white, colors that symbolize innocence and purity, Sabrina’s curated image effectively dissolves any past public animosity.

It helps that Sabrina Carpenter is a songwriter herself, which is always leverage in owning her image. Particularly skillful is how the lightness of her image permeates into her music, particularly “Feather” and the effervescent “Espresso.” These are snackable songs. “Feather” in particular reminds me of girl group NewJeans in its vocal tone. (NewJeans, the first kpop group I’m kind of stanning, was designed as an entrypoint into kpop for people who don’t usually listen to it.)

Sabrina Carpenter may look the “sexy baby” in Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero,” yet somehow still comes across as an ally to women. I get the feeling she’s inviting all of us to join in her wink and hair flip attitude. A threat would be someone like hoodie-handed Ariana Grande. Sabrina commands a presence despite her smallness, enlarging herself with confidence and fluffy blonde layers, often wearing colorful fitted clothing.

She was not an overnight success. She’s a longtime performer who’s figured out a formula that works. Her silly “Nonsense” outros during the Eras tour gave people something to anticipate each night and showed off her wit.

Oh? She’s got JOkes!

Now, back to our flop risk

Who is Madison Beer? I’ve listened to some of her songs but I couldn’t tell you what they sound like. That’s the main problem, and it’s related to a greater image problem.

A natural direction would be making music for girls who wear big hoodies in the summer to hide their self-harm scars. Writing for these girls is crucial because as much as they need love and care, they also long to feel understood. They don’t need glib girlboss positivity, the well-intentioned post-it in the middle school mirror that says “you’re beautiful <3.” They seek something more raw. It doesn’t matter how much Madison Beer fits the beauty standard and how “unrelatable” she is as a pop star. Tortured souls recognize fellow tortured souls. In her memoir, Madison Beer communicated openly about her abuse, suicidality, and resilience despite all she endured. She could connect with an audience by tapping into the pain of feeling like a loser/femcel, the pressure to looksmax, and a shared interest in gaming. Even though she is a successful working artist, I wouldn’t be surprised if she were upset about the way her peers and hoobaes have lapped her. Extended adolescence is such a resonant theme in her generation, as is gifted kid burnout.

The kind of relationship Grimes wants with her daughter

If she wants to join pop’s middle class, she needs a mentor who can bring some “edge” and “artistry” like Grimes. Madison Beer’s problem is a perceived lack of authenticity. People forget she’s a singer and not an influencer. Despite being Elon’s baby mama, most of us know Grimes as a true auteur. And Grimes happens to be so genuinely and authentically interested in in high-artifice cyborgian aesthetics. She basically named her firstborn (X Æ A-Xii) after Jenny’s government name (XJ-9) in My Life as a Teenage Robot. If nothing else, she commits to the bit. There’s potential here for Grimes to step in as Weird Girl Svengali. I can see Madison as both muse and artist, the wounded girl-woman reduced to pixels, reinvented by another woman interested in the grotesque and the mechanical. Madison Beer could stand to learn from the backlash against fellow pixel woman EmRata’s self-aware self-interested feminism, make some cash off some NFTs, and instead win the hearts of fellow alienated women.

Consistent references to 2AM can make you a star

Poets are fixated on the same thing over and over again. They turn things over in their mind until it makes sense, and then it doesn’t, and it’s explored again. That’s how a lot of us work, always solving then running into the same problems and fixations, which is how we get locked into Taylor Swift’s canon.

Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridgers are are both skilled at brand-building and memorability. Sometimes they go overboard, like Taylor Swift creating detritus with all the extra variations of album releases and Phoebe Bridgers wimpily smashing a guitar on SNL.

The brand isn’t just the skeleton costumes and sequin dresses. A real brand, to become truly recognizable in a way that is rewarding, is rooted in the music and lyrics, the things of real substance. Even with a public body of work of 20 songs, this can be done.

The dog references in Phoebe Bridgers’ and Boygenius’ discography starting with 2018’s “Me and My Dog” was continued in Punisher with “Moon Song” and “Savior Complex.” Before, this slavish type of love was explored in “Waiting Room.” In “Killer,” she sings of a type of infatuation that disturbs its object. She writes evocative images that drives curiosity and repeat listens. What does she mean, “You buried a hatchet, it’s coming up lavender?”

A repeated motif suggests a story. It’s rewarding for a listener to notice and analyze these motifs across a body of work. We love easter eggs and the feeling of being smart for realizing things. Taylor Swift uses these tricks across every medium, from album liner notes to music videos. We thank her for keeping the girls off of QAnon and channeling that energy on r/gaylorswift instead.

Across a discography of over 200 songs, she’s served up a ton of self-referential fanservice and nuanced riffs on similar themes. Repetition with variation in the pre-chorus and chorus is a tool she often uses within her songs as well. This is key to receiving extra marginal streams, repeat listens, and inspiring obsession.

you took my sadness out of context at the tortured poets department complex

In “But Daddy I Love Him,” for instance, Taylor Swift plays homage to herself in a spiteful reworking of “Love Story.” The peacefulness of “Invisible String” and the lyric “it’s cool, baby, with me” answers the insecure questioning of “is it cool that I said all that?” in “Delicate.” The “single thread of gold” ties “Invisible String” to “Daylight,” which was tied to “Red” with the lyric “I once believed love would be burning red, but it’s golden.”

This is what can make an artist truly addictive—catchy melodies + rich lyrical quirk + worldbuilding. This is a tough formula to complete, and the reason I’ve long-considered Phoebe Bridgers to be the real spiritual successor of Taylor Swift, Charli XCX is another artist who fulfills this formula, as she’s always in a convertible at a party and crying. Carly Rae Jepsen is another. In fact, I’ve written about how well the Charli Rae Jepsen/Carly XCX worlds meld together and how someone should make a jukebox musical about them. Finding the r/popheads comments about my piece this year is actually what drove me to start a Substack blog as opposed to writing solely on Squarespace. I want to be able to reach the people I’m writing for!

Trust me, I am still 100% sincere about this and I am so thankful to the music editor Ellen who helped make my 4AM tumblr post idea into a real and legible piece of writing.

Making excellent pop music is one thing. Creating a career-spanning emotional landscape is harder. The 3-word brand is table stakes. It’s crazy to me that artists can be commercially successful without it. The brand should be downstream of the artists’ lyrical fixations and stickiest motifs, not just their look.

Now I’m curious… if you styled yourself as a pop star with access to all the resources and collabs, tell me what vibe would you conjure!

I think I’d like to be something like Rina Sawayama—clever and well-versed in pop tropes and genre mixing—and also be beloved in Korea. After improving my language skills I’d like to appear on the occasional variety show and do some writing for girl groups. My music fanbase would be American and probably fellow sufferers of slay mama brainrot, but I’d show off my more trad singer songwriter side on a Tiny Desk. I’d kinda like to be something like a girl Eric Nam, with Koreans speaking approvingly of the fact that I went to a good university.

1. Slay mama brainrot, as coined by Nymphet Alumni, is roughly described as the way the urban online gay gaze has influenced pop culture. Onika Burger is part of this, I think.