106 Time February 3, 2020
Bass” and “Dear Future Husband.” As the years be-
tween albums piled up—her last full-length release
before this year was Thank You in 2016—what was
once “old- fashioned” began to feel antiquated.
When faced with the prospect of revitalizing
her new album, Treat Myself, Trainor had to start
from scratch: “I wrote four albums [of material]
because I was adapting to what’s going on in the
music industry,” she told Billboard. “I got into such
a dark place of, ‘I don’t know how to follow all
these rules.’ ” It’s a quote that’s refreshingly frank
and appealingly workmanlike. You get the sense
that Trainor views pop music as her vocation, and
she wants to do her job
well. But the singles from
Treat Myself wear that
hard work on their sleeve;
taken together, they give
the impression of an art-
ist grasping at straws, with
the light funk of “Blink”
and “Evil Twin” ill-fitting
alongside the moody folk
of “Workin’ on It.”
Others are re-entering
the pop landscape only
to discover how much it’s
changed. When Kesha
made her comeback with
the somber Rainbow in
2017, it was devoid of the
glitter-streaked, whiskey-
soaked hedonism that had
characterized her earlier
work—a natural reac-
tion to the trauma of her
long- running legal en-
tanglement with producer
Dr. Luke, whom she’d ac-
cused of sexual and emo-
tional abuse. Her new
album, High Road, repre-
sents a return to her “roots
of pure and utter debauch-
erous joy,” as she put it.
Kesha has always been
comfortable with the lan-
guage of empowerment,
and the wisdom of songs like “Raising Hell”—a
celebration of the healthy bit of sin in every good
person —feels hard-won given the pain she’s faced
in the most public possible forum. And yet the
songs that have been released from High Road are
out of step with pop’s prevailing mood. They feel
like your aunt has just shown up at the bar and
bought your friends a round of tequila shots: her
heart’s in the right place, but it’s still a little embar-
rassing. The best High Road single is “Resentment ,”While 2019 may noT have been an explosive
year in pop music, it teed up the personalities and
story lines that could define the next decade in
listening. A new generational gap opened up, one
separating the veteran stars of the ’10s—think
Beyoncé, Drake, Rihanna and Taylor Swift—from a
new crop of ascendant art-
ists like Billie Eilish, Lizzo
and Post Malone. A quiet
year for the former group
included live albums,
B-side compilations and a
focus on non musical pur-
suits. Among the few to
release a collection of new
work was Swift, whose
Lover sought to recap-
ture the polished, joyous
sound of older albums like
Red and 1989.
The pause left space for
Eilish and her colleagues
to storm the charts with
work that shared a key set
of qualities : agility, musi-
cal fluidity, a natural ease
with the Internet, and
comfort with the language
of self-care and existen-
tial dread. (They’re natu-
ral bed fellows: you have
to labor to maintain your
well-being when it feels
like the world is going up
in flames around you.)
And while it’s not as if
those big names are going
to be knocked from their
pedestals anytime soon—
for some of them, music
is just one part of a multi-
faceted global lifestyle brand—it’s apparent that
the rules are beginning to change. Anyone striving
for pop success in 2020 and beyond will be judged
on criteria laid out by the young guns.
Some artiStS are Struggling to adjust, even
after making a conscious effort to revise their ap-
proach. Meghan Trainor felt old- fashioned at her
commercial peak, thanks to the doo-wop lean
and retro romanticism of hits like “All About That
REVIEW
Chasing cool in
pop’s new era
By Jamieson Cox
TimeOff Music
ILLUSTRATION BY ELEANOR SHAKESPEARE FOR TIME; GETTY IMAGES (4)
△
Clockwise from
top left: Meghan
Trainor, Halsey,
Selena Gomez and
Kesha all released
albums in January