Sad and famous

Some of the most relevant and wonderful songs in pop history have been written from innocence and ignorance. Some of the most exciting and empathetic songs in pop history have been written out of resentment, disappointment, and the desire to blow it all away. To have a lasting career, it has always been key to find the moment in which to abandon naivety and embrace what is necessary at that moment to continue, be it maturity, cynicism, revenge or even nostalgia. This 2021 we have already seen Billie Eilish, Lorde or Halsey in the transition to that second stage that, well managed, delivers you to posterity; poorly calibrated, on the other hand, it can leave you in the gutter with other traitors, renegades or, worst of all, mature.

As in almost everything in 21st century pop, the fate is similar to what we have seen in similar artists for more than 50 years. Of course, the path taken, the motivations used and the reception by the public and critics is totally new. Lorde (24 years old) has gone from saying goodbye to the French at any party to getting up early even on Sunday to say hello to the sun. Billie Eilish (19 years old) now has legs and is going to use them only to go where she wants. Halsey (26) has written a pop album about reconciling stardom with personal life. All have been, in general, applauded for the path chosen to redirect their career, although neither the public nor the industry had suggested that there was nothing to redirect. On the other hand, Lizzo (33 years old), black and rotund,She has spent most of this year not knowing what was going to hurt her the least, ignore her condition or display it with pride. It's still easier to show vulnerability, character, or whatever by being white and attractive than black and non-normative.

One of the worst things that has happened to music forever has been records about the fame of its authors. Suddenly, that group or that singer was no longer that artist who spoke face to face with his audience, with whom he could empathize from a supposedly equal condition. Now he sang about how bad all the good things were happening to him. It was difficult to connect with someone who found an almost metaphysical void in going around the world in first class, sleeping with someone different every night, never having to pay for drugs and being adored by millions of fans.

This paradigm of the album about fame is being broken by these women. Their success is just as unbearable to them as to those groups of millionaires overwhelmed by material and emotional opulence. The difference is that today the lifestyle of these successful women is not a frenzy of drugs, sex and performances at ten in the morning on a German television, but a world of advertising commitments, social networks and a constant demand to be perfect. . Thus, in the face of overwhelm, Lorde took refuge in her dog and in a

self-help

for people who think they are too cool to read self-help books:

(Ariel), by Jenny Odell. He left Twitter. His dog died. He recorded a record,

(Universal), in which she became the Gwyneth Paltrow of generation X. On the surface, all wrong, but the motivations, the speech with which she presented the project and that patina of rebellion of a rich girl mixed with somewhat superficial flirtations - they can be understood as ironic, even - with the culture of well-being they have achieved that, in the style of some recent books based on nostalgia and longing for simpler times, a conservative and accommodating product can be understood as something revolutionary.

The way that Billie Eilish has entrenched herself is somewhat different. In May of this year, the American appeared on the cover of the British edition of Vogue magazine wearing a bodice, in a sexy pose. Part of the press and the public understood that as an exercise in self-assertion; the other, as a betrayal. Hardly anyone just enjoyed a good photoshoot and a good interview. Months later, his brilliant second feature,

(Interscope / Universal), one that, unlike Lorde's, did not lose its ingenuity despite distilling acidity, something that is a bit lacking in the New Zealander's latest work. Eilish's music explained those photos perfectly: it wasn't that the American had become the Madonna of 1987, it was just that she was sick of being her - with her colored hair, her tantrums, her baggy clothes - had become a work uniform.

Fame in pop is not what it used to be. The way in which it is reached may be the same, but the ways in which it is talked about and plans to get out of it are undoubtedly different. It is all much more personal, perhaps because the main stars are young women whose references are other women who previously suffered the privilege of success, and not hyperhormonized kids who dream of having orgies in hotels in cities that they would not know how to locate on a map. Also because pop has become, like literature or even cinema, a totally personal universe, a completely pure form of autobiography. Three decades ago these works would have been called maturity records. And we would have missed all its nuances. And we would have thought that they were the beginning of the end of the careers of their creators.Nostalgia almost never makes sense.

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