Pop music has gone through a myriad of states and shapes over the years. It’s main players and heavy hitters have taken on an equal number of shapes. Pop music today exists in a very specific era, where streaming has upended the status quo, the internet is essential to an artist’s persona and the record industry’s ability to sell it. Where, then, is the room for the individual? What is there for people to find in pop music’s constantly moving and evolving shape? Though it might not seem immediately clear, there are whole groups of people looking to pop music and its most exciting voices not just for guidance but for consolation.     

In 2013 Lorde arrived on the music scene as if from nowhere, seemingly overnight. Her breakout song “Royals”, written when she was just 15, would take a place on the Billboard Top 200 Charts among weathered names like Katy Perry and Bruno Mars. It would hold that place on those charts for longer than many of the songs by those same household names. There was a lot to make Lorde an exciting new voice in the pop music climate of the time. She was young and rejected the usual pretenses of fame and teen pop stardom. She wore all black, dark lipstick, she danced on stage like you might dance alone in your room. Many in the public and media labeled her as “goth”, especially early on. Part of this was because of her aesthetic, but also the introspective and often emotion laden nature of her music. It probably wasn’t totally fair, if you go back now and watch interviews from the time, or look at pictures from some of her first award show appearance, you’ll find young Ella Yelich-O’connor with a wide smile on her face, looking incredulous at where she had so quickly found herself. Nevertheless, in the years since there has been a rise in female pop performers who aren’t shying away from their feelings. Lorde opened up the floodgates both musically and thematically to what is colloquially referred to sometimes as “whisper pop” or even the “sad girl aesthetic”.

In the past year, we’ve seen perhaps one of the truest embodiments of this same style in newcomer Billie Eilish. A young 17-year old from California who has written most of her songs with her brother in his bed room, Eilish first became known for her single “Ocean Eyes”, a soft slow, dreamy pop ballad. Though this brought her some success and name recognition, it’s nothing compared to what she’s seen more recently. Placed next to Lorde, Eilish’s rise could be seen at once as both comparably slower and even more meteoric. “Ocean Eyes” only peaked at number 84 on the charts, but at the time of this article’s writing it is her 15th most successful songs. The other 14 that have surpassed “Ocean Eyes” on the charts are all off her first album “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?”, which was just released in March of 2019. Since then her most successful song “Bad Guy”, the album’s opening song, has made it all the way up to number one on the Billboard charts and garnered over 180 million streams on Spotify. Eilish represents the final permutation of what Lorde introduced the world to years ago in her “bedroom producer” style of recording, her “whisper pop” vocal style, and especially her song packed with emotions ranging from sadness to anger and longing.

The pop star has always been a significant figure in American culture, ever since it began taking its form as we know it now in the 1980’s. Since the modern concept of the pop star came of age at the same time as that of the teenager, the two are and always will be linked. The female pop star is its own rare breed. At times this has meant glamour and aloofness, other times it has been overtly sexual. Too many, it represents one that was not always allowed to be authentic to itself. Often, when female artists like Lorde and Billie Eilish are authentic too themselves and don’t shy away from emotion and introspection in their music, the public assigns certain labels to them.  “This is an idea that has been attached to women for centuries in Western culture” says Gina Abelkop, a graduate student in the Women’s Studies Department at the University of Georgia, “the notion of hysteria, after all, came from women expressing frustration and sadness with their limited power, and was a way to invalidate that pain under a medical model. Lobbing those same criticisms at artists like Lorde or Eilish seems like another way to say that young women's experiences of the world as hard, confusing, contradictory, and alienating is just about their melodrama, pun intended.”

This raises the question then, are these artists doing good for their young and impressionable audiences? Are they voicing their preexisting concerns, or are they perpetuating potentially harmful ways of thinking? In short, are young girls listening to music to help them get through their own already existing sadness? Or is the music they are listening to leading to these hard feelings?

A study by researchers at San Diego State University and Florida State University, meant to test for a correlation between mental health issues in young people and their time spent online, found that there has been a spike in depressive symptoms among teenagers. Specifically, in teen girls. By combining data from two large scale surveys of teenagers over time, the study found that “depressive symptoms, suicide-related outcomes, and suicide deaths among adolescents all rose during the 2010s… the increase in depressive symptoms and suicide-related outcomes was driven almost exclusively by females.” Specifically, to the tune of a 65% increase between 2010 and 2015. It’s important to note some of this might be a result of the increased commonality of language around mental health in the zeitgeist, and the disparity in numbers between males and females might be a result of a willingness to self-identify as suffering from the symptoms of depression. But regardless, the signs are there that young girls today are, to be frank, sad.

Sure many of them are living full lives outside of their sadness, but there are also plenty that are struggling to do so. But what role can music play in these feelings?

There has been a lot of research about music’s ability to effect mood, according to a study by a collection of researchers along with Tom F. M. ter Bogt. According to that same study, not much research has been done about music as a source specifically of consolation, and so that was what they set out to do. They found that teens listen to a lot of music, but their reasons for listening to that music matters. The study found that many teens, and especially teen girls, turn to music as a source of consolation in tough times and on a daily basis. Beyond that, they found that music as a source of consolation was even more popular among fans of pop music. They study also says,

 “As most people are aware of and value music’s mood enhancing qualities, one would expect that they would particularly prefer to self-identify ‘happy’ music. Paradoxically, many people also listen to self-identified ‘sad’ music and state that this is satisfying…. Hence, not only happy and joyful music, but also sad music is important for alleviating mood and coming to terms with negative, distressing events”.

Thus, it seems that artists like Lorde and Billie Eilish are particularly poised at an apex in which many teen girls find themselves.

There have been many people over the years who have tried to ignore artists, and women, for being open and willing to discuss their feelings. But, “To write off artists like Lorde or Billie Eilish as ‘over emotional’” Says Cat Carter, a grad student in the Hugh Hodgson School of Music at the University of Georgia, “is to view the scope of their artistry from a narrow and confining lens. In doing so, it also negates the more serious themes and/or issues beneath the surface of their music that the artists may experience and their fan-base may relate to, including potential mental health issues such as depression.”. These artists might be the only thing many of these young girls have to help them deal with their own struggles. In a world that tells these young girls their feelings aren’t valid or important, the same one saying it to Lorde and Billie Eilish about their music, these songs can become their only solace. Rather than saying these artists are just wallowing in sadness and should be ignored, maybe they should instead be embraced. In turn, maybe more of us can come to terms with our own sadness. Even if the result is just that we’re all sad together, at least we can have something to listen to in the mean time.