Hyperpop

Hyperpop runs anywhere from 130 to 180 BPM, sometimes tempo-mapped to shift mid-song, and shoves the loudness ceiling as a stylistic choice rather than an accident. Production uses heavy sidechain compression, distorted 808s, pitch-bent leads, Auto-Tune cranked past natural-sounding correction, and white-noise risers borrowed from EDM. Vocals are routinely pitch-shifted up an octave, doubled at clashing intervals, or cut into glitchy stutters. Songs are short — often under two minutes — and structured as a sequence of drops rather than verse-chorus alternation.

The PC Music label, founded by A. G. Cook in London in 2013, set the aesthetic foundation with releases from Hannah Diamond, GFOTY, and SOPHIE. Charli XCX's collaborations with Cook and SOPHIE from 2016 onward — Vroom Vroom, Pop 2, Number 1 Angel — moved the sound toward the pop mainstream. The Spotify playlist Hyperpop, launched in 2019, named and consolidated the scene; 100 gecs' 2019 album 1000 gecs is the canonical statement. SOPHIE's death in 2021 cast a long shadow, and the genre has since fractured into post-internet pop, dariacore, and digicore offshoots.

Listen for the pitch of the lead vocal — almost always shifted up at least a few semitones, sometimes through Auto-Tune set to retune in zero milliseconds for the chipmunk break. The kick and 808 are often distorted past the point of clipping. Notice how the song refuses to settle into a single tempo, BPM, or key — abrupt half-time, double-time, and modulation are formal features.

100 gecs' Money Machine is the single that broke the sound to a wider audience. The album is 1000 gecs (2019) by the same duo. Charli XCX's Pop 2 (2017) is the more polished gateway record from a major-label adjacent direction.

SOPHIE's 2018 album Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides was nominated for the Grammy for Best Dance/Electronic Album. The Spotify Hyperpop playlist editor Lizzy Szabo named the genre based on listener-tagging data, and most artists initially included on it rejected the label.