Rogers, Holly. 2025. The Mercurial Affordances of Participatory Culture: SOPHIE, Hyperpop and the Undoing of Musical Genre. Journal of the American Musicological Society, 80(1), ISSN 0003-0139 [Article] (Forthcoming)

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Abstract or Description

Hyperpop, a noisy, glitchy and hyper-referential internet style, became a viral sensation in the 2010s. But by 2021, just as the hyperpop style was gaining significant traction over mainstream music culture, superstar protagonist Charli XCX sent out a nuclear tweet: “RIP Hyperpop?”

Who determines how contemporary music, particularly music born and disseminated online, gathers and dissipates? Many have called hyperpop a “micro-genre”. But is “genre”, even in its broadest usage, a useful frame for music that exists within the participatory affordances of new media? Internet music troubles the Western insistence on originality, copyright, permanence and the commodification of musical ownership that has guided traditional forms of genre construction, aligning more meaningfully with the social transmission of oral and folk cultures. Once music leaves the control of record labels and musicians to travel through the collaborative and networked creativity of fan remediation, the gatekeeping capabilities of intermediaries traditionally tasked with the categorisation and dissemination of music are weakened.

Using SOPHIE as a case study, this article suggests that the proliferation of digital media technologies and the accelerated participatory engagement with the music they afford have destabilised genre as a coherent way of categorising and understanding certain new music. Instead, it proposes the concept of mercurial music that can accommodate iterative creativity, and multiple voices and modes of cultural production in response to the ways in which music is created, critiqued and circulated in the meta-connectivity of the current digital moment.

Item Type:	Article
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Music
Dates:	Date Event 16 September 2025 Accepted
Item ID:	39582
Date Deposited:	17 Sep 2025 13:28
Last Modified:	17 Sep 2025 13:28
Peer Reviewed:	Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/39582

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