Nothing truly disruptive: why is pseudo-rebellious music so popular?
In April, internet personality JoJo Siwa released a song called ‘Karma’, which has amassed almost 40 million views on YouTube in just over a month. The song sees Siwa ditch her hyper-childlike style (bright colours, bows, and sequins) for an edgier look, defined by dark makeup and revealing clothing. Her transformation from child icon to “bad girl”, as she refers to herself in the song, was inspired by former Disney star Miley Cyrus, who similarly rebranded herself in the early 2010s, suddenly claiming that she couldn’t be “tamed”.
This is one of several instances in the music industry where artists have weaponised ‘alternative’ styles and subcultures for financial gain without properly adhering to or advocating for any of the belief systems associated with them. Figures like Machine Gun Kelly and YungBlud come to mind, as do Taylor Swift when she entered her Reputation era, and, on a much smaller scale, a new wave of small bands, such as Bilk, who use a faux punk sound that is vapid and soulless.
When these artists decide to use aesthetics associated with subcultures like punk or grunge, which are inherently political at their core, they do so to a comical degree, devoid of any authenticity. You can see the manufactured nature of their look practically dripping off them, from the perfectly manicured black nail polish to the bright streaks of green or red hair dye, which were most likely not an at-home box-dye job. YungBlud, real name Dominic Harrison, emerged on the scene in 2017, and his image has become more and more ‘alternative’-inspired as the years have progressed. He often wears eyeliner and styles his hair spiky, with studs adorning his clothing, which is sometimes a dress or a skirt made of leather, plaid or mesh.
While it’s great that he is promoting an aesthetic that challenges gendered expectations, his utilisation of alternative style is so over the top that it borders on costume, and it’s hard to believe that the privately educated musician truly wants to rebel against the ‘system’ he so often sings about. There’s a reason why Harrison is so successful – he doesn’t do anything that is actually groundbreaking. He simply rehashes an outdated pop-punk sound and adopts a faux alternative aesthetic without writing anything of nuance or depth. “I was born in a messed-up century,” he sings in his song ‘Parents’, where he vaguely sings about the older generation’s backward beliefs. It’s an infantile approach to rebellion, marketed towards a young audience who won’t actually want to incite an uprising against the capitalist system (he needs to flog those expensive gig tickets and vinyl variants, after all) – maybe just their mum and dad.
“And I’ll admit I’ve never been broke, but I have been broken,” Harrison sings on ‘King Charles’, his debut single, admitting his privilege before trying to sell us revolution. In reality, Harrison has made an almighty profit off of these pseudo-rebellious songs and aesthetics, selling out massive venues like Wembley Arena and creating his own festival. It’s disheartening to see, but it’s sadly understandable. Major-label artists can’t actually promote anything that would disrupt society. A bleached-haired, platform-shoe-wearing pop-punk wannabe who takes pride in spitting balls of phlegm into his audience is the ‘best’ the mainstream industry can offer.
Just like Harrison, who was born in a “messed-up century”, Bilk, a British band who have been blowing up on social media over the past few months, asserted the same sentiment in their song ‘Generation Messed Up’, which they ever so smartly introduced as being “about how messed up our generation is”. The video of the band playing the track at a live show has been widely ridiculed online. Not only does the band use the exact same instrumentals as Green Day’s ‘Brain Stew’, but the lead singer has an aggressively British accent, clearly trying to sound like a working-class punk band from back in the day or maybe Pete Doherty. The lyrics are the worst of all, however, with lines such as “Have you got anxiety?/ Or are you just running late?” and “Have you got ADHD?/ Or have you just had too many sweets?” forming the verses.
From the use of Green Day’s instrumentals alone, Bilk clearly have no originality, and not a touch of nuance to spare for their lyrics, either. They aren’t much different from YungBlud; they just market themselves as an amalgamation of more celebrated British artists, like Oasis, the Sex Pistols, and The Libertines, while dressing less obnoxiously. Yet, their approach to creating rebellious music is utterly devoid of passion or authenticity. Their song ‘Daydreamer’ contains the lyrics “Went to get chips and my card got declined/ Government pay, minimum wage/ Working at a call centre every single day.” The words sound like discarded RATBOY lyrics, yet the band have somehow amassed over 190,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.
These kinds of songs aren’t doing anything new, and they’re almost all created by white men (most are also well-off) who seem to deliver a very generic viewpoint that avoids intersectional issues such as racism and feminism. While many successful alternative artists throughout the years have come from privileged backgrounds, the ones who have endured the most are those who have used their privilege for a good cause, writing anti-war songs, singing about racial issues or calling out male violence. Artists like Joe Strummer or Kurt Cobain were hardly disadvantaged, but they were truly radical in their approach to music and songwriting, clearly prioritising their art over profit or image.
Now, we’ve entered an era where punk, grunge, and other alternative aesthetics can easily be adopted by the mainstream—everything these wild pieces of clothing once stood for is now used as musical shorthand. Swift once called Reputation a “goth-punk moment of female rage”, but the billionaire singer is anything but punk; she is part of the very top 1% that the subculture seeks to destroy. Her status as a billionaire upholds capitalism and, subsequently, patriarchy.
These artists and their faux-rebellious lyrics and outfits remain incredibly popular because they don’t actually pose a threat. Mainstream labels can happily promote these modern artists who use nostalgic aesthetics associated with ‘cool’ bygone eras of music, such as the rebellious, empowering nature of 1970s punk or the romanticised misery of ‘90s grunge, knowing that they’re not singing about anything truly disruptive to the capitalist system in which they thrive.
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