Sabrina Carpenter, Charli XCX and Chappell Roan: Vulnerable, Messy and Mean

“It’s so confusing being a girl sometimes,” Charli XCX sings on her latest album, Brat.

The vulnerable lyrics, existential questions and honest exploration of the complexity and contradictions of womanhood have made Brat more than just a collection of music.

For millennials and Generation Z, this reflects a very similar way of life.

Brat is, in the words of Charli XCX, a girl who “has a nervous breakdown, but likes to party,” who is honest, direct, “a little unstable.” In recent weeks, Brat has become a mainstream phenomenon.

The same week my grandmother told me one of her friends was a “kid,” Charli tweeted “Kamala IS a kid” and the Democratic presidential candidate renamed her profile X.

Charli isn’t the only pop girl ditching the bland approach.

Artists like Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter aren’t your typical, perfectly groomed, well-groomed pop stars: They’re messy, candid artists who wear their hearts on their sleeves. Both dominated the charts this summer.

They all stand out for their common outlook on life. They seem honest and authentic, with their opinions and life experience.

There are only so many times you can dance to songs with smooth beats and meaningless girl power mantras. Sooner or later, you want something more, and that’s what this new wave of girl pop offers.

In Brat, Charli candidly explores what it’s like to be in your 30s. In her truth-telling hit Von Dutch, she doesn’t care about the gossip about her, while her energetic anthems 360 and 365 are wild, carefree, and tell us we can still have great nights out (phew!).

At the same time, she offers a personal and introspective reflection on subjects such as motherhood: “I think about it all the time / That I could run out of time / Would it give new meaning to my life?”

Existential questions resonate with most millennial women. Should I have children? When is the right time? Will it change my life? What if I have other aspirations?

Josée Malon, a 23-year-old social worker from Kent, says she admires Charli because she gives her fans “a really insightful insight into her creative mind and her personality, which you don’t get from all musicians”.

“Beyoncé, for example, is reserved and mysterious. Some people think that’s part of her charm and appeal, but for me, it works against her. Why would I want to be influenced by someone who doesn’t give me any energy?

“Charli XCX gives 110% energy, she lets you into her life and you feel like a friend.”

Women aren’t the only ones who are fans of these pop girls. Spencer Caminsky, a 26-year-old political campaign manager, has been following Charli since 2016 and loves Brat because “it’s so much more raw and direct.”

“You find all the positive aspects of her past works and now you discover more vulnerable aspects of her life that she never talked about. You really feel her emotion and her regrets.”

In the meantime, Chappell Roan, 26-year-old queer pop icon has built a strong Gen Z fan base.

While she wasn’t the first queer pop artist, her drag outfits, sexually charged lyrics and steamy melodies made her one of the most mainstream artists.

Chappell’s music focuses heavily on his queer identity – Pink Pony Club was inspired by his first visit to a gay club, while Good Luck, Babe is about a fling with a girl who insists she’s not really gay.

Jonah Graham, 25, says he’s a fan of Chappell’s “openly queer” music because it “lets people know there’s a place where they can come together through big emotions, irreverent humor and boundless joy.”

But even without having had the same experiences that Chappell sings about, the themes of rejection, freedom, acceptance and self-discovery are universal.

Kamala Harris also tapped Roan in an attempt to appeal to younger voters, posting a meme on TikTok quoting Roan: “What we really need is a womanizer!”

While Ms. Harris is not part of the demographic that Chappell and Charli are most likely to appeal to, and is almost certainly not “someone with a pack of cigarettes, a Bic lighter, and a strappy white top with no bra,” by Charli’s definition of a kid, that’s not the problem.

Lucy Ford, a cultural critic, told the BBC that “Kamala is a kid in the sense that she’s a dominant cultural force at the moment and there’s been a separation from the album and the cultural hold that it has as a vibration.”

Sabrina Carpenter is a master of fun, cheeky pop music: The 25-year-old has taken Taylor Swift’s confessional style and added a healthy dose of humor.

His improvised, absurd X-rated outros never fail to make a splash. “The BBC told me I had to keep it PG / BBC I wish I had it in me / There’s a double meaning if you dig deep,” She performed at Radio 1’s Big Weekend.

“Sabrina is openly excited in her music,” Ford says. “It feels like she’s having fun and being silly, without taking things too seriously.”

In other songs, she turns the typical romantic pop song on its head. This time, he’s obsessed with her and “she looks so cute wrapped around my finger.”

Her self-indulgence and unapologetic attitude toward affectionate attention is totally cheeky. Why should we pretend that knowing someone has a crush on you isn’t a little bit of a turn-on?

But why this summer in particular are fans craving complex, messy music?

Content writer Olivia Cox recently took a look at these three artists and says what sets them apart is that each of them, in their own way, “embraces silliness.”

“I feel like pop music takes itself too seriously,” she says.

Rachel Humphreys, 29, a digital PR manager from Pontefract, says the artists are a “cultural reset” and offer an element of escapism.

Music is a “welcome distraction from the daily pressures of adult life.”

Ford says one of the factors behind why this phenomenon is happening today is that it’s a “response to very sentimental, ‘celebrities are just like us’ sentiments in music in recent years, where artists are baring their souls to meet their fans on the same level as everyone else.”

All these reasons show why outdated feminist slogans – like those of Katy Perry’s latest single, Woman’s World – don’t resonate with millennials or Gen Z.

Perry’s satirical video, which shows women dancing around a construction site in skimpy outfits, using urinals and brandishing sex toys, feels inauthentic compared to the music of these Gen Z artists.

But the smart, straightforward pop songs we’re listening to now aren’t as new as you might think.

Mercury Prize nominee CMAT told the BBC there was “nothing sudden” about the phenomenon.

“Women have always written stories in funny, tragicomic ways, but the people who wanted to hear them were other women – who, until recently, were not seen as a very (desirable) market.”

She said her own music was criticized a few years ago as “novelty music” because it was humorous.

“There was never before a debate about whether this was an intellectual thing or whether we should take this seriously – because no one takes women seriously,” she added.

Artists like Madonna and Lady Gaga laid the foundation for this music, but the modern trend begins with artists like Lorde, who undermined the absurd positivity of 2010s pop lyrics on Team – “I’m kind of over when getting told to put my hands up the air” – and Billie Eilish.

One of his first songs was written from the perspective of a psychopath with a car trunk full of corpses.

His music continues to be wonderfully strange – every track on his new album Hit Me Hard And Soft plays with that duality.

Dynamics change, ideas remain unresolved, and nothing ever gets resolved.

It’s a feeling that many people must have felt over the past couple of years.

To ensure their longevity, today’s kids will have to guess when the sands of pop, and culture at large, will shift again – and do so before anyone else.

Additional reporting by Mark Savage.