2020s Totalism
the sound of the vibe shift is a dunk in the fish tank
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In hindsight, I may have been overly deterministic. Sure, technology has an outsized influence in shaping our collective taste. But people have agency, and though they often veer along the tracks of our technological and cultural infrastructure, they can, and often do, resist the momentum of inertia.
My thesis for this newsletter has basically been this: Spotify prioritizes the continued and constant playing of music, thus making them prioritize music that works well as background in their recommendation algorithm. This broad preference has empowered the notion that music should be thought of as vibe-setter. Music, we are led to believe, is not an art form with meaning unto itself, but a thing in service of mood, context, atmosphere, affect.
Whole genres emerged as a downstream side effect.
Bedroom pop was probably the most clear example of this. One of the first genres to emerge from the new dominance of Spotify’s editorial playlists (which adopted radio’s once-ability to powerfully shape mass taste), Bedroom Pop displayed all of the preferred aesthetic qualities of streaming technology. Pleasant, non-disturbing, mood-inducing, vibey.
This gave the genre a natural advantage on Spotify. Spotify’s algorithm highly factors “skips” into their curatorial schema. The more people that skip a song, the more that song is downgraded on the platform’s recommendation algorithm. This essentially made “vibey” synonymous with “good.” We don’t skip vibes after all, we vibe with them. This is not to say there was no good or worthwhile bedroom pop — many artists from that era have sustained, and become some of our greats. But there was a lot of music too from that time that was simply successful because it filled an ambient, algorithmic need.
It was an illustrative era. And if I was a technological determinist, I would say that Bedroom Pop is our forever future. Spotify wants chill vibes, and thus chill vibes will be our perennial meal. But such is not the case.
Humans, I suppose, still have a say in the work of culture-shaping, and the underground, or the always dormant-weird in our culture, wanted to reclaim the foreground. Which is sort of what hyperpop was. It was music that served a punk-ish desire to be brash and sugary. And it was also music that served the ever-intesifying needs of an attentionally-challenged generation.
I could never tell if it was the scrape or the balm.
There was a partial thrill and tepid radicalism to hyperpop. It was directly opposed to streaming’s placid, background aesthetics, but what it gained in opposition to Big Streaming, it lost in other domains. It did, after all, suspiciously conform to the generally frenetic clip of the attention economy. It was TikTok music: not in an eye-rolling, kids these days way, but in that it packed the quick, loud, joyful punch of that particular platform. Everything Everywhere All in 2 Minutes of chipmunk voice. There’s much to say here. I think I already said it. But basically, other than SOPHIE and her colleagues, its cultural potency always felt partial to me.
But it did beckon me to wonder: What would a music that faces it all sound like? Something that was reacting to a deeper impulse in our culture, rather than serving a momentary swing in aesthetics? Something going against the grain of algorithmic recs, but also the whole splatter-paint shit show of our digital culture?
I think I’m beginning to see the outlines of such a music, such a vibe.
If Bedroom Pop sought to set a mood. And if hyperpop sought to capture attention. And if both did so in a sort of parodic way — too extreme to fully work as capital-A Art — then I think there’s a new crop of artists who are splitting the difference between background aura and foreground engagement with what I’ll call 2020s totalism.
It’s my newsletter, so I get to name an era.
My former professor at Bard, Kyle Gann once wrote about Totalism, which was a newly emergent movement in contemporary music in the 90s. After the great leap that was minimalist music in the post-classical world — you know, like Phillip Glass, Steve Reich — there was a sort of “where do we go??” moment for composers. Minimalism purified composition to its most basal, repetitious forms and tropes. Gann wrote of the 90s’ totalism, “The ‘total’ in totalist music implies, among other things, having your cake and eating it too: appealing to lay audiences, yet also providing enough underlying complexity to intrigue sophisticated musicians.” For such an example, see the work of John Luther Adams, whose work immerses listeners in sonic landscapes via intricately detailed ambient and repetitious orchestration.
In a way, the 2020s totalism — which I’m positioning as firmly pop rather than of the avant grade — is not dissimilar to Gann’s idea. It splits the middle between complexity and straightforwardness, as filtered through the taste of the Zoomer generation’s technological hive mind.
The 2020s totalism doesn’t seek to scratch an ever needy attentional itch like hyperpop, or relegate itself to spa music, like the worst of bedroom pop, but provide both ambiance and active experience.
Some could call it immersion. It immerses listeners not with wild swings of distraction, but a true commitment to atmosphere, to fullness, to a totalizing moment.
Take “Boy’s a Liar” by PinkPanthehress, featuring Ice Spice, which is the song is the song-of-the-summer but now. What it combines so deftly is that zoomer-need to capture attention with a deep, sumptuous musicality. PinkPantehress’s soft vocals begin on the 1, only supported by a syncopated kick. “Take a look inside your heart/Is there any room for me?” The instrumentation then veers, skipping in a perpetual 2-step between two corny electric piano chords. The song then reaches a quick catharsis just 30 seconds in. A sweetly funky baseline enters as PinkPantheress wanders out the chorus. “The boys a liar/He doesn’t see ya.” The song hugs you in. Swirls you around before Ice Spice enters the chat. “He say that I’m good enough/ grabbin’ my duh-duh-duh.”
Short songs which reach the chorus at or before the 30-second mark are a hallmark of pop in the streaming age. This has become annoying, not because God hath decreed that choruses come in at 1-minute, but because this move usually feels like a cheap attention grab. “Quick intro/Post Malone chorus-croon/and then verse” just doesn’t feel like a logical through line. “Boy’s a Liar,” though, sets a whole atmosphere, while doing the rapid-21st-century-song-structure dance. It doesn’t feel quick; it feels condensed. It’s not a thin ploy to poke your roving mind, but a short dunk in the water tank. In and out we go.
Condensed sonics. Immersive atmosphere. Mood as hammer rather than mood as mist. Engagement but not absurdity. Vibe as propulsive frequency rather than aural affect. That’s the new aesthetic. That’s what’s really good.
Once I thought about it, I began to hear it all around.
I hear it, I think, in MGNA CRRRTA’s neon fish tank rave.
I hear it in 2HOLLIS’s line goes up digital mosh pit.
In PinkPantheress’s 2 minute pink swirl saunters.
In The Dare’s Indie Sleaze soak.
Even in Ethel Cain’s farm house gothic.
Sometimes, when it works, in RAYE’s cinematic overdose.
I recognize I’m talking about a lot of different music. Not much connects these examples but that they’re relatively new and increasingly popular. Some in this quick list are reaching mainstream appeal, while others are gaining underground terrain. But something real, if vague, connects them.
If the past few years have been defined by a relatively thin attempt to capture our attention, be it through kooky hyperpop or cheap-thrills-TikTok hits, then this vibe shift is defined by an attempt to freeze us in place and feel something. Maybe, even, to pay attention to music with earnest ears.
Maybe we’re moshing to The Dare or drifting to Ethel Cain’s amish reverie. We’re there, inside the sonics: a familiar, if strange home to return to. Like the Hipster revival, we are experiencing an immersive revival.
I dunk myself in the water tank and try to hold my breath.
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