Hyperpop

Every now and then I catch myself humming "30°" by Anna Pepe or some other Gen Z track, with a faint sense of shame. It's undeniable that, given my 46 years, this isn't music made for me, and that singing along borders on cultural appropriation. On the other hand, I like to think of myself as a curious person, someone who's never been able to stand the ageing comments of my peers about today's pop (trap first and foremost).

I have the opposite impression, actually: now that the wretched retromaniac decade of the 2000s is over (a decade in which, thanks to the spread of the Internet and peer-to-peer systems, we witnessed an equally misplaced sanctification and museum-ification of rock music, which since then has seemed frozen in a display case, at least in its most successful manifestations), it's pop that has picked up the pace again — and done so in the only admirable way possible, by digging generational moats full of crocodiles.

I make no claim to being on top of things, but, out of sheer stubbornness, I do venture across that moat now and then. What I usually find pushes me away, but that's exactly as it should be: it's not meant to appeal to me. Yet maybe that's precisely why the fresh air is undeniable: this is an expressive, stylistic and musical revolution (you'd have to have your ears stuffed with prejudice not to notice that these kids and their "machines blessed by God" are creating something entirely new), whose iconoclasm takes aim at our beloved fetish, the "album", tearing it to shreds and reducing it to extremely short singles or, at most, twenty-minute EPs.

Anyone who talks, in this regard, about a "TikTok generation incapable of attention" is perhaps forgetting the brevity and immediacy of early rock'n'roll, or of punk. And how much they, too, disgusted the adults of their time.

In short, Chris Cornell's remark still holds true: "If what you're listening to sucks to your dad, then it's okay. And hope that your kids listen to music you don't like."

It's worth setting paternalism aside, then, when you walk into your kid's bedroom. In the long run, they'll win anyway — and heaven forbid it were otherwise.

The same premise applies both to trap and to its younger sibling (a scene that, at least in Italy, has developed over the last four years) and less talked-about, hyperpop. The former, as you'll have gathered, I appreciate, and, as a metalhead, I also feel a deep envy for how well it manages to draw the outrage of the middle class. That said, I have to admit I don't particularly enjoy listening to it, which, of course, doesn't take an ounce away from its importance.

Hyperpop, on the other hand, has been a wonderful discovery, and following wherever Spotify takes me is a genuine pleasure — a bit of a guilty one, perhaps, but certainly not because of the artists' worth. Maybe it's down to certain elements that can sound familiar and appealing even to someone of my generation: the synth-pop and chiptune influence, the dead-straight unz unz kick drum of another era (even though some artists don't shy away from far more complex solutions), the glitches and bursts of noise, the almost metal-like drive and, thematically, the obsession with video games, manga and anime (passions shared by anyone born in the last 50 years). Overall, a constant sense of a not-quite-contextualized nostalgia.

Of course, the overlap with trap comes through forcefully in a certain self-referentiality, in the use of slang that excludes anyone over 25, the flaunting of distress or of vaguely defined criminal activity, but above all in the fact that this is exclusively producer-driven music (the likes of Christiannife, EnimraK, Polvere, VillaHarcore, Aegeminus, apparently kept in the background, yet just as important as the singers who lend their name and face) in which conventional instruments are almost entirely banned or, at any rate, manipulated until they become something else. This is even more true of hyperpop, given, on one hand, its ostentatious artificiality, and on the other, the fact that it's still, essentially, too low-budget to break out of the bedroom. What's more, there's no trace of the (often wannabe, but so be it...) blackness that characterizes trap.

Hyperpop is white and neurotic, like new wave. And it's precisely neurosis that runs through it as a common thread — whether sexual (Troyamaki), consumerist (Sillyelly, AleXXiSt4r), or straight-up psychiatric (NXFEIT, Narcolessia). Even with seemingly more composed artists (Thru Collected or Pseudospettri — not by chance, on the margins of this discussion), the calm has something chemical about it: not drugged in the usual sense, but certainly medicated.

Curiously, amid this chaos, there are also artists with clear left-wing politics (Yung Paninaru, Franchetti, Emilio Paranoico — provocateurs, yes, but only up to a point), and the whole thing started with a demented band.

Pop X

Them, precisely. Sure, the movement's noble roots lie in the PC Music of AG Cook, in Crystal Castles, in the late, great Sophie, in Charli XCX, in 100 Gecs, etc., but in Italy, the influence of Pop X shouldn't be underestimated. Technically, they're not a hyperpop band (they're a stray splinter that flew off the trunk of it-pop) and they certainly don't belong to that scene (if only for generational reasons: mastermind Davide Panizza was born in 1985), but the deconstruction of song form, turned into a parade of Clementoni toy instruments, the voice treated as if overdosing on helium (lower case "h", though come to think of it, upper case too), the self-satisfied nonsense like an in-joke that only makes sense to those who already know the premise — these are elements you'll find in nearly every artist on this list.

I saw them live at the 2018 edition of Ama, on the Santa Caterina lawn in Bassano del Grappa. It was electronic and holi day, with big bags of colored powder flying around. I had no idea what the latter even was (and, sure enough, I made the mistake of showing up in a white polo shirt), and I'd never even heard of Pop X either (I was there for Digitalism). When, in the late afternoon, Panizza & co. took the stage, dozens of kids who up until then had been smearing paint on each other suddenly rushed to the front, singing along to absurd lines about sentient missiles, buckets and cows, as if they were massive hits — even though they hadn't gotten so much as an accidental radio play (Pop X would only get airplay starting with "Antille"; back then, it was all about passing around YouTube links). Meanwhile, the musicians staged an absurd little theatrical show, the likes of which I've only seen at a Flaming Lips concert — except, unlike them, I don't think Pop X were on drugs.

I like to think that all the kids in hyperpop were influenced by a concert just like that one.

(DANZƏ)

With the reviled schwa in the title and a burnt floppy disc on the cover (incidentally, 100 floppy discs were the only physical format the record was ever released on - making it impossible to actually listen to, except for junk-hoarding enthusiasts), the middle finger aimed at previous generations couldn't be clearer.

In 2021, amid the endless cycle of lockdowns and reopenings, the Rome-based collective Le Major, after trawling through Soundcloud and Twitch, brought together 25 musicians, producers and videomakers, all from different parts of Italy (no one from Milan and almost no one from Rome itself) and all used to writing, arranging and putting out their music exclusively from home. Ages range from 14 to 24.

The result is 30 minutes of music (plus a short film that accompanied the release) and the birth of a whole new scene.

There's the pop talent of Troyamaki and Marco444, the absurd dollhouse-nursery-rhyme chants of Hello Mimmi, the furious alienation of NXFEIT (who "hits a creeper just to feel something" - a line I only got after watching my kids play Minecraft) and the resigned kind found in Narcolessia, the inhuman voices of Cherry Ills and the electronic nursery rhymes of natimernero!. There's no shortage of trap detours either ("Amazon" by Foreverboymush) or IDM (the closing "Traccia 15" by Ermete Diara of Pseudospettri).

So much achieved in so little time, with a production that turns a potential mess into a genuine display of cohesion. All among people who have never physically met, who communicated over Discord and Whatsapp - and who, even afterwards, would go on collaborating fruitfully.

If you ask me, it's a perfect snapshot of a historical moment and a record that in years to come will rise to the status of a landmark.

Troyamaki

My personal favorite. A boy, a girl or something else depending on the day, pansexual with a soft spot for "daddies XL" - more than enough to épater la bourgeoisie, make Roccella scream about gender ideology and have the woke-obsessed nerds on YouTube losing their minds. Giammarco Mancini, born in Abruzzo in 1996 (one of the scene's "elders"), aka Troyamaki, has filled Soundcloud and Spotify with singles and EPs, all sharing an off-the-charts effectiveness as their common denominator. Among his influences, he shamelessly cites Eiffel 65 and Raffaella Carrà, and indeed his songs are the kind of party you'll never forget for the rest of your life, with a taste for vintage electronics that's never, not even by accident, merely imitative, but always reinterpreted through a fresh, modern lens.

How we managed, in Italy, to let bombs like "Morsi", "Acidi" or "Dottore" slip by unnoticed borders on criminal. In a fairer world, these tracks would be in heavy rotation and at Sanremo we'd have Troyamaki instead of Achille Lauro and Rosa Chemical.

NXFEIT

To date his masterpiece (obviously, an EP barely twenty minutes long) is titled "CASSA DRITTISSIMA !!", and right there I was already sold. NXFEIT (deliberately unpronounceable, real name Davide D'Errico, from Trieste) sublimates his unease into arrogant blasts of 8-bit electronics and harsh noise, with a punk and metal attitude that warms the heart. It's impossible to listen to "CAZZICORE" and "BACKSTAGE" (the caps lock is mandatory, as taught by M¥SS KETA, another godmother of this scene) without wanting to slam-dance against the walls. Even in seemingly lighter, more melodic moments like "MISA & LIGHT" (neither happy nor a couple - but certainly stylish), a duet with Sillyelly, the pace never lets up.

In the lyrics, tangled between slang and filtered vocals, as if trying to make himself hard to understand, an inner suffering emerges that finds relief only in cigarettes, medication and Minecraft (the ultimate zen game and another generational fetish - in the sense that it's impossible for someone my age to play it without losing their mind after fifteen minutes).

Another crystal-clear talent that would be unforgivable to miss.

Thru Collected

These guys, on the other hand, have rightly already been noticed. Maybe they're not part of the scene, but they're a scene unto themselves. It should be said upfront that, with their latest work ("The Great Lightning Bolt"), the properly hyperpop sonorities have been set aside. Even as the Campanian collective persists in its praiseworthy work of deconstructing and reassembling the Italian song, they now do so using more traditional instruments and less electronics. Electronics that, by contrast, dominated their debut "Discomoneta" and the equally worthwhile "Napoli Undercore", credited to Specchiopaura alone.

Compared to the other artists covered here, what's missing is the more straightforwardly radio-friendly, dancefloor-ready punch. The soul is singer-songwriter at heart, but the flesh wrapped around it is synthetic. Both are red-hot. The rhythms are always broken up, and alongside the electronic elements, clear dub and shoegaze influences emerge. Overall, there isn't a single trite or predictable solution in any of their tracks, and, objectively, this isn't music for distracted listening — quite the opposite, it demands the same attention as the most cerebral avant-garde. Rather than hyperpop, here we should really be talking about "post-pop".

It might sound rhetorical (and like an easy cop-out), but at some point we have to admit we still don't have any point of comparison to fully describe what these guys are doing.

Sillyelly

Let's get frivolous again. On Sillyelly's Spotify page (Elen Lanza, born in Rimini in 2002), pride of place, with 26 million streams, goes to "Hello Kitty", a duet with Anna Pepe featured on the aforementioned "Vera Baddie". Only time will tell whether this featuring will give us the hyperpop scene's first genuine breakout name. A success she boasts about in almost all her lyrics, but one that, at least outside of Soundcloud, doesn't yet exist.

It's telling, in any case, that our artist comes from a family of fairground workers. Her music is proudly bumper-car music (a genre not to be underestimated, if only for having always been an integral part of teenage courtship rituals), and for a couple of years she nailed pretty much every ride possible.

Few other things scramble brains and hand out goofy grins quite like tracks such as "Sumikko Gurashi", "Waifu Material" and "Girl Boss" (ça va sans dire, inspired by the silliest, most colorful side of Japanese pop culture). When you need a hit of endorphins, her little dance constructions are ideal, as long as you overlook the lyrics, which constantly waver between an unintentionally goofy egotrip, unconvincing tough-girl posturing, and the occasional bout of cold-blooded victimhood (though, to her credit, she consistently keeps an edgy, defiant attitude and avoids cheap sexualization). So far, she's peaked with the excellent EP "Manic Pixie Dream Girl", which also shows a certain variety in its approach — one that, frankly, is missing from her later releases. Still, she has all the time in the world to conquer the planet.

Hello Mimmi

If Sillyelly is obsessed with manga, Rome's Caterina Pelliccia, aka Hello Mimmi, doesn't need to be, because she lives inside one. A manga that crashed its car into the Mediaset studios back in the '90s. Obviously, at the time, she only had a learner's permit.

From the adorably over-the-top early days of tracks like "Il villaggio incantato delle mutandine" and "Cooking Mimmi", through the covers album "Karaoke" (fittingly titled), ours is a girl who spent her afternoons watching "Non è la Rai" (in reality, luckily for her, she hadn't been born yet — she's from the class of 2001) and tries to imitate the girls on TV, singing in a high-pitched, heavily effected little voice and, one imagines, dancing clumsily along.

And yet, she too suddenly grows up (a bit like a butterfly — we're talking about an extremely rapid maturation in a career that's barely three years old) and pulls a stunning record out of her little headphones: "Canzoni accelerazioniste per ragazze apatiche", in which she blends vaporwave, trip-hop and dream-pop, brushing up against a masterpiece with "Passenger Princess" and actually achieving one with "Mani Pulite (sabba romano)", which fully justifies the seemingly incongruous image of the goat on the cover.

Pseudospettri

Their debut was called "Summertape", and there was absolutely nothing summery about it — apart from a vague sense of sultry August sadness. As with Thru Collected, we're talking about a collective (about twenty kids based in the province of Lucca, apparently), with a fondness for long-running tracks and fewer concessions to the danceable silliness of the scene's other names (of which, though, they're unquestionably a part, as proven by their numerous collaborations with artists on this list). Here too there's a greater closeness to singer-songwriter territory, but also to pop tout court. However, while Thru Collected take their risks mainly on a structural level, Pseudospettri take the it-pop style song, of the more melancholic variety (though bursts of energy aren't lacking), and stitch onto it wild, ever-shifting arrangements that are, of course, essentially electronic.

Their latest album, "Presudotape Vol. 3: Presudomania", is an excellent introduction to their discography.

Narcolessia

Filippo Sancasciani from Livorno, aka Narcolessia, also favors more reflective atmospheres (his lyrics are, objectively, among the sharpest churned out by hyperpop artists, all marked by a personal unease that's nonetheless tempered by generous doses of irony), foregrounding the singer-songwriter side over the dancefloor one. That doesn't stop him from having excellent traction too, having put out three EPs in three years ("Angeli" with Liltagliagole, "Tutto bene finché non sanguino" and "Micixsempre"), all equally successful, with gems like "Gasligthling" and "cineblog1".

Marco444

A similar case could be made for Marco444 (I couldn't find his real name, bear with me), who, besides sporting a very hipster mustache, is decidedly the most urban of the bunch. His songs, in fact, often have a modern pop edge (though not all of them – the recent "Lacrime di ferro" has a decidedly noise-rock arrangement) that wouldn't be out of place on mainstream radio, albeit with a strong emocore component, a trait shared by all the artists in this scene (after all, this is a generation with plenty of good reasons to be depressed) the moment they decide to step off the dancefloor. Either way, the EP "Araldica" is highly recommended.

AleXXiSt4R

If he were my son, I'd smack him upside the head. But he's not, so I get to praise his drive and clarity of purpose. Nostalgic for an era neither of us ever actually lived through for reasons of age (him, born in the Marche region in 2002, too young; me, born in Veneto in 1978, already too old), and of which I only remember the ghastly sight of boxers peeking out from low-rise jeans. If the last few artists I've discussed shared a baseline of melancholy, here we're in Beastie Boys "Ill Communication" territory. His only album is called "Dance Mania" and it's a statement of intent. There's no life beyond the dancefloor, and the flaunted vulgarity is a good thing. Concepts spelled out in a mere forty minutes (what a luxury!) of irresistible, tight, punchy four-on-the-floor thump.

I find it sociologically interesting that his reference year (and, likewise, the year his world ends) is 2009, when the global economy was starting to collapse, but in Italy we hadn't noticed yet, and some were still saying: "There's no crisis at all, the restaurants are always full!". And people voted for him enthusiastically.

Liltagliagole

His name is Kevin and that's all I know. I was in two minds about whether to include him on this list, because, technically, he's a trapper. However, he's been part of the scene since "(DANZЯ)" and is, in fact, one of its most active members (numerous collaborations, especially with Narcolessia). And alongside his trap patter, he brings a taste for cheap electronics that's unmistakably rooted in hyperpop.

He's made a name for himself with the excellent singles "Slug" and "Giulia ti odio", with lyrics that are suitably vile, sexist and violent, but which, unfortunately, haven't reached the ears of any mainstream journalist who could have turned him into a star by pointing the finger at him.

Unlike other artists in this scene who don't want to be understood, he loves being blunt and getting under people's skin. He has my approval.

faccianuvola

He (Alessandro Feruda, from Valtellina), on the other hand, seems built to transcend generational barriers: his lyrics are poetic and dreamlike, free of any harshness or provocation, and his music, though purely electronic with mostly trance references, evokes progressive-style structures, while beneath an ever-present veil of autotune a technically flawless voice rises and falls. Listening to him, I was occasionally reminded of a certain strand of Italian singer-songwriting straddling the 70s and 80s, the kind most closely adjacent to the dying prog scene (Alberto Fortis, early Matia Bazar...).

"Le stelle* Il sole; L'arcobaleno))" is a tremendous debut, and it's easy to predict a future of success (even just critical success) for him beyond his bedroom. It lacks a defiant edge, if you want to be picky, but the breath of fresh air is welcome nonetheless.

Yung Paninaru

I'll close with him/her, who defines themselves as "Queer Neurogender Prolet Hypertrap", doesn't skimp on blasphemy and equally despises center-left partisans, liberals, the right and red-brown crossovers. More than with the other artists on this list, they run with the P38 crowd (whose "Nuove BR" can never be praised enough). They push extremist political messages, including body politics. Hearing them talk about "gender activism against the patriarchy" is somewhat reminiscent of Bello Figo bragging about "not paying rent", but, in any case, they're one of the few who manage to use the word "patriarchy" without giving me a bout of jaundice, because their stance isn't posed as moral instruction from on high, but as a hard-nosed challenge from below.

Anyway, “hypertrap” is an accurate label: aside from the last (disappointing, at least musically) EP “Canzoni per Compagnu dissidenti”, his discography is a flourishing of synthetic music, fluo graphics and heavily processed vocals.

But the game here is mostly about the contrast between playful backing tracks and incendiary lyrics. “Comitato centrale del cuore” is my favourite.

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