normal world: politics of hyperpop?
and dorian electra's possible libertarian phase??
in the depths of my sunday scroll this week i discovered that the gender-bending hyperpop artist dorian electra started their musical career writing songs about economics and… libertarianism?
stop what you are doing and watch I'm in Love with Friedrich Hayek.
overwhelmed?
what started the whole thing for me was this screenshot of a reddit thread posted on twitter:
someone replied to the tweet with a reddit thread that thoroughly outlines electra’s libertarian phase. my understanding is that it was a brief attempt to change the party from the inside out. *sigh* i refuse to believe that anyone could change liberty party co-founder deryl perry’s mind about addictive drugs being the same as tomatoes as he states at the liberty party debate during the 2016 presidential race. just seconds before that john mcafee (proprietor of mcafee computer software, winner of the liberty party candidacy, tax evader with 30 years of prison waiting for him) proudly overshares that he would use as many drugs as his body could possibly tolerate, legal or not! i hear u buddy, but save it for therapy.
pretty sure the op was not serious (hence posting in r/hyperpopcirclejerk), but i would not be shocked in the slightest if it came from r/republicancirclejerk. please tell me if i am completely out of bounds but i sense that there is potential for overlap in musical tastes between juuling queers at bossa nova and monster chugging no fappers on fortnite. i am beginning to believe hyperpop contains the power to transcend these two sects of the internet. unity via saccharine. for extra credit: spend 5 minutes scrolling the tiktoks that use the song “SugarCrash!” by 17-year-old elyotto and let me know what you find!
ANYWAY!!!!!!!!!
electra’s libertarian love note is obviously not 100% earnest but idk it was pretty well written so there had to be maybe a little truth in it right??? sure electra found their way in songwriting by making videos for a high school economics class instead of writing essays but it truly did not take that much work to find this interview: Loving Hayek and Partying with Milk: Q&A with Dorian Electra.
from the interview it seems the hayek song was written partly in jest for an assignment but happened to collect some views in the libertarian community. this earned electra an invite to the International Students for Liberty Conference sometime in the early 2010s. electra mentions reading other thinkers including marx and mackey so they seem to be exploring where they stand politically. “i think i connect more... with those in the Occupy [Wall Street] movement… in terms of building something together and that sense of cooperation.” it seems that they also, like many of us in our young adult lives, would have gone anywhere if it meant we could skip school.
electra quickly tossed that method and is now a major player in the gender fluid pop music we see today. forces in the universe snapped when electra and dylan brady of 100gecs came together to make Flamboyant, electra’s first album. i am speaking for myself but hyperpop is the perfect pace for my screen-poisoned brain. when i started listening to 100gecs in the fall of 2019 i was assistant editing on a really depressing documentary and would immediately leave work to blast a song nobly titled “stupid horse” which i speculate is a nod to the ancient youtube sensation “[redacted] horse.” i also really loved their song “money machine” which immediately transports me into the abstracted glory of attempting to make lots of money under capitalism.
it’s not fully fleshed out in my head but i do feel like its worth mentioning that the simultaneous entrance of gender queer and socialist currents into the internet mainstream fueled the rapid, eminent birth of hyperpop. its like if you put a bunch of genderqueer zoomer cusps in a room and blast socialist podcasts long enough you’ll eventually get a genre of music that samples every subgenre of pop over the last decade and simply obeys zeros laws. to me, it is definitely not a coincidence that technologically-advanced young adults without a state or medically-sanctioned identity invented an entirely new genre of music for themselves to enjoy. i say good for them!!!!!!
hyperpop to me sounds like what meme culture looks like. the same way ideas and images are freely spread on the internet, hyperpop is a rapid mashing and remixing of genres without bounds. i could list examples of this but i am lazy and i think most of you know what i am talking about anyway. the tracks sound deep fried, saved and resaved, compressed and upresed in ways that only people who spend a lot of time on computers could understand. i swear 100gecs uses a plug in that creates the same exact chopped up sound that happens when i am quickly scrubbing through footage in premiere, like it plays 4 frames of sound per second…. am i making sense?
but 100gecs was not the first to dabble in this sort of thing. SOPHIE had been warping computer generated noises into naturalistic sounds as early as 2013 when she produced “BIPP.” rest in peace dear sweet sophie. arca, a venezuelan immigrant a few years out of college, was credited as creative consultant, programmer and writer for HALF THE SONGS on Yeezus. insane!!! kanye west is unfortunately an asshole but i’d be lying if i said that album didnt change everything about pop music.
i now feel inclined to share with you all how cute her and FKA Twigs are singing “hot like fire” by aaliyah and missy elliott at karaoke circa 2013 as arca appears pre transition:
back to the topic… also mentioned in the reddit post from earlier, electra was reported telling the guardian in 2019 that “As a product of human thought, libertarianism is a very interesting thing to study, but it is really poisonous.” They have since had to clarify repeatedly that they are not a libertarian to insufferables online.
i agree. i find those silly head liberty boys sickly entertaining but they should never receive any form of encouragement, ever.
to write about hyperpop through a political lens requires so much more time and research than i am qualified for. i would be very interested to learn more and see what theories are floating around out there! this post is obviously inconclusive about what political theory hyperpop is rooted in but i have a wiiiittle feewing dat it might be anti-capitawist :333
if you havent listened to flamboyant yet, i highly recommend. i also found this really thorough and super interesting analysis on their album and visual style from one of my fav youtubers, Boyform.
support queer, trans and nonbinary artists forever and ever and ever and ever and ever.
c u next time
love,
carol