8 Rising Pop Girls You Should Hear Now

Dear listeners,

This is Joe from The Times’s music team, once again filling in for Lindsay, a.k.a. taking any opportunity to foist my taste onto all of you.

I’ve been thinking, as I often do, about the nature of stardom and whether its essential ingredients are becoming more scarce, or have long since dried up. Despite coalescing conventional wisdom, I’m invested, personally and professionally, in the idea that they have not, and that many of our most promising young musicians still possess an ineffable magnetism and some amazing hooks, even if they may never reach the heights of their monoculture forebears.

Online, where music fandom gets messy but also meaty, the idea of the Pop Girls (and especially the Main Pop Girls) looms large. This constantly regenerating hierarchy includes — arguably; all of this is arguable and should be argued — the mostly emeritus legends (Madonna, Mariah, Britney), the modern imperialists (Beyoncé, Taylor, Ariana) and the lame duck in-betweeners (Katy, Gaga, Rihanna). Endless debates can be had about who fits where, and what that means for Billie, Cardi, Dua, Charli and anyone else who can get by with a single name.

In the last few years especially, the field has blown open: Even the niches have niches and one person’s pop queen can be another’s “who?” (Justice for Rosalía, etc.) Even as Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan have solidified their footing, not just on the internet but also the radio, streaming and IRL in concert, there are infinite iterating tiers of singers who are alternately reverent, irreverent, brash, manufactured, original and otherwise.

These eight new songs are my summer picks from the current class of hot prospects, all of whom are doing something I see as undeniably modern, while also recognizing their place in the Pop Girl lineage, defined most broadly.

Your money’s not coming with you to heaven,

Joe