The mean girls conquering pop

Sabrina’s got that boy wrapped round her finger. Olivia knows she might sound crazy but she doesn’t care. Chappell is having a sexually explicit kinda love affair with a closeted woman. Billie is going to eat that girl for lunch, because it tastes like she might be the one. Charli wants you to guess the colour of her underwear. Renée is feuding with the worst bitch on earth. Summer 2024 is a bad girlie summer.

Anodyne injunctions to have a good time or vague sentiments about love are out. This year’s music invites you to party hard, feel your feels in all their glorious mess, and succumb to being frankly, fiercely horny. Musically, they cover everything from woozy dream-pop (Billie Eilish) to peppy guitar-led tracks (Olivia Rodrigo) to aggressively hooky dance music (Charli XCX); aesthetically, they run from Bardot-esque cutie (Sabrina Carpenter) to drag-act confrontational (Chappel Roan, with her mime makeup and wildly teazed hair).