Why Lana Del Rey And Lorde Are The Most Influential Pop Artists of The 21st Century
Lana Del Rey, American alt-pop queen, and Lorde, Kiwi teen prodigy turned full fledged popstar, have changed pop music more than any other artist in my lifetime. Lana’s debut album Born To Die was released in 2012 and Lorde’s debut album Pure Heroine was released in 2013. Both albums were completely different from the clubby Taio Cruz or Black Eyed Peas songs from the era that preceded them. This opened up pop music from a singular party style to include darker sounds and content that wasn’t previously embraced by the mainstream.
The first major impact of Lana and Lorde was that they lowered the tempo of popular music. In the years leading up to their debuts, LMFAO, Lady Gaga, and Nicki Minaj were dominating radio stations often with a tempo of around 130 BPM or faster. Then came Lana with her legato singing and grand orchestral accompaniments inspired by old Hollywood music. This didn’t make her album very radio friendly, but still it reached a lot of young fans debuting at number two on the Billboard 200. When “Royals” by Lorde came out, it made the Billboard 100, even with a tempo of only 85 BPM, and was met with critical acclaim. She has cited English singer and producer James Blake, who was making post-dubstep music at the time, as an inspiration of hers. We can hear this in the minimalist downtempo production. Both Lana and Lorde also have hip hop influences and hip hop tended to be slower than pop in the 00’s. So Lana and Lorde debuted in 2012 and 2013 with unique slow pop music; if you look at the top 25 most streamed Spotify songs from 2012 to 2017, you’ll see that the average tempo dropped by 23 BPM in that timeframe. There are probably a lot of things that contributed to this, but based on the timeline, Lana and Lorde played a major role.
Singing styles on the radio have diversified since Lana and Lorde gained popularity. At the time they debuted, mainstream vocals were all projected like Beyonce and Adele, and often sounded bright like Taylor Swift or Katy Perry. On Born To Die, Lana uses a deep nasally voice, which made her stand out to me, and she’s also credited with bringing breathy singing back in fashion. Lorde’s voice stands out because of its husky, laboured quality, which brings a heaviness to her music. You can hear both artists in contemporary pop singers like Billie Eilish, who often has both a breathiness and huskiness to her singing instead of a strong projected singing style.
Lana and Lorde made dark content in music popular right after the era of escapist dance music that was prompted by the 2008 financial crisis. Lana sang about messy relationships with older men and Lorde sang about teen angst. These topics were new again since pop had been about partying for the years leading up. The dark content resonated with young people because, not to anyone’s surprise, teenagers aren’t always happy. Even though Lana and Lorde only showed up in 2012 and 2013 young adults had been ready for dark music for years. YA content in the rest of media had been getting darker in the years leading up: the second and darker half of the Harry Potter movies series was released in 2007 to 2011; the Twilight movies were released in 2008 to 2012; the UK TV series Skins released new episodes from 2007 to 2013; and the first, and angstiest, season of American Horror Story aired in 2011. All these movies and TV shows had dark content and were popular with young people. Emo was also a popular genre of music at the time, but that crowd wouldn’t claim the kind of people who liked Twilight because Twilight was mainstream and for girly girls. So those girly girls found a musical outlet for their angst and gloom in Lana and Lorde who were a bit emo and also mainstream. From there, major labels got verification of the potential success offbeat pop acts could achieve.
Lana Del Rey and Lorde walked so that artists like Billie Eilish, Halsey, and Melanie Martinez could run. They pioneered the new era of pop music for the 10’s and onwards. Also, artists like Charli XCX, Marina (and the Diamonds), and Sky Ferreira were popular alongside Lana and Lorde in 10’s Tumblr era pop music. They took a genre known for being formulaic and commercial and did so much with it. It’s important to recognize these artists because it was an uphill battle to make pop what it is now. Lana has been criticized relentlessly for things that are now ubiquitous in pop music and she’s still held to a higher standard compared to male celebrities. Lorde was teased for the way she danced during her live performances and bullied for her looks. They really set the tone and did the groundwork for what we know pop music to be now.
