For many, summer 2024 was a Charli xcx ‘brat summer’. For others, this summer was undoubtedly dominated by the sensational rise of Chappell Roan. And for all those who still can’t get that chorus out of their heads, it was the summer of Sabrina Carpenter and her ‘me espresso’. Whichever defined your summer, though, there’s no question that Charli xcx , Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter were the brightest rising stars in music of the past year.
Their astonishing growth doesn’t seem to be slowing down either. Carpenter recently became the woman with the most weeks at No.1 in the UK chart in a single year, the ‘Femininomenon’ surrounding Roan has reached a fever-pitch as multiple of her songs remain chart staples, and xcx has expanded her seasonal domination into a ‘brat autumn’ as she gained her first No.1 album with her BRAT remix album, Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat, in October.
The fascinating thing about these ‘new kids on the block’, though, is how far from new they actually are, with all three having over a decade in the industry.
When accepting the Variety Hitmakers Rising Artist Award, Carpenter described herself as ‘the tortoise’. Referencing the fable of “The Tortoise and the Hare”, she used the metaphor to describe her embrace of the ‘slow rise’ to success, something that initially irritated but now empowers her, particularly upon reaching the culmination of this journey this year. The phrase ‘it takes ten years to become an overnight success’ has truly never been more apt.
Carpenter, pop’s newest pocket-sized ‘it girl’, broke into the entertainment industry in 2014 – aged just 13 – when she starred in Disney Channel’s Girl Meets World. She went on to release her first album under Disney’s Hollywood Records label in 2015 before embarking on a steady career as a largely unknown yet gradually evolving music artist and part-time C-list actor. After slowly building up a small audience for six years, 2021 saw Carpenter splitting from Hollywood Records and gaining some more mainstream attention after becoming embroiled in an explosive love triangle involving Olivia Rodrigo and Joshua Bassett (becoming “that blonde girl” in Rodrigo’s heart wrenching ballad ‘drivers license’). After the initial misfire of her counterattack single ‘Skin’, her candid single ‘because i liked a boy’ – which responded more earnestly to the ‘homewrecker’ accusations made against her during this scandal – started to gain a small but significant level of traction online.
Her following album – 2022’s emails i can’t send – further leaned into this confessional ‘Taylor Swift-style’ songwriting, alongside a good measure of light and salacious pop moments. The album became a niche success for a growing audience who appreciated Carpenter’s newly honed creative vision, centred around honest and quirky lyricism and airy melodic pop. The album’s tour helped Carpenter gain further momentum. Particularly, the live outros for the flirtatious pop-r’n’b track ‘Nonsense’ (which were tailored to each tour stop’s location and became increasingly raunchy as the tour progressed) gained virality on TikTok, propelling the song to minor-hit status.
Carpenter leaned further into this fun, frivolous and sexy theming, with her next micro-hit ‘Feather’, her Christmas EP Fruitcake and her performances when supporting Taylor Swift on ‘The Eras Tour’. Then, of course, in April 2024, she released the indomitable Espresso, which finally exploded her into the mainstream. It was this decade-long campaign of expanding Carpenter’s audience, honing her artistic perspective and defining her visual aesthetic, that put her in the prime position for the right song to come along and enable her immense success in the present.
Charli xcx started her career from a similarly young age, being driven by her parents to perform at raves from as young as 15. She broke into mainstream consciousness in 2012 when she featured on Icona Pop’s hit single ‘I Love It’ and released a flurry of successful – yet ultimately forgettable – singles from her sophomore album Sucker in 2014. After this, she quickly faded into irrelevance within mainstream pop, struggling to secure any major hits for many years. In response, xcx entered a much more experimental phase of her career, collaborating with influential hyperpop producers like Sophie and A.G Cook. Her seminal Vroom Vroom EP exemplified her rebirth as an avant-garde critical darling and indie fascination, inextricable from an adoring LGBTQ+ fan base. Charli xcx ’s synthetic and abrasive take on pop led to her perception as a musical auteur and singular creative visionary, ever flirtatious with the mainstream but never fully infiltrating it. Instead, Charli’s recognition grew amongst an esoteric class of Rolling Stone-reading music nerds and ‘pop gays’. Her world became identifiable as one of sweaty dancefloors, speeding cars, chaotic impulsivity and emotional complexity underscored by pulsating club beats. It’s a world that has only gradually garnered a mainstream reception: her 2022 album Crash gained marginally more commercial success in the UK and her feature on 2023’s Barbie soundtrack allowed her to interface with the charts. Finally, her album BRAT , with its instantly recognisable garish cover and associated hedonistic ‘brat summer’ lifestyle, which became (the perfect fodder for TikTok trends) became a cultural supernova.
Chappell Roan interfaced much less frequently with the mainstream prior to her breakthrough. She was signed to her first record label in 2015 and began releasing singles - which gained little recognition - before ultimately being dropped in 2020 and having to move home from Los Angeles and start working at a drive thru. It was during her time in Los Angeles, though, that Roan entered a new world of ‘Queer nightlife’, which informed revelations surrounding her own sexuality and the type of music that she wanted to make to express it. This culminated in her single ‘Pink Pony Club’ – a synth-heavy Queer self-discovery anthem, which was a far cry from the melancholic angst that had defined her previous output – being released just before being dropped. Picking up where she left off in 2022, Roan returned to LA to work on more songs within this creative vision. Her debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess was finally released in September 2023 to notable critical acclaim and a niche, largely LGBTQ+, fanbase. The resulting steady word-of-mouth hype and her successful single ‘Good Luck, Babe!’, released in April, meant that Roan finally achieved mainstream success this summer. The album finally flooded the charts, including ‘Pink Pony Club’ reaching the top 20 over four years after its release.
These artists’ ascents all speak to a changing musical landscape, one that is fractured between endless content on streaming services and governed by hyper-individualised social media algorithms. One smash hit song by an unknown artist rarely has the ability to transcend these boundaries and fully break through into the public conscience anymore. Instead, the artists now experiencing success are increasingly those who are committed to building up an artistic vision and distinctive ‘world’ over time, which their growing audiences can immerse themselves in.
The dainty Hollywood glam and racy humour of Sabrina Carpenter; the throbbing baselines and ‘365 party-girl’ messiness of Charli xcx’s ‘brat summer’; the Midwestern kitsch and explicit Queer lyricism of Chappell Roan’s camp theatrical performance project. Whatever it is, artists now need to cultivate an audience who will actively seek out their music on streaming services by giving them a reason to invest in their artistry. As the captive audience of mainstream radio dissipates, artists can no longer rely on simply chasing the next audience-pleasing song but must actively break through the noise and give audiences a greater reason to care about them, even if this takes years of development.
Both BRAT and ‘Midwest Princess’ have had certain songs gain particular traction but their success has been defined far more by a general fervour surrounding their artistry than specific hit singles. Even Sabrina Carpenter's more definitive hits, ‘Espresso’, ‘Please Please Please’ and ‘Taste’ were also informed by the general excitement surrounding her and would have been unlikely to break through without Carpenter’s years of honing a clear creative ‘world’. The process of reaching superstar status seems to be taking more time than ever but is perhaps bringing us more defined artistic visions than ever before too.
