NEAR TRUTHS:
THE WOMEN OF SUMMER

Female artists have been dominating the pop landscape for some time, and two in particular are among the hottest acts of this hottest of seasons: Island’s Chappell Roan (Wasserman) and Atlantic’s Charli xcx (CAA), who was inked to the U.K. label. Both have had blazing runs on the DSP charts of late; Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!”—which is not on her Top 5 album, 2023’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess—sits at #1 on the Spotify U.S. chart as of this writing and is Top 10 globally (with nearly half a billion worldwide streams on the platform). “HOT TO GO!” is trending Top 25 worldwide, with 200m streams on the Spot. Chappell recently passed the 800k mark in U.S. ATD. Charli’s duet with Darkroom/Interscope's Wasserman-repped Billie Eilish, “Guess,” is Top 10 U.S., while other tracks from her zeitgeisty BRAT album bubble up. Chappell’s 2023 album (Top 5 in the U.S.) is currently #1 in the U.K., where Charli’s “Guess” is the #1 single and BRAT is the #2 album.

In the wake of splashy appearances at Coachella and Gov Ball, Chappell has truly become a force as a performer. Her Lollapalooza show demonstrated that she is a superstar in the making as the massive throng—the largest ever assembled for a daytime Lolla set—sang along with full force to every note of her set. What’s more, her impact extends beyond music to the larger cultural conversation. Similarly, Charli’s social-media pronouncement “Kamala IS Brat” got more play than the commentary of any pundit on the political scene, underscoring her enormous cultural influence.

Women are, of course, at the center of this ultra-intense political season, and it’s highly possible that a surge of female voters will catapult VP Harris into the White House, motivated as much by rage at the overturning of Roe v. Wade and other misogynistic events as they are by the possibility of shattering the ultimate glass ceiling. This dynamic is naturally reverberating throughout pop culture; that much of the most robust activity in pop centers around queer, queer-friendly and gender-fluid artists, too, is reflective of the energy and demographics now infusing the Harris campaign. Eilish, also having an incredible summer, is certainly an exemplar of this phenomenon.

Now, poll watchers wonder how aggressive Republic's Taylor Swift—who happens to be a cat owner with no kids, as J.D. Vance well knows—will be in the effort to elect Harris. Tay drove a significant spike in voter registrations with a single Instagram post last year, but the Swifties are already electrified about this contest, conferring online to maximize their outreach. The star recently made headlines when she was forced to cancel three Vienna shows due to a (fortunately thwarted) terror threat—once again underscoring the intersection of pop and the gravity of world events.