u/BlaireWhatever

It’s weirdly hard to define the sound of this decade because monoculture is basically on life support, but here’s how I see it:

Late 2019–2022: Peak Tiktok pop. Retro-pop was everywhere too, it felt like every hit was borrowing from the 70s to the 80s. Also, this was when Tiktok truly dominated and dictated what the biggest songs were.

2023–2026: The country/Trad/Mormon music wave (Ella Langley, Morgan Wallen, Zach Bryan, Alex Warren, Luke Combs, Dasha, Megan Moroney, Jessie Murph). If you scroll through the Billboard charts, it’s hard not to notice how many country songs started dominating from 2023 onward. Even a lot of mainstream pop artists have been leaning into country influences (Sabrina, Chappell, Beyonce, Post Malone)

I could see the next real musical shift happening around 2027 or 2028, kind of like how 1997 cemented the late-90s teen-pop explosion (Spice Girls, Hansons, BSB, Nu Metal) or 2008 kicked off the recession-pop era.

The thing is, top 40 pop music feels oddly stagnant and depressing right now. Everything’s so fragmented that it’s tough to tell what’s actually becoming the next sound.

I feel like this is a fun one to debate. Which islanders do you think would’ve been better suited to the US villa than the UK one and vice versa?

For example, I know Lorenzo’s a fan favorite on here because he’s unintentionally hilarious and in his own head most of the time, but I can’t see him surviving more than a week in the US villa. They don’t really seem to go for the laid-back, nonchalant types over there.

Jasmine, on the other hand feels like she’d absolutely eat on the US version.

Also looking at previous seasons, I don’t think a lot of the heavily glazed blonde bombshells from the UK series would’ve had the same success on the US version. Someone like Grace Jackson, for example. It’d just feel… off.

Happy, Moves Like Jagger, Fight Song, Party Rock Anthem, Shut Up & Dance, Any basic Katy Perry song, Blurred Lines, Thrift Shop, Call Me Maybe, We Are Young, Can’t Stop The Feeling, Shake It Off, Rude, Timber, Uptown Funk, Turn Down For What, Tik Tok, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger, What Does The Fox Say

Pretty awful time to have ears and they still play most of these garbage in weddings

View Poll

Just as many people view a lot of Top 40 music from the 1980s as upbeat, cheesy, and fun, which decade would be considered the opposite: the one whose mainstream hits generally sounded the most gloomy, melancholy, or depressing?

Just to name a few: Happy, Call Me Maybe, Party Rock Anthem, What Does The Fox Say, Harlem Shake, Shake It Off, Shut Up & Dance, Thrift Shop, Gangnam Style, Moves Like Jagger, etc

And the forefront artists like Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Bruno Mars, Kesha, Calvin Harris, Pitbull, David Guetta, Rihanna…

The EDM trend hasn’t aged well at all either. Just a really trashy decade for music overall. Hated the era when every artist tried to mix electro beats into pop music and make a dance-pop record, I’m glad that’s all over.

I feel like this era had the most annoying empowerment ballad songs too, besides Adele, songs like ‘Fight Song’ still enrage me