Queer Music
Queer underground raves have always been anchored by non-traditional electronic music. Genres within the niche reject conformity, push auditory extremes, and embrace the mess of emotions that is the lived queer experience. With so many forms of artistic auditory expression, it's impossible to pinpoint a single genre to represent the queer community, but that's never stopped people from trying. Enter: Hyperpop
Spotify. "Hyperpop [playlist]."
Hyperpop itself is a slippery label. The term only emerged because the music streaming platform Spotify created a playlist that needed a catch-all name for various queer experimental electronic artists that they didn't know how to categorize. As a result, the umbrella of "hyperpop" is incredibly broad with countless subgenres, but it gets the point across.
Assistant professor of Music Theory Lindsey Reymore from Arizona State University highlights this in her analysis of 100 Gecs' "Ringtone," identifying hyperpop's defining characteristics as "...vocal manipulation and the subversion of normative formal, harmonic, rhythmic, and metric conventions,"(Reymore) showing how queer aesthetics manifest within the music. Hyperpop lives in distortion, thrives in cringe culture, encourages chaos, and breaks conventional structures in the same way queer culture bends, breaks, and reimagines the norms around identity. However, something that links the many subgenres of hyperpop together is a shared preference and inspiration for digital culture, especially the early Internet.
Since hyperpop is primarily created using electronics, the sounds often mimic the machines Gen Z grew up with. Some popular auditory effects in hyperpop music are bitcrushing (lowering audio quality, creating an almost pixelated sound), heavy distortion, chiptune 8 or 16-bit audio associated with retro gaming consoles, glitch sound effects, and audio samples of Internet memes. Even in underground queer music, there's nostalgia for the bright and colorful, clunky, low-res era of the Internet, which is why hyperpop is the sound of underground queer parties.
These traits are evident in songs like 'Ponyboy' by SOPHIE, with its heavy distortion; 100Gecs' bitcrushed vocals in 'Money Machine'; the glitchy audio chops in 'Contact' by Alice Gas; and the chiptune in 'False Awakening' by Gupi. These sounds aren't random; they reflect the hyper-digital environment in which young queers grew up. This connection is a key factor in the relationship queer raves have with hyperpop. As The Trail, University of Puget Sound's newspaper, expressed, the hyperpop world has become "a space for individuals with marginalized identities to access their voice within popular culture… achieving a unified identity in the appreciation and acceptance of difference." (The Trail 4) The queer influence in hyperpop is the ethos behind its sound. Because there is no singular way to define the queer experience, hyperpop's range is vast, chaotic, and ever-changing. Hyperpop's identity is not expressed as a fixed category, but rather as an endless array of possibilities.
Internet Kids. "Hyperpop Dance Party.[Eveent Flyer]"
Rest in Peace, Sophie. Your music will live on forever. 
