All posts tagged: hedonistic

Trash hits! Why a wave of hedonistic, feral female pop stars are rejecting respectability | Pop and rock

Trash hits! Why a wave of hedonistic, feral female pop stars are rejecting respectability | Pop and rock

Published by Sam Flores

If any year demanded a soundtrack of self-aggrandising female mayhem, it’s 2026. Amid the terrors of war, AI and the climate crisis, women are expected to be symbolic vessels of order and stability: thin, beautiful and perpetually 25 – a state of perfection newly available for purchase thanks to weight-loss drugs and the deep plane facelift. Covered unironically in leopard print and rhinestones, a cohort of young female pop stars are defying this familiar con with brash electronic pop, shamelessly hedonistic lyrics, anarchic sexuality and an obsession with what was once dismissed as “white trash”. It’s an aesthetic embraced by performers such as Slayyyter, Kim Petras, Cobrah, Demi Lovato, Snow Strippers’ Tatiana Schwaninger, Tove Lo and returning scene godmother Kesha. On I’m Your Girl Right, the lead single from her new album Estrus, Lo sings “We fuck all night on Ritalin-lin-lin-lin”. Slayyyter, meanwhile, describes herself as a “too drunk, trashy St Louis girl … extensions showing … looking kinda crazy”. Thong, a recent single by rising London-based musician Amara ctk100, celebrates barely-there pants (the artwork …

‘I never had those deep chats in the smoking area’: Arlo Parks on embracing late night life with her hedonistic new album | Arlo Parks

‘I never had those deep chats in the smoking area’: Arlo Parks on embracing late night life with her hedonistic new album | Arlo Parks

Published by Sam Flores

Until only a few years ago, Arlo Parks had never been clubbing. The lack of a party phase makes sense when you consider that while most of her friends were decamping to university at 18, Parks was busy bagging a record deal, releasing her debut album, Collapsed in Sunbeams, a few months after her 20th birthday. “It’s something that I almost didn’t have time to think about,” she says, speaking from LA, where she has lived since 2022, and where she feels very much at home. (This morning has already consisted of gymming and a walk in 28-degree sunshine that’s as bright as her neon-red hair.) “But I definitely did come to the conclusion that I had missed out – I hadn’t really had the time to be silly and have crazy, deep conversations in the smoking area. To be in an anonymous space and feel like you’re part of this whole.” Now 25, she has very much made up for lost time with her third album, Ambiguous Desire – a paean to the night-time, …