In recent years, much has been made of the "relatable" bedroom pop artist, who eschews theatricality for understated outfits and production. But pop has always carved out space for the artificial: for the loud, the shiny, the ostentatiously unreal. There's something disarmingly honest about artists who wholeheartedly and publicly embrace a persona. When our favorite stars pull off looks and feats that look so hard, loving them and trusting them becomes easy. After all they're doing this—in theory—for us.
The process is messy, of course. Connecting to art, while essential, often means forming parasocial bonds that can veer into hostile, unhealthy territory. Audiences participating in the fantasy can lead to unhealthy strains of escapism, encouraging fans to become entirely disconnected from a reality which appears bleak in contrast. But at its best, this relationship creates what theorist José Esteban Muñoz calls a "utopian performative —a vision of possibility that transcends ordinary constraints.”
An essential part of this vision, according to Muñoz, was disidentification: a way to engage with dominant mainstream culture without wholeheartedly embracing or rejecting it. The artists mentioned here are mainstream and have access to conventional formats and venues where they can express themselves (music videos, televised performances, radio, concerts etc. etc.) but they use their position to build showy and blatantly counter-cultural personas, challenging the norms of the establishment from within. Take Prince’s declaration that “like books and Black lives, albums matter” during the 2015 Grammys, or Chapell Roan’s Grammy acceptance speech this year where she called for increased artist protections. Both of their declarations were supported and contextualized by the loud, nonconformist visual language that their careers are built on embracing. Drawing from Muñoz's theory of disidentification, we can understand how theatrical pop personas create spaces for both artists and audiences to expand conventional social boundaries.
When David Bowie created Ziggy Stardust decades ago, he was able to gracefully and publicly elude rigid concepts of gender, sexuality, and human potential. The key, David Shumway writes in an essay collection titled Goth, lay in the “explicit use of character, costume and makeup”. Bowie “did not appear to claim authenticity for his characters,” Shumway writes. “But screen actors do not claim authenticity for the fictional roles they play either… the star’s authenticity is not erased by the role-playing, but made more complex and perhaps more intense.” The overt embrace of artificiality fosters intimacy and freedom: the mask is given a life of its own when we don’t have to pretend that it’s not there.
This tradition continued with the rise of Lady Gaga, whose elaborate costumes and performances created a character—and a world—through disidentification. By pushing the boundaries of conventional presentation, Gaga didn't distance herself from her audience—she took them with her, and created a space where fantasy transformed the status quo. In the 2012 edition of open-access journal Colloquy, Jaime Guzmán connects her breathtakingly grotesque visuals to the message when describing the music video for Born This Way, one of the de facto songs for the LGBTQ community in the 2010s: “her body is digitally and cosmetically altered to seem “monster” like. Her face is altered with bumps and her body is riddled with horn-esque shapes beneath her skin that try to defy what a human body should look like. She literally is “different” and through her difference she is then able to project her message to the millions of fans and audience members.” The message, naturally, is one of inclusivity—that the marginalized and the others (the little monsters, as she calls her fans) can command attention and respect as she does in her ‘monstrous’ mask.
It’s no coincidence that both Bowie and Lady Gaga's embrace of queerness undeniably shaped their legacy. Journalist and author Sasha Geffen notes in The Paris Review that the transcendental nature of music allows for a momentary dissolution of individual identity, which uniquely creates the potential for queerness: “The fan hears a beloved song and believes … they were written for her to sing. The division between artist and fan dissolves in the moment of impassioned listening, and with it goes the division between genders. In music, people are not separate; they cannot be divided up into two discrete categories”.
Indeed, the glamour of the pop star has always shared a bloodline with the glamour of drag: using the art of pretending as a way to define and explore alternate modes of existence. Categories like "executive realness" and "high fashion evening wear", created in the Harlem ballroom scene by Black trans pioneers weren't about the verisimilitude of the attire; they were about claiming space in a world that tried to deny their existence. As Daniel Harris notes in a 1995 article published in Salmagundi, drag itself was inspired by the “gaudy, over-dressed fashions of the actresses and singers who starred in minstrel shows and vaudeville…Liberace’s shimmering jumpsuits and jewel-encrusted smoking jackets, were…designed to sparkle with blinding flashes of light that made the performer herself seem literally radiant, framed in a dazzling halo.” The point of drag was never to be believable or realistic; its authenticity is derived from this outrageous, unashamed emulation of celebrity: the Marlene Dietrichs and the Marilyn Monroes. Drag rebuilds and recontextualizes these monuments of glamour, out of the spotlight and in queer minority spaces—pop stars like Madonna then draw from these very spaces to express themselves and transform the mainstream. The cycle of sequins continues with masks that are built, refashioned, and passed on.
To Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan, arguably two of the most successful pop stars to come out of 2024, creating visual spectacle seems instinctive. They recognize that in a cultural landscape that insists on authenticity, the most authentic thing you can do is admit that you're playing a part. Chapell Roan, whose first album cover is itself an explicit homage to drag, consistently uses fashion to build an unapologetically queer avatar. Her Lucha Libre wrestling costume for Day 1 of Lollapalooza—a shiny neon leotard, paired with a matching luchador mask and her trademark red mane—was one of many successful attempts to attain beautiful extremes of transformation and nonconformity. And Sabrina Carpenter’s recent evolution into a living dollhouse fantasy, all latex heart cutouts and ballet-slipper pink, isn't just about looking pretty. Her depiction of female sexuality takes on an idealized form, a frothy plastic extravaganza that seems to treat men as peripheral inconveniences, not the focal point. Like the greats before them, they play make believe so earnestly that the audience isn’t disillusioned by the obvious personas, but enchanted by the possibilities they represent.
This is the paradox that powers pop's greatest transformations: the further artists stretch into fantasy, the closer we feel to them. By crafting elaborate visual narratives and announcing the character that they play in them, pop artists become larger-than-life avatars of their audiences' own dreams, fears, and desires. They create a powerful feedback loop of identification and aspiration that turns passive listeners into followers. As Sasha Geffen says, the division dissolves. The music cradles our eardrums and is superimposed over our insides. It presents to us a mask, made irresistible as it is worn with purpose and joy. A mask becomes a face that sees us. What passes then can only be described as truth.
Sources Cited:
You and I: Lady GaGa's Performative Disidentification of Social Normalcy
How Pop Music Broke the Gender Binary - The Paris Review
Chappell Roan Was Your Favorite Wrestler’s Favorite Wrestler at Lollapalooza | Them
Salmagundi Magazine — “THE AESTHETIC OF DRAG,” AN ESSAY BY DANIEL...