Hyperpop

The Sound of Internet Chaos

Hyperpop is a loosely defined music genre and artistic movement that emerged in the 2010s, primarily through online communities. It takes the familiar conventions of pop music—catchy melodies, polished production, charismatic vocals—and pushes them to their most extreme, distorted, and surreal limits. The sound is often a gleeful, chaotic collision of influences, blending elements of EDM, bubblegum pop, trap music, and emo with a maximalist, anything-goes approach.

Key sonic characteristics include heavily auto-tuned and pitch-shifted vocals, abrasive metallic synth sounds, distorted bass, and a general sense of digital compression and sensory overload. The genre’s visual aesthetic is equally important, drawing heavily from glitch art, early 2000s web design, and a bright, oversaturated color palette. Artists like 100 gecs, A. G. Cook, and SOPHIE are considered pioneers of the sound.

Cinematic Application

As a relatively new and niche genre, hyperpop is beginning to find its place in film soundtracks that aim to capture a distinctly modern, ‘extremely online’, and often queer sensibility. Its frantic, elastic, and synthetic nature makes it a perfect fit for experimental animation and scenes depicting digital chaos. The soundtrack for the visually groundbreaking animated film Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) prominently features artists and sounds from the hyperpop scene, perfectly mirroring the film’s glitchy, overwhelming, and genre-bending visual style.