The era of pop music has ended.

Pop music was not defined by strong choruses and catchy hooks; it was defined by its means of distribution.

Pop music was the product of major record labels, national broadcasters and not least, MTV. Through de facto monopolization, they ensured that everybody listened to pretty much the same music.

These institutions have, however, ceased to play any significant role in current music consumption. The internet killed them by introducing a much more fractionalized mediascape where multiple and often contradicting music trends could exist and thrive simultaneously, reverberating in the online echo chambers through carefully crafted algorithms. The internet thus killed pop music. It was not an instant massacre. Instead, it was an execution in slow motion starting in the late nineties and extending into the 2010s.

Hardcore Pop is a nostalgic homage to the heydays of pop music. It is like a pleasant childhood memory where everything was good, and the sun was always shining. But, just like a distant memory, it is also a distortion and idealization of the past. It is an attempt to recreate the feeling and unity that prevailed before the algorithms of the tech giants decapitated the beautiful monster otherwise known as pop music.