BAD TASTE IS IN
IN 2022, POP CULTURE IS DOING the most. Consider some of the most memorable images to come out of the entertainment industry recently: Mr. Big campily keeling over on his Peloton in And Just Like That … Nicole Kidman baring an impossible 3 ft. of midriff on the cover of Vanity Fair. The sight of dopey, meme-based game show Is It Cake? claiming the No. 1 slot on Netflix.
Everything is suddenly bigger, brighter, louder, raunchier. Designers are hawking hot-pink suits, belt-length skirts, and logo-plastered handbags. After a boom in scripted programming, trashy reality TV is surging. The most salient new sound in recent years is hyperpop, a dizzyingly hooky, wildly referential microgenre that has been described as “ebullient electro-maximalism.” We have entered an era of exuberant, even apocalyptic, bad taste. There is a youthful element to this bad-taste renaissance. Trendspotters have glommed on to the Y2K
