Dark Pop

Dark pop is a strain of contemporary pop music that pairs mainstream song structures and hooks with minor-key harmony, brooding electronic production and lyrics centred on anxiety, depression, mortality, obsession and fractured identity. It crystallised in the early 2010s as a counterweight to the era's euphoric EDM-pop, through *Lana Del Rey*'s noir balladry, *Lorde*'s minimalist suburban gothic and *BANKS*' shadowed R&B, and reached commercial dominance with *Billie Eilish*, whose whispered vocals, tactile sound design and macabre humour made the style's grammar the default language of late-2010s youth pop, continued by *Melanie Martinez*, *Halsey*, *Poppy* and *Ethel Cain*.