Experimental Pop

Experimental pop is pop music that retains song forms, hooks and accessibility while subjecting them to avant-garde method: unconventional structures, extreme production, noise, collage and conceptual framing. Its line runs from the studio experimentation of *The Beach Boys*' "Pet Sounds" through *Kate Bush* and *Björk* to the digital maximalism of *SOPHIE*, *Arca* and *Charli XCX*, whose "Pop 2" treated the mixtape as a laboratory for future pop. The genre is defined less by a single sound than by a working position inside commercial pop, using its budgets, distribution and melodic language against its own conventions.