What were you up to at 16 years old? Gonna take a wild guess here and say that it probably wasn’t pioneering a new sub-genre of music and releasing EP’s that reach millions of listeners. So meet Ash Gutierrez, otherwise known as glaive. Like many other teenagers, he found the pandemic pretty boring, but instead of binge-watching Tiger King, he decided to collaborate with smaller alt-pop artists on SoundCloud and developed a unique musical style that contains elements of pop, glitch, emo, trap, and electronic sound but certainly isn’t limited to any genre. With gaudy auto-tune, chaotic melodies, and controversial lyrics, some consider this sub-genre to be brash and unnecessary. Artists like glaive see it as an exaggerated take on popular music tropes, and while they prefer not to label the genre at all, the music industry has branded it as hyperpop. Read more about the development of this unique subgenre with this article from Vice.
Release date: August 6, 2021
Similar artist(s): 100 gecs, Sophie, Fraxiom
Top tracks: 1984, detest me, i wanna slam my head against the wall