when the nu metal girlypop trend accidentally overlooks women's accomplishments
korn is for the gurls
When I was in middle school, I was in with the “rocker” crew. There were few girls. Dominated by boys who wore black band shirts, black wristbands, and who’d shoplift at Hot Topic. There were only a few of us girls in that group. I remember feeling intimidated by the boys. One day, one of them snatched my red iPod nano to mark their place in the “rocker” chain, to claim their superiority as a music aficionado compared to me. The boy then saw that my iPod library far surpassed their song quantity (I had about 1,800 songs), ranging from artists like Bjork to Faith No More, Slipknot, to My Chemical Romance, David Bowie, PJ Harvey, Mr. Bungle, System of a Down, and so much more. My taste, unbeknownst to me before that moment, was far more advanced than the frontal lobe of an 8th-grade boy who actually admitted defeat. After that, I earned my cool card and passed the “rocker” group initiation, and I was an official “rocker girl.”
If I reached out to the boy who did that, he’d likely not remember doing that, nor did I, for that matter—but that moment defined my obsession with learning about the coolest indie record labels, counterculture, and anything that lived outside the mainstream.
Enough about me, but I wanted to share that context because it makes me feel intimately connected to a current TikTok trend. A trend that echoes a bigger seismic shift within young women’s identity and taste. And we’re presenting… Girly Pop.
No, not slaylist (pun on playlist) Charli XCX, hyper pop iteration of Girly Pop. We’re talking about the juxtaposition of nu-metal and pink and glitter. Yes. It’s amazing. This trend has been bubbling under the surface for a few years but has actualized on TikTok in early 2024.
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This trend on TikTok showcases young Gen Z women who subvert the expectations of what it means to be a woman who likes macabre genres. To sum it up, a commenter on one of these viral videos said, “me blasting Korn in the car drinking my little iced coffee in a bright pink skims set and uggs 💅🏼” with the creator of the video replying back “I love girlhood”.
The TikToks show young women wearing pink, rocking out to Korn, calling it “girly pop” characterized by the fact that they can dance to it. The comments are a wholesome place for the most part. With OG nu-metal girls taking on the big sister role, commenting on which other bands and songs to check out: “Rob Zombie too, especially Living Dead Girl”. Along with “System of a Down and Slipknot have some girly pop bops too” and that “Deftones is definitely Lana del Rey coded.”
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However, plenty of millennial women have walked the line of being girly but also into morbid themes well before it became a TikTok trend. Since the ‘90s and 2000s, women have loved nu-metal, and have taken part in defining the characteristics of the fashion’s subculture. Even outside of nu-metal per se, the defiance of fitting the cookie cutter archetype of a clean, pretty, proper girl has been challenged by women. Think of how Gloomy Bear took women by storm in the 2000s to Inked Magazine Cover Girls.
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In the late 2010/2020s, the artist Poppy resurfaced the convergence of cliché “girly” representation with metal sounds. She initially rose to fame by uncannily imitating a robot. She then put out music that would oscillate from femme to screamo. Poppy does not necessarily have roots in nu-metal, but her stardom based on the shock value of the time creations can be noted as part of the shift of nu-metal sounds making their way into the mainstream, commodified spectrum of consumption.
In 2023, the fashionable abrasiveness of nu-metal took on a new form. With two huge fashion collaborations featuring two prominent nu-metal bands. First, the Spring 2023 collection of Marc Jacobs and Stray Rats for a Deftones capsule collection in Spring 2023. Next was the KORN x ADIDAS release in October of the same year. These two collaborations marked a huge significance in nu-metal’s resurgence, and its alternative nicheness turned into a mainstream celebrated status for all to enjoy and recognize.
Trends of the 2020s are heavily marked by nostalgia, so of course, nu-metal would become revisited and get its flowers since it’s now 20+ years old. However, the inclusiveness in the “[insert nu-metal band] is so girly pop” trend is worth discussing. When you close your eyes and think of a nu-metal band and fan, you likely think of a man. (I asked Dall-E to create a nu-metal band, and their output showed all white men. I asked Dall-E to show me a nu-metal fan, and I was shown a white man. Are we surprised? Of course not.) The TikTok trend also echoes that. Even though there are women nu-metal artists who rose up during the genre's inception, they very well can be a perfect face for this girly pop rebellion.
One of those bands is Kittie. A true nu-metal band which came to be in the late 1990s. They penetrated a scene that was dominated mainly by bros. Their debut album, “Spit,” which came out in 1999, really put women's raw and heavy genre-bending abilities on the map. The album art features a cheetah printed frame, wherein each member is rocking the baddest of baddie goth outfits and dark eyeline, colored hair. The inside of the CD has a black printed, iconic spiked choker circulating on the disc. The music videos from this album show glitter guitars and guttural screams. These ferocious females even played shows alongside nu-metal founding fathers Slipknot. Kittie’s drummer stated she doesn’t want to be seen as “girl metal” band… it’s almost exactly the same kind of music, except we don’t have penises.”
Come early 2000s, another woman-fronted nu-metal band came to be called Otep. Founded by frontwoman Otep Shamaya, the band featured men. But Otep herself has been referenced on the subreddit r/numetal as “Heavy and frightening,” what's not to love about those adjectives? She sang about many social issues and political advocacy. Otep has used her platform to fight for LGBTQ+ rights. These, wrapped in a harrowing and unsettling genre, especially from a woman at this time, are especially visceral and worth recognizing.
Both of these bands stayed true to their feminine identity. Refusing to conform to the stereotypical roles that women in music at the time were bucketed into. Think pop stars like Britney Spears becoming a calculated piece of merchandise for the masses. Kittie and Otep did not stay in “their lane”, puppeteering as good dancers and good little girl next door tropes, which the music industry at that time mainly propped up.
Lack of female inclusion aside, this trend is all about challenging what it means to look and outwardly present yourself as a woman. To push the boundaries of the connotations of taste that people have outside of their stereotypical target audience presumptions. It’s about finding empowerment in a converging of different aesthetics. In a way, it feels like a parody of the abrasive genre of nu-metal led by men. Where women stand up to the horror-facing aesthetics that accompany the genre and defy the expectations of what it means to be a listener while they wear glitter and wear pink, it questions the masculinity these bands perpetuate. This iteration of girly pop is a statement. It’s women entering spaces typically reserved for men. Challenging the image of your “average” Slipknot listener with the power of “slay queen” elements.
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