The television series Avatar: The Last Airbender has enjoyed a long cultural lifespan for a Nickelodeon cartoon. Since its release, critics have praised its ability to convey heavy emotional themes through a medium aimed at a young audience. Pop music, which also caters to a young demographic, has transformed over the last 25 years to serve a similar purpose. Thus, Avatar does not patronize its audience, nor does it make them grow up too quickly.
The animated series follows Aang, a messiah-like figure who emerges from hibernation to save his world from an imperial threat. A 12-year-old prodigy, Aang can manipulate all four of the natural elements of the show’s magical realm, but his peers can only devote themselves to one.
To defeat his archrival, Aang masters the “Avatar State”: a temporary condition in which the young savior can increase his supernatural powers to their maximum. However, while doing so, any blow he sustains has mortal consequences.
Pop Music’s Gilded Age
As a concept, Aang’s “Avatar State” resembles the cultural shift that enabled Avatar: The Last Airbender to remain relevant for nearly two decades. The increasing complexity of children’s entertainment allows popular culture to revisit the same intellectual property again and again, albeit with varying results. (M. Night Shyamalan’s 2010 live-action adaptation The Last Airbender disappointed fans and critics alike, whereas the 2024 Netflix series fared better.)
With great power comes great responsibility. Aang’s “Avatar State” is a symbol of pop culture’s transformation over the first quarter of the 21st century. By embracing honesty and vulnerability, it has become a greater economic force than ever before.
Digital Media Oversaturation Affects Pop Music
Like Avatar: The Last Airbender brought depth to children’s television, Taylor Swift brought the complexities of her inner life to pop music. As the tabloid fervor of the early 2000s subsided, Swift emerged with a new proposition: that a celebrity sharing her personal life with the public could be an act of empowerment, transcending gossip bloggers. Of the album Blue, the singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell said in a 2021 interview with The Los Angeles Times, “The feedback I got was that I was exposing too much of myself.” This radical honesty characterizes Swift’s entire catalogue. Indeed, Swift cited Blue as an inspiration for 2012’s Red.
While interviewing Swift for a 2023 Time magazine cover story, Sam Lansky accompanied the singer to the premiere of the Eras Tour concert film in Los Angeles. He likened the screening to being in a “house of mirrors”. The first layer of this effect was Swift herself in the theatre watching the concert film. The second layer was Swift in the film, performing on a stadium stage. The third layer was Swift projected on the Jumbotron of that stadium, a screen within a screen.
Digital media makes fame synonymous with oversaturation. A new requirement has emerged for celebrities: to prevent their enterprises from collapsing under their own weight, famous people must include self-references in their work to let the public know they remain aware of their gargantuan reach. The very act of consuming a pop star’s output threatens to strip it of meaning because of its accessibility. When almost every new song is available on Spotify, consumption becomes banal. In this environment, celebrities must not only prove the relevance of their brands but also that of a product with mass appeal.
Charli XCX’s 2024 album Brat finds meaning in the vapidity of celebrity culture. Charli XCX’s early-career hits “Boom Clap” and “I Love It” both charted. Still, Brat captures the ethos of her catalogue by bringing an innate complexity and messiness to the simplistic act of partying. In “Rewind”, Charli XCX contemplated striving for conventional achievements: “I never used to think about Billboard/nBut now I’ve started thinking again/ ’bout whether I deserve commercial success.” This meditation on fame helped Charli XCX reach new levels. As entertainment media continues to expand, the public wants to understand the behemoth its demand has created.
Pop Icons’ Shifting Interests
On “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” from 2024’sThe Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift wrote the thesis statement of 21st-century fame. Addressing her audience, she said, “I am what I am ’cause you trained me”. Because fans have direct access to their idols through social media, they can shape a celebrity’s persona from the ground up.
In the music video for “Fortnight”, another Tortured Poets track, Swift is held captive by scientists who electrocute her as part of an experiment. Although pop stars are symbols of excess, often held in public contempt, the idea that fame is suffering remains marketable to a broad audience. Swift’s analysis of the scrutiny that famous people endure has ushered in a new era of stardom where the act of confession is no longer shocking.
While interviewing Sabrina Carpenter on CBS Mornings, Gayle King asked the singer if the actor Barry Keoghan, who Carpenter dated, inspired her 2025 album Man’s Best Friend. “I wouldn’t say,” Carpenter replied, unfazed. Although the press still reports on celebrity muses, fans have stopped hyperfixating on them. Instead, the cultural conversation surrounding Man’s Best Friend focused on whether the album’s cover, which shows Carpenter kneeling before an out-of-frame man, is regressive sex appeal or forward-thinking satire.
On “My Man on Willpower”, the singer deconstructs a familiar archetype: “He used to be literally obsessed with me/ I’m suddenly the least sought-after girl in the land”. Carpenter’s brand of frothy pop has a sharp comic edge; whether its themes are regressive is beside the point.
In a capitalist system, the purchase of a product is a platform for cultural discourse. Much of contemporary American life happens “on-the-go”. People listen to music during a commute and watch award shows while doing household chores. Meanwhile, celebrities wear glamorous gowns to events that become the background noise of onlookers’ lives. As a whole, famous people act as Trojan Horses, if you will, for the cultural values that consumers are too busy to realize they have already chosen to endorse.
Pop Music’s Duties
Although Ariana Grande released chart-topping hits throughout the 2010s, she has pivoted to acting, starring as Glinda in Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of the Broadway musical Wicked, a prequel to The Wizard of Oz. By casting Grande, the film takes on a meta quality. As an icon to the people of Oz, Glinda proclaims, “I’m a public figure now.” Of course, Grande, the actress uttering this line, is a public figure as well.
The 2019 album Thank U, Next represents the peak of Grande’s music career, and saw the star combine hip-hop stylings with personal confessions. Months before its release, Grande and comedian Pete Davidson ended their engagement. Several months before that, Grande’s ex-boyfriend, the rapper Mac Miller, died of a drug overdose. The Thank U, Next track “Ghostin” is dedicated to him, a ballad of grief that, when layered with Grande’s intricate harmonies and sparkling synths, becomes a delicate lullaby.
Thank U, Next proved that Grande could understand the complexities of Glinda’s character: someone tasked with comforting the public from a heartbreak she also endures privately. Celebrities face conflicting expectations. Such is the nature of their job, which requires them to appear superhuman to justify their massive platform. Fans of “pop culture” want to consume mythology, even as they knowingly contribute to its proliferation through small purchases. Even turning on a radio pays dividends to celebrities. The supposed passivity of this choice is part of the mythology people crave.
Pop Music’s Final Form
Pop music in 2025 begins to break capitalism’s fourth wall while relishing the glamour that shields listeners from reality. On Who’s the Clown?, singer-songwriter Audrey Hobert acknowledges that fame requires having a sense of humor about yourself. The TikTok presence of rising star Sombr threatens to undermine his artistic credibility in his own audience’s eyes, even though his debut album received positive reviews. Additionally, in 2025, Justin Bieber released an album of laid-back, R’n’B-inspired pop that captures his aura of easy confidence better than a chart-topping hit.
After outgrowing the tabloid frenzy of the 2000s and reframing leftover drama as the terrain of social media, by the mid-2020s, pop music embraced a pillar of its existence: quality. The school of thought “Poptimism” argues that “pop” as a genre is comparable to classic rock in its commitment to a form. Just because pop’s final product makes for easy listening does not mean its creation is any less complex than that of other genres.
Just as Aang of Avatar: The Last Airbender entered the “Avatar State”, pop music has legitimized the process of its creation by embracing vulnerability. Taylor Swift’s 2022 album Midnights is a synth-pop record inspired by her biggest commercial success, 1989, and written with the lyrical content of her greatest critical success, folklore. On “You’re On Your Own, Kid”, a song about ambition, Swift recalls fame’s sacrifices: “I hosted parties and starved my body like I’d be saved by the perfect kiss.”
However, Swift also admits her own agency in achieving success: “I looked around in a blood-soaked gown and saw something they can’t take away.” Even America’s sweetheart admits that behind every great fortune lies a crime.
Indeed, the dark side of determination is a recurring theme of pop culture. At the end of the film The Devil Wears Prada, a fashion magazine editor, Miranda Priestly (allegedly based on Vogue’s Anna Wintour), confesses that she sabotaged a colleague to cement her own power. The shiny packaging of fashion and pop culture contains a truth about human nature: disguising our cunning qualities is an act of showmanship.
The sequel to The Devil Wears Prada will be released in 2026, another franchise resurrected due to the trendiness of reboots. However, scrolling through TikTok or other social media platforms reveals that fans often revisit clips from this film. The hype for certain cultural phenomena never goes away.
A New Era for Pop Personas
To conclude 2025, Vogue released an unconventional cover of its print edition, proving that pop culture has earned the right to be zany when it wants to. For the cover of the December issue, the actor Timothee Chalamet is photoshopped to appear standing above a Nebula in outer space. The background image is attributed to NASA.
Chalamet’s appearance in Vogue captures the evolution of promotional strategies in the internet era, when actors and musicians, who usually work in one medium, have access to a vast array of platforms. The photoshoot accompanying Chalamet’s Vogue cover took place at Michael Heizer’s land art installation City in Nevada, a backdrop that evoked Chalamet’s role in the Dune franchise. Additionally, in 2024, when promoting his starring role in the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, Chalamet performed the singer’s hits on Saturday Night Live. That year, Chalamet also appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone, a music publication.
Through their personas, celebrities represent truths that help fans assess their own lives. After all, billionaires don’t get rich for nothing. In an episode of Netflix’s The Crown, a young Queen Elizabeth II is told by her grandmother about the importance of monarchy: “[It] is God’s mission to give ordinary people an ideal to strive towards, an example of nobility and duty.” Although modern celebrity is a more democratic form of idolatry, transparency with an audience remains a negotiation.
The Crown includes another piece of advice Queen Elizabeth received from her grandmother: “The crown always wins.” Although a pop singer would risk alienating their fan base by saying such a thing about their own fame, the public still knows it to be true.