Picture this: It’s 2013. You run a mildly successful Tumblr account filled with moody pictures and text excerpts about the unbearable life of a 21st-century teenager. The biggest songs on the radio are “Thrift Shop” by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke, which you hate with the power of a thousand suns because you’re busy listening to “Royals” by Lorde, “Robbers” by The 1975, and “Wrecking Ball” by Miley Cyrus.
The VMAs are still the biggest event of the year and the sight of a 20-year-old Miley twerking on stage was still considered vehemently shocking and depraved. But you knew, right there and then, that you were witnessing pop history. Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez had both just put out their debut albums, Yours Truly and Stars Dance, and a new generation of pop divas worthy of competing against the ones that paved the way before them was building right before your eyes. You wanted to own every album and download every song onto your iPod. You wanted to be as cool as them.
Ten years later, the music industry is significantly less exciting, songs don’t sound as good, and the new generation hates sex and fun. Suddenly, however, faced with this unsalted, unsweetened, unflavored emergency, the pop music Avengers decide that August 28, 2023, is the day they’ll rescue us all.
They will always be famous: Miley, Selena, and Ariana prove they’re the queens of the child-star-to-pop-it-girl pipeline with new music
A lengthy, nostalgia-heavy introduction was needed to celebrate the magnitude of this unassuming late summer Friday because the trifecta of child-stars-turned-pop-it-girls is back and we early Zoomers are feeling incredibly sentimental.
Miley’s powerful rock ballad, “Used To Be Young” is nothing if not an ode to the rebellion of her late teens and early 20s, which, without her knowing or intending to, freed and liberated so many of us teenage girls in the 2010s. The music video is staged like an audition, with the artist standing still while emotionally singing out the powerful words that make up her anthem to youth. Her attire fits the glam-rock aesthetic she has come to signify but with the added twist of a cheeky Mickey Mouse t-shirt in a nod to her groundbreaking Disney past. She loves it all, and we should too.
It’s exactly ten years since she released the song that segwayed her career from child star to wild provocateur, “Wrecking Ball.” It’s also been exactly a decade to the day her performance of “We Can’t Stop” and Robin Thicke’s crude “Blurred Lines” sent the general audience into a pearls-clutching frenzy. Looking back, and this is what “Used To Be Young” reflects on too, none of that was as big of a deal as we all made it out to be. It was a young woman coming into her own despite unrelenting scrutiny, and ten years of hindsight have shown just how ahead of her time Miley has always been.
Ariana Grande has indisputably become one of the great pop stars of the modern era and a lot of that comes down to how solid her debut solo album was. If Miley’s starter had us emotionally looking back to that early 2010s era where everything felt just a tiny bit more meaningful, then Ariana Grande’s special rerelease of 2013’s Yours Truly fully turned on the waterworks.
The 30-year-old singer hasn’t put out new music in a minute, but her celebratory performance of her best music from her first step out of the Nickelodeon shadow feels like the perfect next move. If there was any doubt remaining, this reminder of Ariana’s unparalleled honey-dripping voice, the mesmerism of her performance, and the timelessness of her first record should cement her position among pop music’s greats.
Something that is also incredibly distinctive about growing up in the 2010s is that every time we had a bit of a wobble about the endlessly confusing paradox of emotions that is adolescence, there was always a feel-good banger we could turn to to help put all that behind us. So, it’s only right that the queen of that exact genre of music is giving us the perfect dessert to conclude this pop music renaissance meal.
2013 was the year Selena Gomez properly broke out into the music scene (without… well… The Scene) with her first solo album Stars Dance, as well as the undeniably zhoosh-y single “Come & Get It.” This was the start of one of the most underrated discographies in the mainstream music world, composed of the pop perfection masterpieces that are Selena’s sophomore and junior efforts 2015’s “Revival” and 2020’s “Rare”.
The lack of recognition led to the artist rethinking her music career, so when she announced that she would be coming back with a new song, those of us who have always understood what she was trying to make felt vindicated. What’s more, “Single Soon” is charged with the same kind of effortless sexiness and grooviness that have always set her music apart from the rest to those willing to pay attention.
As the megastar celebrates breaking free from the shackles of a sterile relationship in this new song, she sings “Blame it all on feelin’ young,” accidentally bringing this succession of Friday releases full circle — and this article, too. Miley, Ariana, and Selena may have all just turned 30, but by chance or a stronger metaphysical force pulling the strings of pop music, their new songs have us 2010s teens looking back fondly on the years that defined us, while simultaneously settling into and commemorating a new way of feeling young.