Pop Enters Its Wife Era
Lana, Charli, Dua, Taylor
Something I’ve noticed:
Lana Del Rey, aged 39, married September 26, 2024.
Charli XCX, aged 33, married July 19, 2025.
Dua Lipa, aged 30, announced engagement on June 12, 2025.
Taylor Swift, aged 35, announced engagement on August 26, 2025.
Four of the biggest names in pop, four of the most influential women in culture: all of them married or engaged in the last 12 months alone. What to make of this? Well, on the one hand, nothing. “Woman enters her 30s and desires the stability of marriage. More news at 11.”
But that’s no fun.
The expected discourse
Let’s get the politics out of the way shall we. It is always interesting to observe the public performance of progressivism (the rejection of inherited institutions and fixed roles, and the valorization of autonomy), the private retreat into tradition (here, marriage, one of the oldest social institutions we have), and the hair-pulling fallout on both sides.
It usually goes something like this: liberal progressives lament when a notable cultural figure “talks left” but “walks right”. (This is understandable; it’s not great for the brand.) Smug conservatives take this as proof they’ve been right all along. But not all is lost for the left. In victory, the conservatives have turned their backs to the ocean. They’re wearing—I don’t know—boat shoes and those insufferable salmon-colored shorts with little embroidered lobsters on them, and they are hit by a second, bigger wave; liberals defend this particular woman’s empowered choice to get married and the conservatives crash out and drive themselves into a blind rage because they want these women to experience “the consequences” of their (often perceived) licentiousness, they thrash about in the sand, blather on about declining fertility, “the wall”, etc.
It’s all very tiresome.
Marriage is not Summertime Sadness. It’s not The Tortured Poets Department. And it’s certainly not brat. Wait, so you’re telling me there’s a tension between shaking your ass on stage for millions of people and then walking down the aisle? In the words of Dua Lipa: I’m levitating.
My interest is less in any kind of perceived “hypocrisy” or what this “means” for politics, “heteropessimism”, “tradwives”, or [your buzzword here]. I’m more interested in what this means for the music itself, music that has yet to be written because the experiences have yet to be had. Music is an excellent barometer of culture, one of the best we have. So when four of the biggest female pop stars in the world get married or engaged within 12 months of each other, we should probably pay attention.
Where pop has been
For probably the past 15 years, “I-don’t-need-anyone-because-I’m-perfect-and-amazing” has been the ambient mood of pop music. We reached new heights of this smug self-regard between 2019 and 2023 (Taylor Swift’s “ME!”, Miley Cyrus’s “Flowers”, and Meghan Trainor’s “Mother”, a strong contender for the worst pop song ever written), though the recent success of Sabrina Carpenter’s “Manchild”, with all its irony, nostalgia, and shameless Lana reference, suggests we may be here to stay for a while, no matter how unbearable it feels.
Ironic detachment from love is endlessly glamorized in our culture, and pop music is no exception. There’s an obvious status in pretending nothing affects you and you don’t care. One day, we’re all happily singing along about how “love is a joke” and “men are trash”, until the lead singer decides that actually love matters and marriage is desirable. It probably goes without saying that this can harm ordinary women who have absorbed and internalized these messages, who feel somewhat betrayed, and who don’t have the same status, resources, and security measures in place to soften their disappointments.
Of course, part of the whiplash is on us: we collectively project so much onto these women that we fail to see them as real people with personal lives and romantic desires. We don’t understand that their music is their job and they have a life outside of it. But they have indeed all built their brands on relentless, self-centered ambition, the aesthetics of dysfunction, or both. Taylor is heartbroken but still perfect, Lana is doomed but likes it, Charli is on drugs but still the sharpest in the room, Dua is on autopilot but always ascending.
Our culture deeply rewards this potent mix of negative emotion and material success. Fear, anxiety, sadness, anger, envy, emptiness—all perform well for algorithmic media and all, crucially, get you to buy stuff (and people love it when you buy stuff). Positive qualities like courage, contentment, happiness, patience, generosity, and wholeness—arguably the foundation of any good marriage—do not. Besides, there is this false but pervasive idea that happily married people, especially if they have kids, can’t make good art. (Trent Reznor, one of the most accomplished musicians of his generation, is married with five children.) However, there are several notable examples of musicians falling deeply in love and their music going off a cliff: the self-indulgence of Yoko Ono and John Lennon, Kanye preaching circa 2019 like he had it all figured out (there’s always the “Bound 2” music video), and Chance The Rapper’s “wife guy” album, to name a few.
What marriage means for the future of pop
If I’ve learned anything about the cyclical nature of culture, it’s that once we all thoroughly agree it’s bad, it’s about to be good again. How else do you explain the women on the Lower East Side wearing Bermuda shorts and actually looking good in them? Even if Addison Rae’s lyrics border on cringe—I still wince a bit every time I hear “black car pick me up from the airport / drop my bags at the Bowery Hotel”—maybe that’s on me. I’m not sure Addison Rae has an ironic or detached bone in her body, and it’s frankly refreshing. She’s smiling, she’s having fun, and she’s winning. From where I’m sitting, The Cynical Sad Girl Era is over.
No matter what you think of the men these women have chosen to marry, I think it’s clear that they’re all rather happy. And good for them. People’s desires and priorities change over time, this is allowed, probably even to be encouraged, and as our desires change, we are forced to make certain tradeoffs, grapple with the fantasy of utopian futures vis-à-vis our current reality, and reckon with the impossibility of “having it all”—at least all at once. These women are massively successful and don’t need a man for financial reasons or to boost their self-worth. Something else, the real thing, is at play here. They’re in love. They have consciously decided to enter into marriage, to bind themselves, hopefully forever, to one man. Once advocates for possibility, freedom, and the limitless self, they have chosen exclusivity, commitment, constraint, and someone else. We might not get a new breakup anthem, but as an unapologetic romantic, I hope we get something better.
Selfless love
Selfless love and sacrifice are underexplored ideas in today’s artistic landscape. In marriage, you’re bound to experience a lot of both. There is nothing more beautiful or profoundly affecting than witnessing someone pour their heart out for someone else. It’s why we all cry at weddings and would die for our children. I know I’m not alone in feeling like culture has been stuck at rock bottom for a while now. The only direction we can go is up. Fifteen years ago, in 2011, “we found love in a hopeless place” (fraternity basements). The stakes are much higher now, but we can find it again.
Sincerity is a joke until it’s not. Some will say it’s not possible, but I see a return to love on the horizon. We need the emotional nuance of Joni Mitchell (“Both Sides Now”), the power of Whitney Houston (“I Will Always Love You”), the ecstasy of Donna Summer (“I Feel Love”), the open-heartedness of Patti LaBelle (“Love, Need and Want You”, “If Only You Knew”) and the captivating beauty of Sade (“Cherish the Day”) back in the mainstream. I think we’re ready. I think it’s time. Maybe we will learn that stability and love do not destroy art, but serve as its foundation. Maybe we discover that love is the ultimate liberation. When the Pop Girls bet on love, perhaps we will all be more willing to do the same.
Thank you for writing the one newsletter on Taylor’s engagement that I didn’t feel like cringing away from.
A thought I wanted to share – I’m not sure if I’d lump Taylor into the I’m-amazing-and-I-don’t-need-anyone group. As a long-time listener and fan, I may be biased! But I do think she’s always been a fan of marriage and it’s something she’s always longed for, right from her teenage years.
I see your Me! and I raise you ‘propecy’ (longing for a forever person), ‘ttpd’ (mocking marriage makes her heart explode), ‘so long London’ (‘I died on the altar waiting for the proof’) among many others.
I think 2 pop diva that weren’t mentioned that’s really oddly situated in culture for the last 15 years is Beyoncé and Adele. I’d argue that Beyoncé’s music got significantly better *after* she got married. Her music and albums around love and marriage have been incredibly earnest, and while she’s often coded as progressive, the underlying music tends to be incredibly traditional in the defense of the institution of marriage (single ladies is such a funny song). Indeed the album Lemonade is ultimately about a couple overcoming infidelity and reforging the marriage contract, which is an explicit rejection of the “girl boss independent” tone of music
Adele also has produced incredibly earnest music. It’s not just she experiences heartbreak, it’s that she seems genuinely hurt and yearns for love. I suppose it’s why Beyoncé and Adele are deeply popular and yet somehow feel outside of the mainstream