By 2024 poptimism’s taboo against criticizing megastars finally broke

Evidence

A major taboo of the poptimist age was criticizing mainstream stars. But by 2024, up-and-coming artists began to reject fealty to the pop aristocratic class. Charli’s oblique barbs fit with her “annoying, dirty, hedonistic, bra-less” persona, and in 2024, the world ushered in “Brat Summer” in honor of her zeitgeist-defining album Brat. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 678

Categorization

• XREF: A concrete datapoint for the reader’s periodization — 2024 marks the break point of the poptimist era within Marx’s structure.