Source: The Conversation – UK
Pop has always thrived on reinvention, with artists moving through distinct phases that reconfigure both their sound and sense of self.
David Bowie moved through personas such as Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke, each marking a distinct shift in sound and identity. Madonna similarly built her career through transformation, with each phase tied to a distinct visual and sonic shift. More recently, Beyoncé has moved through distinct eras, from Lemonade (2016) to Renaissance (2022) and Cowboy Carter (2024), creating clearly different stylistic worlds around each project.
Taylor Swift’s recent Eras Tour has helped to repackage this reinvention as clearly defined “eras”. The tour reinforced the idea that each album represents a distinct world, and encouraged fans to structure their memory, identity and engagement through these phases.
These artist eras are now experienced, circulated and intensified through social media. Albums have become centrepieces of wider cultural worlds built through visuals, personal stories and fan participation. Meanwhile deluxe editions, remixes and companion releases increasingly blur the boundaries of the album itself.
Thinking in terms of eras provides a way of understanding these multiple releases as belonging to the same creative chapter that fans actively participate in, expand and help define.
Charli XCX
Fan studies research has long shown that digital technologies expand opportunities for fan creativity and participation, allowing audiences to play a more active role in shaping and circulating cultural meanings.
On social media, fans don’t just follow an era – they help bring it to life. Through videos, memes, fashion, conversations and creative interpretations, they shape the meanings that come to define a project and extend an album beyond the music itself. Artists often encourage this by revealing visual aesthetics, sharing cryptic teasers and discussing new projects in interviews long before release, inviting fans to imagine the era before the music is even out. What emerges is something larger than an album alone: a shared cultural world built together by artists and fans.
This can clearly be seen in the work of Charli XCX. Released in 2024, her album Brat became instantly recognisable for its lime green artwork and deliberately chaotic aesthetics, becoming one of the defining pop moments of the year.
The album’s rebellious energy was rapidly taken up by fans online, who helped to build a recognisable Brat universe that connected with the core themes of the album through fashion, memes and video edits. One example was the “apple dance” a viral TikTok dance that accompanied Charli’s song Apple. It was originally created by fan Kelley Heyer before being taken up by Charli herself and becoming a regular feature then in her live shows.
Participating in an era in this way was also a way of expressing identity and belonging, allowing fans to signal shared values, tastes and community through creative participation.
Charli’s new album Music, Fashion, Film (released on July 24 2026), signals a shift in tone and style, showing a distinct new era. Where the Brat era embraced bright green visuals, club culture and a chaotic energy, Music, Fashion, Film introduces a more cinematic, fashion-led aesthetic, with stronger influences from rock culture.
The album’s artwork itself is a collage featuring figures from music, fashion and film. As with Brat, fans are similarly able to co-produce a particular world around this new era, being invited through a website generator to add their own images and remix the album cover. This built excitement around the release and encouraged fans to share visual references and interpretations before the music was fully out. It’s an example of how eras increasingly begin even before albums are released, shaped through expectation as much as through reception.
The third single from Charli’s album, Wink Wink, with its tongue in cheek declaration “I’m not a bad girl anymore, I promise”, signals a deliberate departure from the Brat era.
This has shaped early fan interpretations of the project as a shift in direction. Charli herself has reinforced this, explaining in interviews that her albums often “repel against each other”, suggesting that reinvention is central to her creative process, with it being “fun to flip the form”.
Ariana Grande
One of Charli’s recent collaborators, Ariana Grande has highlighted a different dimension of era building with her new album, Petal (released on July 31). Whereas Charli’s recent era has centred on a bold visual aesthetic, Grande has framed her new era primarily through emotional openness and personal storytelling.
Grande labelled her new current era “a little feral” and from “a place that I have maybe been too shy or polite to tap into before” in a post shared to her Instagram before any music was released. By describing the project this way directly with her followers, Grande encouraged fans to understand the album as an emotionally revealing chapter of her career.
The visual presentation remains important. Through monochrome photography, Grande showcased a return to her signature high brunette ponytail after the blonde look associated with her role as Glinda in Wicked. The striking image of her smiling on the album artwork helped to signal a new chapter as it reinforced a sense of a return to self after a major acting role.
These visuals establish the mood of the project, but it is the emotional framing of the project that gives this era its further distinctive identity. Fans extend those narratives through their own posts, edits and discussions online. Eras, as well as being visual or aesthetic terrains, can also be emotional ones.
Not every fan welcomes a new era. Major shifts in sound or image can spark debate, with some celebrating reinvention while others mourn the loss of what came before. Those discussions are themselves part of how an era takes shape.
Ultimately, what we are seeing is the expansion of the album. Albums remain core musical texts, but eras are the wider worlds built around them that can grow over time through visuals, performances, interviews, remixes and fan interpretations. In this sense, the album becomes less of a fixed object and more of an ongoing cultural space shaped through repeated engagement and reinterpretation.
Eras have become such a powerful way of understanding contemporary pop music. Listening is only one part of the experience. At their core, eras are sustained by the connective and creative work of fandom, which fuses together music, meaning and identity across time.
Lucy Bennett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/07/24/charli-xcx-has-entered-a-new-era-heres-why-pops-biggest-transformations-are-no-longer-just-about-the-music/