I think we all got a little tired of hearing what hobbies our peers took up during lockdown in early 2020. At first, baking sourdough and watching Tiger King were novel activities, since none of us could possibly know how long the pandemic would actually last. Those pastimes can’t help but feel inconsequential compared to the project undertaken by 17-year-old Ash Gutierrez, aka hyperpop breakout star glaive, who used his COVID lockdown boredom to forge a music career that is quickly making him one of the most recognized artists in his genre.
First, a refresher on what constitutes hyperpop: The microgenre’s extremely online origins date back to the 2014 birth of UK chipmunk-voiced pop machine PC Music, which unleashed a slew of performers that appeared more like online avatars than real artists: label leader A.G. Cook, the late SOPHIE, Hannah Diamond, QT, etc., as well as Charli XCX’s less mainstream material. The PC Music characters borrowed from earlier pop progenitors like Britney Spears and Kesha but arranged the puzzle pieces differently so that the end product…
