Rebels and outcasts remaking female pop

New York

IN recent years, female pop has been remade again and again by rebels and outcasts, singers who exude scepticism and self-doubt, not blithe cool and exuberance. Lorde, Halsey, Alessia Cara and more: All thrive on the tension between their often gloomy mood and their instinctual gifts for pop songcraft.

Rena Lovelis, the lead singer of the pop-punk, electro-pop, just plain pop band Hey Violet, is an indirect offspring of these singers, but has solved a conundrum none of them have quite mastered: how to make a bad attitude gleam.