Pop culture feels really weird in 2026. Have you looked at Billboard’s Hot 100 lately? It’s a particularly chaotic selection of records and artists on the chart. As of today, four of the top five songs are country. Then, there’s quaint, clean-cut R&B songs from Olivia Dean. Tame Impala having one of the biggest hits in the country would’ve blown anyone away just ten years ago. Who even is Dexter and The Moonrocks? Even weirder, songs that are over a decade old could have a sudden resurgence in popularity due to some viral TikToks.
Gen Z adults and millennials are old enough to remember when popular culture had something even vaguely resembling an identity. Now, it’s lawless—any artist at any time could randomly blow up under our noses. Or some artist you’ve never heard of is actually way more popular than you think. There’s just no Billboard metric for it.
But attending Lollapalooza in 2026 prompted a fascinating question: what if this chaos is actually really healthy for us? Attending the festival gave me a very intimate look at how the most unexpected artists really translate in a profound, meaningful way. Gone are the days where a central set of artists ruled the airwaves. Instead, whoever is at the top of the game feels drawn out of a hat.
Lollapalooza 2026 Changed How I Looked at Pop Culture Today
There were a number of acts from this year’s festival in Chicago that really resonated with the crowd and they were all drastically different from one another. If you went to the Slayyyter set, you’d wonder why the biggest artist on the lineup was performing in the afternoon. In the same breath, that same sea of fans was cooing along to Olivia Dean’s plea for the man she needs.
These could not be more different artists, in terms of aesthetics and success. And yet they both elicited similarly visceral reactions from effectively the same crowd. Similarly, Ethel Cain’s deeply emotional Lollapalooza set list went everywhere from power pop to country to drone. Still, teenage girls and young adult women were at the guardrails in tears as they sang along to these songs.
I remember when pop culture centered around a select few artists and broader sounds. The late 90s and early 2000s were all about the boybands. The early 90s saw grunge and g-funk capture the cultural imagination. Every song in the late 2000s was informed by the economic doom and gloom of the recession.
Lollapalooza showed how this relative uniformity has essentially washed away. But that’s not to say the conventions of popular culture have gone away. Fans still yearn for better days than their everyday reality. It’s why they flock to older songs and help them re-chart accordingly.
To call it mere nostalgia misses the point, though. If it were, we wouldn’t see album cuts like Mac Miller’s “Cinderella” surge in popularity. Instead, TikTok has almost unconsciously taught young listeners what a hit song is. By popularizing portions of songs and making them go viral, they understand what a great hook sounds like. As a result, they can flock to Geese or Slayyter and pick up the same sensation they’d get from tried-and-true hit makers on Billboard like Zara Larsson.
Why Lollapalooza Was the Ideal Starting Point for a First-Time Festivalgoer
Lollapalooza was surprisingly organized for such a massive-scale festival. Even at its fullest, rainiest, and muddiest, the grounds were actually pretty easy to navigate. T-Mobile gave you the most bang for your buck. Sure, having the Club Magenta pass gave plenty of perks like mobile chargers, a gumball machine, and plenty of drinks. But most importantly, you had a safe haven from the rain and intense mud in their lounge.
Was it annoying to walk in a crowd of 100k+ people after the headliners? Absolutely. But the experience could’ve been a lot more miserable for first-timers if there weren’t good directions. The most you had to deal with was bad, unaware fans clogging up the foot traffic.
In a surprising twist, people also weren’t on their phones nearly as much as you’d expect. It’s 2026—of course there’s going to be a legion of people chucking their phones to the sky. But it very easily could’ve been a sea of fans keeping their arms in the sky to record the whole event for later. Instead, fans were having deep, meaningful connections to their favorite artists, dancing and singing blissfully to Blood Orange’s “Champagne Coast” and Leon Thomas’ “MUTT”.
What Does All of This Mean for The Future of Pop Music?
I can only suspect pop culture is only going to get harder to pinpoint from here. The internet speeds up every trend to the point of oversaturation. Who knows if Frost Children or Ethel Cain become big superstars in the way we typically understand them? By Lollapalooza 2027, there’s probably a drastically different set of performers we aren’t thinking of.
In a sense, it’s beautiful that artists could balloon to such a degree and maintain their individuality. Charli XCX could become the star she always envisioned herself to be without completely compromising her vision. Trend chasing won’t work. Without a sense of monoculture, artists have to be wholly themselves—or at least pick a lane to exist in. From there, whether they blow up is completely out of their control.
Photo via T-Mobile
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