The Scene
The US music charts are awash with songs that can best be categorized as “tradpop” hits.
The No. 1 song in the country, Billboard announced Monday, is Alex Warren’s Ordinary, a folksy, melodramatic ballad about faith and love. And country-pop star Morgan Wallen reigned atop the US album charts for a fifth straight week.
It’s a stark cultural contrast from last summer, which was defined by the ascendance of boundary-pushing female pop stars like Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, and Charli XCX, whose “brat summer” trend was embraced by Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
American pop music in 2025 feels “far more safe, far more traditional, and far more conservative,” pop music commentator and podcaster Sam Murphy noted.
Wallen, who was briefly dropped from radio stations in 2021 after using a racial slur, also has multiple songs in the top 10. Other male artists like Teddy Swims and Benson Boone, known for yearning, guitar-heavy songs featuring swelling vocals, are on the rise. Lady Gaga’s retro ballad Die with a Smile featuring Bruno Mars has been more successful than her recent, experimental singles. Christian music is also having a breakthrough, NPR wrote.
This new sound of pop music reflects the broader cultural and political narrative shift toward traditional and conservative ideals after US President Donald Trump returned to power, as conservative media voices have become mainstream and companies abandon progressive positions and Pride Month campaigns. As The Wall Street Journal wrote the day before Trump’s inauguration this year, “displays of conservatism are crowding out progressive postures” across sports, entertainment, and marketing.
Warren’s Ordinary — which carries no explicit political message — went viral partly as a wedding processional soundtrack, and he has been dubbed the “New No. 1 Wife Guy.” The song’s popularity comes as the online “tradwife trend,” which took off in 2024, is being increasingly espoused by new conservative voices in media and politics who are arguing for more women to embrace traditional values of marriage and family and buck liberal ideologies.
That narrative was evident at a recent Turning Point USA conference for female students, where speakers encouraged conservative women in the crowd to “opt out of higher education and focus on getting married, becoming a homemaker, and raising as many children as possible,” The Cut wrote.
“Conservatism is selling sexy in all aspects,” one right-wing influencer said. “We are pop culture now.”
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Room for Disagreement
Not every song in the Billboard top 10 fits this “tradpop” label, and there are still several experimental summer releases breaking through, including from Sabrina Carpenter, Addison Rae, and a host of K-pop artists.
Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour offers an innovative perspective on this cultural moment, with a bold reclaiming of country music and traditional American aesthetics through a diverse and progressive lens: Early in the show, Beyoncé sings The Star-Spangled Banner, immediately followed by Freedom — Kamala Harris’ campaign anthem.
Country music’s fan base “is more diverse than the last time conservative politics and pop culture met up,” New York Times columnist Tressie McMillan Cottom said, and it comes “at a moment when electorally, we’re having the same debate about who is and is not American.”
Notable
- Alex Warren, Teddy Swims, and Benson Boone make a type of music that sounds like “an audition song for The Voice,” with sparse production and building vocals, Larisha Paul wrote in Rolling Stone.
- Semafor’s Max Tani covered the rise of young conservative women who offer an alternative to the overwhelmingly male right-wing podcast space, catering to a female audience from a right-leaning social and cultural perspective.