Over the past couple of years, many stars have shot into popularity and just as quickly have fallen from the public eye. 

   Pop stars like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo are examples of this pattern. Billie Eilish peaked in 2019 to 2020 with hits like “bad guy”, “lovely”, and “when the party’s over”, which amassed over 3.5 billion views on Youtube. While Eilish’s view counts are still impressive, they aren’t close to what she used to get. Even in modern culture, the fanaticism Eillish’s fanbase has while still present isn’t nearly as prevalent as before.

   Olivia Rodrigo is a much more recent example of an overnight phenomenon. When “driver’s license” dropped, the internet practically buzzed with praise for the pop star. When Rodrigo dropped her “SOUR” album, “good 4 u” and “deja vu” also went viral. On her Youtube page,  both songs added up to over 1.1 billion views. However, past those songs, the view count drops from 300 million to 100 million. While the lower number is still extremely impressive, it shows the sudden change of attention. 

   Both artists are by no means completely irrelevant to the music scene. A common thread in these artists is youth and niches. Billie Eilish became popular with unconventional music production and an ASMR-like, ethereal voice at a time when the sort of voice was trendy on other platforms like Youtube or TikTok. Olivia Rodrigo had risen to popularity with her role in High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, then her music career was launched after the release of “driver’s license”. Also, a majority of her most popular songs were about breakups and the aftermath of them.

  The reason why such phenomena happen with these artists would be niche trends and changes. A large part of why artists stand out is their unique voice or style that fits or starts a trend on wider social media. However, just like social media trends, if some sort of new innovative/inventive twist doesn’t occur then the relevancy will fizzle out in days. Bigger artists like Taylor Swift have changed constantly: from country to pop to folk, etc. This also applies to lyrics. If all the most popular songs are about breakups or parties, the audience will eventually want to hear about some other theme.

   Of course, artists like Eilish and Rodrigo always have the opportunity to come back into the spotlight, granted they find a sound that the public loves. However, it will be hard to find the same level of fame they achieved before.