Positioning Masterclass (PART 1 of 3)

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This is Part 1 of our 3-part masterclass on positioning in music. New installments drop every Thursday. This week: how pop's elite separate themselves through class and danger.

Since positioning often takes months to develop properly, I realized I couldn't cover this adequately in a single newsletter. Instead, I'm breaking down how successful artists across genres find their lane and set themselves apart. You'll see subtle and obvious examples, musical and visual positioning, and how artists evolve their positioning over the years.

If you missed my first discussion on this, positioning is how you set yourself apart from other artists in your genre and find your own lane that's authentic to you. We'll also show what happens when positioning isn't authentic and doesn't work.

Why Women in Pop Are the Best Example

The best example of positioning exists in women's pop music. There used to be this term "generic girl voice," where all female pop singers sounded exactly the same. Now we're in a much more character-driven landscape. Everybody has learned to do what I call divergent streams.

Everything moves further away from the center. The center drops out. Everything has to go more extreme, so people understand it and latch onto it. If people are leaning into futurism and spaceships, others will lean into the past, and retro comes back.

Think about the 2000s when The Strokes and The White Stripes got popular. That happened when Auto-Tune was hitting. Nothing has been more of a culture shock in music than Auto-Tune. Period. Naturally, the rebellion against that became bands saying, "We're not even going to perform that well. We're going to be off-time, a little pitchy, and just have a great vibe to the songs." That resonated with people.

What we see now is that artists have learned to position themselves far away from each other. Sometimes you accidentally get in someone else's lane because it's hard. We're going to show the consequences when you don't do it well.

The Expensive Lane: Ariana Grande and Sabrina Carpenter

Let's start with what I call the expensive lane. Ariana Grande positions herself as very expensive, but also as the girlfriend you could curl up on the couch with. She may date a weird freak like Pete Davidson, but throughout time, there's always been a pop lane of "I am very expensive."

Sabrina Carpenter has a track record of trying to do the "I'm the most expensive bitch in the game" thing. Everything she puts out says, "I am way classier." Listen to the lyrics—it's "I guess I'll deal with you" instead of begging. Similar to Ariana, the lyrical themes are often "you want this, okay, but remember it's a privilege."

That's not the place most pop artists write from. Sabrina hangs out in expensive areas, doing expensive, classy things in a very classic way. Ariana Grande doesn't always do it classically. She's doing Jean-Luc Godard-girl type stuff, pinup-model fashions, and retro throwbacks. Ariana creates in the modern era, doing things that feel totally current. Sabrina Carpenter is trying to say, "I'm classic, and I'm classy." This sets them apart.

Even when you listen to the tonal sounds, there's something funny. "Espresso" was obviously one of the biggest hits of summer 2024. If you listen to that song, it's built almost the same way as Doja Cat's "Say So," which was a very confusing launch for Doja. She's never really returned to that style again because it was a little too non-identifying for her.

Doja Cat's Personality Problem

Doja Cat is one of those artists with a lot of personality. We have to remember what launched Doja Cat—the extremely weird video for "Mooo!"

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