I was listening to the radio the other day and did an audio double-take as I could swear I heard vaporwave coming from my speakers. Turns out it was the intro to Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter, one of the hottest songs of the summer. Another popular song that seems like it might have some subtle vaporwave influences is Saturn by SZA.
What do you think, is this just a coincidence or has the niche phenomenon of vaporwave influenced pop music? What mainstream songs give you synthwave/vaporwave vibes?
Yep. Almost all genres eventually provide influence to the stale pop formula. The hard thing is when the genre itself gets flooded by pop music and dilutes the scene to the point it becomes hard to find what you originally liked. That’s what drove me out of the EDM scene. Loved stuff in the trance and house genres for over a decade from the early 2000s and then pop caught hold of it and slowly hollowed it out. Haven’t been able to enjoy much of it since and moved on to other genres.