Spartan Scroll

by Emily Law

photo courtesy of burst.shopify.com

While trending music genres throughout 2017 consisted of pop and hip hop, 2018 has increasingly broadened its scope with new boy bands and international stardoms.

With a new wave of cross cultural interactions, new genres of music from all around the globe have flooded into America, and dramatically influenced the way listeners portray themselves and others through their new tastes in music.

As listeners in 2017 favored artists such as Ed Sheeran, Khalid, Kendrick Lamar and many more, 2018 introduced various songwriters within and outside of the U.S. What makes 2018 such a unique year when it comes to music would be the variety in music genres which made some appearances on Billboard Hot 100 and many other lists of recognition.
Some popular boy bands who started to gain attention from many teenagers and other listeners in 2018 are Why Don’t We, BTS and BROCKHAMPTON.

Rising dance-pop group, Why Don’t We, released their album, 8 Letters, late August which proves their growing popularity by surpassing 40 million streams on Spotify and other music streaming platforms.

BTS is a popular boy band in the U.S. based on their appearance in the Billboards Music Awards 2018. The group won Top Social Artist in 2018 and their popularity started to spread globally.

Other than BTS, Korean Pop, also known as K-Pop, has been gaining a lot of acknowledgement which shows how listeners throughout 2018 have been increasingly open to the idea of listening and supporting international artists. Genres such as K-R&B and Korean Drama OSTs also attained a significantly large amount of listeners throughout the year.

BROCKHAMPTON, an American musical collective or boy band, who produces Hip-Hop and Alternative R&B songs, made it to the top spot on Billboard 200 with their No. 1 album in the country, Iridescence, released Sept. 21.

Trending Hip-Hop artists Cardi B, Travis Scott, Drake and many more successful rappers made many accomplishments within the music industry.

Cardi B is known as the first rapper to have her first three hit singles appear on Billboard Hot 100’s Top 10 simultaneously in the beginning of 2018. She was then nominated for more outstanding awards and was nominated for four awards for the 2019 Grammys.

Travis Scott attained No.1 on Billboard 200 in December. He has also been nominated for Best Rap Album for the 2019 Grammys along with other outstanding awards for his trending album.

Drake accomplished many historical achievements throughout 2018 especially with his album, Scorpion, with Most Global Streams for an Album’s Songs in a Week according to Billboard. His hit song “Nice For What” also obtained the title of Most Simultaneous Hot 100 Top 10s along with Most Top 10 Hot 100 Debuts in a Week.

Throughout 2018, music trends have been diverse in genre and artists. This shows everyone’s tastes in music differ from one another and fans are willing to expand their musical horizons internationally.

Although Hip-Hop will most likely continue to be a flourishing genre in 2019, the future is still unpredictable, and new genres may still find their way to becoming a trend.