Why were all the girls “going back to their roots” 2016-2019

[ThatsGossip111 104]

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and I think we need to have a chat. 
All the girls were seemingly “going back to their roots” or “making their most personal album” around the same time.

Gaga: Joanne (2016)

Miley: Younger Now (2017)

Kesha: Rainbow (2017)

Katy: Witness (2017)

Avril: Head Above Water (2019)

A part of me thinks maybe it was a trend, or maybe it’s just where the music industry was headed, maybe people from the label were demanding back to roots albums.

But at the same time, all of these albums were inspired by very real things happening in the artists lives. I wouldn’t called witness a roots album but at the time she was promoting it as her most personal. Anyway, what do you think?

[Railing 1,626]

Witness was not Katy going back to her roots... Was she trying to market it as that? She was doing campy Teenage Dream antics x100 and making the same electro/synth pop music she'd been making for 7 years. Her roots lie with rock-adjacent pop and girl-next-door aesthetics

 

But on-topic answer: Gaga did it and everyone else followed suit

[Ziggy 9,827]

Trump. It was Trump. His rise in politics in the year and a half prior really unearthed and mainstreamed a lot of ugly politics that rich liberal celebrities were otherwise able to avoid. It created a kind of internal reckoning with the spirit across the board.

healing my family, purposeful pop, all that was in response to trump’s seismic shift in American political discourse. The Obama era let people be fairly apolitical. No longer and now it made folks rethink a lot.

[Ziggy 9,827]

4 minutes ago, Railing said:

Witness was not Katy going back to her roots... Was she trying to market it as that? She was doing campy Teenage Dream antics x100 and making the same electro/synth pop music she'd been making for 7 years. Her roots lie with rock-adjacent pop and girl-next-door aesthetics

 

But on-topic answer: Gaga did it and everyone else followed suit

Also this LOL especially for Miley 

[Original Diva 4,863]

I think the term you're more looking for is artists were in their "woke" era, which as mentioned above, was as a result of Trumps presidency. Gaga low-key started this trend in my eyes with Joanne and then we got Rainbow and Witness and Younger Now, Liberation... etc.

[skaxboy 3,150]

To show a more stripped down artistic side of them.

C2C was a way to tone it down for Gaga after ARTPOP and Joanne was good next step.  
 

Bangerz/tongue out Miley was so fun but she needed to tone it down to be a little more mature. 
 

Rainbow as well. It was in the midst of her court drama so a sleazy party pop album didn’t seem as suitable. 
 

Chained to the Rhythm was a different sound for Katy but we ended up getting another fun pop album. We never did get the “dark” album of hers. 
 

I didn’t know Avril released anything in 2019. 

[NATAH 27,794]

every artist has a "back to their roots" era, nothing new or special

[Defmix100 5,487]

6 hours ago, Ziggy said:

Trump. It was Trump. His rise in politics in the year and a half prior really unearthed and mainstreamed a lot of ugly politics that rich liberal celebrities were otherwise able to avoid. It created a kind of internal reckoning with the spirit across the board.

healing my family, purposeful pop, all that was in response to trump’s seismic shift in American political discourse. The Obama era let people be fairly apolitical. No longer and now it made folks rethink a lot.

That does make sense, never thought about it that way before. Now it has me wondering how different could Gaga's career path be, like if Hillary won might the original LG5 have been released, would Gaga have done ASIB then leading to Joker etc

[high culture 1,377]

Joanne came out when Obama was in office and we thought Hillary was going to win, so I don't think Trump was the cause

[Reginald 13,646]

Justin Timberlake Man of The Woods (2018) 

Kylie Minogue Golden  (2018) 

 

[Dr Fudge 8,217]

Def chasing trends. Gaga did it out of necessity to strip back her image after the ARTPOP backlash, but I’m a firm believer that the rest followed like dominos. Except for Kesha - hers was definitely from the heart and needed to be done

[Maxine Puth 5,401]

2 hours ago, Defmix100 said:

That does make sense, never thought about it that way before. Now it has me wondering how different could Gaga's career path be, like if Hillary won might the original LG5 have been released, would Gaga have done ASIB then leading to Joker etc

I mean Joanne was released before he won, and Gaga got the ASIB role before too. 

[Ziggy 9,827]

2 hours ago, high culture said:

Joanne came out when Obama was in office and we thought Hillary was going to win, so I don't think Trump was the cause

No but he was rising in politics so the upheaval was happening regardless. That’s more what I mean. Is like this knowledge of woah this country is worse than we thought!

[Ziggy 9,827]

9 hours ago, Original Diva said:

I think the term you're more looking for is artists were in their "woke" era, which as mentioned above, was as a result of Trumps presidency. Gaga low-key started this trend in my eyes with Joanne and then we got Rainbow and Witness and Younger Now, Liberation... etc.

100% just like BTW Gaga was the catalyst for a bunch of these gals *but* I do think it was an energy percolating among artists anyway. We were talking more about trauma, healing, self help, all that. The stripped back era became the internal reckoning era  and I do legit think a lot of that was caused by political traumas from police brutality, gun violence, Trump, etc. the alt right was growing and I think it forced a lot of artists to reckon with their idealized and romanticized views of the world 

[Anderson123 27,583]

Rihanna's Anti should be pat of that list too. Not exactly a "personal" or "chill" album but she wanted it to be more timeless and something a little different to what she had been doing year after year. FourFiveSeconds, BBHMM and American Oxygen still count as part of that album cycle.