Everywhere you look, a pop star has claimed a shade for whatever era they’re in.
Photo-Illustration: VultureSurveying the pop landscape right now is like flipping through swatches in a paint store — nearly every release has its own bespoke color palette. The trend has been percolating for a few years, thanks to canny efforts by Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish, but it exploded this summer as Charli XCX claimed a shade of lime green for brat. For some artists, the palette comes naturally, like Ice Spice intentionally selecting her calling-card orange hair or Sexyy Red and girl in red, well, leaning into red. Others work with designers and creative directors to pick shades and build campaigns around them. Regardless, the goal is to “own a color,” like Supreme’s white on red, says Brent David Freaney, the art director behind the brat rollout: “If you’re able to create a world around color and use that repetition, through artwork or merch or costumes, it all just reinforces the same thing.” (Prince will always own purple; Nicki Minaj and P!nk share custody of pink.) And if you’re lucky, your swatch might be the next trend all over Instagram and TikTok.
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Normani, Dopamine
Black, White, and Silver
When Normani revealed the name of her debut solo album in February, she did so with black serif lettering on a white background. That would end up being the palette carried throughout the (short-lived) rollout, which emphasized black latex outfits and white and silver accents to match the black rocket on the cover. It’s hard not to see references to her idol, Janet Jackson, who owned the black-leather look throughout the late ’80s and returned to the edgy imagery on one of Normani’s own favorites, 2008’s Discipline.
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Taylor Swift, The Tortured Poets Department
Black, White, and Sepia
Like most developments in pop, the current palette-palooza traces its way back to Swift, who has painted each of her nails a specific color for every album on the Eras Tour and named her 2012 record Red. For her latest, Swift matched its academic title with a sepia-toned grayscale theme (closer to the grown-up Fearless (Taylor’s Version) than the starker black and white of Reputation) for both the artwork and “Fortnight” video. And when she took the stage in Tokyo after announcing the album, she showed off a new all-white manicure. Then once she added TTPD to the set list, she paired it — of course — with a white dress covered with black calligraphy.
Katy Perry, 143
Red, White, Black, and Blue
Her usual cotton-candy palette is too popular this summer, so instead Perry pivoted to a fembot-esque black and white for her new single, “Woman’s World.” (It’s not an entirely open lane, though, with Normani and Blackpink’s Lisa emulating similar looks.) She first teased it with a photo of her wearing lacy white lingerie and black leg armor and couldn’t beat the Arca-copycat allegations. But she isn’t fully leaving the rainbow behind, either — at Paris Fashion Week, she printed the song’s lyrics on the 500-foot train of a red Balenciaga dress (but was sure to be back in black by the next day). The music video and her album art are also Americana-colored.
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Dua Lipa, Radical Optimism
Cherry Red and Ocean Blue
To introduce the era of her third album, Lipa debuted cherry-red locks. Her colorist told Marie Claire they wanted something both “vibrant” and “vampy” — and landed on a deeper shade that could look bright and lively during the day or dark and sexy at night. It was also a good contrast to the ocean-blue tones on the album packaging, a nod to the sea on the cover. Fittingly, she released red and blue vinyls.
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Maya Hawke, Chaos Angel
Fire-Engine Red
For her third album, Hawke played off the obvious devilish, discordant associations of the color red (orange, the color of her new Inside Out 2 character, Anxiety, was already taken). As an actor first, she’s committed to the visual side, carrying the bright scarlet through from the album cover and vinyl pressings to outfits in photo shoots to the heart-with-wings logo she has adopted.
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Olivia Rodrigo, Guts (spilled)
Purple and Blood Red
Unlike most emerging pop stars who make a clear differentiation between eras, Rodrigo reused her signature shade of purple from the Sour era for her sophomore album, Guts. She’s said she has “baby synesthesia” and sees many of her songs as purple (plus it’s her favorite color). But when Rodrigo unveiled her deluxe Guts (spilled), she added a pop of red to the mix, complementing the brasher new songs like “obsessed.” She’s still loyal to purple, though, recently launching a Stanley-tumbler collaboration that matches her usual aesthetic.
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Sabrina Carpenter, Short n’ Sweet
Pastel Blues, Red, and White
Central to Carpenter’s retro rollout is a full rainbow of a color palette. “Espresso” started by emphasizing sky blue, accented by a black-and-white look on the cover and other pastels in the music video. She kept the theme up with a black-and-powder-blue dress at the Met Gala, before the blue came back deeper on the album artwork, but the red lipstick mark is also key — recalling the sexy red dresses Carpenter wore on SNL and in the “Please Please Please” video, not to mention the red-and-white striped dress she wore at Vogue World. Put together, the colors play with the winking pinup-girl image she has been cultivating for her sixth album.
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Camila Cabello, C,XOXO
Neon Blue and Baby Pink
Cabello entered this era with a hard reset, debuting bleached-blonde hair in a viral clip of her singing lead single “I Luv It” on a nighttime drive. Less prominent, but just as important, in that video is her light-blue top. That color, not the blonde, would become the signature shade for her fourth album, appearing in lollipop form on the cover. She paired it with an accenting bright pink, the color she used for the track list and wore in the “I Luv It” video. She even references the color combo on “pretty when i cry.”
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Victoria Monét, “Alright”
Midnight Blue
Monét’s 2023 album, Jaguar II, continued the first project’s earth-toned visuals and introduced another color muse. “The new music felt sexy and confident and strong,” says Char “VYLIT” Baker, her creative director. “We wanted to pull out more primary colors that emphasized that energy.” Baker knows red is typically associated with those feelings, but after seeing Monét in an all-blue shoot with photographer Amber Asaly, she knew Yves Klein’s namesake shade was right for new single “Alright.” (Monét told a fan that the song “has always sounded dark blue to me!”) They started to “drip-feed” the color, including for trim on her Coachella outfit, before fully leaning in with the song’s music video in June. It featured Monét dancing in blue light and even over projections of blue irises.
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Billie Eilish, Hit Me Hard and Soft
Deep Blue
Eilish used to denote an album’s era by changing hair color (green roots, a blonde bob). But she ditched that strategy for her ocean-blue third LP because, she told Rolling Stone, she’d already dyed her hair blue by accident, in her earliest era. “Blue has always been my least-favorite color,” Eilish admitted. But her synesthesia had other plans, inspiring the album’s underwater cover. “Over the last couple of years,” she said, “I’ve just been like, Wait, blue is so who I am at my core.” The song “Blue” is dedicated to that realization.
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Charli XCX, brat
Lime Green
When Charli first met with design studio Special Offer, Inc., to create brat’s campaign, she knew she wanted the cover to be text on a green background. Freaney helped find the perfect shade, considering around 500 options. “We wanted to make sure it wasn’t too tasteful — that the green didn’t feel like it could be fashion,” he says. “It should feel like there’s something off, a little bit wrong.” (The Shrek comparisons have abounded.) He calls the resulting aesthetic “digital” and “degraded.” Brat green has inspired memes, DIY accessories, and even the truest sign of a trend: posts from brands.
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Gracie Abrams, The Secret of Us
Yellow
Taking after her mentor, Taylor Swift, Abrams has made a lemony yellow the signature shade for her sophomore album, incorporating it into merch, vinyl, and artwork lettering. (And there won’t be any confusion — this is a color Swift hasn’t gone near.) On social media, where Abrams has done video promos in front of yellow backdrops, the heart emoji in that color has become the Bat-Signal for her fans, who have taken to the branding like Swifties. They even made yellow friendship bracelets for release day.
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