Is Poppy the Dua Lipa of goth girls?

Is Poppy the Dua Lipa of goth girls?

ByJohn

When Robert Eggers’ remake of “Nosferatu” arrived at the cinema at the end of 2024, never was a more apt description than a viral comment on social media: “‘Nosferatu’ is the ‘Barbie’ movie for goth girlsIn some ways the feature film, which took up the 1920 silent film classic of the same name based loosely on the novel “Dracula” by Bram Stoker, paved the way for a newfound interest – in various fields, from fashion to cinema – for the aesthetics, imagery, literature and music attributable to it to the goth genre that doesn’t seem to have left us yet.
With her long brown hair, white dress with tulle bodice and skirt, microphone and rhinestone stand, on the Poppy stage seems to give a similar image, like a Dua Lipa for alternative girls and boys.

At Alcatraz in Milan, on the evening of March 18, this image takes shape inside a space that is not sold out but he builds anyway a close-knit communityready to recognize itself in a language that has changed its skin several times in recent years, moving from “computer girl” to metalcore, from repetition as a performative gesture to vocal fracture as a declaration. It is not yet the time for consecrationbut it is that of verification, of an identity that is measured on the stage and with a transversal audience, divided between curiosity, adhesion and resistance.

After the openings entrusted to Fox Lake and Ocean Grove, a voice-over introduces the main show: “You are now inside the house of Poppy”. From here on out, the concert builds on a minimal scenographythrough games of darkness and lights and smoke machines. Poppy jumps onto the stage, proud of a very feminine aesthetic which recalls that of the voice of “Levitating”, but with a dark and gothic touchabandoning intricate ballets and choreography, instead building its sonic world upon aggression and immediacyin which pop, electronic, metal, hardcore and low-slung guitars coexist. Born as Moriah Rose Pereira, the American singer-songwriter, born in 1995, is accompanied by four masked musicianswith a Hannibal-inspired aesthetic: drummer Ralph Alexander, guitarist Johnuel Hasney, bassist Jake Massanari and guitarist Alexa Lynn.

The attack is entrusted to the enthusiasm of “Bruised sky“, which in “Empty hands” already represented one of the peaks of the album and at Alcatraz immediately sets the tone of the concert in a fusion of electronics and granite structures, leaving the voice with the task of defining the emotional state. Poppy goes from melodic lines to screams, while the parterre responds with enthusiasm. The audience is not the largestbut he’s good at making himself heard and to show the artist his support. And the singer, although not indulging in too many pleasantries, takes advantage of the participation of those present to raise choruses, such as those that start on “Scary mask” and the handclaps on “Public domain”.

The momentum that Poppy brings to the stage is broken at some moments with his soft voice while conversing with the audience. At a certain point, almost as if to evoke a past that continues to function as a device, comes a simple “Hello, I’m Poppy”, which recalls that identity built on YouTube in 2015 through repetition and ambiguity. From her experience as a YouTuber, the singer then went through different transformationspassing through the personification of artificial intelligence in “Poppy.computer” in 2017, to the point of making her vocal cords learn fury, recovering a register capable of moving from innocence to fracture. All with the support of Jordan Fishex Bring Me The Horizon, who wove the right musical carpet for her to build a new characterwhich at Alcatraz inevitably asks the public to open a circle pit for the mosh pit. During the Milanese show, queso also translates to a sequence of steps that work through contrasts. It’s fun to hear an interpretation that could come out of “High School Musical”, as happens in “Concrete”, and then the very tight drums that introduce the growl in the following “The center’s falling out”.

Thus we witness the metamorphoses and changes of register live on which Poppy’s project has been formed in recent years, which starting from “Am I a Girl?” of 2018, in which we could glimpse a desire to intertwine various musical styles and reflect on issues relating to identity, gender and control systems, but even more so in 2020 with “I disagree”, continuing in “Negative spaces” in 2024, it completely broke down the wall between pop and metal. Yet the singer’s way of jumping and swaying on the stage is hypnotic, before letting off steam in screams and screamo, then returning to a clean and angelic vocality. Within this system, traces of a shared lexicon can be recognised. From the broken breath and vocal tension that refer to experiences such as those of Knocked Loose, with whom Poppy collaborated on the single “Suffocate”, we arrive at the dynamic between darkness and openness that recalls Bring Me The Horizon. There is also no shortage of more classic references to the female voices that have marked metal in recent decades, from Cristina Scabbia to Amy Lee, with whom Moriah Rose Pereira collaborated together with Courtney LaPlante of Spiritbox in the single “End of you”. However, on stage Poppy aims to bring her own way of being and performingwhich breaks a bit with the attitudes seen so far. And that’s what pushes the audience to sing “You are beautiful” to her before “They’re all around us”, the last song in the set list before the encore with “New way out”.

Unfortunately, the concert ends too quicklyafter about an hour of music and 15 songs. It’s not much, considering the artist’s prolificacy, with a repertoire that would allow her to offer something more. Poppy seems to have half convinced the audience present at Alcatraz, which brings together the new generation of teenage emos, the darker thirty-year-olds and the more mature metal fans. To the skeptics who see in her something unconvincing and far from the brutality of the genre she is aiming for, the singer responds even before starting with a hat on sale at the merch stand that says “I went to a Poppy concert and now I’m gayA provocation, but above all an invitation to indulge in something well done, technically valid and captivating, without thinking about genre conventions and prejudices.

Poppy is not Dua Lipaand parallelism remains a surface game, useful for orienting a gaze but insufficient for defining a trajectory. In addition to the brown hair, the glittery microphone and a sophisticated dress, there is another dimension and another type of audience. Here the center is not the pop star as a system figure, but a presence that continues to redefine itself between captivating songs and metalbetween construction and rupture, between identity and representation. Whether Poppy will be able to expand this space and make it shared beyond a niche remains an open question. Just as it is not known whether he will decide to continue in the direction of metalcore in the future or if it is just a trend ride the moment that sees the spotlight on artists like the aforementioned Knocked Loose and especially sui Turnstilefresh from triumph at the Grammys too. However, for the singer the path is traced, and on stage it still clearly takes shape.

Here is the lineup:

  • Bruised Sky
  • BLOODMONEY
  • Scary Mask
  • the cost of giving up
  • Public Domain
  • Concrete
  • the center’s falling out
  • Anything Like Me
  • have you had enough?
  • crystallized
  • Time Will Tell
  • NPV
  • If We’re Following the Light
  • they’re all around us
    Encore
  • new way out
John
John

With an untamed passion and deep, eclectic knowledge of music, John is the soul of RadioWise UK. Having worked in the music industry for over two decades, his vision was to create a platform that embodies the love and respect for music. John is known for his great attention to detail and insatiable thirst for discovering new talents and music genres.