As Charli xcx stomps onto this year’s Grammys award show stage in stilettos and a sky blue outfit, the set behind her is barren, unlike her traditionally raunchy style. Maybe she’s toning it down for the televised event. Maybe she’s going to keep it clean and classy for music’s biggest night.

But as the lyrics to her hit song “Guess” blare over the stadium speakers and a strobe light effect blinds viewers, Charli xcx makes it clear she can turn any stage into the club aesthetic she’s become synonymous with. More than that, she can turn a song about women’s underwear and sexuality into a nationwide spectacle. 

“You wanna guess the color of my underwear”

Audience members toward the front of the crowd are up on their feet dancing immediately, keeping the rhythm with the pumping bass as Charli xcx continues singing.

There are inconspicuous towering walls, or perhaps boxes, on either side of Charli xcx but to the unassuming viewer, they are just simple prop pieces to make the space more intimate.

“You wanna know what I got going on down there”

DePaul senior Jim Slife is glued to his seat in the Grammy U suite of the Crypto arena in awe. He’d seen Charli xcx — one of his favorite artists — during the Sweat tour, but never expected this type of music to be presented so grandly at an award show. 

“Is it pretty in pink or all see-through?”

Before Slife can take it all in, the walls on the stage lift. 

“Is it showing off my brand new lower back tattoo?”

A crowd of scantily dressed performers are revealed, all of whom are having the time of their lives on stage dancing to an electronic song about womens’ underwear. Some are standing on plain folding chairs strewn about the stage. Others are throwing their arms up like they were born and raised in the club dancing. Panties start raining down from the ceiling, showering the group in multicolored fabrics as the club feeling intensifies. 

For the audience members like Slife watching it in real time, it’s a mesmerizing and shocking sight. For the Grammys as a whole, it’s a resurgence in mainstream pop music centered toward women’s sexuality and shock value. 

The 67th annual Grammy Awards saw a new wave of female pop and pop-adjacent artists receiving accolades for music that heavily focused on sex positivity. Charli xcx, who won three awards that night including one for Best Dance/Electronic Album, was only one of this year’s winners to do so. 

Other notable performers included Best New Artist winner Chappell Roan, known for sapphic ballads like “Casual,” and Best Pop Vocal Album winner Sabrina Carpenter, whose explicit performances of “Juno” on tour left some fans divided over the provocative choreography.  

“Just seeing these women being rewarded for the art that they’re making and how they’re completely shifting how audiences view their genres, the whole night was just a big celebration,” Slife said.

For Olivia Epstein, the DePaul Music Business Organization co-president, the current trend of female-led pop music is both a resurgence of fun —  and a form of sex education for women she’s never seen before.

“The music artists like Sabrina and Chappell are putting out in the pop scene are fun, flirty and sexy,” Epstein said. “I’m a queer person from the Midwest, so I feel like any talk about sex I’ve experienced has always been very abstinence-focused. Having artists like Chappell singing about sex, especially lesbian sex, so openly in the mainstream is amazing. I’m not alone, you know?”

Epstein is used to hearing music from male artists being praised, but hearing pop hits on the radio by Charli xcx or reminiscing on her time at Lollapalooza dancing body-to-body with historic sized crowds to Chappell Roan with her girlfriend feels like a new direction.

But according to media and popular culture professor Daniel Makagon, the current wave of sex positivity in music is not new.

“We can listen back a decade to Iggy Azalea’s ‘Taste the Rainbow;’ fifteen years back to Khia’s ‘My Neck, My Back’ (which is rephrased for a current deodorant commercial), and even further back to a time when Lil’ Kim was popular,” Makagon said. “Dancehall reggae has regularly featured lyrics from women building sex-positive narratives. Lady Saw’s ‘No Bellyas’ offers a woman-empowered narrative and the rhythm (or riddim in Reggae terms) was a smash.”

As for how Epstein sees this shift in mainstream pop affecting trends for decades to come, in the words of Charli xcx, she can only “guess.”

“I’m not going to be surprised if I see another ‘Juno’ kind of song on a greater scale,” Epstein said. “It just means it will pave the way for more women and marginalized groups in general to feel more comfortable being vulnerable on such a big stage.” 

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