Jingle Ball 2019 NYC: Taylor Swift, Jonas Brothers, Lizzo and the Year in Pop Music
"Is 'Burnin' Up' the greatest song of the decade?" I asked myself wildly as the Jonas Brothers performed at Jingle Ball 2019 in NYC.
And like, no, of course it's not. I knew this as I came back down to earth. But it's an extremely fun pop song, made even stronger through nostalgia, and as the reunited brothers proved at the Jingle Ball, it's still just as capable of inciting euphoric hip gyration as it was in the late 2000s. It's a lingering song that likely won't ever make "best of" lists but has sticky staying power, especially as original Jonas Brothers fans grow up to consume other kinds of pop music.
Attending the Jingle Ball made me think about staying power — its lineup, a who's who of Top 40 from the past year, is the concert equivalent of a Now Hits compilation. At the show on Dec. 13, the performers included Taylor Swift, Jonas Brothers, 5 Seconds of Summer, Camila Cabello, Dan + Shay, Fletcher, Halsey, Jonas Brothers, Lauv, Lewis Capaldi, Lizzo, Monsta X, and Niall Horan.
During the Jonas Brothers' performance, however, Nick Jonas recognized that they hadn't played the event in 12 years — this is true for the New York date, but they did play the Los Angeles Jingle Ball in 2012, a show that's particularly intriguing in retrospect. In the early years of the 2010s, the JoBros were already in decline. Less than a year after the Los Angeles show, they'd be broken up. But for the night of Friday, December 7, 2012, they were still one of pop's A-listers.
That night in 2012, they performed with a kind of surreal selection of acts: B.o.B, Bridgit Mendler, Cher Lloyd, Ed Sheeran, Jason Mraz, Justin Bieber, Ne‐Yo, Olly Murs, One Direction, Taylor Swift, The Wanted, and fun.
Many of those people are still performing seven years later, but not all of them are in the cultural zeitgeist the way they might have been in 2012. Fun is in a sort of extended hiatus, but member Jack Antonoff has become a vital architect of interesting, '80s-infused pop music in the intervening years. One Direction is broken up, but Harry, Niall, Louis, Liam, and Zayn are all releasing solo music (to varying levels of success and acclaim). Ed Sheeran is as ubiquitous as ever.
So, staying power. It's a fun game to imagine what the Jingle Ball of 2029 might look like. It will very likely include Taylor Swift as a headliner; she opened the 2019 show by reminding everyone she knows how to write a bop (Hi, "Blank Space") and a tearjerker (Hi, "Lover"), and even a perfectly serviceable holiday single (Ho Ho Ho, "Christmas Tree Farm"). Taylor Swift will likely be performing at Jingle Balls for the next 30 years, even if they fall on her birthday like last night's show did.
But a lot can change in a decade, as the 2019 Jingle Ball shows. In the early 2010s, One Direction was grabbing the Jonas Brothers' boy band crown, and Taylor was still mostly country. Camila Cabello was just beginning her work with Fifth Harmony, which formed in 2012; she was a long way from her Shawn Mendes romance and second solo album. In 2012, a relatively-unknown Lizzo was part of an indie rap group called The Chalice and still years from writing her breakout hits "Truth Hurts" and "Good as Hell." BTS (who performed at the 2019 Jingle Ball) didn't arrive until 2013, and Monsta X didn't debut until 2015 — but the past couple years have seen K-pop's domination around the world all the same.
Some acts from the Jingle Ball 2019 show in NYC are already proving they're getting better with age — Halsey, for one — while others already seemed forgettable during their performances. Some acts, like Lizzo, completely dominated their moment, earning rabid cheers from Madison Square Garden. I hope both of them are making music in 10 years in some form, whether or not they're sharing it on the Jingle Ball stage.
At the end of the year, at the end of a decade, there's a lot to infer about what mainstream music is like right now from the Jingle Ball. All the artists who performed reflected a very 2019, genre-mixing sensibility, from pop-country Dan + Shay to pop-rap Lizzo and the clubby dance-pop of Monsta X. The Jingle Ball, like the music industry right now, is a singles game. Even Taylor Swift, defender of albums, knows this: "There are a lot of red herrings and bait-and-switches in the choices that I’ll make with albums, because I want people to go and explore the body of work," she told Billboard this week. "We’re running really fast toward a singles industry, but you got to believe in something. I still believe that albums are important."
Who knows where 2020 will take mainstream music, in all its delightful and exhausting glory? Who knows who will really "make it" in 10 years and what that means? Whose work right now is being done quietly and under the radar, waiting for a big break? Though radio and charts and playlisting are games artists must play to be heard, 2019 showed that good pop music, despite the algorithms and the data, still has the power to surprise.
Me to pop: "I'm a sucker for you. You say the word and I'll go anywhere."
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