And yet we are far more open to trading male nostalgia than girlish, attention-seeking glamour, although this probably stems from deeply felt snobbery towards different calibres of fans. The Oasis man and the Disney girl could not be further apart in terms of cultural prestige; the one is a sophisticated and hard-nosed concert-goer, the other little more than a vessel for shiny make-up products and plastic songs. But there is nothing special about liking a band that dominated the charts for more than a decade and for the middle-aged bores on Radio X to tune in to Chris Moyles. Besides, the vices of unkempt rock stars have not been shocking since the Seventies – while the dark arts of the major studios deserve the name.

“The Oasis Man and the Disney Girl couldn’t be more different in terms of cultural prestige.”

Disney regularly spits out stars like Sabrina. Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez—there’s a plethora of once-new kids on the block still hanging around West Hollywood like aging teenagers. The formula is: five to 10 years of mainstream success with a few catchy hits, then a rocky patch (Justin and Britney split up, Britney goes bald, Christina and Demi gain weight, Selena gets a supposed immune disorder that miraculously has the same effect as a boatload of facial fillers). Then they either drift and become sad phantoms of their former selves (see Nickelodeon’s Amanda Bynes or Justin’s inglorious mugshot after alleged drunk driving in June) or they get cured and constantly recreate their fetal pop star look (43-year-old Christina Aguilera’s recent youthful makeover is nothing short of witchcraft).

The way we absorb these creations is so commonplace today that it is nothing special. But for the teenage girls who become stars, this process means signing an unspoken pact with their adoring audience: they must remain a teenager for as long as possible. Taylor Swift, whose never-ending Eras Tour, which finally wrapped up in London last week, is 34: She’s been on stage since about 2006, starting out as a curly-haired country singer warbling about trucks and princesses and the like. Now, at the peak of her powers, there’s something of Blanche DuBois about her. As a grown woman, she’s spent the last countless months singing about long-ago breakups to millions of teenagers who haven’t yet taken off their braces. Forced to replay the heartaches of her tender years over and over, she strives to project an image of vulnerability that in no way fits the steamy corporate machine she now represents.

Part of this teenage performance includes recruiting younger versions of themselves as opening acts: Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter have both performed on the tour. In doing so, these artists are often accused of being industry plants, which isn’t entirely fair, because as plants they must have appeared out of nowhere. Child stars are, by definition, already celebrities in their own right. But they certainly represent the decline of independent artists: Most of them don’t play instruments or write their own music or lyrics, but have joined the TikTok music factory. As Paula Harper, a musicologist at the University of Chicago, told me, “The creators are thinking about making a song that has really listenable, clear, lip-syncable lyrics that are both weird but also applicable to a variety of environments.”

This system enforces a kind of creative dogma; even the most unconventional talents never produce completely crazy, inaccessible music. Take Chappell Roan, for example, the 26-year-old singer with a red-headed “drag” persona and a six-month-old career as a bona fide megastar. Compared to most TikTok-friendly singers, she has a startlingly original look; although her music has the appearance of homogenous production from major studios, her “performance art” is truly novel—something she demonstrated when she emerged from a giant apple at this year’s Governors Ball in New York as the Statue of Liberty, complete with buttless dudes and what looked like a joint.

Yet Roan is simultaneously a mix of self-conscious artificiality – the costumed intrusiveness of drag – and authentic vulnerability. Last week, she went viral for a long confessional post in which she complained, quite politely and understandably, about weird stalker fans. Social media was unsympathetic: The new contract between fans and artists expects the latter to sacrifice any sense of safety or privacy because “you asked for it,” a forceful argument when directed at a woman. More than anything, our idols must thankful.