oscar wilde essay topics

Oscar Wilde: Essays Themes

By oscar wilde.

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The Truth of Masks

Taking center stage in two of his most well-known essays (as well as actually providing the title for a third), but often lurking in the background of much of his other writings is the idea of the mask as a means of presenting a more honest version of the truth. “The Critics as Artist” and “The Decay of Lying” both robustly promote the idea that the façade of deception is really a dual-edged form of duplicity. The persona that one puts on is, of course, a falsity, but it is precisely through the freedom of anonymity that the mask engenders which frees up the person behind it to be more forthright. As a homosexual living in Victorian England—even a flamboyant homosexual—Wilde would have explored this theme on a person level throughout his life.

The Value of Art to Life

Oscar Wilde is an aesthete. He places a higher value on artistic expression than most of society places on just about anything else. A writer noted for being a master of the epigram left behind a virtual catalog of aphoristic observations about art that would alone fill an impressive volume. When Wilde is discussing art, he is talking broadly: music as well as decorating, architecture as well as poetry. And the value he placed upon such expression is utterly unambiguous across the full canon of his essays on the subject:

“It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection; through art and through art only, that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence.”

Individualism

Wilde responds to the criticism of selfishness often leveled against those who manifest their individualism in a more eccentric or non-conformist manner with a succinct display of logical brilliance. True selfishness is demonstrated by expecting everyone else to act as you wish rather than rejecting the desire by others that you act as they do. As with the theme of truth being paradoxically freed by hiding it behind a mask, Wilde pursued the theme of the fundamental value of individualism as a result of walking the walk as well as talking the talk.

On the whole, Wilde was as flamboyantly individualistic as they came in the oppressive regime of Queen Victoria, and though the exercise of his corrosive wit may have been at the expense of the conformism of others, he never paired that aspect of perspective with insistence that others acted as he did. His essays on this subject—of which “ De Profundis ” and, especially, “The Soul of Man” are the most famous—never lapse into confusing the pursuit of one’s own individualism with any sort of expectation of superiority. Thus, his writings encourage exploring one’s own identity rather than replicating even his own.

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Oscar Wilde: Essays study guide contains a biography of Oscar Wilde, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Oscar Wilde: Essays
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Essays for Oscar Wilde: Essays

Oscar Wilde: Essays essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Oscar Wilde: Essays by Oscar Wilde.

• On Oscar Wilde’s “The Decay of Lying”: A Discourse on the Perceptions of Art and Reality

Oscar Wilde online

Essays and lectures.

• Art and the Handicraftsman » An essay on art - There is no opposition to beauty except ugliness: all things are either beautiful or ugly. (9 pages)
• De Profundis » A very long, intensely emotional letter written from prison at Reading Gaol to Lord Alfred Douglas – Bosie. (28 pages)
• House Decoration » A lecture on house decoration: What is the meaning of beautiful decoration which we call art? (5 pages)
• Impressions of America » Thoughts and impressions after lecture touring the United States in 1882. (4 pages)
• Lecture to Art Students » Lecture about art and beauty: Nothing is more dangerous to the young artist than any conception of ideal beauty. (6 pages)
• London Models » An essay on art models: Professional models are a purely modern invention. (5 pages)
• Miscellaneous Aphorisms » A vast collection of Wilde's aphorisms and witty one-liners. (31 pages)
• Pen, Pencil, And Poison » Essay about Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (1794 1847), English artist and serial poisoner. (14 pages)
• Poems in Prose » Six prose poems published in The Fortnightly Review magazine in 1894. (6 pages)
• Reviews » A collection of reviews written before Wilde's fame. (304 pages)
• Selected Prose » A collection prose writings, with a preface by Robert Ross, a Canadian journalist and art critic. (57 pages)
• Shorter Prose Pieces » Short prose collection on various topics and issues. (21 pages)
• Some Cruelties Of Prison Life » Protest letter to The Daily Chronicle, criticism of the prison system. (7 pages)
• The Critic As Artist » An essay on art written in the form of a philosophical dialogue. It contains Wilde's major aesthetic statements. (46 pages)
• The Decay Of Lying » A critical dialogue between two upper-class aesthetes. (21 pages)
• The English Renaissance of Art » Lecture on the English art, first delivered in New York, 1882. (17 pages)
• The Rise of Historical Criticism » Lengthy essay evaluating historical writings and the art of criticism. (40 pages)
• The Soul Of Man Under Socialism » An essay exploring socialism ideas. (24 pages)
• The Truth Of Masks » An essay focusing of dramatic theory. (17 pages)

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The Decay of Lying

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Summary: “the decay of lying”.

“The Decay of Lying” is Oscar Wilde’s rejection of Realism in art and literature and an appeal to embrace the principles of Aestheticism , which the essay lays out and defends in narrative form. First published as an independent essay in 1889 before being revised and published as part of an essay collection in 1891, the piece explores a number of questions related to art, nature , and life, as well as the interrelationships between these concepts. The central themes of the essay are Lying as a Necessary Creative Act , Art as an Inventive Force , and Art for Art’s Sake .

A major proponent of the Aestheticism movement, Wilde was a prolific writer and found particular success as an essayist, playwright, and poet. Born in Dublin but active largely in London and Paris, Wilde was well known as a socialite whose flamboyant lifestyle and beliefs oftentimes clashed with the staid mores of the Victorian era.

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This study guide refers to the 1913 Methuen and Co edition of the essay collection Intentions freely available on Project Gutenberg.

The essay takes the form of a dialogue between two characters, Cyril and Vivian. The essay opens with Cyril inviting Vivian to take leave of the confines of the library and come outside to enjoy nature. This sparks a series of criticisms from Vivian about the idealization of nature in discourse and particularly the contemporary taste for nature-based art, which he links to a broader degradation of the arts in favor of realism. Vivian uses this foundation to present an argument propounding that true art is created from the imagination, which he describes as lying.

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The essay progresses with a question-answer structure as a Socratic dialogue. In this dialogue, Vivian is the protagonist , while Cyril is the listener who poses questions to interrogate Vivian’s claims. The dialogue is heavily reliant on an article Vivian has written titled “The Decay of Lying: A Protest.” Their conversation functions as a frame story for Vivian to present Cyril with the text of the article. The article’s principal aim is to criticize “the decay of Lying as an art, a science, and a social pleasure” (1), with particularly grave consequences for literature. Modern society’s dedication to facts and real life is, according to Vivian, “fatal to the imagination” (3).

Vivian’s argument is backed by a series of examples in which he lampoons a number of contemporary novelists as victims of the modern tendency toward truth-telling. Targets of his criticism include famous writers such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James, Guy de Maupassant, Émile Zola, and George Eliot, among others. The works of these writers fail because they are moralistic, “dreary” (4), “obvious” (3), and uninteresting. In contrast, writers like George Meredith and Honoré de Balzac are writers whom Vivian enjoys and distinguishes from the realists.

The issue Vivan takes with his contemporaries’ work is that they use their surroundings as their basis and copy from life. This, Vivian argues, is an inherently misguided approach that misinterprets art as a reflection of life rather than life as a reflection of art. Vivian dismisses contemporary exhortations to “return to Life and Nature” (6) as failing to recognize this point. Vivian cites the beginning of this decline in literature as being apparent in Shakespeare, whose writing sometimes favors imitation of the vulgarity of everyday language instead of relying only on artistic creation and imagination to impose perfection of form.

Vivian reserves praise for Eastern artistic practices and poets, which he deems as remaining faithful to original, abstract artistic creation without the return to life that degrades much of modern Western art. Naming Herodotus the “Father of Lies,” Vivian lists a number of others—nominating the likes of Cicero to Pliny, Marco Polo, Napoleon, and Thomas Carlyle—who have privileged art over reality and kept facts “in their proper subordinate position, or else entirely excluded on the general ground of dulness” (8).

To buttress his position after being questioned by Cyril regarding the paradoxical notion that life imitates art, Vivian gives a number of examples in which art has determined behaviors and tastes in both visual arts and literature. He recalls a friend of his with whom he shared a serial in a magazine because she reminded him of the story’s protagonist. Later, after discovering the tragic ending of the story, he wrote to his friend to lament the protagonist’s fate only to find that the friend had copied the protagonist and come to the same sad ending.

Having persuaded Cyril of his claim that life imitates art, Vivian then tackles proving that nature, too, imitates art. To make this point, Vivian asserts that nature is also the creation of the imagination. He distinguishes between looking at something and seeing it. Seeing is what creates the thing itself, and “what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that have influenced us” (12). Using landscape painting as an example, he claims that overuse of artistic tropes renders the repetitive events of nature, like sunsets, tired and cliché . However, this only happens because the artworks representing these scenes lack originality.

Cyril feels convinced by these arguments, but he then poses another question: does art represent the conditions of the time in which it is made? Vivian categorically denies that art is related to the conditions surrounding its production. Instead, great art creates the images and symbols that become associated with particular places, times, and people. To illustrate this point, Vivian uses the example of Japan and Japanese arts. He refers to the works of Hokusai and Hokkei, both artists of the Edo period in Japan, as having a major role in inventing the perceptions of the Japanese effect, meaning “a mode of style , an exquisite fancy of art” (14). To understand this effect, it is necessary to immerse oneself in the artworks of these great artists. Once the style has been understood, the effect can be found anywhere, not just within Japan.

Once Vivian establishes the fundamentality of style in art, he moves toward the conclusion of his article. At this point, he advocates for the revival of the “old art of Lying” (15) and particularly “Lying for its own sake” and “Lying in Art” (16). Once lying is restored to its former position of privilege over fact , a series of fantastical imaginings will follow that inspire people with “things that are lovely and that never happened, of things that are not and that should be” (16).

The essay concludes with a summary of the four key principles of Vivian’s aesthetic doctrine: 1) Art is independent and does not reference external conditions or circumstances; 2) Art must not idealize life or nature; 3) Art does not imitate life, but rather life imitates art; and 4) Art’s objective is to lie, or to tell “beautiful untrue things” (17).

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Essay Topics for Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (for English 1112, Lakehead University (Canada)

Philip v. allingham , contributing editor, victorian web.

[ Victorian Web Home —> Authors —> Aesthetes and Decadents —> Oscar Wilde —> Works —> Leading Questions ]

Instructions : Employ one of the critical quotations as the basis for your term paper of 1,500 to 3,000 words.

1. Robert Boyle describes Wilde's last play as a humorous "treatment of decay and death," and of "human suffering," in which Wilde finally abandons the effort to balance "conventional moral norms with the realities of human behavior" (325). Responding to these remarks, develop an essay topic about an underlying, serious theme in The Importance Of Being Earnest . Please confirm by e-mail the precise wording of your topic.

2. According to Karl Beckson , "Central to Wilde's life and art was the idea of the dandy as the embodiment of the heroic ideal as well as of the aesthetic temperament hostile to bourgeois sentiment and morality" (205). Which of the characters in the play embodies this aesthetic principle, and how? From your consideration of these characters' utterances and actions develop an appropriate essay topic. Please confirm by e-mail the precise wording of your topic.

3. William Keach contends that Lady Bracknell's "cross-examination of Jack lays the groundwork for much of the rest of the plot" (184), and that the underlying tension of the play depends upon "the contrast of city and country so important to the double lives being led" (183). Explain these two points, then develop one of them into a suitable essay topic. Please confirm by e-mail the precise wording of your topic.

4. Otto Reinert claims that "Wilde's basic formula for satire is [his characters'] assumption of a code of behavior that represents the reality that Victorian convention pretends to ignore" (15). Reinert argues that in this play Wilde is principally concerned with the difference between conventional and actual manners and morality. Discuss these points, then refine this "formula for satire" into an essay topic. Please confirm by e-mail the precise wording of your topic.

5. Richard Foster believes that the terms "farce" and "comedy of manners" are unsuitable for this Wilde play because it is far more subtle, complicated, and artistic than such labels imply.

Farce . . .depends for its effects upon extremely simplified characters tangling themselves up in incongruous situations, and upon a knowing audience gleefully anticipating their falling victim, in their ignorance, to some enormous but harmless confusion of fact or identity." Furthermore, "A comedy of manners is fundamentally realistic: it requires the audience to accept the world presented on the stage as a real world, a possible world." [19]

Foster contends that the play is in fact an elaborate lampoon.

Apply the terms "farce," "comedy of manners," and "lampoon" to The Importance of Being Earnest , then develop an essay topic that utilizes these terms. Please confirm by e-mail the precise wording of your topic.

6. Pointing out that inverted relationships are the norm in this play, Robert J. Jordan , rejects the proposition that The Importance of Being Earnest is a satire or a social criticism; rather, "at the most important level it seems to be a fantasy in which unattainable human ideals are allowed to realize themselves." Elegance, symmetry, taste, indifference to conventional morality, and a total lack of sexual corruption (for which Wilde substitutes "food-lust") are achieved in this make-believe world.

Apply the term "fantasy" to Wilde's play, demonstrating how it achieves some of Foster's ideal elements listed above, then develop a suitable essay topic. Please confirm by e-mail the precise wording of your topic.

7. Wilde suggests that his Victorian contemporaries should treat trivial matters with greater respect and pay less attention to what society then regarded as serious. Discuss how Wilde expresses this philosophy and comment on the effectiveness with which he has communicated his 'message' with reference to ONE of the following in the play: death, politics, money, property, food, or marriage. Please confirm by e-mail the precise wording of your topic.

8. Using three examples drawn from the play, show how Algernon uses Wilde's aesthetic principles to transform his life into a work of art. Please confirm by e-mail the precise wording of your topic.

9. How does Wilde portray food as both a weapon and a means of demonstrating one's power? Discuss three examples from the play to demonstrate how Wilde uses food. Please confirm by e-mail the precise wording of your topic.

10. Describe how this play mayor may not fit the criteria associated with the genre of the lampoon. Define the term "lampoon" and apply this definition to the play: what is Wilde lampooning? What is his intention in lampooning it? What are his techniques, and do these produce appropriate attitudes in the audience? Please confirm by e-mail the precise wording of your topic.

11. Define the term "fantasy," then demonstrate how Wilde treats ONE of the following fantastically (as opposed to realistically): Victorian society's class structure, food and the Victorian conventions surrounding it, the resolution of the plot. Please confirm by e-mail the precise wording of your topic.

12. Using appropriate quotations and paraphrases from at least one major scene in the play, show how Wilde treats humorously serious issues and conflicts that existed within Victorian society. You might wish to demonstrate how the play deals with one of the following matters: marriage and courtship, sexual double standards, the class structure, money and property, and attitudes towards illness and death. Please confirm by e-mail the precise wording of your topic.

13. In French, the title of the play is Ernest ou l'Importance d'être Constant . Explain how this title sheds additional light on the key issues of self-awareness, self-knowledge, and being "earnest" versus being "constant." Consider the implications of the French title for all the major characters. Please confirm by e-mail the precise wording of your topic.

Beckson , Karl. "Oscar Wilde." Modern British Dramatists, 1900-1945. Part 2: M-Z. Dictionary of Literary Biography . Vol. 10. Pp. 204-218.

Boyle , Robert. "Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)." British Novelists, 1890-1929: Traditionalists. Dictionary of Literary Biography . Vol. 34. Detroit: Gale Research, 1985. Pp. 315-331.

Foster , Richard. "Wilde as Parodist: A Second Look at The Importance Of Being Earnest ." College English 18, 1 (Oct., 1956): 18-23.

Jordan , Robert J. "Satire and Fantasy in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest ." Ariel 1, 3 (July 1970).

Keach , William. Teacher's Manual: Adventures in English Literature . New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1980. Pp. 183-7.

Reinert , Otto. "Satiric Strategy in The Importance Of Being Earnest ." College English 18, 1 (Oct., 1956): 14- 18.

Related Materials

• Writing and Discussion Questions
• Introduction to the play

a. Parenthetical citation rather than foot- or end-notes will be considered acceptable; for a play longer than a single act, please provide act number in roman numerals followed by page number in arabic numerals.

b. Double space all text; if you are doing your essay by hand, you may single space quotations of forty words or longer, but integrate shorter quotations; for example:

Lady Bracknell is unrealistically, almost contemptuously honest when she reveals her ignorance of the German language. Objecting to French songs on the grounds of possible impropriety of subject-matter, she remarks, "But German sounds a thoroughly respectable language, and indeed, I believe is so" (I: 128, emphasis added).

A Note on Essay Topics

Topics may call for comparison between two like things, such as the humour in a modern television sit-com (situational comedy) and The Importance Of Being Earnest .

Contrast , on the other hand, implies that the writer is out to demonstrate differences between things usually thought to be similar. For example, one might contrast the duplicity of Jack and Algernon here with that of Dr. Jekyll in Stevenson's novella.

Other possibilities are explanation and analysis, for example: "Why We Laugh WITH and Not AT Lady Bracknell."

Last modified 13 March 2006

• The Importance of Being Earnest

Oscar Wilde

• Literature Notes
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• Play Summary
• About The Importance of Being Earnest
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• Summary and Analysis
• Act I: Part 1
• Act I: Part 2
• Act II: Part 1
• Act II: Part 2
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• John (Jack) Worthing
• Algernon (Algy) Moncrieff
• Lady Augusta Bracknell
• Gwendolen Fairfax & Cecily Cardew
• Rev. Chasuble & Miss Prism
• Character Map
• Oscar Wilde Biography
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• Full Glossary for The Importance of Being Earnest
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Study Help Essay Questions

1.      Wilde's play has two settings — the city of London and the country. How does he create differences between the two settings?

2.      What attitudes toward marriage do Wilde's characters explore?

3.      How does Wilde create and comment on the differences between the social classes in England as represented by Lady Bracknell and the servants in both settings?

4.      Manuscripts are used by various characters — diaries, sermons, and a three-volume novel. What function does each have in the play?

5.      What attitudes of the aristocracy can be seen in Lady Bracknell's dialogue?

6.      How is conflict developed in the play?

7.      How does Wilde turn around well-known proverbs or epigrams to comment on Victorian attitudes?

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From Taylor to Ariana, pop’s overreliance on gossip is choking the life out of it

Today’s pop stars are cramming songs with so much biography they need footnotes – and they’re in danger of alienating all but their hardcore fans

W hen Taylor Swift released Reputation in 2017, she self-published an accompanying magazine while avoiding interviews. “When this album comes out, gossip blogs will scour the lyrics for the men they can attribute to each song, as if the inspiration for music is as simple and basic as a paternity test,” she wrote in an essay. The sentiment oozed with contempt for playing dot-to-dot with her lyrics – even though, from her debut album to Reputation’s predecessor 1989, Swift left clues in her liner notes that clearly indicated whom certain songs were about.

Seven years on, and Swift’s new album, The Tortured Poets Department, couldn’t be more transparent about its subjects – typewriters and tattoos lighting a path to the 1975’s Matty Healy, whom she had a fling with last spring; Hampstead Heath and “longsuffering propriety” referring to actor Joe Alwyn, who she dated for six years.

In case you didn’t clock them from ambient exposure to the mass coverage of the past year in her life, there are hundreds of articles online handily “decoding” the carefully chosen references; bonus song The Black Dog mentions Pennsylvania pop-punk band the Starting Line, and one easy Google search reveals that the 1975 covered them live last year. Maybe Swift was going for the highest-profile humiliation of her exes possible; maybe it’s an admission of defeat against a media that will pick the bones clean of anything she does – or a naked attempt to harness the exposure guaranteed by that kind of coverage.

The latter seems most likely given that gossip is pop’s driving engine right now. From Swift to Ariana Grande’s divorce album Eternal Sunshine , Sabrina Carpenter, Miley Cyrus and Olivia Rodrigo, the highest-profile releases are laden with popcorn-chewing subtext – or it’s the subtext that propels them to that level of exposure.

The lurid appeal of famous people shit-talking one another is evident – and it’s long been an art form in rap, now in the midst of a purple patch for beef – but whether it makes for lasting pop is another matter. Swift helped propagate the notion that pop achieves universality through specificity, though there’s a point at which specificity begins to strangle the life out of songwriting; where proper nouns (“Charlie Puth”) stand in for being able to contour emotional arcs and elegant portrayals of relationship dynamics that listeners might see in their own lives. Rather than enduring landmarks in an artist’s catalogue, these records can feel like expansions of personal lore more akin to how the Marvel Cinematic Universe operates: a layering of references and gestures over meaning and depth; a patently obvious breadcrumb trail that harnesses the public into promoting a generation of superstars, who can now comfortably evade the press.

The move away from physical music and bespoke music media to streaming and social media seems key to this shift. New music is now just another thing in your feed; it has had to use the eye-catching clickbait of its competitors to keep pace. “Why do you care so much whose dick I ride?” Grande asked on Yes, And?, the lead single from Eternal Sunshine – rebuking fans and baiting them at the same time. It’s also down to a generation of particularly young female pop stars becoming the writers of their own work and so documenting their own lives, something that was much less common at the turn of the 2010s. That is a wholly positive shift that has produced a ton of great work. But even the most elegant songwriters find themselves caught in an age when veracity is considered the ultimate in authenticity, and they are subject to prurient online sleuthing that treats songwriting as a series of clues to piece together in pursuit of some ultimate “truth”.

Rodrigo never discussed the explicit background to her masterful debut single Drivers License, but fans quickly assumed that it concerned a supposed love triangle between three young Disney Channel stars. She seemed burned by the invasive coverage; so too was Joshua Bassett, the alleged male party, who ended up hospitalised as a result of the stress and whose career has never recovered. Carpenter, the rumoured “other woman”, wrote the excellently nonchalant Because I Liked a Boy after she was hounded over the allegations (“Now I’m a homewrecker, I’m a slut … Tell me who I am ’cos I don’t have a choice”). She then seemed to become weaponised in a rumoured rift between Rodrigo and Swift when the latter invited Carpenter to support the Eras tour (Rodrigo’s comeback single Vampire was also assumed to be about Swift).

For all that subtext, Carpenter’s new single, Espresso, is a mercifully frothy diversion from the discourse: breezy disco about being so hot you keep boys up at night. It’s rising up the UK Top 10, and Carpenter looks set to become the next big pop star – a waning archetype, with few breaking through since Rodrigo in 2021. You wonder if the difficulty in developing new stars comes down to an absence of readymade lore, which Carpenter has. Now 24, she is only new to the general public. She started on Disney at 16 and has released five albums, and left Disney’s own Hollywood Records, which caters to a niche teen audience, to sign to Island for 2022’s Emails I Can’t Send – her first album after intrigue into her personal life flourished.

It leaves pop in a tricky spot. Too much gossip and you date your work; too little and fans lose interest. Last year, Ellie Goulding toted her fifth album, Higher Than Heaven, as her “least personal record yet” – and it was also her least successful, bombing out of the UK charts after a fortnight. The opening track to Justin Timberlake’s new album, Everything I Thought It Was teased introspection in the wake of his post-Britney reckoning, but only offered up vacant libidinous disco pop: it also dropped out of the Top 100 after two weeks. Kacey Musgraves’ latest album, Deeper Well, frustratingly traded her old lyrical specificity for therapy-smoothed platitudes. Dua Lipa’s forthcoming album has been distinguished by a remarkably blank press campaign: good on her for not spilling her guts for headlines, but her vapid interviews and three totally impersonal singles have left fans nonplussed about Radical Optimism. “The self is the only subject,” Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys – one of pop’s great storytellers – withered at a Guardian Live event this week while promoting the band’s new album, Nonetheless, which instead imagines the inner lives of dancer Rudolf Nureyev, spy George Blake and Oscar Wilde.

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Today’s self-obsessed pop, which needs its own footnotes, may well alienate the passing fan who just wants something to listen to in the car. Perhaps that’s why charts are seeing a resurgence of rustic broad-church emoting from the likes of Benson Boone, Teddy Swims, Hozier and Noah Kahan; and why Natasha Bedingfield’s Unwritten has stuck around off the back of its Saltburn bump (“No one else can speak the words on your lips”).

There’s also a rising newcomer in Chappell Roan, the alternative US pop star whose Good Luck, Babe! is shooting up the Top 40. It’s a song about loving a closeted woman who ultimately goes back to men, which nonetheless makes a universal statement about the unstoppable nature of desire: “You’d have to stop the world just to stop the feeling,” she sings. Moreover, she has a fantastical vision: a sort of regency rodeo prom queen; or Elizabeth I with a pig’s nose . As with the Last Dinner Party’s similarly baroque get-ups, it’s an invitation to fantasia that assumes no prior knowledge: just don some fancy dress and get stuck in. That sense also seems key to Beyoncé’s current incarnation: after the personal revelations of her 2013 self-titled album and 2016’s Lemonade, 2022’s Renaissance and this year’s Cowboy Carter mostly strip the specifics of her life from the lyrics to instead comfortably centre Beyoncé as a font of joyful genre play and invention. Tellingly, the one “Becky with the good hair” reference in Cowboy Carter’s Jolene rewrite stuck out for its tedious biographical retread.

None of this is to say that pop stars should avoid writing about their personal lives – far from it. But the most resonant pop steers between the two impulses. Charli XCX’s comeback single Von Dutch was clearly taunting someone – “it’s OK to just admit that you’re jealous of me” – but whoever the subject is pales in comparison to the way the song’s brazen grind makes you feel just as unfuckwithable as Charli. The Tortured Poets Department has a handful of moments like this. Guilty As Sin? may make its subject clear from the first line (no prizes for guessing which pop rogue’s favourite band is the Blue Nile) but Swift’s portrait of agonised fantasy over the forbidden while trapped in a stultifying relationship – and trapped in the societal expectations around it – resound with real emotional truth. The unfulfilled yearning is the album’s most convincingly sensual moment – a testament to leaving the picture incomplete.

• Pop and rock
• Taylor Swift
• Ariana Grande
• Miley Cyrus
• Olivia Rodrigo
• Justin Timberlake
• Ellie Goulding

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