Essay: How pop music embraced grotesque and gory aesthetics

Pitchfork got inspired by the latest Ed Sheeran video and published an essay about gory aesthetics in pop music: "This stylized imagery, heinous and perversely hilarious, was once foreign to the purview of chart-topping pop stars. For years it was weaponized by hard rock and experimental artists who sought similar extremes in their music. Dating back to the late ’60s, metal and its spawn of heavier subgenres have long been the cradle of horrific stimuli—all on some Satanic mission to corrupt the American teen, as the Christian right often argued. But in the past 13 years, the gruesome and gory has been liberated from that stronghold and embraced by the status quo".