The year was 2015. Star Wars got a reboot, Snapchat introduced filters, and Netflix finally arrived in Australia. K-pop fans hailed it a “Golden Year,” though it wasn’t my scene, so I can’t claim expertise there.
On a personal note, I’d just finished my Bachelor’s degree and had no idea what came next. I took a job teaching English in China in a move that ended up shaping my career for the next decade.
Western music was wild. Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’’ “Uptown Funk” cemented itself as the inoffensive anthem of intergenerational dance floors. Drake’s “Hotline Bling” went viral, inspiring endless parodies and memes. The Chainsmokers annoyed everyone with songs that seemed unavoidable. Adele broke records with 25, while Taylor Swift’s 1989 was an unstoppable hit machine… but more on her soon.
Pulling from the archive- dazed magazine vol IV, Autumn / winter 2015
From my growing stack of print treasures, today’s pick is a Dazed cover featuring Grimes. The magazine sells itself as a quarterly celebrating radical fashion, youth culture, and innovation. In 2015, Grimes was a perfect fit.
Grimes: The Internet Oddball
The 2015 Dazed profile painted Grimes as the ultimate internet oddball, a chaotic mix of science-nerd energy, DIY weirdness, and restless creativity. She was framed as an outsider pop star: eccentric and genius in equal measure, constantly experimenting and refusing to be pinned down. Back then, she was still the cult figure who seemed to live half-online, half in some imagined future. Inspiring, in a bloody chaotic way.
Pearl: Drag’s Steely Wunderkind
In the same issue, Pearl (Matthew James Lent) was framed as drag’s cool, unbothered wunderkind. She’s the queen who stood out on RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 7 by refusing to play cute or cry for the cameras. That icy detachment and razor-sharp aesthetic turned her into a fembot for the fashion rat race. She touring the world, releasing an EDM album, and inspiring fans to say: “You make me feel safe to be who I am.”
These figures are still icons to me: the pop star chasing visions of space, and the drag queen who refused to play along. In Pearl’s case, that bloody-minded refusal helped drag culture grow. Compare it to newer seasons of Drag Race: Ru seems softer, production feels more supportive, and queens now get space to shine earlier in the run. It’s more accessible. Friendlier. Proof that stubbornness pays off.
CL – Ready to Rule?
And then there was the article that made me double-take.
In autumn 2015, Dazed cast CL as a boundary-pushing K-pop icon ruling Asia while planting one shiny boot in the Western music world. Shot inside a neon-lit mermaid-fountain hotel in Queens, she was styled as a contradiction: rapper, fashion plate, and global gunslinger of pop. CL declared herself “The Baddest Female”. She toured with Skrillex and Diplo. She released Lifted, her English-language debut. The question was: could she be the first Asian female artist to break big in the West? At the time, it felt daring. From 2025, it looks like just the opening chapter.
K-pop: From Niche to Mainstream
Since 2015, K-pop has exploded worldwide. BLACKPINK and BTS headlined stadiums, broke records, and became fashion powerhouses. Coachella 2025 even hosted four K-pop acts. The genre’s reach stretched into film with Netflix’s K-Pop Demon Hunters, while the BBC aired documentaries and specials to capture the craze. What once felt niche is now firmly mainstream.
CL reflects that journey. The track she promoted in Dazed has racked up 132 million Spotify streams. She closed the 2018 Winter Olympics ceremony, became one of the first K-pop stars at the Met Gala (alongside BLACKPINK’s Rosé) in 2021, and, according to her Spotify tour page, is still performing in 2025.
But all of this feels safe, fairly self explanatory and not really worth blogging about. OK, OK. Let’s delve into the words.
CL and the 2015 Name-Dropping Game
CL drops a lot of names in the 2015 piece, eleven (noticably men) in total. Producers Blood Diamonds and Scooter Braun, fashion designer Jeremy Scott, and (unfortunately) P. Diddy all get a mention.
On one hand, I almost understand it. K-pop at the time felt worlds away from Western pop, with its own methods and madness. Name-dropping familiar industry figures signaled that she was already in “the club.” But looking back, it feels more forced than fresh, less “look what I can do” and more “look who I know.”
P. Diddy: From Cool Co-Sign to Cautionary Tale
Back in 2015, names like P. Diddy still carried weight. CL even shared the stage with him at Miami’s Ultra Festival during the Jack U closing set. In Dazed she said “He was so supportive… he was really cool.”
Fast forward to 2025 and that quote reads very differently. Multiple lawsuits of sexual violence and assault eventually led to Diddy’s imprisonment in July 2025. Today, celebrities scramble to put distance between themselves and his name. How quickly reputations can flip!
Quick Instagram break. Follow me for these vibes:
Scooter Braun: From Power Broker to Pariah
Ah yes, the name hissed as a curse by many a Swiftie… Scooter Braun.
In 2015, being linked to him was a big deal. He managed Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande, and his catalogue of A-listers made him a kingmaker. But in 2019, Braun’s company Ithaca Holdings bought Big Machine Label Group and that’s when all hell broke loose.
Big Machine owned Taylor Swift’s first six albums. Braun’s company sold them on, reportedly netting $400 million. Taylor was furious. Her fans were furious. In response, she re-recorded her catalogue as Taylor’s Version, turning a personal battle into a cultural movement. The drama raised questions of ownership and ethics. #StandWithTaylor trended, with Iggy Azalea, Lily Allen, Katy Perry, Gigi Hadid and more publicly backing her. Major outlets from Variety to The New York Times to Rolling Stone ran with it. Braun’s camp looked very thin.
By 2025, Braun is old news. Complaining about how unfair Taylor was before announcing his retirement feels underwhelming. He made millions so no one’s crying for him.
So… how did it age? 2015 – 2025
Looking Back, Writing Again
Revisiting Dazed‘s Autumn/Winter 2015 issue is like opening a cultural time capsule. Back then, Grimes was celebrated as the eccentric outsider, Pearl as drag’s cool rebel, and CL as K-pop’s hopeful ambassador to the West. Even the co-signs, P. Diddy and Scooter Braun, felt like marks of legitimacy.
Ten years on, the shine looks different. Grimes is still fascinating but no longer the cult internet figure she once was. Pearl remains an icon of refusal, but Drag Race itself has softened. CL’s career has proved steady rather than world-dominating, while K-pop as a whole has blown the doors off the global stage. And those male co-signs? They’ve aged like milk.
That’s what makes digging through old magazines so addictive. They’re first drafts of culture snapshots of how we wanted to see things at the time. But the second draft belongs to hindsight, and it’s here we see what endured, what collapsed, and what we laugh at now.
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