It's time to face the music. Conservative ideals have made their way back into mainstream pop culture. For the first time in more than 10 years, songs based on faith have been dominating the charts. And this aligns with society's shift toward more "traditional values."

The past
Popular music has long been a bellwether of the political climate. Summer 2024 was "defined by the ascendance of boundary-pushing female pop stars like Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan and Charli XCX," said Semafor. However, "rising in a parallel fashion," country music resonated with "young white people, some who might not even describe themselves as conservative but may have been searching for a watered-down, digestible form of populism," said Rolling Stone. 

For some listeners, country music has served as an "art form to latch on to when progressive artists (and their politics) alienated them a little too much," said Rolling Stone. Much of this was attributed to President Donald Trump's campaign, which was "based in part on nostalgia for a formerly 'great' period in U.S. history when white identity was unthreatened and women held traditional roles." Since Trump's victory, Christian and Christian-adjacent music, especially by men, has broken its way into mainstream culture, capturing the zeitgeist of this political era.

The present
Summer 2025 has been a "stark cultural contrast from last summer," said Semafor. This summer has been dominated by "tradpop," a term used to describe a "hybrid of traditional pop infused with spiritual and country music elements," said Artistrack. 

Songs under this umbrella "often include lyrics centered around family, faith, personal values and resilience." Some examples include Benson Boone's "Beautiful Things" and Alex Warren's "Ordinary," which is a "love song that easily doubles as a Christian worship song" and has become one of the biggest hits of 2025, said Vox. 

The meaning
The shift to tradpop "reflects the broader cultural and political narrative shift toward traditional and conservative ideals" ever since Trump's reelection, said Semafor. "What unites all of these songs" is their confessional stance, as well as the performance of raw vulnerability from each male artist," said Vox. This is a "trait that modern men, especially ones steeped in a culture of conservatism, often have difficulty accessing." This aligns with phenomena such as the male loneliness epidemic, as well as the growing ideological divide between men and women.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has told his fellow Indians that "nature has been testing us." Cloudbursts have caused flash flooding that has killed hundreds of people across the north of the country and in neighboring Pakistan. 

What causes cloudbursts? 
Usually defined as more than 4 inches of rainfall within an hour over an area less than 11.6 square miles, cloudbursts are more likely to happen in places where warm, moist air is rising upward in a period of high humidity, low pressure, instability and convective cloud formation. As the air rises, it cools and condenses, creating large, dense clouds that can often get trapped by hills or mountains, instead of moving on. 

When these clouds cannot contain their moisture anymore, they burst, releasing it all at once, effectively like a "rain bomb," said The Associated Press. Cloudbursts "thrive in moisture, monsoons and mountains," all of which are present in India and Pakistan. 

Why are they dangerous? 
The intense rainfall often triggers deadly flooding and landslides, as happened in northern Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir last week, killing at least 344 people, according to authorities. The death toll included 24 people from the same family, who were swept away on the eve of a wedding. 

In Indian-administered Kashmir, at least 60 people have been killed in flash flooding, with 200 more missing. Part of the reason cloudbursts are so dangerous is that there's "no forecasting system anywhere in the world" that can predict exactly where and when they will occur, said Asfandyar Khan Khattak, an official from Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. 

Are they caused by climate change? 
Cloudbursts are a natural phenomenon, but extreme rain events and their related flash-flooding have worsened in recent years as a direct result of climate change. Because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, "every tenth of a degree of warming will lead to heavier monsoon rainfall," said Mariam Zachariah, an environmental researcher at Imperial College London. 

Khalid Khan, a former special secretary for climate change in Pakistan and the chair of climate initiative Planet Pulse, said global warming had "supercharged" the water cycle. "In short, climate change is making rare events more frequent and frequent events more destructive."

Divers watch a crane lift an artifact from the sea at Abu Qir Bay in the port city of Alexandria. A total of 86 antiquities recovered from Egypt's coastal waters are on display in the new "Secrets of the Sunken City" exhibition at the Alexandria National Museum. 
Khaled Desouki / AFP / Getty Images

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Ellis Brooklyn Salt eau de parfum
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