Happy Thursday!

I’ve referenced the Khia Asylum once or twice in this newsletter, but I realized that I never actually explained it. I’ve noticed quite a few pop artists mention it recently, so I figured it was a good time to talk about it. It’s become both a badge of honor and a chip on people’s shoulders, which I expand on below.

Also in this newsletter, Kamala HQ’s rebrand and fresh questions about the creator-journalist pathway. Subscribe to the Yapper tier to read the full newsletter.

Lastly, if you haven’t heard, the Washington Post has undergone brutal layoffs, which is a major blow to the industry. You can support these recently laid off journalists by donating to their GoFundMe here.

Ah, the Khia Asylum. Where to start?

It began as a Stan Twitter meme and has slowly made its way upstream, with some of the biggest artists referencing it in recent months. Just this week, Adéla, standing next to Demi Lovato, said rising pop star Eli was “heading from the Khia Asylum to the Kia Forum.” Last week, Charli XCX fielded several questions about the Khia Asylum while promoting her film The Moment.

“Who says I’m not going back there?” she said during one screening. “The doors to the asylum, I hear they keep them open. And I’d love to pop back in there, see all my cool friends.”

Now that it is entering the zeitgeist, we should probably reconsider the implications of the term. After all, it was, in origin, an insult to the rapper Khia. It all started in 2014 when some Twitter users were laughing at a fan who cried after meeting the “My Neck, My Back” artist. 

“Why is this Korean girl crying over meeting Khia?!!” one wrote.

The Khia Asylum has since morphed into an endearing, if not a bit shady, descriptor for lesser-known pop stars. In the most generous readings, a khia is an artist that most people believed would never hit mainstream success. In crueler terms, a khia is a flop or a failure. 

The Khia Asylum is what more professional music writers would call “pop’s middle class.” If you’re a Pop Pantheon podcast listener, they would be in Tier 4: Working Class Pop Stars. These are musicians that have modest-yet-dedicated fan bases, put out consistent work, and generally sustain a pop career using a more “indie” model. 

But what happens when an artist “breaks out” of the Khia Asylum? Since 2024, there has been this sentiment in the pop world that anything is possible. That was the year that we had quite a few musicians — Chappell Roan, Charli XCX, and Sabrina Carpenter — reach stratospheric heights after grinding at the margins for years. Their albums and tours cut through a very noisy, crowded landscape full of A-list releases, including from Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. Then in 2025, we saw Zara Larsson hit new highs over a decade after her first hit.

“I feel like I’m out of the Khia Asylum for sure,” Larsson told Dazed last December. “I’m like wait, it’s cool to listen to my songs? I’ve always loved all my songs, but I think it’s been hard to identify me as an artist. As a person I’ve always been very secure and confident, but I’ve been figuring out how to make people understand me as an artist. Before, people knew my songs, but it feels like they know me [as a person] better now.”

Seeing this, pop musicians and stans alike have been wondering: Who’s next? Listeners have their guesses. Artists are directly appealing to their fans to let them out. Exhibit A: Bebe Rexha.