The relevance of the research is the unevenness of the study of the Ukrainian song variety at all stages of its development. For today there is no separate study dedicated to the study of Ukrainian variety song of the late 20th – early 21st century, including its style characteristics, which forms a significant gap in variety studies, which must be filled as soon as possible.
In the first chapter, the theoretical foundations of the research are described: a review of scientific works on musical pop variety is carried out, and the problematic field of research of musical style and national identity is outlined. Methodological approaches to the study of the style-creating process in variety music have been developed. It has been indicated that variety music styles, similar to academic ones, should be considered in a hierarchical trinity: historical style – national style – individual style, but with appropriate adjustments. The division of variety music into four directions is proposed, where a fourth is added to the three basic ones (jazz, rock, pop music) with a generalized definition of "another music", which includes a number of new branches (hip-hop, electronic dance music, world music, etc.). It is emphasized that it is advisable to consider the style of each direction of variety music separately, taking into account the possibility of style crossings at the border of the directions. Three basic markers of the national in Ukrainian variety song are highlighted and characterized, including the Ukrainian language; archetypes and cultural codes contained in song lyrics; musical language with Ukrainian elements in melody, harmony and arrangement. It was indicated that the renewal of Ukrainian variety music in the 1990s occurred not only due to style reorientation, but also due to the strengthening of its national branding.
The second chapter is devoted to the examination of the festival movement and the activities of production agencies in the context of the development of the Ukrainian song variety of the late 20th – early 21st centuries. The "Chervona Ruta" festival was aimed at forming a variety repertoire in the Ukrainian language that would conform the demands of the young generation regarding modernity and novelty, but at the same time was deeply rooted in the national musical tradition. One of the goals of the festival was to discover new names, so a competition type model was chosen. The "Tavriiski Ihry" festival was founded on a presentation-report type model: already well-known foreign and Ukrainian performers with new hits took part in it, thanks to which its concert programs reflected the entire panorama of modern music. It was indicated that an important role in the formation of the sound landscape of the first decade of Ukrainian Independence was played by production agencies, which performed two main functions – the formation of the image and repertoire of artists and their media promotion. Among the production centers that put the main emphasis on media support of the new generation of Ukrainian variety artists was the "Terytoriia A" agency, which had two media projects – the hit parade "Terytoriia A" and the television festival "Terytoriia DANS".
The third chapter describes the song creativity of leading Ukrainian singers and bands and defines the style priorities of Ukrainian variety songs of the late 20th – early 21st centuries. It was indicated that among all the variety music trends, pop music underwent the greatest transformation, which over the course of a decade and a half made the transition from the monostyle of Ukrainian variety music in the 1980s to the style pluralism of the 1990s – early 2000s. Rock music of the second half of the 1980s – the first half of the 1990s is represented by blues rock, jazz rock, bard rock, alternative, glam rock, heavy metal, hard rock, punk. In addition to rock music, new branches of popular music appeared in the Ukrainian variety in the 1990s, among which hip-hop and rapcore gained particular popularity. Non-academic electronic music takes an important place in the Ukrainian variety. Among the performers, Katia Chilly turns to electronic sound in her creativity, combining electronic sound based on the ambient style with authentic folklore, creating a Ukrainian species of world music. Dance electronic music is a separate branch belonging to the "another music" direction. In the song variety, it is represented by the Eurodance style (the bands "Aqua Vita", "Turbo-Techno-Sound", "Phantom-2", etc.), which can be considered both as a vocal species of dance electronics and as an electronic version of dance-pop.
Keywords: postmodernism, popular music, vocal variety, show business, song genre, musical style, pop music, rock music, folklore, composer, arrangement, intermediality, musical performance, music festivals, producing and art management.
