Pop Music And The Science As To Why It Sucks

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Now I have a huge dislike over Pop Music. Doesn't mean I hate all of it. I just hate 99% of it. My music palette can be quite diverse, though I do have my genres that I generally stick to. There are various reasons as to why I hate it but digging around I found this article that did sound interesting and did match up to my analysis of Modern Pop Music:

http://www.savingcountrymusic.com/the-science-behind-why-pop-music-sucks

Almost all Pop Music sounds exactly the same due to:
- Timbre (as the article mentions)
- Type (different from content as in love song or uplifting song, etc. This is a bit of a freebie for me.)
- Content (musical features like syncopation, build ups, etc. and Pop hardly introduces things like this and when it does it's usually very fast and dirty and repetitive)
- Era (There seems to be a trend right now [at least in the US] of going back and using elements from music from earlier time periods, specifically the 80s. Bit unoriginal but sometimes it is done right.)
- Language Style and Semantics (simplistic and minimal for pop music)
- Verse Structure (pop music usually follows the same verse-chorus structure and some are practically just the chorus throughout the whole song. This type of thing is not exclusive but still pop music is so repetitive in more ways than one.)
- Musical Key (I think G and C which are practically default are the most used and Major chords really)
- Instruments Used (This I think is also a pass for me at least.)

You only need to look at a few pop songs to get the structure of the entire genre.
Now the difference I see between Pop and other things such as Chillout Electronic is that for Pop it seems to me to be like a rulebook where for Chillout or Jazz (especially Jazz) its more like guidelines you can follow.

Notice in the above "dissection" I mention repetitive a couple times. That's the big issue for me. Pop is just so damn repetitive that it makes me sick. Add to the fact that it's played on multiple radio stations all day and I get annoyed. I swear on a 5 hour road trip I heard Blank Space by Taylor Swift like 10 times. After switching between 3 stations.

From what I know about writing and other relatable fields when you are repetitive you are almost always thought to be a terrible writer. There's a difference between being clever and not knowing what you're doing and people can pick up on it somehow.

Take for instance [CAUTION POP MUSIC AHEAD]:

https://youtu.be/7PCkvCPvDXk?list=PLWRJVI4Oj4IaYIWIpFlnRJ_v_fIaIl6Ey

https://youtu.be/nfWlot6h_JM?list=PLWRJVI4Oj4IaYIWIpFlnRJ_v_fIaIl6Ey

https://youtu.be/QJO3ROT-A4E?list=PLWRJVI4Oj4IaYIWIpFlnRJ_v_fIaIl6Ey

Versus other things that you don't really hear on the radio:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRedqQIEsh4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pxMtDAlvuI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azV0Y7v6wsg

https://youtu.be/8JeOvT1-CMs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ET1MhXiUDVg

There are similarities, but there is a distinct difference between the examples. Honestly the latter examples to me at least feel more real, more powerful, than the everyone is happy BS that is Pop music. This is a thing that isn't really set for everyone but really, there is a difference. Classical has more back story and meaning (and to me more thought) put into it than modern music. Compare Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy to modern artists (and compare not just the generic stuff becuase they're different genres) and older music (heck music that's not even really that old like 30+ years ago or even stuff less than 10 years that no one has heard of) was much more complex than it is now. And that complexity makes it fresh and long lasting.

Note that there aren't really hard and fast rules to this, but regardless there are distinctions. Some Pop Artists I like and they do some of my criticisms. But the vast majority I detest for those same things. So possibly the main difference that I'm aware of is what I covered in the last paragraph.

I'm just presenting some ideas, if you have something to say or debate or whatever I'd like to see it.

Hmm... This is interesting. I usually say that I don't like pop music, but that's not really true.

What I don't like is pop music from the 80s onward. I actually really like pop/rock from the 70s--Steve Miller, The Doobie Brothers, Lynard Skynard, etc.

I also love popular jazz from just about every era, and I adore Louis Jordan's work from the 30s to the 50s. Back then, he was known as "The King of the Jukebox" and extremely popular with both black and white audiences...

It doesn't take a genius or a 'scientific' study to determine why pop music sucks. All you have to do is listen to it. In my opinion ...

... Every composition is derived from at least one previous composition. Sometimes the sampling is obvious, while other times there is a change in the key structure or the time signature.

... The lyrics are repeated repeatedly. Just keep reciting the same phrase over and over, and soon you'll have a hit on your hands.

... There is a very narrow range of musical styles, most of which seem to involve screaming guitar chords, crashing drums, and wailing vocalists drawing out the final notes to the end of their breaths.

... Finally, if you're already a known pop music star, it seems that you could sing a sushi recipe in Japanese and sell a million records, while the relative unknowns struggle with getting gigs at dive bars to perform a 12-song set of original compositions for tips and drinks.

It's all about image and maintaining the musical status quo. Pop music is in a rut, and Rock & Roll has been dead for over 40 years.

The 60's had diverse innovative great pop music and a lot of the 70's pop/soft rock/disco was horrid but when you listen to it you know it is not only from the the 70's but often a specific year in the 70's and as mentioned you can't do that much now. Not only pop music but if you look at a video from 2005 people are dressed pretty much the same as now. The very end of the 70's and 80's were innovative with the synthpop/new wave and other post-punk influences. It was a part of the beginning of the computer era. If you were like me and hated growing up in the 70's these added a level of excitement to becoming a young adult in the 80's. As mentioned the last 15 years has been one pseudo synthpop (dance pop), pseudo post punk(indie rock) song after another. These can never tap the original good feelings the originals had and still have to me because the associations are not there.

Nowdays there's much less demand for experimentation with music. Since MIDI and DAW, I don't recall anything in the same scale being invented. Back then in the 70s when rock bands were doing stuff with REAL plate revreb, REAL analog gear (comps/EQs, etc), Instruments were recorded into tape machines which is something extremely sought after today. No autotune, and there's this neverending debae as to were musicians better back then? Well, they surely had to play more technical stuff. Even Electronica was played live!

And then there's the reason of songs being commercialized with the intent to sell and make money, rather then be any good. They get louder, faster and more the same. LOL it's sad.

I can't really judge subjectively based on my very narrow interest in music, which is incidentally my favorite fine art by far, but my palette sometimes overlaps with pop music.

I definitely agree with some of this. It also seems illogical to say pop music sucks. The "pop" just means popular. Surely people as diverse as George Gershwin, Elvis Presley, and Lady Gaga are all pop.

This sums it up really:


This is not to say it's bad persay, but it does show a large lack of originality/creativity...

This may be a rant but, this just my point-of-view on pop music and why I don't listen to it:

- It sounds cheap and artificial
- Lack of originality, as another poster has said, and some don't even write their own songs
- No creativity to it
- It's too conventional
- Some of the songs are too fast
- Not diverse and repetitive
- This may be irrelevant, "those" bands get "old" easily and another replaces another every year so it seems
- The mainstream media make a big deal out of it like it stops the world or a nation because it's "pop" music
- The lyrics talk about the same thing
- They reference things too much

pop music does not suck I happen to love it, you don't know what your talking about. I bet that you don't listen to pop music.

Let me explane why pop music does not suck, Pop is the most famous music in america. Fifth harmony, megan Trainer, and beyonce and more people are pop stars. there are more pop stars in the world than jazz, classical, and country combined. Pop music makes me feel happy.Fifth harmony has good music it alway make my douts go away.like Iggy Azalea she is creative my favorite song of her is fancy it has good lyrics and a great beat. I have a IPad I have the Musicfy,it lets me download current popuarl songs. New music gives you a new sense of hearing, I like hearing new music.

Popularity does not necessarily mean good. There is humongously popular music that sucks and there is other hugely popular music that is great. Same idea for fringe or alternative music just because of purity of motive does not make the music automatically good.

But I believe this thread is not about all popular music, but recent popular music which is often derivative and to reliant on autotune.

Pop music :: Intro / get to the chorus within 45 seconds / bridge / chorus x100 / create "tension" by taking a soundbite and slowly ramping up the speed til it sounds like its ready to explode / pause for 3 seconds / chorus x100 (but an octave higher)

Its made for idiots. What did you expect?

Jaron Lanier wrote about this in his book "You Are Not A Gadget" by saying if you take a person who's never heard music before and had them listen to music from the 60's, 70's, 80's etc that they'd be able to notice a significant difference in the changes. But then you take a pop song from 2000 and one from 2015 and it's almost next to impossible to notice anything different. So basically....music (atleast on a commercial level) hasn't changed in well over 15 years, which is sad.

This is the generation of dead creativity. Music hasn't changed and each band copies each other, movies are remakes of those made 20 years ago, you have crap like Call of Duty XIV and Assassins Creed 49, and television is filled with "reality" tv.

Our generation sucks.

In a recent study, pop music, on a lyrical stand point, is written at a 3rd grader level.

And.......yeah. I'm going to let your post speak for itself, I think.

For or by? Or both? To say it's for idiots assumes the intention behind everyone's use of that music. For example, I listen to the Kiss albums with Ace Frehley on them. I think their music is dumb and they stand for a lot of things I don't. But I find that its simplicity and stupidity can actually be calming, especially after a hard day of work and/or social obligations. So I listen to it to help clear my mind, and then I can put on something more stimulating. But if I just tell people I enjoy Kiss, they will think I'm like other fans who look up to them, go to all the concerts, etc. My reasons for using the music are different than many of the other fans' reasons.

That said, I think pop music still takes skill. Compare the sense of structure, timing, and variation in a Paul McCartney song with something by Kiss. They are the same general art form, but he is clearly more intelligent with crafting a song. And while pop may tend to be simple, that doesn't mean it's dumb. It takes skill to be concise. I also think some of the same arguments against pop could be, or have been, used against TV, film, video games, and other media which seem to have defenders here. Pop is just one example of the human voice, and can express various things. While much of it on the radio today is about simplistic yearnings to be wealthy, sexually desirable, and prove you're better than others, pop also gives us ingenious little songs like "Metal Detector" by They Might Be Giants or "Night Rally" by Elvis Costello.

I'm talking about pop music now days.