Why is it so wrong to like pop music?

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I listen to anything that appeals to me. Last year I listened to quite a lot of Tears For Fears and during the summer some Take That and Mark Owen.

I don't like contemporary popular music. Well, I occasionally like a song, but there is no artist I find interesting.

Laconvivencia, while I have an unhealthy amount of love for pop music (I count 'Sweet Dreams My LA Ex' among my favourite songs), I don't think I agree that liking mainstream music is required to get along in society. That's not too dissimilar from saying that you should at least have a couple of brand clothes in your cupboard, because that's what all the cool kids do. I've always been comfy with my cheap tees, shirts and jeans from brands no one cares about, and I look mad sexy in 'em.

It's not an exclusively autistic thing either, imo. On another forum where I post, I don't enjoy nearly as much freedom going to the music sub-forum and proclaiming my love of silly pop ditties by Wham! and Spandau Ballet, Usher, and Christina Aguilera, because the community there is very indie/metal/underground-minded. On WrongPlanet at least, pop music gets love!

Finally, I wouldn't fret about Cornflake's integration into mainstream pop cultural phenomena in particular, considering he sports a Family Guy avatar. And I know from experience that admitting you like Family Guy can cause some raising of eyebrows, jeering, and doubts on your good taste.

YOU MIGHT AS WELL PRETEND THAT YOU GIVE A RAT'S *** ABOUT VIVALDI!

Well I'm certainly not so it seems unfair that Laconvivencia should on my behalf.
Did I admit that? I thought I'd just used the cartoon, and surely no-one with taste would claim a cartoon as an indicator of taste.
Actually, as it happens - I don't give a rat's anything for much of Vivaldi's output...

What's wrong with not liking pop music?

'Sweet Dreams My LA Ex' is sung by my biggest celebrity crush, Rachel Stevens from S Club 7. You can see that I have her as my avatar. She is the reason why I wanted to integrate into mainstream music.

exactly, that's what I'm wondering.

Don't think I can force myself to "like" something I don't find enjoyable. What a ridiculous idea.

wow, so much to respond to...

Thanks for the second article! As for the first one, my boyfriend told me about it already. It makes a lot of sense. I just can't quite comprehend introspectively why I don't have the same inclination to listen to anything else most of the time, although I appreciate a very wide variety of genres. And speaking of Cracked "articles", I'm pretty sure that most of the facts there are actually quite legitimate (responding to the quotes on the "article").


Yeah, perhaps it's not art at its finest. I think there's still an artistic element to it, though. While I don't have experience in the area of producing music, I would think it does take some artistic skill to be able to produce a tune that is catchy enough to stick in people's heads. I've heard quite a few lousy pop songs that were written very similarly to favoured mainstream pop yet were missing the catchiness element. Similarly, I listen to some pop artists who do not get any airplay as far as I know (I don't listen to the radio) but still put out amazing tracks. While this does come down to taste, I personally find most of Justin Bieber's music to be really monotone and bland.

This is a sensible critique, and it is one put out by many. Even though I understand the reality of pop music, my liking of it is based purely on the feelings that I get from listening to it. More than anything else, it is a respite of the mind. The party, drugs, dancing, and sex themes represent escapism, which is part of the appeal and I'm sure this is why so many other people listen to it. It becomes appealing when you're stuck at university and do nothing but study most of the time. There's also the taboo appeal. The lyrics are the least important part for me, anyway. There's also something really cool about voice modification and autotune, the way it is made to blend into the music. Yes, I know that there may be a lack of talent behind it, but I get pleasure from listening to it, for some reason.
If that's supposed to help me integrate into the mainstream society, then it's not really helpful. Sure, I know some facts about some mainstream artists and can talk about the music, too, but there isn't really much to talk about. NT conversations move fast, so if that's the only thing I can really talk about, it doesn't help much. I still exclude myself from society by being a brutally honest, obnoxiously talkative loudmouth who finds it really hard to listen to what other people have to say and to actually do something that is defined as reciprocal communication.

I see. So I guess that's one of the reasons why people tend to make rash judgements about those who listen to pop. I find this hard to understand since there is so much different music out there. I mean, how isolated from society could you possibly be to NOT come across different genres of music?
You're right. I am a fan of foreign pop as well, specifically Asian pop. I only listened to Chinese/Japanese/Korean pop back when I was in my Asian culture phase. 80s American pop is not energetic enough to me. I went through a phase of that, too, but it started to get too bland after a while. My music preference range is by no means restricted to what I've mentioned in the OP, but the only thing that unites it is that the majority of it is still pop.
Thanks for this song, I actually really liked it. 1000 Miles is also one of my favourites but yet it is still a ballad and I tend to listen to more upbeat stuff instead.
Have you ever heard of Britt Nicole? She's a Christian artist and I really like her song "Headphones". The other stuff by her didn't quite catch on but she's a new discovery and I tend to be slow getting into new artists.
That is a great scene! And I don't know if it's NVLD/Asperger's. I've always thought my preference for pop is the not-so-aspie part of me, since most of my friends are aspies and most of them aren't into pop. And a lot of NTs are into pop. I don't think there are any linkages between music preferences and autism. My theory is as follows. There has been a study done which showed that extroverts tend to have a preference for more vibrant, upbeat music and introverts prefered more downtempo music. Since people on the spectrum are predominantly introverts, it follows that they would more naturally prefer calmer, deeper music. As for me, I test as extroverted but I think I have been forced to have an introverted lifestyle due to being socially shunned and isolated. But there is a part of me that just wants to be around people all the time and have fun and party and do all the other crazy stuff a lot of NTs like to do to have fun. It just never works out in reality because in reality, social situations aren't as predictable as they are in my head. But I like to daydream a lot about these things.

Not much that I've seen. I've just noticed that a lot of people put forth their pop music preferences as "guilty pleasures". I've also been faced with someone objecting to my friend's confession of liking pop music right in front of my face. And these are just two of the few situations that have happened lately in my life. Which really made me raise the question as to why there is this avoidance associated with it. I would think the terms "bad" and "good" are relative to what aspects of music you are looking for... and different people look for different things in music. So the notions of "bad taste" and "good taste" seem completely flawed to me.

To any of you whose posts I haven't responded to, I've read them and simply don't have anything to say to them.

I think the meaning of laconvienca's argument is not so much about pop culture. It's about the cognitive patterns of isolation and the toll that it may take on your identity.

the problem in the UK is that you will NEVER hear anything other than pop unless you actually go out of your way to find other music and many people here dont do that.

every TV channel, every program, every shop, every event and even in my daughters christmas play they were playing it.

I like this (what used to be) pop track the most right now.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_LQPPtP4nI[/youtube]

It's very trippy.

Dammit, Uprising you've got me hunting down other Röyksopp tracks on YouTube. I've been listening to a lot of electronica and ambient music recently.

I like a huge range of music, everything from classical to pop. I don't care about integrating with society or what others think about my taste in music, I just know what I enjoy listening to. A lot of modern pop music is rubbish but that has always been the way. Even in Mozart's time there was a lot of rubbish. The rubbish has faded into obscurity and the classics remain. The same will happen with modern pop music.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PrYKtahrWU[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSaPk9Qd8vo
If you like autotune, you'll LOVE Perfume.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg-2B2VDFlg
Here's another cool Macross opening. Macross is sweet. Mech animes in general had sweet music.

Well the NVLD thing is interesting in that regard, as you know, I guess I'm vaguely introverted, as in I do need alone time, but then again, most people do need alone time. But, out of all my siblings (the rest are girls, though, so it's unfair to compare) I was the least shy. My mom says I've almost never been shy, I'd talk to strangers as a kid, I still do now, I just aren't really shy. I mean I can be shy at times, etc, but in general, I'll go up to people and ask them questions and just not care. It works out weird, as everyone is just like "YOU NEED TO BE MORE CONFIDENT" but the problem is when I'm more confident, I'm just a more confident idiot. I mean it's fun when I'm confident, so it's better to just be that way, but yes, fun fun. I test as introvert like 70% of the time, I'm guessing I'm introverted, but at the same time, I'm not really "shy."
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If I can give an anecdotal story I heard, here. I think it was the lead guitarist from Megadeth, I might be wrong, though, but anyway, metal musician. A radio station was interviewing him, and they were like "So what have you been listening to lately?" So the guitarist asked "Well, do you want me to tell you what you'd like to hear, or what I've actually been listening to?" And of course, the DJ was like "Oh come on man, yeah, tell us what you've been listening to!" And so, guitarist says "Kelly Clarkson's new album." I just thought that was a cool story, a guy at my skating rink told it to me, after having a similar conversation, where I told him I mostly listen to Japanese pop and techno.

My thing with pop music, for the longest time, I was totally utterly obsessed with eurobeat. I'm a bit less now, since I've broadened my horizons a bit more, but eurobeat is just wonderful music. Basically eurobeat is just a concentration of all the things I like in pop music. I think it's pretty much the "poppiest" music around. It's got just, the most energy, I don't know. But for the longest time, yeah, I'd pretty much alienate everyone around me with my eurobeat. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_N1dnezrl8 This is a slower eurobeat song by comparison to a lot of them. It evolved from italodisco, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOn3DQVjSIk that's italo. I initially didn't like italo, but it has it's charm, and it grew on me. Italo is sweet stuff, you can still rock a dancefloor with italodisco even nowadays, it's like the most 80s sounding of all 80s music. I don't know, to me, eurobeat and italo is just like, perfect music. It's weird stuff, it's sung in English, by Italians, for Japanese people. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJYEtNR6y5I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhQjG5M9WrQ That's a faster eurobeat song there. But uh, yeah...you can maybe tell how constantly listening to music like that would alienate you a bit. Part of it is because of that anime Initial D, and the fact I'd drive around listening to this. Best driving music ever! Who cares the lyrics sometimes don't make sense, it's just got so much...energy?

If I can tell another story, one day I was having a really really bad day. I went to park my car, just to do like, a few little adjustments to the timing of the engine, and this old guy comes out and talks to me, and asks if I can give him a ride. I figure "well, he's 60+, and he doesn't seem threatening, eh, screw it, why not?" So he gets in my car, I have eurobeat playing. He's like "turn this up!" and starts fist pumping to my eurobeat music. At first I thought he was Hispanic of some kind, then he starts talking about Italian stuff, and later I connected the dots and figured out he was Italian. It was seriously SO cool, because he was just totally LOVING my eurobeat music, and was so happy to hear someone play it in America. It was surreal and awesome, I found seemingly the one person on the entire earth that "got" me and my music, and it was some random 60+ year old broken English speaking Italian dude. Just a crazy wonderful experience.

Lately for me, though, what's been "doing it" has been 80s Japanese pop. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlOZmqi0bHk This song here, wow, just so much, again, energy. Not just like "raw" energy like eurobeat has, but like, I don't know. I guess that kinda thing would be more the pop rock kinda spectrum. On the American side of things, I really like the group Heart in that regard, they're fantastic, but 80s American "metal" is pretty good stuff, too, but I feel the Japanese made at the very least some VERY good music during that timeframe, and personally I like a lot of what I hear out of Japan from that timeframe. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_1Dws68-PY Another 80s jpop song. But yeah, the Japanese pop rock of back then, wonderful stuff. I do like pop rock a bit in general, but yeah.

One thing I did, I ice skate a lot, and the way my rink works, anyone can play music and you just take turns with who gets to play music, but the vast majority of the time, I can play whatever I want for the whole rink to hear. I got booted a few times, and some negative responses. But, one day one guy REALLY liked what I was playing, it was a mix of eurodance and modern house songs, and he actually paid me $20 to make him a CD. I used to wanna play faster techno and all that, but once I kinda like, slowed things down somewhat, people started really liking what I played. It's a bit of an odd role, as I get to pick my own music from home, and just "try it out" on a crowd of people. There will be times/days I'll just play whatever I feel like, but yeah, it's a bit hard to judge that sorta thing. It's interesting, though, took some trial and error, but yeah.

As far as how that relates to you, house music could be a good thing for you to explore a bit. Makes you seem a bit more cultured I guess. Obviously, you're still going to have preferences and all that, similar to my eurobeat thing, but house music is good, as there's a lot of gems in that sea of music, and it's pretty socially acceptable and a bit "cool." That sort of music, as far as I understand it, is very popular in dance clubs and whatnot. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP4J-HlsNW0 Another house song, with my fave trance/house vocalist Nadia Ali. Nadia Ali is just the best vocalist in this field right now, imo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on8DJBt07eU Another Nadia Ali song. Might be a bit boring for your tastes, though. I like this kinda stuff, though.

I do kinda like that "Headphones" song, I probably should explore the Christian pop realm a bit more, as it's pretty fun music, really. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JseXP8-pLw But that sorta gospel music, some of that stuff is fantastic. I like a lot of, I guess 70s and 80s R&B, so yeah, perfect fit. I do like some modern R&B, too. I feel like Gospel music really has a lot of like, effort put behind it, whereas a lot of other CCM feels kinda halfhearted really. I got a friend who makes a lot of Christian trance, etc, pretty good stuff. http://www.matthewjbentley.com/Christian_Trance.html That's his site.

Oh oh oh, super duper last thing. You like 90s eurodance? 90s eurodance would probably be my second favorite kinda pop music, really. But, uh, for something newer that's still very 90s eurodancey, Basic Element. They're Swedish, and really have stuck to their guns on the eurodance thing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL50Y6YB6Vw, that's a newer song by them, pretty good stuff. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkIy__sBPYc newerish song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZLQkEfU2lw This is an older Basic Element song, back when they had the black singer with the way more powerful voice, overall better, but their new stuff isn't bad by any means.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=683S5DY4Fz8 Here's A Russian pop song, too. Russia does make some good pop music really. It's all got a bit of a melancholy feel, but to be fair Russia does have a bit to be melancholy about.

Sorry, I've gotten to rambling about stuff that's borderline/is a special interest for me, so I'll stop. Anyway, I forgot what my point was, but yeah, buncha links to musical stuff.

My issue with today's pop is actually that it's not pop enough. It lacks melody, the key element of pop, and much of it just sounds like noise.

The stuff that does have melody, often has extremely boring changes. You know, something like 'Someone Like You' by Adele or 'Use Somebody' by Kings of Leon.

There's hardly any songs about love anymore, it's usually about partying, sex or breakups.

I actually dislike today's pop for the SAME reasons I dislike punk, hip hop and metal. It's not melodic/catchy enough, it sounds like noise, and it's too full of negativity. Please bring back new wave, synthpop or at least 60s/70s singer-songwriter pop and epic ballads.

and forcing myself to enjoy popular music of today and things associated with it is supposed to help my identity? I don't identify with that sort of music I prefer music I can relate to and that I enjoy listening to.