Is Pop Music That Bad? (A Look on The Reality of Today's Music Industry)

The last time I wrote about this topic, I was dissecting the Tool VS Taylor Swift feud over record sales and Billboard 200 chart position, and how both fandoms responded to the occurrences. What differentiate Swift and Tool is Taylor Swift's album Lover is classified as a pop record, while Tool's Fear Inoculum fall between Progressive Rock and Progressive Metal. For the last few years, pop music has been the source of heavy criticism from the music critics over how homogenous the songs under the category.

Music as an art form allows the artists to express themselves with various melodical structures and different musical style. But music as an industry is a place where aside from making the best records possible, the artists often compete with each other for chart positions and fame. And more often than not, this lead to a sentiment that music nowadays is all about money and fame. No wonder why some people considers pop music as the least interesting genre of music.

Then why pop music is now considered that bad? There are few factors that contributed to this claim. The first one is how similar every song with the next when it comes to the song structure, composition, and the chord progression. In this technological era, many artists utilize the drum machine to lay down the foundation of a song, which can be altered numerous times to different taste. But inevitably, some songs might use the same drumbeat, even with different chord progression. Let's take a look at Taylor Swift's Shake It Off from her 2014 release 1989 and Pharrell Williams' Happy recorded in 2013. From the title itself, we can conclude that these two songs are entirely different. One is a single from a full-length album, another is a stand-alone song recorded as a soundtrack for a movie. But beyond those obvious facts, if you listen to both songs, there is a catchy drumbeat found in either song. Coincidence? I guess not. It's unclear which one of them that sampled the drumbeat first, but I can assure that the same drumbeat could be used in the future. This also tied with the second reason, which is the lack of instruments used to make music. Since 2010, there are so many songs that utilize sampled beats and synthesizers. Justin Bieber's entire discography also uses synthesizers as the main instrument. Although by using this method meaning that making music is relatively simpler, it kills the diversity and the complexity of the song itself. This is the primary reason why most people would say that pop music "sounds the same."

The next two reasons might have a connection with the first two mentioned above. Some artists might not have the necessary talent in any aspect, whether is singing or the capability of playing a musical instrument. I did mention about one of the reasons why rapper Lil Wayne is hated because of his inability to play guitar, many pop artists are slammed for their supposed lack of talent. Aside from the computer generated beats, some singers of this genre are backed-up with a device called auto-tune. The main use of this instrument is to digitally alter the human voice to a certain note. People often criticize this method because of its prominent, sometimes over-extended use of it. Some singers that can clearly be heard singing with auto-tune are Britney Spears, Drake, Nicky Minaj and Post Malone. And along with it, artists, producers and songwriters are considered to be lacking the musical creativity. Although not belonging to the pop genre, Canadian Rockers Nickelback are slammed and even hated for their supposed lack of creativity by constantly recycle their songs based on their 2001 hit single How You Remind Me from their offering Silver Side Up. Another annoying aspect of this is the presence of millenial whoop. Milennial whoop is a note sequence that shifts between the fifth note on the scale and the third note repeatedly. Most artists use this as the hook to familiarize the tune to the listeners, but overtime, it can be the most annoying thing in the world.

The lyrical content of most pop songs are often disputed, as well as the credibility of the supposed writers. Let me start this by saying that although some artists write their own music, they are mostly backed with another songwriter. As a result, there is a possibility of having over twenty songwriters on one song. Of course artists like Bieber, Taylor Swift, Maroon 5 vocalist Adam Levine and even someone like Adele and Ariana Grande can write their own songs, but looking at the recent trend, most songs are either written or co-written by Swedish songwriter Max Martin. Imagine that you relied too much on an army of songwriters, most song that they wrote will turn to a generic song mostly talking about love, sex and drugs that might contain the stupidest lyrics with meaningless words. By dissecting Charli XCX's song Boys, the only thing that comes to mind is a girl's obsession to the opposite gender. Beyonce's Girls (Who Run The World) is known for the repetitive nature of the lyrics as evidenced by the lyric part "Who run the world (Girls!)" being muttered multiple times during some parts of the song itself. Soemtimes two songs being written by a certain person might result in both songs sound almost identical, like Kelly Clarkson's Already Gone and Beyonce's Halo, both are written by OneRepublic frontman Ryan Tedder. The most prominent example of meaningless and stupid lyrics is Miley Cyrus' Wrecking Ball. Not only the lyrics that are considered as one of the stupidest ever written, the music video is also questionable. It involves a nude Cyrus licking a sledgehammer and a part when she swings herself still buck naked with a giant wrecking ball, which is where the song got its name.

Although some of them are not that talented, popstars are often considered role models to the masses, but when I said role models, you should consider them as someone who doesn't really care about their image in public area. Despite being a public figure, these men and women often engaged in questionable behaviours. Few of those examples are Justin Bieber when he spat on his fans from a hotel rooftop, Ariana Grande when she was caught licking a sample donut in a bakery, or even feuding with another musician, as evidenced with Taylor Swift VS Katy Perry feud in 2015. Their songs are often played constantly on several radio stations. It's like when you look for certain music on a certain station, but what you get in return is some or a few songs being played over and over again. This is prominent during a single or an album's first few weeks of release. While it can increase the song or album's popularity, it can also mean that people are subjected with that song or album being played repeatedly to the point that it can be disturbing. I can vividly remember when Luis Fonsi's Despacito with Daddy Yankee featuring Justin Bieber was released. It recieved so much radio play that even hearing a single note from that song makes me want to punch myself in the face.

It looks like with all those factors mentioned above, I can personally say that pop music is really on its lowest point. The repetitive nature of the songs, the artist's inability of actually sing or playing instruments (if there is any instruments to play with), the meaningless lyrics and constant overplaying of some artists is enough for me to consider this genre not as an art, but as a ploy for fame and fortune. Now I know the reason why Rock and Metal is the fastest growing genre in the world right now. When it comes to composition and thoughtful lyrics, look no further than Queen's 1976 Freddie Mercury-penned eternal masterpiece Bohemian Rhapsody, which is known for its lyrical mystery or Tool's 2001 Fibonacci-inspired number Lateralus. Aside from the complex composition, bands like to be creative. Like Epica, Within Temptation, Therion and Nightwish did by fusing Heavy Metal with Classical music elements to create probably one of the most epic subgenres of Metal, Symphonic Metal. I'm not saying that metal is necessary above pop in any aspect, but due to recent trends and all that is happening in the music scene, I have to agree that pop music are on its lowest level.