Why is modern pop music today so terrible?
MTV awards last week were God awful musically. My teenage daughter even agreed. The focus is increasingly more on spectacle to try to make the various celebrity clones more interesting. I guess that’s the only way to get any attention in the watered down and glutted entertainment world these days. Wait, hey do I ever sound like my parents when I was a kid now...... |
Good stuff, Trans. They just got too good figuring out how to squeeze money out of art and in the process squeezed all the life out of it. Early on, a little "squeez" was okay. Great HST quote, btw. Further commentary on the topic from Joe Jackson’s "Rain", Track 1 - Invisible Man. I do remember, "Yummy, yummy, yummy....". In case you want to get re-adquainted (at the risk of self-inflicted ear-worm for a day or two).... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uo9tMoew6o&list=PLd_TTQtxcJIyThtQshLLhVU4NKas2AmVc&ab_chann... We were making judgements about authenticity even then. Ohio Express didn’t pass the test as I recall, BUT ignoring the dopey lyrics...this bit of fluff IS pretty well constructed. Have to admit I’m a sucker for hooky pop with harmonies. Speaking of which. Here’s another good one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl61-KMQAnE Cowsills, on the strength of this hit, maybe not viewed as authentic either, but probably a mistake. Legit musicians as it turns out. I don’t have kids and don’t do social media (I’m waiting for them to come out with Anti-social media and then maybe I’ll sign up) so clueless about how things work nowadays. Appreciate the information. Wasn’t Def Leppard also one of those contrived bands put together solely for making money? Never cared for them. Supertramp too a millionaire’s investment vehicle based on what I’ve read. Them I liked (and still do). So corporate creation music stars ain’t really new. Just somehow more annoying the older and more crotchety I get. |
But "good stuff" is getting harder to find and I often find it in unexpected places. Plus I have been reaching out beyond my sphere and even back to the early/mid 70s and checking out artists I was aware of but never had any of their recordings, like Shawn Phillips, Jeff Buckley, Duncan Browne. But I sometimes overhear what young teenagers are listening to, and it seems they want melody, but melody without anchor sounds lost. I played some Beatles on a recent road trip and the uninitiated teens in the back dug it, they thought it was new. Go figure. |
I hear the songs of a lot of young singer/songwriters, both in Portland/Vancouver bars & pubs and on TV (my sisters watch all the talent competition shows), and I have noticed a couple of things about most of them. The chord sequences are very minimal, just two chords alternated between, back and forth, over and over and over. Relatively few up-and-coming songwriters seem to be aware of classic Pop song construction, with chord "progressions"---a chord, followed by a second, then either a third, or back to the first with then a third played instead of the second again. And really good songwriters, on the second time through the progression, replace one of the chords in the first transversal with an alternate chord, to keep things fresh, interesting, and seemingly unpredictable. And it appears that the "bridge" or "middle eight" section of a song seems to be either out-of-fashion or unknown to young writers. They would do well to study the songs of at least Lennon & McCartney and Brian Wilson, for a start. Then there are the song "melodies". I put melodies in quotes because the line of notes used to sing the song's lyrics often barely qualify as an actual melody, being instead nothing more than the root note of the chord being played. Many, many songs have no "hook"---the sing-along quality of a true melody. This is nothing new---I immediately heard it in the "songs" on the first Blondie album. It's one thing to be a singer (if you want to call Debbie Harry that) or a musician, quite another to be a songwriter. The songwriting talent in The Beatles unfortunately made writing one's own material almost mandatory for a singer and group/band who desired respect from his/her/their peers. There are many groups/bands with a lot of singing and/or instrument-playing talent, but little songwriting talent (imo ;-). Another element missing in much of the contemporary music that is popular with the masses is harmony singing, which is a shame. Harmony (and it's sophisticated cousin, counterpoint) is wonderful! It is still very much evident in contemporary Bluegrass music, one reason I listen to that genre. It's quality songs is another. |
