Complete Absence of
Effort
Over 20 writers
gather in a room and then make a song that is repetitive and annoying that
literally sound the same with the other songs that play on the radio. This
results into very messy and sometimes repeating choruses that just don't go
away. The producers and writers don't put much effort into it because they know
that people are so easy to fool around. Just think about the 90's where rock
music became the pop music. It is the time where everyone is putting some good albums
like Nirvana's In Utero (which still remains to be one of my favorite albums of
all time). It is so good back then with a lot of effort that is exerted by the
actual artists. It is that time when when pop music is still important. I
totally agree that people's taste evolve but I'm pretty sure it's for the
worse. The biggest example to this is Maroon 5's Girls Like You which is just
plain pointless, lazy and dumb.
Pop Marketing
Marketing is also another problem that
the popular music is facing right now. Pop music seems to follow the trend that
if a song is bouncier and louder the song is also bigger which usually result
into awful and mindless tracks. They tend to stick with what the youth like
nowadays because they aren't doing it for entertainment but because they only
want the money from the dumb teens that actually listen and willingly pay for
Lil Pump's Gucci Gang.
Heart, Emotion and Realism
Taylor Swift or Lorde convey emotional
aspect to their songs with only some synthesizers to start with. The charts are
filled with songs about party, sex, drugs, and girls which is also a very sad
thing since a lot of young people listen to pop music. Modern pop music relies
so much on doing drugs and having sex and going around the world saying that
they are more famous than any other person in the world. The lack of emotion
and depth is killing popular music. I know some people who still does though.
Fleetwood Mac, Madonna, and the Carpenters did it before but I haven't heard pop
songs in the radio that actually covey realism for a while now.
Originality and Diversity
It seems like the modern pop music is
recycling the same topics and production ideas as a result for having the
same producers and writers to write for them. Let's have The Beatles for
example who managed to make an excellent album (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts
Club Band) with so much diversity and experimentation in it. I feel bad and
ashamed with the pop music nowadays because pop defines our generation. We need
more great artists like them in the pop industry to set the standards and
completely change it for the better.
Composition and Writing
The composition of hit songs nowadays
is getting lazier and shallower. Pop artists always hires songwriters like Max
Martin to write a hit which makes the charts sound the same. The 1960s is the
perfect time for pop music. It is the time where the Fab Four is reigning hard,
Led Zepelin is making records, Jimi Hendrix and even The Beach Boys are still
around. Another thing that I also noticed about pop tracks nowadays is
that it is full of explicit words that are starting not to be raw or explicit
anymore as it really should be. I despise artists who are trying too hard to
appeal with other audiences like Halsey and AJR with their forced lyrics that
are completely visible (there are some Halsey songs though that I like). They
try to be more broad and wide and inspirational but what comes out of their mouths
are actually really cringy and cheesy (seriously, I really hate AJR).
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I'm not saying that pop music is bad.
There are still some decent artists out there. There are some potentials that
might change the pop scene like the rising stars Billie Eilish and Dua Lipa.
Now that pop music is dominated by electronic and rap, I don't really consider
pop to be dead because there's still some hope for the future. There are still
some people out there who still make some music that is worth listening to.