Pop music...why? just why? Options

[GreatWhiteWhale]

All of it seems so shallow, and industrial...whats the point? The beatles played because they wanted to, not because they loved money, of course, it is a job, and "artists" like Justin Bieber, Lady GaGa, T-pain...is it even music? and god, insane clown posse, they....are terrible. of course it's my opinion, but why cant people listen to actual music, with meaning? not ignorant things like smackin' hoes, getting hammered, and throwing your life away for one night of "excitement"

[X-M-O]

You should title this "Modern Pop Music" rather than "Pop Music" because I feel mostly the same, but pretty much only about the more modern bands/artists (not all of them, but most of them). =P

I'm picky when it comes to music. XD

[Starscream]

Because it's easy to stick to a formula and create carbon copy pop stars than to promote musicians that want to do something different/new/personal. Generic pop, rock, hip-hop, and R&B sell so why change it when it's so lucrative? It's part of the reason I stick to the metal scene so strongly. It's not nearly as lucrative as pop rock, faux punk bands (unless your name is Metallica) and they suffer through it because they love what they do. They are true artisans. They don't do it for a paycheck. Also, the general public are shallow idiots.

[heisenman]

Justin Bieber, Lady GaGa, T-pain

Stop listening to MTV or the radio equivalent of it.

[X-M-O]

I completely agree with heisenman on that.
I looked at MTV once and have never looked at it again, I was surprised at how unrewarding it was to view it...

Maybe I'm just into "Classical" Pop from the 80's, but it surely is better than most of that new "stuff" - for lack of a more appropriate word.

[Sparrowsmith]

Well pop is just popular music, but there is a specific formula that pop music sticks to. The musical theory behind it is so simple that - while I can't explain it with my minimal knowledge of theory - we all pick up on it.
It's that part of your head that predicts the next chord before you hear it.
That picks up the next line before you hear it.

I actually did sing a line of a song, in key, correct lyrics, tempo and all, that I had never heard before.
That is an embarrassment musically. Music should strive to be unique, not predictable.

Not all popular music is pop music though. All pop is popular, but not all popular is pop. Take indie bands like Arctic Monkeys. Even when they arrived on the music scene they were relatively unnoticed. I listed to them for several years before everyone I knew started listening. The best part? There are songs directly aimed at the kind of people who only listen to 'popular' music, and then those very people walk the streets singing the song.
It's quite disturbing how little attention people actually pay to music.

I have a habit with music to only like good music, regardless of who else likes it. Every 'shitty' band I've ever been caught listening to has been a craze within the next six years so that's the problem with pop music.
Some people just listen to what the majority listen to. Sheeple.
Some people only listen to music that no one listens to... Anti-Sheeple.
And some people listen to music they genuinely enjoy, regardless of who else likes it.

You can't destroy modern pop, but you can support independent musicians... Until those musicians become popular and mixed in with the pop crowd.

[X-M-O]

Well said Sparrowsmith! =]

I'm like you in that I only listen to what is my preference, and I basically tell my friends to "get stuffed" if they complain about what I listen to.
I don't share my music with them, I listen to it with headphones - they shouldn't complain about what I listen to, but especially when they can't hear it anyway! XD

[Fearoftheunknown]

Justin Bieber, Lady GaGa, T-pain

Stop listening to MTV or the radio equivalent of it.

Ha ha silly, MTV doesn't play music.


I'm fine with all kinds of music, provided they have some form of quality. Except rap, rap is beyond hope of redemption in my eyes.

[Sparrowsmith]

Justin Bieber, Lady GaGa, T-pain

Stop listening to MTV or the radio equivalent of it.

Ha ha silly, MTV doesn't play music.


I'm fine with all kinds of music, provided they have some form of quality. Except rap, rap is beyond hope of redemption in my eyes.

dunno like, I don't like rap per say, but I've heard rap that I like.
Hell, I even wrote some rap once that my friends liked.

Rap is just saying words fast and with rhythm, which is easy to do. I've rapped books to myself so that I could remember the lines and recite them back to myself later (I'm a huge fan of everything written)
The problem with rap music is that most rappers don't think about what they write.

I for one would like someone to rap Plato's Phaedo. I think it would be absolutely amazing to hear Aristotle rap to his own death...But that's just me.

Pop rap is terrible.
For an example of (I guess you could call it) rapping that is good, check out Rage against the machine.
Or even Eminem (though his latest stuff is pop )
Early rap is alright as well, much like the 80s 'Emo' scene which is much more creative than the modern emo scene.

Most music genres have good bands. I've heard dark baroque brothel esque pantomime music... and it was good. But any other band that tried it would fail.

So yeah. pop is a culmination genre, it changes with fads, so pop is generally shit unless you're a sheep. But rap has a couple of good artists (but there's a hundred thousand talentless ones standing in the way).
This rant is done in the name of ever RRRian who ever told me off for saying rap was bad, I went out had a listen and changed my mind

However, agreed, MTV don't play music. They play adverts and occasionally brain cancer.

[Adriantepes]

I'm going to have to disagree. While most pop is fairly predictable, a lot of it is still good. Like the song airplanes? That was pretty good. Lady Gaga is actually pretty amazing. Have you seen her live? Her voice is stunning. I can't take autotuney's though, So I can't even really appreciate the great production of artists like Kesha. And some pop artists face the worst thing. Getting played on. Like Nicki Minaj. She honestly just sucks. Low production value, horrible voice and songwriting. Yeah.

But there ARE alot of good pop songs and artists.

Now I listen to Indie and midwest emo, and honestly, alot of it is AMAZING. And you gotta realize the real problem modern music is facing.

Trend bands.

Pop music will always have its ups and downs. But trend bands are always horrible, always. It's something about hipsters and scene kids that makes them shit out horrible music.

You got your fucking indie fag hipsters shitting that horrible vampire weekend shit out. Death cab horrible piano fag shit. All kinds of horrible fag shit honestly.

And then you got your scene kids who whore out shitty deathcore bands and post hardcore acts that aren't even post hardcore. It's fucking horrible....

[JohnCoyne]

I hate Lady Gaga. Why? Because she's amazing. Her radio stuff is terrible, over-processed pop crap. But watch this video of just her and a piano:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3R3KqrJAI4

She's phenomenal without the big "pop" aspects. She's a sell-out. And I'm not just saying that in the hipster ("WHY DOES POMPLAMOOSE DO COMMERCIALS?!?"" kind of way where they want the artist to themselves, but she deliberately changes her style to attract the public. That's a sell-out.

I think that everyone has the ability to listen to genuine music and to appreciate it. They're just not looking hard enough. With the surge of The Internet, people should have easy access to little bands like this: http://youtu.be/7qMXBUjm8tM. Listen to 2:50 'til the end if nothing else.

And not all rap is bad. Check this out: http://youtu.be/Tl4wLgw-6Zk (sorry for the Vevo video, it was the best I could find...). The Avett Brothers are amazing, they do some fast rap-like passes like this.

Yesterday I found some popular music that I actually like. Cee-Lo Green, he can actually sing live. WOW. A POPULAR MUSICIAN THAT CAN MAKE MUSIC!!! WOWZA! SINCE WHEN IS THIS POSSIBLE?!? (Video is NSFW, contains profanity. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZyPld7tq_4)

So, conclusion, most pop sucks, most rap sucks, but there are always exceptions.

[Klokinator]

I'm going to have to disagree. While most pop is fairly predictable, a lot of it is still good. Like the song airplanes? That was pretty good. Lady Gaga is actually pretty amazing. Have you seen her live? Her voice is stunning. I can't take autotuney's though, So I can't even really appreciate the great production of artists like Kesha. And some pop artists face the worst thing. Getting played on. Like Nicki Minaj. She honestly just sucks. Low production value, horrible voice and songwriting. Yeah.

But there ARE alot of good pop songs and artists.

Now I listen to Indie and midwest emo, and honestly, alot of it is AMAZING. And you gotta realize the real problem modern music is facing.

Trend bands.

Pop music will always have its ups and downs. But trend bands are always horrible, always. It's something about hipsters and scene kids that makes them shit out horrible music.

You got your fucking indie fag hipsters shitting that horrible vampire weekend shit out. Death cab horrible piano fag shit. All kinds of horrible fag shit honestly.

And then you got your scene kids who whore out shitty deathcore bands and post hardcore acts that aren't even post hardcore. It's fucking horrible....

Lol this is pretty much how I personally feel.

I like pop, but that doesn't make me a sheep. Taylor Swift has a good voice... after it's been heavily edited in a studio. I absolutely HATE listening to her songs live, like at the CMA's and etc, because her live voice is NOT a voice to be proud of. Sure, she's got rhythm, sure she's got rhyme, but that voice is just terrible. I feel that maybe she was grabbed up by an executive that said "Hey this girl is pretty, with a few studio edits, her voice could sound okay!" and that's why she's the star she is today. I also don't like her as a person much. Sure she seems nice enough, but she must be a bitch to date. Either you date her and marry her for life or OH NO you dump her and she writes a shitty song about you. I just can't respect her.

Lady Gaga is a good singer, because I like pop music because it's fun to dance to. That's the one thing people haven't mentioned even once in this thread. The dancability factor. (My own word lol) Michael Jackson spawned that dance factor and he created POPular music, which people try to duplicate. Before you go bashing artists ask yourself who their idol was as a child. MJ. And if you like MJ but don't like some of these new artists "because it's the same stuff" then let me just call the waaaaaaambulance because that's the way it is.

Elvis spawned "rock" if you wanna call it that.
Michael Jackson spawned pop.
The beatles spawned... well I don't know what because I hate the sound of the beatles. *Shot*
Metallica *sort of* spawned metal.

There's an article on cracked.com about how all the pop songs you hear nowadays all seem to sound the same because they ARE the same, written by the same guy. I'll have to look it up.
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1307133/pg1
http://sharemyplaylists.com/songs-written-by-max-martin/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Martin

So YEAH they sound the same, they're written by the same guy.

[squirrelmg]

Dancing is an important factor.

I prefer music that is either soothing (like classical or new age) or somewhat meaningful (like Coldplay or U2 or Nirvana, or basically any band that doesn't sing about going to the club or getting sex haha).
Pop music is overplayed. It's all I hear people listen to mostly, but as a hip-hop dancer, it is the best music to dance to, along with some techno songs by groups like Daft Punk.

Of course, I can and do dance to songs in other styles, but I like the quick movements that are really only appropriate in fast, pulsating pop music.

As for rap, which has been brought up, you can't generalize it. "The Revolution will not be televised" is considered rap. And Run DMC is considered a rap band. Heck, even Sir Mixalot with his big butts was rap. But in the 2000s, rap became a bit slower and more about saying cuss words and being from the hood, and all previous rap was renamed to hip-hop.

I like most music. To me, it all has a place somewhere. The only music I dislike is the ridiculously extreme hardcore heavy metal by bands like Disturbed, in which subject matter is about killing yourself and child abuse and rape. Those bands generally play extremely loud distortion and growl and shout. It's the only kind of music I cannot stand.