I love music. I love listening to music and occasionally (trying to) make my own music too. I generally enjoy most genres of music, and those that I don’t love I can generally appreciate. There are really only two genres that I don’t like at all, country and pop. Country is just personal preference. Pop… well, that’s a different story.
Many people enjoy pop music and I won’t deny that there are some good qualities to it. It’s easy to listen to, often fun and catchy and most people won’t complain if you turn it on. It’s just the standard choice for music. Pop music used to be good, too, maybe back in the 80s and before that, but since then pop has morphed into something a lot scarier and monstrous. Really, if you ask me, modern pop music is actually quite pathetic.
My first main objection is how it has failed to be an art and has become a business. The “artists” in pop music are often just stage fronts for huge record companies to make millions on. Most “artists” don’t even write their own music or play a very small part in it and just act as voices for the songs that their team of 20 people wrote. On that note, it apparently takes 20 people to figure out that you just need to sing about sex to get people to listen (but we’ll get to that later). In pop music, it’s all about sucking as much money out of the “artists” as they can, often leading to the “artists'” own destruction. The “artists” themselves get all the credit (and the blame) for their music, when really they were just the singer, the front on a much larger business. Look at the duo LMFAO. As I understand their story, they just got into the business because of a relative in the music business. They don’t actually do much except appear in the videos and sing (under heavy auto-tune). They aren’t artists.
The huge industry side of pop music has also completely killed the art side of it. Because pop “artists” are just run by their record companies, the companies look at statistics and trends closely to figure out what kind of music will sell well. That means that there is absolutely no innovation, no attempt to express anything, just making music that can be easily digested by the common people. That makes the pop music genre one that follows instead of leads. Most pop music sounds the same because the industries are scarred to step out of what would sell. They aren’t as willing to try anything new because it could weaken their chances of sales. Just slap new lyrics (about one of two possible themes) and a slightly different melody and BLAM a new hit single. Even the “innovation” in pop music is just borrowing from other genres, such as the current trend in borrowing from EDM. Just look at Daft Punk. I used to like Daft Punk, but as of their newest album, (Random Access Memories,) they’ve become sell outs. Their record company wanted to make more money, so they started producing music that was similar to other pop music and generic. Easy to swallow. Wasn’t “weird” like their previous music. Every single song on that album sounds practically the same. That isn’t an art, it’s a business.
Another thing that kills me about pop music is the meaningless and often harmful lyrics. There is an unwritten rule in pop. You can only sing about two things: love/sex (which pop culture confuses a lot) and partying. They know it will sell, but it’s pathetic. There are so many more positive things that they could sing about, but yet meaningless takes presence. This party lifestyle not only degrades the music, but has a negative effect on those young impressionable teens that listen to it. Don’t the songwriters think about the pre-teens and youth that listen to the music when they write about partying and sex? Take a look at the music video for Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night“. What kind of message does that send to kids. “You can be liked by people, you just have to dress a certain (sexually appealing) way, act a certain way and live a reckless, self-destructive lifestyle.” Oh yeah, that’s all… I especially hate it when I see/hear of grade 4 students listening to pop music. Don’t the parents care what they are listening to?
The final reason that I hate pop music, the biggest bombshell of the whole thing, is pop music’s use of sex to sell. This is the part that bugs me the most. There isn’t a single female pop artist out there who hasn’t been made by the industry some sort of sex idol. Why can’t females just dress normal when they sing? Because it doesn’t sell. It also has the negative effect of convincing female listeners that they to have to dress that way too and it takes advantage of males’ visual-sexual drives. Sex sells, and it sucks because it is turning our whole culture into a culture centred around sex that doesn’t know the difference between love and sex. Yes, it’s not just the music, but the music does play a huge part in the whole grand scheme of pop culture. As seen in LMFAO’s “I’m Sexy and I Know It”, even the males play some part in using sex to sell music. A more recent example of this is Miley Cyrus’ sudden change in public view from teen pop singer to a mature, sexually desirable pop icon. She realized that in keeping the common public view of being still like that little girl she started out as, soon she would not sell music any more, so she decided to sell her body. It started with her “twerking” performance at the VMAs and continued with appearing naked in a recent music video. Her single “Wrecking Ball” is currently #1 in the charts. It wasn’t an innovative song, or even really good, but she was riding a wrecking ball naked in it, so it sold. And that’s why I hate pop music.
Why do people even listen to pop music? That’s a question I ask myself every day. It’s the music for “popular people”. It’s the music that is easy to listen to and doesn’t challenge you at all. It’s easy to find and is shoved in your face on TV and online. It’s the music choice for people who don’t have a music choice. It makes you feel young and free (while dooming you to a destructive lifestyle). And of course, as mentioned above, it sells with sex.
If you currently listen to pop music, I urge you to at least try another genre. If you like the EDM aspects of the music, try EDM. If you like the rock aspects of it, try rock. Even try country if you must. Just, please, think about what you are listening to. Even if you enjoy the music, think about the lyrics. If you still insist on listening to pop, just think about this: pop music is a business about sucking the loose change out of anyone who they can pull in. You are buying into that and are being manipulated the way they want you to be. Make your own choices about what you want to listen to, not what “everyone else” wants you to listen to.
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