As one of my friends pointed out the other day, I am a big fan of pop. Not soda, though I occasionally enjoy refreshing Diet Coke when it’s available, but pop songs. While anyone who reads the music-focused newsletters here at Dang Dude should have come to this realization already, in some ways, saying it still feels like a confession, a dirty secret. True, it’s perhaps the lamest, least shocking revelation of all time, not worthy of page six on even the slowest news day, but a confession, nonetheless. Why confessions, well because, for some people, pop is the nadir of music, the debasing of art for money and money alone.
That’s bullshit. Pop rules!
Before we get going, before we get to the heart of the argument, an explanation is needed. Mainly around what pop is. Pop music is harder to define than it seems. “Love Me Do” by The Beatles and “Right Round” by Flo Rida ft. Ke$ha sound nothing alike and yet both are without a doubt pop songs. To my mind, unlike other genres, pop is more defined by its intended audience rather than the instrumentation, sound, or aesthetic. Pop is made for a far wider potential audience than say whatever a stoner rock band like Sleep is putting out. That’s how artists like Beyonce and The Monkees can fall under the same banner.
Okay, I guess it wasn’t that hard to define. Took like four sentences to do it. Easy. Back to the argument.
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It's that mass audience part that a lot of people hate. Pop is where the money is in music. The biggest stars, the biggest record labels, and the biggest producers all make pop music. Taylor Swift, Warner Music, and Benny Blanco to name one of each, all deal primarily in pop. Sure, they might have sub-labels that do rap, or write country songs occasionally, or produce a rap record, but they made their cash making pop music. Making money in music generally means that you need to appeal to the most amount of people possible at all times. This isn’t a music-specific thing either. The same principle is true for Marvel movies, and Law & Order shows.
The haters say that this degrades the music. That searching for the widest possible audience at all times means that you’re going to end up making beige sludge completely devoid of the emotion and specificity that makes the best music sing. Bo Burnham did a bit about this in one of his specials. It’s kind of funny, but also smug in that annoying way that Bo Burnham is always smug. He’s not the only one. The old Pitchfork and AV/Club reviewers made their names on similar teardowns.
Now, I’m not a poptimist, to steal an early 2010s blog term. I don’t think that pop music is some under or unappreciated art form, that we need to recalibrate our critical eyes toward pop, and uncover the genius that exists in all pop music. The critics of pop music’s intents are not wholly wrong. There is a lot of bad pop music out there. Derivative, TikTok cash-grabs, and ill-conceived ideas flood the market all the time. Even worse, a lot of it boring. Remember when little faux dubstep breakdowns were everywhere? Awful. There are plenty of people making music not because they have interesting ideas, but because they see it as a way to make some quick cash. Especially those in executive positions at record labels.
But hey, guess what? Every type of music has its share of stinkers. Bands put out bad songs and bad albums all the time. Just because some band is at the forefront of noisegrunge or whatever doesn’t mean that their stuff is good. Derivative, boring, cash-grabs exist in pretty much every genre you can think of. The noisegrunge cash grabs might be ill-conceived, but they’re still cash grabs.
But that’s just why I think the critics are wrong. Why do I think that good pop music is special?
The answer comes from why it’s pop music in the first place, the focus on a mass audience. There is power in the idea that random strangers from all different walks of life know and like the same songs. An example. Picture a packed karaoke night, or a dance bar – let’s say Slippery Slope for all my Chicago readers. The DJ is playing “I Gotta Feeling,” or “Hot in Herre,” or “Toxic.” All songs the producers, writers, and singers conceived with mass audiences in mind. Everyone is dancing their assess off, losing their dang minds singing along, despite being strangers with pretty much everyone there. That’s the power of pop music. It brings disparate people together. Sure, a country show could do that, or a classical concert, minus the dancing presumably, but people chose to go to those concerts specifically. Pop music, simply by being everywhere brings together people with no predisposition.
Take songs like “Mr. Brightside” or “I Love It.” Two of the biggest millennial pop hits of all time. They couldn’t sound different. The lyrics to both songs are pretty nihilistic, but that’s where the similarities end. Yet go to any wedding, dance, sporting event, grocery store, hell step outside for a bit, and you’ll hear at least one of not both of those songs. And people will be stoked to hear them. You’ll probably catch people singing along. That is what is so great about the attempted universality of pop music. When it hits home it freaking hits home.
These are just examples of course. The world of pop music is a vast one, and I’ve mostly provided examples from artists who made it big in the United States. But pop music exists pretty much everywhere a record industry exists. Hell, the Swedes defined US pop music for a decade plus. K-pop groups like BTS are huge both in South Korea and in the US, and Spanish-speaking artists like Bad Bunny have become world superstars. Pop is a global phenomenon.
So, I guess all of this is just to say that you shouldn’t be embarrassed by liking pop music. Most people do. Maybe I just wrote all these words to convince myself that, but, nevertheless. Nothing wrong with putting on something that a billion other people have listened to just because like ten producers and eight songwriters are credited on the track. It might not be as poetic or full of allusion as a Bob Dylan song, but then again Bob Dylan never wrote “WAP.”
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