Nowadays, it seems like pop-music is engineered towards 13-14 year old girls, not really any other groups of people. The lyrics boast severe-alcoholism, carefree attitudes, and "hooking up" with the opposite sex. But despite this, videos of these artists (i.e. Justin Bieber, Gaga, ...) rack up 10's of millions of views.
The reason for this, in my opinion, is less about the actual music (which quite frankly has to be terrible to every listener), but about marketing. Girls listen to the pop songs about drinking, less because of their love for the song than because the song is about partying and not liking the song jeopardizes their appearances to their friends. If you look closely at many pop songs, they have a very similar appeal.
 |
| The "Loudness of Hit Singles and When They Were Made" graph |
Or you can look at the bad-sounding pop industry in another light, that music is not getting worse and that it's getting louder. On this graph from NPR, it shows how popular songs are getting louder, starting with the 70's and getting up to the late 2000's each hit single louder than the next. Yes you can't prove how good a song is, but you can draw from the loudness, that noise is needed to compensate for the lack of musical content.
well written casey, and i agree.
ReplyDeletegive me the key to the gifts.
Casey, I agree with you that popular music keeps getting worse and worse. It is definitely true that it has become engineered toward teenage girls, who like loud and catchy music because it fits their atmosphere. I think the reason that these popular songs are explicit is because American teens are by nature rebellious, and they like the music that says the opposite of what their parents say is right. However, to me it makes no sense that the "most popular" songs are so annoying to most listeners. My guess is that people who like other music don't listen to these stations and don't get to vote what songs are the best.
ReplyDeleteI can say that I can side with you on this one. When I turn on the radio in the car, I find myself flipping through stations because they have a bunch of cheesy songs playing. I might not be quite as extreme as you because I will keep the station going if Moves Like Jaggar comes on. And your point about loudness really spoke to me as well because I have noticed that a new song will come on and it will be played really loudly, so therefore I will like it and go buy it on iTunes, but then I'll listen to it maybe once or twice before I get sick of it and never listen to it again. In the last year or so, I have grown sick of the music on stations like 103.5 and 96.3, and have started to develop my own actual taste for the music I enjoy listening to, so I have switched over to stations like 107.5 and 92.3, both being more rap and hip hop stations. But unfortunately these stations also have the same common pattern of playing the same 10 songs. So, I have now just recently begun listening to the Spanish radio which is interesting and I can't understand what they're saying but I still enjoy it more than the other stuff.
ReplyDelete