If you're interested...here's today's pop music

[andrushkiwt]

In summary, a handful of Norwegian songwriters craft today's biggest and most successful songs (Minaj, Taylor Swift, Beiber, etc..). Here's an in depth article from The Atlantic covering the story. Even if you don't listen to this music, and I'm with you on that one, there is a lot to learn here. At worst, it's an interesting read.

Karl Martin Sandberg, Mikkel Eriksen, Tor Hermansen and Other Songwriters Behind the Hits of Katy Perry and Taylor Swift - The Atlantic

quick excerpt: "Hits are shopped like scripts in Hollywood, first to the A-list, then to the B-list, then to the aspirants. “… Baby One More Time,” the Max Martin song that made Britney Spears’s career, was declined by TLC. Spears’s team later passed on “Umbrella,” which made Rihanna a star. The most-successful songwriters, like Max Martin and Dr. Luke, occasionally employ a potentially more lucrative tactic: They prospect for unknowns whom they can turn into stars. This allows them to exert greater control over the recording of the songs and to take a bigger cut of royalties by securing production rights that a more established performer would not sign away."

 

[gecko zzed]

It shows how things haven't changed all that much since Tin Pan Alley. Take, for example, Stock Aitken and Waterrman in the eighties.

 

[Nola]

i wish the swedish guys would write good songs at least.

 

[andrushkiwt]

There's a reason it all sounds the same...they have a proven, winning formula and its rinse-repeat year after year, substituting artists every once in a while. A few guys, really, control the radio.

 

[miroslav]

It is a business as old as Stephen Foster, but never before has it been run so efficiently or dominated by so few.
........
“It’s not enough to have one hook anymore,” Jay Brown, a co-founder of Jay Z’s Roc Nation label, tells Seabrook. “You’ve got to have a hook in the intro, a hook in the pre, a hook in the chorus, and a hook in the bridge, too.”
........
The production quality is crucial, too. The music is manufactured to fill not headphones and home stereo systems but malls and football stadiums. It is a synthetic, mechanical sound “more captivating than the virtuosity of the musicians.” This is a metaphor, of course—there are no musicians anymore, at least not human ones. Every instrument is automated. Session musicians have gone extinct, and studio mixing boards remain only as retro, semi-ironic furniture.
........
The songs are written industrially as well, often by committee and in bulk. Anything short of a likely hit is discarded. The constant iteration of tracks, all produced by the same formula, can result in accidental imitation—or, depending on the jury, purposeful replication.


Formulaic songwriting has been around forever with Pop music...but no one can deny that's never been worse than it is today.
At least back in the day there was room for other kinds of songwriting and sounds....today...not that much.
It almost all has to fit some cookie-cutter design in order to get any serious play...and it's spoon-fed non-stop, so it tends to almost brainwash the general audiences. They become addicted to these sounds and production styles...and it all feeds on itself...over and over.

 

[EricIndecisive]

I find it hard to hate pop music overall, as there are so many genres, and so many songs. I will admit though, I don't stay current on the top pop songs, but occasionally do hear some that I like. Generally do not like the tweeny pop. But even if it is written by a committee, would that knowledge make you not enjoy a song you would otherwise enjoy? There has been a massive neutron-star powered gravitation to the 4/4 kick drum though, in almost every kind of music. I think this is one of the worst culprits of all sounding the same. But for some reason it moves a song so well, which is why it keeps appearing.

There are a good number of artists writing pop music that are coming out with some sick songs. Bruno Mars IMO is an absolute monster of talent. Macklemore is huge and came up through his own. Mark Ronson (producer) who produced Amy Winehouse and wrote Uptown Funk has a great style and cool throwback vibes in his songs.

I enjoy some of the newer pop-country (except Florida Georgia Line), but the 'all sounding the same' is REALLY apparent. IMO it's the most noticeable and blatant manufacturing of music. I hate the fake authenticity, and some of the hooks / topics are so cringe-worthy that I have to turn it off. At the same time, there are talented musicians (who go unnamed in the studio), and a few really talented players (Brad Paisley). Again, hard to hate it all.

This is what is disgusting...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY8SwIvxj8o

I appreciate a lot of different parts of a song, from the lyrics to the music to the production.. and a lot of times they do a great job on all of them. I will admit that I don't listen to a lot of 'mega pop' though, such as the Bieber, or the new Taylor Swift stuff. I guess that's what this article is about. But in the end, it's hard to bitch about music nowadays. Between services like Pandora / Spotify and all of the millions of videos of people uploading their own original material, and your own access to these things pretty much whenever you want, you don't have to listen to the top 100 or whatever.