Someone who actually understands music theory helps me take down antipoptimists in a way I never could on my own: by deconstructing actual pop music by Taylor Swift and Charli XCX.
So, turns out I’m a huge fan of detailed analysis and dissection of things I love.
I’m going to explain this badly but apologies in advance but I recall seeing a video last year that was saying the genius of Von Dutch is that each vocal phrase starts on the 2 with the exception of one which starts on the 1. And that phrase just happens to be the “I’m your number 1” refrain.
I actually gave it another listen and realized that there are more measures that start with beat one, most notably - “LIFE von Dutch…” on the word “life” 👽
What an absolutely mind blowing insight! As a first time listener I must admit I didn’t pay attention to that, but it is obvious now I think of it 👽 thank you tons!
People can hate Sabrina Carpenter, for example, for subjective reasons of taste. Sure, she has a kids TV pedigree and a lot of corporate marketing support behind her. But her lyrics are hilarious and filthy. That isn’t mainstream by many standards. That’s subversive.
Taylor Swift writing about relationships and breaks ups isn’t revolutionary but the way she writes about them is considerably more novel and “intellectual” than many or most songwriters in the same vein. Again, people can like/dislike anything for subjective reasons, but she’s a talented songwriter and not too shabby on guitar or piano either.
Its ironic how many people will accuse such musicians of being tryhards when they try so hard to hate hate hate hate hate.
I’m convinced that disliking The Beatles is on a Venn Diagram with homophobia with the same people who love The Rolling Stones but mockingly perpetuate rumors about Mick Jagger and David Bowie hooking up.
We waste our time expecting any coherence or consistency from such people but can direct energy toward more receptive ears and minds.
I’ve also considered the Venn diagram of Taylor Swift haters and people who love things like emo and Death Cab for Cutie. I suspect the overlap is misogyny. The double standard is galling.
I look forward to a discussion of why rap isn’t music. 😝
Incidentally, I recommend people read “A Change is Gonna Come” by Craig Werner for some insights into how much counter culture subversion is coded into Black pop music.
There’s two books mentioned - the one by Dan Levitin is mostly about the neuroscience of why we like music. The one I was referring to is “Music: A Subversive History” by Ted Gioia 🙃
ok rap legend jesse dangerously i can pick up what you're putting down but i'd like to see you shred like THIS on a double flying V electric gee-tar *meedlee meedlee meedlee*
ok sincerely I didn't expect to be so gauche as to promote myself at a cool music writer but SINCE YOU MENTION MEEDLEE MEEDLEE RAPs … at 3 minutes into this video i think i… actually did???
I really enjoyed this piece and could read endless articles on this subject. I agree that “Shake It Off” is a great pop song, but I couldn’t identify anything that sparked joy on the last Taylor Swift last album. Charli is consistently exceptional though.
One article I often return to is from The Quietus. It’s not anti-pop, but reflects on how poptimism has gradually become as blinkered as rockism:
“Poptimism was a way of interrogating the way people thought about music, about asking them to challenge their own preconceptions and their own confirmation biases about what did and did not constitute good music.
Now it is its own set of preconceptions and confirmation biases. And that’s no use to poptimism, to good critical thinking, or to music itself.”
I love how what you’re describing further confirms Ted Gioia’s point from the book I’m mentioning in this essay - every paradigm, however fresh, ultimately attracts so many people and grows so many rules around itself that it becomes the very thing it swore to destroy.
I’ll be happy to check out the Quietus piece, thanks for sharing it!
I wonder what will destroy poptimism? Current trends in music criticism seem to be trending towards more curation and celebration - which I think are very much a continuum of poptimism. I think there’s a role for that, but I am curious as to what happens next.
This is the truly interesting question and I guess we’ll have to wait and see!
The fact that mainstream media are conforming with the reign of pop is from my perspective further proof that we have reached the stage of pop being the establishment standard.
It’s going to be really exciting to see where this whole thing will go with the newest technological advances in the picture as well!
An incredibly well written and thoughtful piece Riri ! You definitely explained a lot of the appeal of pop music today and how it hooks a listener. I work with a lot of people who are casual music fans, and this is the kind of thing they generally like. Do I like it myself? Not really, BUT I understand the appeal from a songwriting and production standpoint. Slick production, catchy melodies and insubstantial lyrics. Plus the idea of peer pressure..."well its on the radio all the time, and WE like it, so it must be good" mentality. I once did an interview with Henry Rollins, and we discussed what was "good music", something we had talked about informally as friends before. Bottom line he said was " If YOU like it, then it's good music". Is "pop music" good? To a fan of it, it is good.
RI was very generous in her response to you. I'm not going to be. This is an unbelievably condescending and reductive take. It makes me question whether you even read this piece.
The piece asked anti-poptimists for their opinion and I gave it. I’m not sure what you found reductive? The reality is that ticket sales for Charlie XCX and Beyoncé were far lighter than expected. Further, streaming data shows that very few people are actually listening to “Pop” music, which is supposed to be y’know, popular. My point - which I maintain, is that poptimism is an exhausted force - precisely because people can only listen to so many artificial hooks before they prefer real music made on real instruments played by real people. Or to be actually reductive - they’re streaming the old stuff with meaning because the new stuff has no juice.
"Pop music remains inferior — at its core — to music made on real instruments, made by real people, who are thinking about music first and commerciality second."
"They’re streaming the old stuff with meaning because the new stuff has no juice."
Since blocking you didn't work (thanks, Substack!) I'll go ahead and lay it out plainly. I absolutely asked antipoptimists for their take on this piece. I always invite dissenting opinion or controversial opinions; as long as it's provided in good faith and in the spirit of inviting additional discussion from others in the community, everyone is welcome.
What you did was come here to *end* the conversation, not start it. You presented your "opinion" as immutable fact. Pop music is inferior. People crave old music and new music is bad. Nothing further to discuss because you have the facts and that data to back it up. (Uncited, by the way, and refutable by so many other means, but that's frankly beside the point.)
New Bands for Old Heads, which you neither follow nor subscribe to, is a community for people who love music, and who are at least open to the possibility that new music might actually be worthwhile. You are the human embodiment of a gatekeeper, and gatekeepers are not welcome here.
That does make a lot of sense seeing as the wheel keeps turning - commercial pop becomes so omnipresent that it’s getting “hard to breathe”, it’s a bubble that will eventually burst to give way to something new that will then become equally omnipresent and equally suffocating.
From the pure music taste perspective, I’m with you on the old bands train, I love music that’s made with real instruments and try to apply this approach as much as I can to the music I write myself.
I think electronic music as such has a lot of merit to it, just to be clear, since there’s a difference between making electronic music for commercial gain and artistic experimentation.
That being said, commercial music is commercially successful for a reason - it would be arguably hard to sell it if it weren’t modeled after the patterns that hook the human brain.
Then again, not everyone listens to the music the same way - for some people (but only some) these obvious hooks are a turn-off and that’s fine as well!
“Do you actually hate the music THAT MUCH, or do you maybe just hate the fans?” -> I would take this a step further and say a lot of criticism of Pop is internalized (sometimes very explicit) misogyny and homophobia! ie: people think if young women and queer people like something, it must be frivolous.
YES DUDE YES. THIS IS WHAT I WOULD HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT IF I HAD BEEN THE ONE WRITING THIS PIECE BUT I KNEW I WOULD HAVE BEEN ABSOLUTELY EVISCERATED. SORRY I'M YELLING I'M JUST SO PASSIONATE ABOUT IT.
For me personally, I do sometimes get frustrated at the kind of fandom that thinks of its object as miles above everything else in the world. Human culture is so, so versatile and full of unbelievably beautiful phenomena that never in my life will I believe anyone can objectively be the ultimate musician or the ultimate artist or the ultimate book author IN THE WORLD.
I never before heard about Poptimism, interesting to get to know about that. I think that many people underestimate the variety of pop music. You gave an perfect example: casual or non-pop listeners would say Shake It Off is like the most Pop song ever. If you would play them van Dutch (or really anything by Charli) they would not think it’s the same. But that’s the beauty of the genre, that the variety is so big. But as you said, the more popular something becomes the more it divides, what once started as a rebellion against the mainstream becomes fast the mainstream itself. We saw this a lot of times, take Rock music. Once rebellious against the norms, it became commercialized itself, leading to new sub-genres being created to push against that trend. Nowadays I think we can see that with Hyperpop, which core idea is to make everything different than the Mainstream Pop scene. But with rising success, it also is slowly getting itself into the position of adapting to it. At the end of the day, we should just enjoy music, don’t matter what genre. All music is great 😊
Yes, this is the point to the t! I cannot recommend “Music. A Subversive History” by Ted Gioia enough in this respect! It describes in great detail this exact process throughout the history of human civilization(s) 🖤
I'm in a Pride band that plays marching band arrangements of a lot of pop songs and that adds an even stranger layer on top of what goes into making a good pop song. Which instrument plays the vocal line? How do you end a song that's faded out on the recording? But most importantly, which ones reliably get the crowd dancing? I'll tell you in my experience that a drop out for a drum break, a sudden unison, or a fat counter melody in the middle instruments seems to get them every time.
This reminded me of the amazing podcast Switched On Pop- where they do exactly this: deep dive into pop songs, it’s so much fun! And this was a great read!!!💗
Ohhh thank you so much! I love nerding out about music and I’m so happy Gabbie gave me this amazing platform to do so this week 🖤 I’m super happy you enjoyed the essay!
One of the arguments I often see aimed at pop is that from a theoretical perspective, it’s not complex. “If a song is much easier to understand theoretically, then they must have put less thought into it than more complicated genres, and therefore deserves less thought or consideration”, or some form of this is often said.
Von Dutch is the perfect example of how simple music theory can be made to work hard- the entire melody of the whole song only uses 4 notes. It literally can’t get simpler than that, but of course you don’t notice how simple it is because she makes interesting choices with rhythms and production, creates a captivating piece of art within those restrictions.
4 notes, 3 chords- but what a banger. I don’t think there’s a better example of the power of simplicity
Wow, what an analysis. I almost went into a whole monologue about the artists mentioned in the article, but that'd be better kept for another article.😂
Love some, dislike some, I think it's good to give them a fair shot and not just be a hater as a hobby.
“Pick apart a pop song” sings nice, no doubt! I want to hear that song now, and you can also sort of have it as a double entendre lyrics - “pick a part, a pop song” vs “pick apart a pop song” 👽
Great article. Reminds me of some musical miscommunication I had upon moving to a new country. I had my own idea of avant garde: indie hipsterdom of course, and my friend did not understand the pitchy-ness coming from a background where jazz and soul made you highbrow. It wasn't until we saw a chart listing what IQs where associated with what music (in America) where we began to sniff out arbitrary cultural biases. Also it helped understanding how jazz was so much more than "weather channel" music in Poland but was pretty much the center of a punk movement to defeat authoritarianism as you can learn about here in this one stop shop for everything you've ever wanted to know about Polish jazz (because you never know when you will need a saxophone to defeat authoritarianism): https://culture.pl/en/article/a-foreigners-guide-to-polish-jazz
Fascinating discussion topic really. A big part is how you define pop music whether it’s meant as “popular music” or as genre pop.
A lot comes down to pitch fetishism and the fact that western society in particular values melody over all other musical aspects. I think it is fair to say we are getting less interesting and diverse melodies as time goes on.
Rick Beato and Ted Gioia demonstrate this fairly regularly. The same can be said for harmony where we are seeing significantly less ley changes or diversity.
On the other hand pop production techniques and rhythmic implementations are getting ever more exciting and creative.
I think this can create an interesting cultural divide where the old school pitch fetishists see new pop as boring, derivative, and losing complexity. While the more rhythmically and timbre oriented brains are enjoying it as much as ever.
Finally, to take the Beatles as an example. They used popular music forms in the beginning and as their audience support grew they became increasingly experimental and did a huge amount to progress popular music generally, from a kids consumable to genuine art.
Pop stars like Taylor Swift have an opportunity to do the same and consistently choose safety and profit maximisation over more artistic or progressive options leading to a general decline in music culture.
All music had value. All music is “good”. We do have to consider the almost endless market power certain pop stars have and whether they have any responsibility to progress culture or to simply profit from it.
this is the nuanced version of a much more abrasive comment I got basically saying "all pop is just a genre construct created by big corporations." i appreciate your take even if I don't fully agree.
I may have been a bit misunderstood there because that definitely wasn’t the point I was trying to make..
More that the music is constantly being judged by different metrics and being codified into genre by others that want to replicate success. I don’t think either are particularly helpful to culture. With pop being whatever is popular at the time.
I’m fiercely anti-genre (due to its roots social and racial segregation) in fact so a lot of my discussion is based on the assumed belief that “pop” or “jazz” even exists 😂 (just a little joke)
I do think pop stars have a strange responsibility to help young people explore new sounds and encourage their intellect rather than protecting a brand though.
I'm actually pretty anti - genre myself! it's something I'm always turning over in my mind but I haven't fully formed my thoughts around it except that I get very annoyed at people who use genres to gatekeep ("how dare you call that shoegaze?"). but I'll keep thinking because it's a very interesting topic
Yeah absolutely! It can be a really loaded and problematic area. It’s easy to see why so many people butt heads. It gets more insidious when you ask questions like why Beyoncé has been called an RnB performer while a white person doing the same thing is pop?
Also I’ll definitely look myself because I’ve likely exhausted your tolerance for one day 😅 but I’d be deeply interested if you have any pieces or are aware of any on dissecting the separation of genre from corporate entity.
Just given the fact that the terms rock, jazz, country-western, RnB, Pop, amongst others have often been propagated by marketing teams and not the musicians themselves to appeal to youth culture. It’d be a fascinating area to explore..
The Beatles are such an excellent example of building off of a dedicated fanbase and exploring different musical frontiers 🖤
And I also really find the point about the divide between pitch and timbre / rhythm enthusiasts interesting - I’ve never thought about it in this particular way. I think I can appreciate both paradigms but as a singer I do enjoy more adventurous melodies so that’s what I write! 👽
Yeah it blew my mind when I was called a fetishist by a teacher. But when you look at the fact that only melodies and lyrics can really be copywritten it demonstrates the way rhythm etc. have been sidelined. Even western art music is all about the development of melodic themes.
It gets more insidious when you realise it was done deliberately to limit agency for cultures that use other elements more readily like African, or South American music. We all have the Bo Diddley beat to use as we please because he was black.
This is such an unexpected insight! Now that you’re putting it this way it does seem pretty obvious. To think that I’ve never given this any thought before!
Being able to only copyright lyrics and melodies wasn't an insidious decision, if anything it was a smart one. Imagine what genres like blues or dance music would be today if beats or chord progressions were able to be copywritten. There would be hardly any songs able to legally be written.
So, turns out I’m a huge fan of detailed analysis and dissection of things I love.
I’m going to explain this badly but apologies in advance but I recall seeing a video last year that was saying the genius of Von Dutch is that each vocal phrase starts on the 2 with the exception of one which starts on the 1. And that phrase just happens to be the “I’m your number 1” refrain.
god that song was my instant favorite on brat and I'm so glad smart people can help me explain why
I actually gave it another listen and realized that there are more measures that start with beat one, most notably - “LIFE von Dutch…” on the word “life” 👽
What an absolutely mind blowing insight! As a first time listener I must admit I didn’t pay attention to that, but it is obvious now I think of it 👽 thank you tons!
Love this.
People can hate Sabrina Carpenter, for example, for subjective reasons of taste. Sure, she has a kids TV pedigree and a lot of corporate marketing support behind her. But her lyrics are hilarious and filthy. That isn’t mainstream by many standards. That’s subversive.
Taylor Swift writing about relationships and breaks ups isn’t revolutionary but the way she writes about them is considerably more novel and “intellectual” than many or most songwriters in the same vein. Again, people can like/dislike anything for subjective reasons, but she’s a talented songwriter and not too shabby on guitar or piano either.
Its ironic how many people will accuse such musicians of being tryhards when they try so hard to hate hate hate hate hate.
I’m convinced that disliking The Beatles is on a Venn Diagram with homophobia with the same people who love The Rolling Stones but mockingly perpetuate rumors about Mick Jagger and David Bowie hooking up.
We waste our time expecting any coherence or consistency from such people but can direct energy toward more receptive ears and minds.
I’ve also considered the Venn diagram of Taylor Swift haters and people who love things like emo and Death Cab for Cutie. I suspect the overlap is misogyny. The double standard is galling.
I look forward to a discussion of why rap isn’t music. 😝
Restacking the fucking shit out of this.
Incidentally, I recommend people read “A Change is Gonna Come” by Craig Werner for some insights into how much counter culture subversion is coded into Black pop music.
Thanks for the recommendation! Im definitely looking it up 👽
It’s been a while but I’m pretty sure this same theme is approached in the Ted Gioia book I mentioned in the article.
I’ve heard of that book before but have bumped it up in my queue.
Looks like the author is Daniel J. Levitin though?
There’s two books mentioned - the one by Dan Levitin is mostly about the neuroscience of why we like music. The one I was referring to is “Music: A Subversive History” by Ted Gioia 🙃
Cool! Thanks for the clarification. I didn’t know the Gioia book and it looks like he has several of interest.
Definitely :) hope you like them!
rap is better than music.
OH SO YOU'RE SAYING RAP ISN'T MUSIC (jk jk)
😏 music WISHES it could include the majesterial mysteries of hip-hop and rap. rap is like ok music i see you, how about THIS though *slays*
ok rap legend jesse dangerously i can pick up what you're putting down but i'd like to see you shred like THIS on a double flying V electric gee-tar *meedlee meedlee meedlee*
Gee-tar! I’m stealing this!
ok sincerely I didn't expect to be so gauche as to promote myself at a cool music writer but SINCE YOU MENTION MEEDLEE MEEDLEE RAPs … at 3 minutes into this video i think i… actually did???
https://youtu.be/1db1YItSnwA?si=JVnB0V8HyaPwW8od
Hahah I’m really enjoying the cheek of this thread so far 👽
I really enjoyed this piece and could read endless articles on this subject. I agree that “Shake It Off” is a great pop song, but I couldn’t identify anything that sparked joy on the last Taylor Swift last album. Charli is consistently exceptional though.
One article I often return to is from The Quietus. It’s not anti-pop, but reflects on how poptimism has gradually become as blinkered as rockism:
“Poptimism was a way of interrogating the way people thought about music, about asking them to challenge their own preconceptions and their own confirmation biases about what did and did not constitute good music.
Now it is its own set of preconceptions and confirmation biases. And that’s no use to poptimism, to good critical thinking, or to music itself.”
https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/black-sky-thinking/rockism-poptimism/
Thank you a lot, David!
I love how what you’re describing further confirms Ted Gioia’s point from the book I’m mentioning in this essay - every paradigm, however fresh, ultimately attracts so many people and grows so many rules around itself that it becomes the very thing it swore to destroy.
I’ll be happy to check out the Quietus piece, thanks for sharing it!
I wonder what will destroy poptimism? Current trends in music criticism seem to be trending towards more curation and celebration - which I think are very much a continuum of poptimism. I think there’s a role for that, but I am curious as to what happens next.
This is the truly interesting question and I guess we’ll have to wait and see!
The fact that mainstream media are conforming with the reign of pop is from my perspective further proof that we have reached the stage of pop being the establishment standard.
It’s going to be really exciting to see where this whole thing will go with the newest technological advances in the picture as well!
Yes - it’s going to be fascinating and it certainly gives us good subject matter to write about!
I’m excited for this, too! 👽
An incredibly well written and thoughtful piece Riri ! You definitely explained a lot of the appeal of pop music today and how it hooks a listener. I work with a lot of people who are casual music fans, and this is the kind of thing they generally like. Do I like it myself? Not really, BUT I understand the appeal from a songwriting and production standpoint. Slick production, catchy melodies and insubstantial lyrics. Plus the idea of peer pressure..."well its on the radio all the time, and WE like it, so it must be good" mentality. I once did an interview with Henry Rollins, and we discussed what was "good music", something we had talked about informally as friends before. Bottom line he said was " If YOU like it, then it's good music". Is "pop music" good? To a fan of it, it is good.
Thank you so much! We really align on our perception of modern Top 40 pop-music, this is exactly the way I see it!
Your last sentence is really the gist of it all 🎶👽
RI was very generous in her response to you. I'm not going to be. This is an unbelievably condescending and reductive take. It makes me question whether you even read this piece.
The piece asked anti-poptimists for their opinion and I gave it. I’m not sure what you found reductive? The reality is that ticket sales for Charlie XCX and Beyoncé were far lighter than expected. Further, streaming data shows that very few people are actually listening to “Pop” music, which is supposed to be y’know, popular. My point - which I maintain, is that poptimism is an exhausted force - precisely because people can only listen to so many artificial hooks before they prefer real music made on real instruments played by real people. Or to be actually reductive - they’re streaming the old stuff with meaning because the new stuff has no juice.
"Pop music remains inferior — at its core — to music made on real instruments, made by real people, who are thinking about music first and commerciality second."
"They’re streaming the old stuff with meaning because the new stuff has no juice."
Since blocking you didn't work (thanks, Substack!) I'll go ahead and lay it out plainly. I absolutely asked antipoptimists for their take on this piece. I always invite dissenting opinion or controversial opinions; as long as it's provided in good faith and in the spirit of inviting additional discussion from others in the community, everyone is welcome.
What you did was come here to *end* the conversation, not start it. You presented your "opinion" as immutable fact. Pop music is inferior. People crave old music and new music is bad. Nothing further to discuss because you have the facts and that data to back it up. (Uncited, by the way, and refutable by so many other means, but that's frankly beside the point.)
New Bands for Old Heads, which you neither follow nor subscribe to, is a community for people who love music, and who are at least open to the possibility that new music might actually be worthwhile. You are the human embodiment of a gatekeeper, and gatekeepers are not welcome here.
That does make a lot of sense seeing as the wheel keeps turning - commercial pop becomes so omnipresent that it’s getting “hard to breathe”, it’s a bubble that will eventually burst to give way to something new that will then become equally omnipresent and equally suffocating.
From the pure music taste perspective, I’m with you on the old bands train, I love music that’s made with real instruments and try to apply this approach as much as I can to the music I write myself.
I think electronic music as such has a lot of merit to it, just to be clear, since there’s a difference between making electronic music for commercial gain and artistic experimentation.
That being said, commercial music is commercially successful for a reason - it would be arguably hard to sell it if it weren’t modeled after the patterns that hook the human brain.
Then again, not everyone listens to the music the same way - for some people (but only some) these obvious hooks are a turn-off and that’s fine as well!
Great piece!
“Do you actually hate the music THAT MUCH, or do you maybe just hate the fans?” -> I would take this a step further and say a lot of criticism of Pop is internalized (sometimes very explicit) misogyny and homophobia! ie: people think if young women and queer people like something, it must be frivolous.
YES DUDE YES. THIS IS WHAT I WOULD HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT IF I HAD BEEN THE ONE WRITING THIS PIECE BUT I KNEW I WOULD HAVE BEEN ABSOLUTELY EVISCERATED. SORRY I'M YELLING I'M JUST SO PASSIONATE ABOUT IT.
I’d read that too!!
I think this is a very valid point!
For me personally, I do sometimes get frustrated at the kind of fandom that thinks of its object as miles above everything else in the world. Human culture is so, so versatile and full of unbelievably beautiful phenomena that never in my life will I believe anyone can objectively be the ultimate musician or the ultimate artist or the ultimate book author IN THE WORLD.
There’s literally no argument to be had here.
Amazing article!
I never before heard about Poptimism, interesting to get to know about that. I think that many people underestimate the variety of pop music. You gave an perfect example: casual or non-pop listeners would say Shake It Off is like the most Pop song ever. If you would play them van Dutch (or really anything by Charli) they would not think it’s the same. But that’s the beauty of the genre, that the variety is so big. But as you said, the more popular something becomes the more it divides, what once started as a rebellion against the mainstream becomes fast the mainstream itself. We saw this a lot of times, take Rock music. Once rebellious against the norms, it became commercialized itself, leading to new sub-genres being created to push against that trend. Nowadays I think we can see that with Hyperpop, which core idea is to make everything different than the Mainstream Pop scene. But with rising success, it also is slowly getting itself into the position of adapting to it. At the end of the day, we should just enjoy music, don’t matter what genre. All music is great 😊
Yes, this is the point to the t! I cannot recommend “Music. A Subversive History” by Ted Gioia enough in this respect! It describes in great detail this exact process throughout the history of human civilization(s) 🖤
Thank you for the recommendation, I will read it 😁
I'm in a Pride band that plays marching band arrangements of a lot of pop songs and that adds an even stranger layer on top of what goes into making a good pop song. Which instrument plays the vocal line? How do you end a song that's faded out on the recording? But most importantly, which ones reliably get the crowd dancing? I'll tell you in my experience that a drop out for a drum break, a sudden unison, or a fat counter melody in the middle instruments seems to get them every time.
These are all amazing points and these tools do invariably work on large crowds 👽 thanks for this wonderful insight!
This reminded me of the amazing podcast Switched On Pop- where they do exactly this: deep dive into pop songs, it’s so much fun! And this was a great read!!!💗
Ohhh thank you so much! I love nerding out about music and I’m so happy Gabbie gave me this amazing platform to do so this week 🖤 I’m super happy you enjoyed the essay!
One of the arguments I often see aimed at pop is that from a theoretical perspective, it’s not complex. “If a song is much easier to understand theoretically, then they must have put less thought into it than more complicated genres, and therefore deserves less thought or consideration”, or some form of this is often said.
Von Dutch is the perfect example of how simple music theory can be made to work hard- the entire melody of the whole song only uses 4 notes. It literally can’t get simpler than that, but of course you don’t notice how simple it is because she makes interesting choices with rhythms and production, creates a captivating piece of art within those restrictions.
4 notes, 3 chords- but what a banger. I don’t think there’s a better example of the power of simplicity
perfectly stated!
Simplicity is SO difficult though. It’s a huge misconception that simple songs are easy to make in my opinion. 👽
I've been stuck listening to "Von Dutch" for the last 1 hour. Thanks.😂
Side effects include: earworm infection 👽
It's ok. I accept my fate.😂
Wow, what an analysis. I almost went into a whole monologue about the artists mentioned in the article, but that'd be better kept for another article.😂
Love some, dislike some, I think it's good to give them a fair shot and not just be a hater as a hobby.
Very interesting and fun article to read.💖
Thank you so much, Vera!
I also have my likes and dislikes but I prefer to keep them private - I’ve actually thought about writing an article about why that is 👽
Ohhhh, that'd actually be very interesting. You should go for it! :)
I'm trying to stay reasonable, but music is one of the subjects I can get very harsh and passionate about to the point it scares people. Hahaha.😂
Not going to lie, musically we have it pretty darn good right now. Plus Charli x Buttercup is the collaboration I never knew I needed 🖤
Ultimately, as time progresses, there is always more music to like 👽
I really love this pairing and I really enjoyed the footnotes as well. It was a nice sorbet in between discussions of new bands for old heads.
And incidentally, I now want to write a pop song with the lyric “pick apart a pop song” because it is so incredibly fun to say.
a sorbet,I love that! also please please write that song
Caroline, all the love to you! Thank you!
“Pick apart a pop song” sings nice, no doubt! I want to hear that song now, and you can also sort of have it as a double entendre lyrics - “pick a part, a pop song” vs “pick apart a pop song” 👽
love it!
Great article. Reminds me of some musical miscommunication I had upon moving to a new country. I had my own idea of avant garde: indie hipsterdom of course, and my friend did not understand the pitchy-ness coming from a background where jazz and soul made you highbrow. It wasn't until we saw a chart listing what IQs where associated with what music (in America) where we began to sniff out arbitrary cultural biases. Also it helped understanding how jazz was so much more than "weather channel" music in Poland but was pretty much the center of a punk movement to defeat authoritarianism as you can learn about here in this one stop shop for everything you've ever wanted to know about Polish jazz (because you never know when you will need a saxophone to defeat authoritarianism): https://culture.pl/en/article/a-foreigners-guide-to-polish-jazz
To my shame I’ve never looked into Polish jazz before and yet I live next door to Poland 👽 time to rectify that!
Haha i guess you’re not a millennial if you haven’t gone through the “indie hipsterdom” phase!
Poptimism is a new term for me…
Fascinating discussion topic really. A big part is how you define pop music whether it’s meant as “popular music” or as genre pop.
A lot comes down to pitch fetishism and the fact that western society in particular values melody over all other musical aspects. I think it is fair to say we are getting less interesting and diverse melodies as time goes on.
Rick Beato and Ted Gioia demonstrate this fairly regularly. The same can be said for harmony where we are seeing significantly less ley changes or diversity.
On the other hand pop production techniques and rhythmic implementations are getting ever more exciting and creative.
I think this can create an interesting cultural divide where the old school pitch fetishists see new pop as boring, derivative, and losing complexity. While the more rhythmically and timbre oriented brains are enjoying it as much as ever.
Finally, to take the Beatles as an example. They used popular music forms in the beginning and as their audience support grew they became increasingly experimental and did a huge amount to progress popular music generally, from a kids consumable to genuine art.
Pop stars like Taylor Swift have an opportunity to do the same and consistently choose safety and profit maximisation over more artistic or progressive options leading to a general decline in music culture.
All music had value. All music is “good”. We do have to consider the almost endless market power certain pop stars have and whether they have any responsibility to progress culture or to simply profit from it.
this is the nuanced version of a much more abrasive comment I got basically saying "all pop is just a genre construct created by big corporations." i appreciate your take even if I don't fully agree.
Ah thank you for your response.
I may have been a bit misunderstood there because that definitely wasn’t the point I was trying to make..
More that the music is constantly being judged by different metrics and being codified into genre by others that want to replicate success. I don’t think either are particularly helpful to culture. With pop being whatever is popular at the time.
I’m fiercely anti-genre (due to its roots social and racial segregation) in fact so a lot of my discussion is based on the assumed belief that “pop” or “jazz” even exists 😂 (just a little joke)
I do think pop stars have a strange responsibility to help young people explore new sounds and encourage their intellect rather than protecting a brand though.
I'm actually pretty anti - genre myself! it's something I'm always turning over in my mind but I haven't fully formed my thoughts around it except that I get very annoyed at people who use genres to gatekeep ("how dare you call that shoegaze?"). but I'll keep thinking because it's a very interesting topic
Yeah absolutely! It can be a really loaded and problematic area. It’s easy to see why so many people butt heads. It gets more insidious when you ask questions like why Beyoncé has been called an RnB performer while a white person doing the same thing is pop?
Also I’ll definitely look myself because I’ve likely exhausted your tolerance for one day 😅 but I’d be deeply interested if you have any pieces or are aware of any on dissecting the separation of genre from corporate entity.
Just given the fact that the terms rock, jazz, country-western, RnB, Pop, amongst others have often been propagated by marketing teams and not the musicians themselves to appeal to youth culture. It’d be a fascinating area to explore..
The Beatles are such an excellent example of building off of a dedicated fanbase and exploring different musical frontiers 🖤
And I also really find the point about the divide between pitch and timbre / rhythm enthusiasts interesting - I’ve never thought about it in this particular way. I think I can appreciate both paradigms but as a singer I do enjoy more adventurous melodies so that’s what I write! 👽
Yeah it blew my mind when I was called a fetishist by a teacher. But when you look at the fact that only melodies and lyrics can really be copywritten it demonstrates the way rhythm etc. have been sidelined. Even western art music is all about the development of melodic themes.
It gets more insidious when you realise it was done deliberately to limit agency for cultures that use other elements more readily like African, or South American music. We all have the Bo Diddley beat to use as we please because he was black.
This is such an unexpected insight! Now that you’re putting it this way it does seem pretty obvious. To think that I’ve never given this any thought before!
Glad to share it! It deeply affected the way I think about the music industry and the way legislation etc is geared to white musical supremacy.
Look at the way we have so many names for the side shoots of “western high art music” but if it’s made By a brown person it’s “world music”
I’ve always found the term “world music” mighty weird! Now I know why!
Being able to only copyright lyrics and melodies wasn't an insidious decision, if anything it was a smart one. Imagine what genres like blues or dance music would be today if beats or chord progressions were able to be copywritten. There would be hardly any songs able to legally be written.