Pop Music, Poor Lyrics, and the Benefit of Hindsight

Let's open this post with a question: What is the single biggest problem facing pop music today?

OK, other than "it sucks," most people are going to have one of the following answers:

1. The music is a series of annoying electronic sounds, likely produced by waterboarding a Super Nintendo.
2. The lyrics sound like they're written by particularly stupid chimpanzees

I can't really do much about the first one--merely pass you some earplugs and hope that EDM will someday retreat back to the club scene where it can be enjoyed with glowsticks, ecstasy, and $9 cocktails.

I also can't help with the second complaint about pop music, but I can explain it, and that's got to be worth something! Here we go:

Many of you have likely seen a meme like this one floating around your social media feed:

Ha! Look how amusing that is, while simultaneously showing the downfall of popular music! And the Nicki Minaj song charted higher than Zeppelin*?! Outrageous. True music is dead.

Except, no, it isn't. Saying "there's no good music anymore" is shorthand for "I am too lazy to use the Internet to look for music I might like, so I'm just going to sit here and complain." Mainstream country may be dominated by flatbill capped bro-douches, but the alt-country scene is bustling with great acts. Guitar rock and roll still lives in garages and crappy little clubs throughout the nation. Underground rappers engage in wordplay that mainstream glam rappers don't touch, because taking an unpopular position could derail their gravy train. There is good music--go find it.

As for pop? Yeah, it's idiotic. It's going to be, for it always has been. We can look back now and fondly remember songs because they have been filtered through years of discernment. Take, for example, The Band's "The Weight"--rightly regarded as a classic piece of music. When it was released in 1968, the song hit 63 on the Billboard charts. That same year, The Ohio Express (a band that did not actually exist) made it to #15 with the song "Chewy, Chewy" a piece of music so monumentally bad that I feel bad for providing you with that link. In 1969, "Sugar, Sugar" (by another band that did not actually exist) outperformed "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes," "Space Oddity," and "Think."

There are two reasons for this. First and foremost, popular material has to appeal to as broad an audience as possible, which means it must be as pandering as possible. This is why Michael Bay lives in a mansion and independent filmmakers live in their cars. To succeed in pop, one must be popular, which merely requires catchiness. Repetitive music and something (anything) that gets stuck in your head is the goal, depth isn't even on the radar.

Secondly, "classic" rock/pop/R&B/country has had the benefit of being filtered through multiple decades of refinement. The bubblegum of the 50s and 60s has been weeded out by classic rock snobs who tout Hendrix (highest charting song: #20), the Grateful Dead (#9) and Led Zeppelin (#4) as exemplars of their time. So take heart! There's at least a chance that our time will be remembered more for Ryan Adams, Dawes, and the Alabama Shakes than for Bieber, Rihanna, and Lady Gaga.

Hey, a guy can dream.

*--For what it's worth, Zeppelin never released the quoted song ("Thank You") as a single. The fact that it didn't chart really doesn't indicate anything.