Can I get a diet “Pop”?
Pop music has become so formulaic that even it’s “genres” all sound the same. What the hell is happening?
Without getting into specifics, my job is to work with foster kids, well actually teenage boys. So when we are out an going somewhere in my car we listen to music. And often it’s the top 40 pop station because that’s what they like to listen to. Trust me, teenage boys rarely have taste in music. It is funny that they call it a top 40 station because I have listened, and it’s more like a top 10 to 15 station. If you listen for more than a couple of hours, you will start hearing the same songs over again. And you really notice the simple formulas that the producers and record companies have “perfected” to the point that a golden retriver with a half decent computer could be the next big star. They just find someone easy on the eye and even easier to exploit, run them through the make-over machine, auto-tune the hell out of them, and film them in skimpy clothes while they lipsync to “their” latest hit single. If two or more “artists” of the same gender are played in a row, it’s almost imposible to tell the songs apart.
Thankfully there has been a boom of independant artists making their way into the spotlight. Most of which are very talented and don’t depend on their looks to make it big. I think this is largly owed to my generation. We were raised on grunge, hip hop, and the dying corpse of hard rock. The last musical era that relied on skill and ingenuity. So our tastes were not suited for the sugary sweetness of pop. Well most of us anyway.
Sure there have always been manufactured pop stars. Even Elvis was groomed from a poor hillbilly. Come to think of it, he was probably the first. At least of the modern era. And there always will be as long as there are people with no real taste for music, and money to feed the popstar machine.
