It’s Official: Pop Music Really IS Getting Crappier!

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July 26, 2012{ 10 Comments }

iStock 000003621804XSmall Its Official: Pop Music Really IS Getting Crappier!Just this morning I was listening to some dance song with maximum synth-saturation and whiney vocals that was playing on the local pop music station and said to my girlfriend, “Pop music just keeps getting worse and worse, doesn’t it? I swear it’s not my age. I know enough about music to know that it’s just gotten way more boring. Right? Or am I just being a snob?”

[Note: I know that plenty of great new music is being made-- even great new dance songs with maximum synth-saturation and whiney vocals (though that song wasn't one of them)-- it's just not played on the radio].

What does Science have to say about Sound?

Then mere hours later, I saw this article on Reuters that, sadly, proved me right. It’s true: music really IS getting more boring by the year. Scientists have crunched the numbers, funneled 60 years of pop music through a bunch of fancy algorithms, and found that:

Pop songs have become intrinsically louder and more bland in terms of the chords, melodies and types of sound used.

Or, as one of the lead researchers puts it, “We found evidence of a progressive homogenization of the musical discourse.”

Less dynamics? Check. Less diversity in terms of harmonic and melodic movement? Check. Increasingly limited use of differing timbres? Check.

The only thing we’ve gained— VOLUME!!!

… and that’s not change we can believe in.

I realize I’m getting bent out of shape about “the crap they play on the radio.” And they’ve always played crap on the radio. But here’s the problem: the crap all smells the same now– and it’s stinkier. And that’s not just my opinion– it’s science, fool!

If music truly is the world’s most popular artform, why don’t we ask more and more of our popular artists (even the ones who are played on the radio), instead of less and less?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.

Sell your non-crappy, non-cookie-cutter music worldwide through CD Baby!

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  • Flatliner0452

    Its simply that most people don’t actually care that much about music, its simply something to turn on in the background or a tool to let them dance easily, the majority of people just don’t care that much and having no idea how music is made so the simplest tunes that are easiest to understand are what they enjoy. I’m glad I’m in a contemporary prog band because there are so many like Porcupine Tree, Circa Survive, Mastodon, etc. that are able to have amazing careers by simply seeking out a “niche” market which when put on a global scale is pretty huge.

    I don’t know how people that are playing more traditionally popular music even do it these days, seems like you have 100 artists trying to be rich and famous for every one or two that actually just loves making that type of music.

    Yes its getting dumber, but that’s just economics, labels more and more can only afford to support something that works, give it another ten years and see where things are, its only getting easier for independents to be successful without a label and the trend will continue so there is nothing to do but keep working hard, the only people that are gonna be disappointed are the ones that want to be rocks stars, the rest of us will gladly keep taking our small piece of the buy and watching as it grows ever so slightly bigger each year.

  • Sarah

    Being an independent, non-mainstream artist myself, I don’t know how to comment to this article without sounding like a sycophant. For any listener that appreciates creativity and time taken to make quality music, it’s getting harder everyday to filter through all the crap and get to the good stuff. Is there a way of channeling the good stuff to those that appreciate it? Are there music critics that won’t bend to popular demand/money/good looks and judge the music for what it is before it gets consumed by the masses? Is the digital sharing age a good thing for the indie artist who might never get their stuff out there without big label money, or is it worse cause you will never see a penny of your really creative stuff that’s being downloaded illegally? I am now 29 and used to enjoy listening to the radio so much a few years back but can’t tell whether am just growing older, or whether pop music is sounding worse. But at the same time, I have never been a mainstream sort of person so I just tell myself, it’s my personality that just doesn’t get it- both as a consumer and an artist.

  • http://www.johnny-pierre.com/ Jp

    The lack of musical imagination in pop music is the fault of the homogenized over demographic-ized mainstream radio. They just don’t understand why FM radio was so popular and creative in the 60′s abd 70′s.

  • Freshp2

    instead of begging them to change, why not seek out the few artist who do incorporate a more worldly full body sound of harmony you seek out? VP

  • http://www.facebook.com/BuckBaran Buck Baran

    As the 60 DIY Indie who has been in-and-out and in-and-out of the business I can assure your perceptions are not due to your age. Due to the business model of radio and living in the Chicagoland area it is difficult for me to hear many new releases, instead my option is the top-5-artists-of-the-month club (usually Pink Floyd, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Journey, Queen, and Chicago) and when I hear something new of interest they don’t push it, promote, give the urge to go out and buy, instead they want you to buy luxury automobiles. So I will have to base my opinion on what I have witnessed on Letterman.
    Not including the seasoned veterans, there have been a handful of skillful artists with unpredictable songs that I never hear on the radio. What remains are noisy bands with little control that seem to be bursting at the seams, a bass player fall down, a guitar player whose eyes showed the tell-tale sign of one who recently partaken in the weed (Letterman remarked), vocal intonation issues and over-processed vocals, out-of-tune instruments and wake me up when the song’s over; predictable changes, lack of melody, no dramatic construction, no emotion, crap it’s gotten to the point where elevator music is more enjoyable, but then most of that is older music.
    Due to its nature, greed can permeate every aspect of life. Finding a source to leech on, it probes for a profitable formula that generates mega revenue for its hosts. The host’s only concern is profit and what makes it. The formula is to produce and promote the tried-and-true mediocre; there is a guaranteed return, and more mediocre the better, because if you focused on real artists with real skills you would have fewer performers to profit from. So the more garbage you produce the more you profit. But you have to be sure that you keep the next generation of listeners from being exposed to real music.
    buckbaran.com

  • Steelwind

    Yes,…..I agree. The bands back in the 80′s where so much more creative, and melodic. Even the rock music, along with the rock ballads seemed to all have lyrical meaning and great music to support the emotional mood of the song. Back when a cover band actually had to really consentrate and put forth some effort to figure out the lead guitar parts, and the over-all chord progressions to play the tunes in live venues.
    .
    I began to notice in the 90′s, bands began to pop up only banging out loud, lazy, and uncontrolled chords, with more bass guitar and louder volume. Now it has all just become a bunch of loud crap repeated over & over.

    Sadly to say,….there are still unknown bands still out there that are writing and making great music, but the record companies don’t seem to even want to hear them. It’s like the radio stations are trying to mold us all into some kind of morphed audio mind melm into an eternal cycle of repatition.

    The 80′s band “Kansas” had it right in their song called; “Play the Game Tonight”. Although the song was talking about a band making it big, and the songs the band plays are being played over, & over, till ya’ do it all over again, – (which was talking about being on tour), after an album release, and that being in the white spotlight wasn’t so great as it seemed to be until the creation of a new album.

    But the lyrics saying; ” and the songs keep playing over, & over, till ya’ do it all over again.” can now be attributed to the crap on the radio. over, & over, & over, & over, & over,….etc.,……………………………….

    A new parallel to Einstein’s definition of INSANITY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • http://diymusician.cdbaby.com/author-chris-robley Christopher Robley

    I know what you mean; I heard the remix with the big drums and said to myself, “Ah, are we that stupid that we can’t take one hit song without giant drums?” I mean, the LACK of big drums WAS the very thing that made that song so interesting. Huge anthemic vocals over minimal percussion.

  • http://twitter.com/waynebo248 Waynebo

    The artists aren’t the issue. Radio is the problem. We don’t need to demand more of artists, there’s plenty of good music being made. The problem is the radio will only play the songs that fit into very narrow parameters. Even if an artist creates a brilliant album with emotion and depth, they can only get airplay with the “radio-friendly” single. We need to demand more from RADIO!! I tuned them out years ago and they have done nothing to lure me back. Thanks to internet radio, podcasts, and DJ mixes, I don’t need them to find new artists and music I like.

  • KPS

    The ease in which music can be put together and distributed now is so much simplier tan it was just 10 years ago, meaning anyone with a keyboard, computer and phone line can become an overnight success if they want.

    On one side it opens up the musical World to a wider audience and artist grup, on the flip side, if sets free the crap! Poepl who 10+ years ago would never have got a look in and suddenly build their own following.

    I’ve had links posted to me ‘recommended’ all sorts from dance, hip-hop, rock etc as the next big thing that I (apparently) have to hear. The vast majority of time it’s come short of being labelled garbage, rather something just below garbage.
    But…. It’s out there and people can get hold of it and that can bring it to the main stream, especially now the charts are built on sales and downloads.

    10+ years ago and more so in the early 90s and before, bands and artists would ply their trade around local pubs, to bars, to clubs, to small venues, building a following, waiting for the break and an album deal. It was not uncommon for a group to have been around 10 years before anyone had even heard of them. This filtered out so much crap because they could get into the recording studio.
    Now as I say, they don’t need to. All they need is a computer, keyboard and phone line and they’re laughing!

  • Shaina

    The radio industry is run by corporate sponsors who play it safe so as not to potentially offend consumers. However, what they’ve ended up doing is offending anyone with taste. Even those artists on the radio have better songs on their albums but labels decide what is “radio friendly” and keep serving the same crap over and over because “hey! It worked before!”.