There is some pop that I look down upon and some that I simply revere. I can't speak in too general a fashion.

 

At least she seems to play with a real band (although you never know, it could well be playback too).

 

I really don't know but I would say that still most pop-star hit songs are written by a human composer / arranger, but it won't be long that even the music, or at least several of the melodical lines, harmonies etc will also be computer-generated. A computer can compose hundreds of melodies in a wink of an eye and then you just chose which one seems to have most chances of success and do the final arrangements and tidy it up.

Computer sound libraries, VSTi etc sound already very convincing and the music can be fully "played" and recorded by a computer and if it's done well many people will not tell the difference from the same music played by human musicians (still depending quite a lot on the type of instrument and music, for example electric rock guitar playing is still notoriously difficult to emulate, but it will come the day that even complex instruments like electric guitars will sound convincing enough).

 

Like it or not we better get ready to accept it, a good deal of music will be computer-generated and computer-interpreted. It will just be a different kind of music, like what computer-generated images are to human drawing or painting.

 

But there will always be music composed and played by humans (I hope, although this does not necessarily mean that it will always be better than computer-generated one).

You've given up without trying, this is the internet - the point of the Walk Off The Earth video I posted is this: 115,236,716 hits ... for a little known Canadian Indie band covering this year's biggest Pop hit by an little known Australian singer/songwriter. This simple little pop song has boosted the careers of 4 separate artists (Goyte, Kimbra, Walk Off The Earth and Sarah Blackwood) without big-money backing of Svengali-like record executives and it is pretty clear that none of the artists involved are talentless bums (as you call them). Of course viral marketting is big business and I am as cynical of it as anyone else, but that does not mean that you need lots of financial backing to pull it off sucessfully - what did Rebecca Black's mother spend on "Friday"... $4,000 getting the song and video recorded and nothing on promoting it? - with our combined resourses we can record a  I-vi-IV-V pop song for nothing and promote it for nothing...

 

Simple songs with simple structures and simple chord progressions and simple pentatonic melodies are the oldest and most common form of music in the history of everything - from folk tunes to hymns, gospel to rock and roll, troubadours and minstrels, choirs and congregations - everything is built from that, incuding madrigals and plainsong, symphonies and concertos - however complex music became its origins lay in the aural tradition of passing-on simple tunes that anyone can pick up and sing. This endures because it works, and it works because of harmony - the harmonic relationship within the chord progression is mathematical, as are the overlaying pentatonic melodies - pentatonic harmonic relationships that are prevelant in every form of ethnic music on the planet regardless of the scale or key or mode of music.

 

 

I haven't paid any attention to Ashlee Simpson to have an opinion as such - I know of her of course, but never really took any notice - reading her Wikipedia profile she doesn't seem to embody the talentless pre-fabricated mold you imply she does - she has writing credit on practically every track on all three of her albums and took creative control of her last album ... actress turned singer, famous sister, pushy parents.. the deck seems to be stacked against her but evidently you know more about her than I do, though I think there are probably better examples you could have chosen.

 

Yeah, I read the Mellencamp article a few years ago - he has some good points and some erroneous ones. Not sure why he picked on Mariah Carey, again I'm sure there are far better examples.