Is Pop Music Innovative Or Good Anymore?

Forgive me if this question has been raised, I didn't read everything...

Dean wrote: Pop music is at its best when it's being smart/clever/erudite/witty/provocative - anything that shows there is a brain and a personality (however prefabricated) at work behind the glitz and the gloss - of the modern era, artists like Tinie Tempah, Lily Allen, Biffy Clyro, Florence & the Machine, Kate Nash, Katy Perry, Gorillaz and (to some extent) Lady Gaga and Eminem, while not being stunningly profound or earth-shattering, are demonstrating that ti still takes talent and skill to produce Pop music as an art form rather than just a product.

I sort of agree with this (but haven't even heard of the artists cited apart from Lady Gaga, Eminem and Gorrillaz)

Casting your line further outside the goldfish bowl of celebrity however, we do reel in a former school of pop music that is intelligent , witty, thought provoking and occupies very familiar mainstream waters e.g.
Bob Dylan, Madness, the Go-Betweens, Blondie, The Kinks, Pretenders, The Stranglers (the list goes on)

The foregoing all write very conservative music using the types of structures (verse, chorus, middle eight etc) still endemic in contemporary popular song writing styles. Notwithstanding audio and computer software developments, technological aides become irrelevant if they do not engender new forms and structures after all. The only real difference I can hear see between Lady Gaga and my examples is that of the lowest common denominator scaling the top of the totem pole i.e. sexuality masquerading as innovation/non conformity ( a marketing guru's wet dream to be sure)

It would of course be naive to claim that record executives did not exploit Debbie Harry and Chrissie Hynde's obvious sex appeal to shift more units, but neither stooped to conquer success as women playing the industry 'man's game' c/f Madonna, Lady Gaga. I wouldn't imagine Gaga's fan base has sufficient nous to intuit their heroine's ironic embrace of a patriarchal mindset she is exploiting for her own mercenary ends.
(Good luck to her I say, but she is even more of an unwitting staunch reactionary than Madonna)

Radio tends to overplay music that is popular. I liked pop music when it was underground.

I like pop music (THere, I said it) but I only like what I concider good pop music and not surprisingly, I don't look for the same things in my 'pop' as I do in my 'Prog'.  I don't take in much pop these days as I no longer listen to those radio stations and most of it is unlistenable.  However, every now and then someone makes something really good (Crazy, Hey Ya, Can't get you out of my Head (Or was that the video?),) Inovation is probably pretty difficult as for something to be pop it has to be catchy and short and conform.  It is possible and it happens. 

Formentera Lady wrote: Currently I quite like the sound of Timbaland and his productions. I especially like the album "Loose" of Nelly Furtado which is primarily produced by Timbaland. I blame the specific synth drum beat sound on him. I think, this is quite a "new" and interesting sound.

Same here, although I have to admit that I haven't actually listened to a full pop album apart from Jacko's and some of the divas - i.e. Celine, Mariah etc (thanks mom!)
I don't know about the innovative side of pop, because there will always be a particular sound even in the case of 70s bands for example, that one hasn't heard before, but there still is some fairly good pop out there (Lady Gaga, even Katy Perry), not as much as in the pervious years though.

It's certainly good. I don't know about innovative.

I listen to much more Katy Perry and Lady GaGa than I do most things. I'll take them over Yes and ELP any day.

It depends. If you're referring to the things that get massive airplay from the mainstream media channels, they're crap. But there's a lot of good "indie" stuff out there. 

Currently I quite like the sound of Timbaland and his productions. I especially like the album "Loose" of Nelly Furtado which is primarily produced by Timbaland. I blame the specific synth drum beat sound on him. I think, this is quite a "new" and interesting sound.

There are plenty of great pop songs now. "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley is one that I actually play live.

Slartibartfast wrote:    It seems some stuff used to get commercial success because the music was genuinely good.  .

I'm not sure if I get it. Do you mean because bands like 10CC wrote some of the most interesting chord progressions in a Pop song, that it would get them 5 stars? In that particular aspect I do see a difference between the genius of Pop writing in the past and what I hear today which doesn't mean too much to me. It's a tough call to make personally because I don't pay attention. I do know that from what I HAVE observed in Pop music today, I hear chord progressions which derived from the 80's. Take a Pop band like Big Time Rush for example. The music is taylored for kids just as "The Monkees" were for kids my age. After hearing Big Time Rush, it is obvious to me that the chord structures and even some of the vocal harmonies derive from that 80's generation of George Michael, Boy George etc. Where "The Monkees" clearly had influence from the sign of the times which was "The Beatles".