I enjoy pop music frequently.

Norah Jones has been around in early 2000's as well. "Come Away With Me", anyone?

Excellent point. Pop, like all genres, isn't necessarily popular, but a sound, we can all agree on that. Therefore, pop music means something totally different than its actual, literal definition. Therefore, the definition of pop music can apply to anything. All music is pop music. Hahahaha lol ROFLCOPTER. 

Everybody thinks today's stuff is crap but the stuff back then was great. OK honestly ABBA??? Come on! It's hard for me to see the difference between ABBA and Lady Gaga. The only difference is that I can enjoy ABBA sort of sometimes.

rogerthat wrote: I don't know of a genius working in music right now, whether in the mainstream or otherwise.

Terrible point. Not one genius in the entire music industry?????? Not even one????? One????????? Uno??????אחד??????

C'mon.... 

Yeah there are some ABBA songs which are disgustingly catchy.

If you hate bad pop, then avoid bad pop and listen to good pop instead, which is still being made today. It's not that hard to find; it's just not being crammed into your face like the flavor of the week Lady Gaga (by whom I still have not heard a single song).

I think this thread is focusing mainly on modern electro/synth/bubblegum pop or whatever it's called (I'm no expert), but there is always at least a few artists grouped into any genre that I find enjoyable and that is because I think music always has its merits and nothing is entirely awful (even if I don't like it). I personally think people should be more open minded and willing to understand and enjoy other types of music even if their preconceptions about a genre is kind of negative. Or else I'll start a thread about how people don't have the same tastes as me and defend my stance as the superior music listener, but that sounds like something that everyone might want to avoid.

I thought I was the only one who thought this.

Dream Theater is awful. 

/troll

high fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive

I don't like anything by The eagles but this song is one of the worst.

+1.

I myself play guitar and I know by experience that when you play with high-end gear and sophisticated effects it's so much easier to play and give an impressive sound, and small mistakes become unnoticeable.

Isn't it a bit like what auto-tune does for vocalists?

 

You may find crap in every miusical genre, including classical and jazz.

This whole thread is ignorant man. 

 

If creating a Pop Star was easy we'd all be doing it - to hell with artistic integrity, bring on the champagne and caviar, limos and easy action - dammit I want a big house in the country and a fleet of Italian supercars to drive to Domino's for a take away pizza - if writing a 4-minute, 4-chord wonder is that easy then let's do it now - come on guys, we've got the talent and I'm sure we can find some leggy bimbo to front the band - our 90% split between us would still be a tidy sum of cash.

 

 

damn, this is one catchy tune:

and as usual Dean wins the discussion. 

darkshade wrote: Well there was some meaningful discussion besides "Dream Theater is awful.  /thread"

well yeah but it was all what is pop and what pop is bad and is all pop bad and stuff like thatz.

We have the technology

Technically everything under the sun is pop that is not Classical or Jazz or serioius experimental composers

No, not really. Plus the word pop had  not been created.

I never looked down on pop, but I have always been picky about the pop I listened to anyway.

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

There are many reasons this music was created. Most was heard by the few. Not so popular.

I disagree. Popular music were the songs sung in pubs and bars.....on streets....travelling wotsits. No one goes to church to hear popular music. Unless it's gospel.

True but they would have there own local songs. But songs did travel because minstrels moved from place to place. 

 

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).

 

Because then real musicians will HAVE to force themselves to push their musical abilities. Do I look down on pop music? Not at all. I respect the hell out of someone that makes music that other people enjoy. I can't do that very well. I can only make music that I enjoy. But I could not respect them as a friend unless I knew personally that they were doing their best to push their music and their abilities.

His name is Toby Driver, you should check him out.

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.