What happened to today's pop music?

[G-Black]

Hello, I'm new on the forum and I really love the idea of a section for intelligent discussions. So, I decided to start one myself.
People always think that MTV killed their music style of choice. They blame MTV for killing e.g. shred and metal, because they suddenly stopped playing that music and started playing grunge instead. But I don't want us to discuss that.
I want us to discuss what is happening to the one constant at MTV, pop music. Pop music of the (most of the)last century has given the world countless great songs that you can hear today only on some old radio stations that are now considered as antique.
I have to tell you, I live in Croatia, and here the whole Lady Gaga/Bieber/Jonas/Cyrus has never gotten popular. Here we have radio stations that play that good old pop music.
And even if you're a metalhead or a progger(I'm both), you have to admit that pop music of that time was good. Beatles, Elvis, Sinatra, U2, Dylan, all gave us timeless classics.

So what happened to the one style that IS MTV, pop?
Sometimes a good song even gets on MTV i.e. I'm Yours by that Mraz guy. It's simple, fun and gets something across, although it isn't my cup of tea, it is for many people.
So why is music by Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, The Jonas Brothers and Justin Bieber saturating MTV?
I don't know anyone who actually listens to them. But I don't know anyone who HASN'T heard their hits.
I do know some people who listen to Beyonce and Rhianna, but even they aren't saturating MTV as much the above mentioned preformers(I almost wrote artists, but that isn't art) and they really can sing.
And why are vocals saturating the market?
Not even guitar solos can survive today. And in the 50s instrumentals were just as popular as vocal music(The Shadows, anyone?).

So, why do you think that their videos have 200+ million views on Youtube. I personally think that Achmed the Dead Terrorist should have remained number one instead of Baby by Justin Bieber.
So what is MTV doing? I think they are destroying themselves, because they don't play music that the masses want to hear, but some songs from a selected few preformers that are just "it" today.
And do you think that this over-saturated music is bound to explode and give way to something new?

Oh and one extra thought. A professional world renowned opera singer can barely afford to buy himself a good car even though he has given himself to music and practices the entire day, and a 16 year old boy sings in front of the damn president and makes the opera singer's salary's worth of money almost every day.

Please share your thoughts!

 

[razoredge]

I dont think anything much has changed in pop music other than the sound/style/latest fad of the times. Its always tended to be rather weak and domestic, its always revolved around heart throbs and various gayities, the teen thing, the teen culture. Even used by media sources and the music industry to steer teen culture and trends. Something really "big" catches on somewhere and industries will take hold of it and spred it everywhere they can for purposes of commerce like fashion, political purposes to get the masses thinking all the same, what ever suits the needs of economic blinding.

 

[Ladyklau]

Tell you, what happened!

 

[Satanstoenail]

It got shinier, more processed, more plastic. It was bound to happen.

 

[Badbird]

It got shinier, more processed, more plastic, more shitty. It was bound to happen.

fyp

 

[monoxide_child]

Video Killed The Radio Star...

seriously, every single day i have to interact with some people that are 100% completely totally deaf, and it turns out that those specific people absolutely love watching the visuals of "music videos"

the ones they like the best are Brittney & Eminem

 

[Badbird]

MTV can be blame as well. Shit pop music has been around forever. It just got worse later.

 

[G-Black]

yeah, all of this is true, but it wasn't THIS gay.

 

[monoxide_child]

MTV can be blame as well. Shit pop music has been around forever. It just got worse later.

MTV created a change in the way that record producers market their albulms

nowadays the profesional song writers get paid every time a song that they wrote gets played on MTV, so that 95% of the songs that have music videos are written buy about 10 different people (there was 1 guy that actually wrote songs for Brittney, NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, Christina, Jessica AND Mandy Moore) and the record producers get 1 or 2 songs from every albulm on MTV/VH1/CMT BEFORE the albulm actually hits store shelves, they make the the visuals so spectacular that the people that watch MTV religiously end up buying the CD within the first few hours of being capable, and because they've all been hypnotized by the visuals no one realizes that the song "genie in a bottle" is all about Cunnilingus until after they've bought the albulm and the studio doesn't even bother trying to make albulms good enough to sell from "word of mouth" anymore because for the last ten years 99% of the people who bought a pop albulm bought it within the first hour of being able to, and no one seems to care that the rest of the albulm is even more crappy than the really crappy songs that got the videos

 

[Windie]

What the fuck are you talking about? There is some good fucking pop around right now.

Lady Gaga, for Christ's sake. She's original. Talented. I'm surprised people can't see that. And anyone who hasn't listened to Marina and the Diamonds has no right to diss modern pop.

You guys are crasy. If you want to hear terrible pop, go time travel to the 70's

 

[damnromulans]

It's very original to directly rip off the things Madonna did for the first time in the 1980s yes!

There have been people rebelling against the "bland mainstream" since the beginning of time. This question popped up in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s...funny to see people who are still complaining about the boy bands/girl groups of like 1998! get with it, it's Ke$ha and Justin Bieber now.

 

[Satanstoenail]

80's pop was the best.

 

[damnromulans]

Absolutely 100%. I feel like nothing has really changed that much in pop since the '80s - all the templates were set then, and 90s and 00s pop is just expanding on them.

 

[Dak]

Lady Gaga makes me beat Mareeps with a meat cleaver.

 

[Badbird]

80's pop was the best.

Agree.

 

[monoxide_child]

Lady Gaga makes me beat Mareeps with a meat cleaver.

???

 

[Alex78]

I don't know about pop in general... But concerning MTV - it's practically dead, at least here in Germany. Most of the shows on there don't have anything to do with music (you know what crap shows I'm talking about). I remember when they used to have shows like MTV Unplugged. Nowadays I can't even imagine that show still existing. People's attention span is getting increasingly shorter.

 

[Badbird]

So Unplugged wouldn't work because people have ADD nowadays?

 

[hexwind]

I actually downloaded Lady Gaga's The Fame Monster and I fell in love with some songs actually (Speechless is my fav off that album). Man, if you have any interest in music, you have all the tools to access it. We have no record stores or anything of the sort (well, there are, but definitely not my type of music), nonetheless, i could access music that I totally enjoy. Man, you have the Internet and you don't need those MTV stuff anymore, make a Lastfm account and you'll get similar artists to what you listen to, you have myspace, youtube ! if you love music and give it some of your time to look for new/underground bands/musicians/whatever, then you'll definitely find something satisfying. After all, don't except that the overall image of music will be the way YOU want it. Some people don't care whether this song is well written or that singer has a good voice, for them music should be played in the background while partying, working, driving, or studying or anything, and POP record companies target such people.
Luckily, everyone can find their favorite taste of music, the worst part is some music gets promoted more than other.

 

[monoxide_child]

I don't know about pop in general... But concerning MTV - it's practically dead, at least here in Germany. Most of the shows on there don't have anything to do with music (you know what crap shows I'm talking about). I remember when they used to have shows like MTV Unplugged. Nowadays I can't even imagine that show still existing. People's attention span is getting increasingly shorter.

here in america we still have VH1 CMT (country music television) and in addition to MTV, we also have MTV2 and MTV3!!!