Why pop sucks

OK, I don't really think it sucks, so get off your anti-rockist high horse for a second - I love lots of pop, I like it when music I enjoy becomes popular, and there will be no mention of performers being "manufactured", "sell-outs" or "not playing their own instruments" here. Nothing about dance routines and costume changes, even ! I just feel like addressing what has been bugging the hell out of me about the whole "this is a golden age for pop" and "pop rules, rock sucks" thing that comes up here once in a while.

1. What's with the pop vs rock dichotomy? One genre is defined by exposure and popularity, the other by lyrical/musical/attitudinal conventions - they couldn't be *opposites* if they wanted to! Not only that, they overlap like crazy! Creed is pop! Any pop-vs-rock discussion that ignores this ends up in tedious rehashes of stereotypes of [x] vs stereotypes of [y], like all rock is Iggy (or Elvis Costello or Yo La Tengo) and all pop is Britney (or ABBA or Ja Rule).

2. This type of debate often seems based on rather fanciful definitions on the order of "if I like it, it must be pop", so that people like the Smiths or My Bloody Valentine (total US top 40 hits: zero) magically become Pop, and the Rolling Stones (US top 40 hits: 42) are suddenly Not Pop. [2a. Could the UK's much more inclusive mainstream be part of the reason why British music fans seem more inclined to identify with pop than American ones? I mean, next time you feel like bashing pop-haters, picture yourself in a place where pop by and large excludes glam, reggae (total US top 40 hits by Jamaicans between 1972 and 1987: zero), punk, alt/indie and techno.]

3. In the US, pop hits are broken almost exclusively by radio, which = Clear Channel, which = The Man. Clear Channel defines what is pop and what isn't, and I hope pop fetishists understand why that would make some music fans wary of singing pop's praises. True, other musical formats are ruled by Clear Channel as well, but a country record that only sells 10 copies is no less country. Pop is defined by reach.

4. Rock/indie fans/writers are often accused of using irrelevant guitar-rock criteria to judge pop music. This accusation is frequently true. But at a mainstream level, the exact opposite is happening, and demanding of guitar-rock performers that they be as slick and synthesized-sounding as the bulk of R&B and hip hop and schlock ballads if they want to have a chance of making the charts is as retarded as putting down Aaliyah for not writing her own songs. I have no problems with slick-and-synthesized, mind you, just with the idea of it being the only acceptable way to do things.

5. Isn't *everyone* in the top 40 "rock" anyway?? I mean, except for straight-up easy listening artists like Celine Dion and Kenny G, as well as country music, isn't everything in the charts the spawn of one rock subgenre or another, be it disco, funk, soul, metal, soft-rock, whatever? I mean, are there really lots of songs in the charts that are the outcome of the Perry Como/Patti Page/Rosemary Clooney tradition of pre-rock and roll pop? Good luck in drawing a line from Eddie Fisher to Nelly.

6. Since radio has increasingly been focusing on not scaring off passive listeners, playlists have been getting shorter, with chart movements getting accordingly sluggish. What that means is very low turnover (total weeks on Billboard's Hot 100 - the Troggs' "Wild Thing": 11; Santana's "Smooth": >50 - both songs were # 1 hits), and less room for oddball left-field hits, and an ever-decreasing range of music played. It also means that if you dislike several of what few songs are getting played, you will be turned off very quickly (# of songs that hit the top 40 in 1966 = 334; in 1984 = 217; I don't have the numbers for recent years, but when I pay attention, there's always like only 2 or 3 new entries in the top 40, so figure about 150 songs a year, and that's a generous estimate). Which is outrageous, since there's probably 10 times more music being released now than there was 15-20 years ago. That doesn't feel like any kind of golden age of pop to me, regardless of appreciation of individual songs.

one last scatter shot comment: guitarocentrism a la indie or whatever is no worse than any other centrism, be it infatuation with synths or samplers or whatever. "indie" is a trojan horse, the cartoon bounced around at the ILM having no relation to the actual beast. It's just a whipping boy.

viz it's not "pop" people but rock people who get in a lather abt creed not being "real rock" (= it's "just" "pop"); and the things you complain about in (2) are only an issue if the dichotomy is adhered to, but actually the "pop" camp are surely attacked more because they DON'T take the dichotomy particularly seriously => 1&2 are both anti-rockist argts; 3&4 i'm not competent to talk abt much, except to say that any rhetoric which distinguishes between acceptable and rubbish types of mass popular music (as the rhetoric of jazz and rock have both done, at several stages) plays straight into the hands of narrowcasters (i think there are loads of other factors here, though, in the set up of US radio)

Smiths have had a few hits in UK. MBV had one hit. Yes, but rock did dominate in the US and of corse it originated from chuck berry, Muddy Waters and so on...the immigrant population of America. In the UK, thre was an influx of Jamaicans so maybe that's why reggae was more popular here. Nowadays it seems to be all hip-hop from what I hear.

''3. In the US, pop hits are broken almost exclusively by radio, which = Clear Channel, which = The Man.''

The same applies for the UK. TV breaks it and so does radio (and look at the NME, it's basically an 'industry' weekly).

Garbage. this is why I hate 'genre' and trying to 'classify' music. Maybe in the charts it might get more homogeneous but there are clear diff between dico/funk/soul. What abt rap? Is that a 'rock' subgenre as well?

If MBV only had one hit in the UK, wouldn't that just make them a one hit wonder like the Big Bopper or the Hollywood Argyles?

Julio - Disco, funk and soul are all different genres with their own history, fans and whatnot. I am not saying they are the same AT ALL. But to me they are all part of the rock world, as are hip hop and techno. Just cause some jerks came along and decided at some point that black pop and disco were no longer going to be part of rock and roll doesn't mean I have to go along with that bull.

Tim - Point taken, but the "well, THEY started it" argument is a tad annoying. And as for rock's alleged oppressive consistency, well, just try to get your average Nickelback fan and your average Modest Mouse fan to agree on *anything*. Part of my annoyance is when this huge musical universe containing many warring factions is dismissed with a "it's all the same" shrug. And I KNOW that's what guitar-rock fans have been doing to black pop and disco for years, but that's the "THEY started it" argument again - blanket dismissals of that kind suck no matter who's doing the dismissing.

(out of curiosity -- how high up did MBV make it on the UK charts and what song was it? also, the concept of one-hit-wonders always amuses me -- the term suggesting that the performer or band only produced one good song ever (the one that charted)).

The same applies for the UK. TV breaks it and so does radio (and look at the NME, it's basically an 'industry' weekly).

Well, I'm not very qualified to discuss this, but I was under the impression that the UK charts were full of techno songs that make it with minimal airplay, and all sorts of bizarro stuff like 40 year-old songs going to # 1 on the basis of being featured in a TV commercial. And doesn't the press have a much bigger influence on what people listen to over there ?? Over here, both TV and the press go along with what's already popular in the first place.

ILM is a trojan horse, the cartoon bounced around at the ILM having no relation to the actual beast. It's just a whipping boy. And now I've got that snarkiness off my chest:

The problem boils down to everyone here, me especially included, using words like "rock" and "pop" to mean lots of different things. So when I use the word "pop" it can mean:

- music that charts.
- music that is 'popular'
- that subset of music which charts that would not have been heard by most of its fans had it not initially charted (this being the difference between MBV and Britney, incidentally)
- all non-classical and non-jazz music since about 1920.
- music which has a particular hard-to-define quality - of hookiness and lightness, say - that I value

And when I use the word "rock" it can mean:

- all non-classical and non-jazz music since about 1920.
(eg. of usage: "rock criticism")
- guitar-based music.
- music that has particular qualities - earnestness and weightiness, say - which I don't value. Actually I never use this meaning except in opposition to meaning #5 of pop.

It would probably make things clearer if I (and other people) stopped doing this but I wouldn't want to settle on just one meaning.

One of the problems with these kinds of debates is that *some* people (including me sometimes) have been playing with the idea of "pop" meaning something like "open to multiple definitions and enjoying bandying terms around loosely". From that point of view "rock" means trying to pin things down and categorise. So to ask for a definition of pop is to play the game from the rock point of view.

By pop I generally mean 'popular music in general, including Britney, Led Zeppelin, Abba, Radiohead, Piano Magic and Eminem'. If that's what someone else means by 'rock', then we're both talking about the same thing, and just using different words.

Also, you are saying that companies are better at giving the people what they want, or at least what they'll take. Which leads to the question -- what should people want?

The problem boils down to everyone here, me especially included, using words like "rock" and "pop" to mean lots of different things.

These things are not problems. They enrich the word, so that when used in one way the word can also carry overtones of the other uses; and they enrich our lives, so that we can plump for certain uses over others in order to differentiate ourselves from one another. Maybe there's a problem when people pretend not to understand the multiplicity and antagonism of the various usages ("How can you call this 'pop' when 'pop' means such-and-such?"), but that's usually only a problem in terminological conversations like this one.

When *NSync's "Pop" came out, I complained that it wasn't pop enough. I wasn't just complaining about the sound, but also about the impulses that it was appealing to (that pleasure means lack of purpose and value) and the other impulses that it was shunning (melody, joy). No single definition of the word can encompass what I meant. In retrospect, I think that the song failed at not being pop, that it was about fun with sounds, pulling and twisting beats and boings around like silly putty, and that it appealed to impulses that it perhaps hadn't intended to (and ruled the Radio Disney request line for months and months, until Plus One finally displaced it finally with a song that sounds a lot like early *NSync). Also, I like it more than I did.

I think that Patrick has never listened to an entire Celine Dion album. I think that Patrick has never listened to a country and western station.

A) Wrong (I've never heard a full English-language album from her, though). Plus Quebec easy-listening radio is pretty much a non-stop Celine-fest, so I've probably spent more time listening to her music than anyone on ILM.

B) Wrong! I'm not sure what your point is w/ this one, though - perhaps that current country music is MORE guitar-rock *nflu*nc*d than anything else in the top 40 right now ? I agree with that. But country is still a separate tradition that predates rock and roll (but then again so does R&B, so maybe I need to rethink my theory).