How do you perceive pop music?

Today’s pop “Music” is pure commerce. There is no art, no passion, no thought in any of it. It is pure rubbish.

Ragindloli, Amen. Go to Youtube and listen to Big Joe Turner bellow out Shake, Rattle and Roll and see if you want to hit the dance floor. Real musicians, real instruments and real teamwork…............now that’s ART.

Nothing like this…........today.

It’s Friday, Friday, Friday!!
Wait, what? That’s not art? :O

Like modern pop (e.g. Muse and Coldplay)? Yeah, it’s pretty terrible. No one should have to suffer just to listen to music. As far as I’m concerned, it should be recognized as a crime against humanity by the UN.
I’ll stop trolling for now…

were there 1950’s anti pop music peoples?

Beatniks

I like Coldplay….

Beatniks were not around until the late 60s and 70s.

No anti anything back in the 50s. We just had a lot of innocent fun and danced our butts off.

Our only concern was buying a hamburger for 10 cents and a Coke.

Beatniks were not around until the late 60s and 70s.

Wut?!

On the Road – 1957

Howl – 1955

Check out Phillipa Fallon playing a Beat poet in High School Confidential

The Beat Generation was already getting lame Hollywood imitations in 1957’s Funny Face

I think there are a few good artists still out there, sometimes just have to root them out.

It depends on what you mean by “pop” music. There’s lots of awesome music being made today, but I don’t think most people would label it “pop.”

Some of it can be catchy, some is utterly boring. I don’t really perceive it as anything except what sells in the mainstream. I mean, that is what it is. Seeing what’s in, what trends, fashions and subjects are popular in the culture it’s in, and appealing to those who will buy it. I don’t know yet, but I’m pretty sure there’s a song about Facebook out there. It’s kind of funny when you listen to pop music from some years back, like some from the mid nineties. All the passed fashions, slangs used, stuff like that. Sometimes it’s like, wow that’s so lame. Except back then, it was a big thing, the top of it all. At least for some. I bet Lady Gaga is gonna sound like a complete ass in ten years. No matter what she wears. It’s all been done, we just see it in a new but ephemeral form. Wow what…that was fuckin contradictory. That’s it, I’m starting a pop band! You’ll pay for crushing my spirits, Econoline crush Vangaboys!
I admit, I listen to some, old or new, as long as it’s catchy. But I never seemed to be able to really relate or be inspired.
Not saying that it’s all bad or that all pop sucks, but I got Vikings to listen to, primarily.
I do think it sucks that some people define the entirety of music on what’s constantly playing on the radio though, and therefore make no effort to seek out lesser known genres and artists.

I don’t listen to pop anymore.

Eh, it’s OK. I’d rather run the rock station, though. Or the classical station, or the oldies station, or the indie station, or the new-country station (though country isn’t quite suitable for driving), but not the old-country station, or anything in the rap/hiphop category..

I’d describe it as… a slushing orgy of techno beats, pre-washed optimism, synthetic remnants of haphazard vocals, and numb profanity, forever failing to touch ground. But then, I’m one of those who defines pop music by what plays on what I consider the pop stations on the radio, and more specifically, what songs play on the radio that I find particularly empty, lacking.

I don’t mean to condemn songs, or the radio—I described simply what I see as pop-en-masse, pop-the-majority, pop-the-fluffiness. Not all music of today.

I usually don’t listen to the radio.
I enjoy the smugness, a bit, of not.

I have a growing collection of groups/songs I appreciate, I enjoy hunting out new-to-me artists, I try to find songs that matter, I’m very picky about what I put on my Zune.

But, at the same time, if I can move to it, it’s not all bad.

(Also, I believe it was the Beats, not Beat-niks—If I remember correctly, the true Beat generation called themselves the Beats, and some of the mainstream media, trying to smear them a bit, added the ‘nik’: putting a supposed communist suffix (as in, sput-nik); this was the 50s, culture had found an aversion to red. Problem: the term Beatnik was actually too catchy, and as the Beat movement grew in popularity, young people trying to be cool would claim Beatnik! not realizing they weren’t Beat at all…)

Most of it seems terribly bland and unoriginal and I avoid listening to it.

Some of it’s okay, some of it’s great and some terrible. A bit like music throughout the ages really.

@AshLeigh Yeah, me too. How can people say this is rubbish? Admittedly, I’m not as fond of their last couple albums.

@Keep_on_running, I know right? <3 Yellow is my favorite song in the world… XD

@auhsojsa: ”..Is pop music always “not cool”?”

“Pop music” == “corporate music”. That’s just the nature of the music industry. Because of that fact, pop music is almost always shit (in my opinion). Once in a while, something decent will somehow sneak in to the corporate boardroom and make it out without being stripped, sanitized, and destroyed. But that is a rarity.

I grew up with pop in the 70’s and 80’s. In the 70’s it was Chicago, Linda Ronstadt, Bye Bye Miss American Pie, Elton John, then in the 80’s it was Duran Duran, Wham, Our House in the Middle of the Street, stuff like that. That era, I liked. Now, I still listen to some of it in the car. I have a small child, so I try to keep the car music light and not too harsh. When she’s not in the car, it’s a different story!

Like the inner workings of Mitt Romney’s brain, shallow, meaningless & utterly without substance.

Just to be clear, Muse and Econoline Crush are considered alternative rock. Coldplay is considered britpop, but britpop is a sub-genre of alternative rock too. None of these bands are pop at all; their music is popular, but pop music is its own genre that they do not fall in.

Pop music does borrow from other genres, but tends to a “verse chorus verse chorus” style of songwriting. The hook of the song is almost always in chorus. Pop music is, by design, music with a very basic structure to try to appeal to as big of an audience as possible. Pop music also follows trends in popular taste, which is why listening to Micheal Jackson’s pop is very different to listening to today’s pop even though the song structure is very similar. Since the goal of pop is to try and push as many units as possible by making the music generally accessible, it makes many people dislike its generic feel and fluff lyrics (since you don’t want to get too polarizing in your lyrics and drive people off that way).

I’ve never really cared much for pop. There’s been the occasional song that I kind of liked, but for the most part I’ve been much more a rock and it’s derivatives (punk and its proto and post stages, alternative, metal, etc.) type of guy. The current pop stylings are especially bad in my opinion since quite a bit of the electronica (not techno; techno is a specific sub-genre of electronica) they use I originally heard more than a decade ago.

@amujinx speaks truth.

@amujinx I know that EC isn’t pop. But ever since Brand New History (and a bit of The Devil you Know, but I still like it) I can’t help but to feel that they were going in a totally different direction…well, the title says it all, haha.

@Symbeline I figured you knew with the fact that you crossed them out, but I added them in just because I was already going to address the statement that Muse and Coldplay is pop.

I think there is a lot of commercial crap out there but I still think there is an equal amount of decent talent dominating the pop scene. I don’t think music is worse now than it was in the 50’s, 60’s or 70’s at all, I think all eras have had their share of good and bad but as time goes on we start to only hear the good stuff from decades gone by and in 20 years time we’ll, more than likely, only hear the good stuff of today and that shit will be forgotten about.