Today’s pop music is designed to sell, not inspire. Today’s pop artist is often more concerned with producing something familiar to mass audience, increasing the likelihood of commercial success. With less timbral variety, and the same combination of keyboard, drum machine, and computer software, and with only two songwriters writing much of what we hear, is it any wonder that most pop music sounds the same?
Throughout grade school and high school, I was fortunate to participate in quality music programs. Our high school had a top Illinois state jazz band; I also participated in symphonic band, which gave me a greater appreciation for classical music. It wasn’t enough to just read music. You would need to sight read, meaning you are given a difficult composition to play cold, without any prior practice. Sight reading would quickly reveal how fine-tuned playing “chops” really were. In college I continued in a jazz band and also took a music theory class. The experience gave me the ability to visualize music (If you play by ear only, you will never have that same depth of understanding music construct.)
Both jazz and classical art forms require not only music literacy, but for the musician to be at the top of their game in technical proficiency, tonal quality and creativity in the case of the jazz idiom. Jazz masters like John Coltrane would practice six to nine hours a day, often cutting his practice only because his inner lower lip would be bleeding from the friction caused by his mouth piece against his gums and teeth. His ability to compose and create new styles and directions for jazz was legendary. With few exceptions such as Wes Montgomery or Chet Baker, if you couldn’t read music, you couldn’t play jazz. In the case of classical music, if you can’t read music you can’t play in an orchestra or symphonic band. Over the last 20 years, musical foundations like reading and composing music are disappearing with the percentage of people that can read music notation proficiently down to 11 percent, according to some surveys.
Two primary sources for learning to read music are school programs and at home piano lessons. Public school music programs have been in decline since the 1980’s, often with school administrations blaming budget cuts or needing to spend money on competing extracurricular programs. Prior to the 1980’s, it was common for homes to have a piano with children taking piano lessons. Even home architecture incorporated what was referred to as a “piano window” in the living room which was positioned above an upright piano to help illuminate the music. Stores dedicated to selling pianos are dwindling across the country as fewer people take up the instrument. In 1909, piano sales were at their peak when more than 364,500 were sold, but sales have plunged to between 30,000 and 40,000 annually in the US. Demand for youth sports competes with music studies, but also, fewer parents are requiring youngsters to take lessons as part of their upbringing.
Besides the decline of music literacy and participation, there has also been a decline in the quality of music which has been proven scientifically by Joan Serra, a postdoctoral scholar at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona. Joan and his colleagues looked at 500,000 pieces of music between 1955-2010, running songs through a complex set of algorithms examining three aspects of those songs:
1. Timbre- sound color, texture and tone quality
2. Pitch- harmonic content of the piece, including its chords, melody, and tonal arrangements
3. Loudness- volume variance adding richness and depth
The results of the study revealed that timbral variety went down over time, meaning songs are becoming more homogeneous. Translation: most pop music now sounds the same. Timbral quality peaked in the 60’s and has since dropped steadily with less diversity of instruments and recording techniques. Today’s pop music is largely the same with a combination of keyboard, drum machine and computer software greatly diminishing the creativity and originality. Pitch has also decreased, with the number of chords and different melodies declining. Pitch content has also decreased, with the number of chords and different melodies declining as musicians today are less adventurous in moving from one chord or note to another, opting for well-trod paths by their predecessors. Loudness was found to have increased by about one decibel every eight years. Music loudness has been manipulated by the use of compression. Compression boosts the volume of the quietest parts of the song so they match the loudest parts, reducing dynamic range. With everything now loud, it gives music a muddled sound, as everything has less punch and vibrancy due to compression.
In an interview, Billy Joel was asked what has made him a standout. He responded his ability to read and compose music made him unique in the music industry, which as he explained, was troubling for the industry when being musically literate makes you stand out. An astonishing amount of today’s popular music is written by two people: Lukasz Gottwald of the United States and Max Martin from Sweden, who are both responsible for dozens of songs in the top 100 charts. You can credit Max and Dr. Luke for most the hits of these stars:
Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson, Taylor Swift, Jessie J., KE$HA, Miley Cyrus, Avril Lavigne, Maroon 5, Taio Cruz, Ellie Goulding, NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, Ariana Grande, Justin Timberlake, Nick Minaj, Celine Dion, Bon Jovi, Usher, Adam Lambert, Justin Bieber, Domino, Pink, Pitbull, One Direction, Flo Rida, Paris Hilton, The Veronicas, R. Kelly, Zebrahead
With only two people writing much of what we hear, is it any wonder music sounds the same, using the same hooks, riffs and electric drum effects?
Lyric Intelligence was also studied by Joan Serra over the last 10 years using several metrics such as “Flesch Kincaid Readability Index,” which reflects how difficult a piece of text is to understand and the quality of the writing. Results showed lyric intelligence has dropped by a full grade with lyrics getting shorter, tending to repeat the same words more often. Artists that write the entirety of their own songs are very rare today. When artists like Taylor Swift claim they write their own music, it is partially true, insofar as she writes her own lyrics about her latest boyfriend breakup, but she cannot read music and lacks the ability to compose what she plays. (Don’t attack me Tay-Tay Fans!)
Music electronics are another aspect of musical decline as the many untalented people we hear on the radio can’t live without autotune. Autotune artificially stretches or slurs sounds in order to get it closer to center pitch. Many of today’s pop musicians and rappers could not survive without autotune, which has become a sort of musical training wheels. But unlike a five-year-old riding a bike, they never take the training wheels off to mature into a better musician. Dare I even bring up the subject of U2’s guitarist “The Edge” who has popularized rhythmic digital delays synchronized to the tempo of the music? You could easily argue he’s more an accomplished sound engineer than a talented guitarist.
Today’s music is designed to sell, not inspire. Today’s artist is often more concerned with producing something familiar to mass audience, increasing the likelihood of commercial success (this is encouraged by music industry execs, who are notoriously risk-averse).
In the mid-1970’s, most American high schools had a choir, orchestra, symphonic band, jazz band, and music appreciation classes. Many of today’s schools limit you to a music appreciation class because it is the cheapest option. D.A. Russell wrote in the Huffington Post in an article titled, “Cancelling High School Elective, Arts and Music—So Many Reasons—So Many Lies” that music, arts and electives teachers have to face the constant threat of eliminating their courses entirely. The worst part is knowing that cancellation is almost always based on two deliberate falsehoods peddled by school administrators: 1) Cancellation is a funding issue (the big lie); 2) music and the arts are too expensive (the little lie).
The truth: Elective class periods have been usurped by standardized test prep. Administrators focus primarily on protecting their positions and the school’s status by concentrating curricula on passing the tests, rather than by helping teachers be freed up from micromanaging mandates so those same teachers can teach again in their classrooms, making test prep classes unnecessary.
What can be done? First, musical literacy should be taught in our nation’s school systems. In addition, parents should encourage their children to play an instrument because it has been proven to help in brain synapse connections, learning discipline, work ethic, and working within a team. While contact sports like football are proven brain damagers, music participation is a brain enhancer.
Republished with gracious permission from Intellectual Takeout (August 2018).
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The featured image, uploaded by MasterMind5991, is of the band Maroon 5 performing in Sydney, Australia in February 2019, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
My public-school child is state-ranked in piano and flute. A public school is a PUBLIC school, and it will offer a good music program if the PUBLIC expect it of the trustees they elect. Self-government is not a computer game.
Great piece, Mr. Henschen. I think you hit the nail on the head. Most pop music is so boring. It’s unbelievable that the public has a taste for it. And there is such thematic poverty. It’s a one note Charlie. Grab the money, t&a and despicable consumption. You know. The “lifestyle.” It’s hard to watch.
The problem is utterly hopeless. The quality of the music is in a free fall and has been for at least 30 to 40 years…. And the lack of any formal training and education in terms of quality music doesn’t bode well for the future. The future of pop music will be much worse than today – which is very difficult to imagine. I can’t imagine it can get much worse than it is – but that is what’s coming. I’m leaving the country. I’ve already abandoned the culture. It’s a pathetic country now. Sad to see
And the worst thing is that they don’t listen to the best genre (here, I am implying classical- or, if you don’t want people to confuse it with the Classical era- serious music) simply because of stereotypes in kids’ shows.
Well … I guess it all depends on the definition of “pop music”.
The fact is that outside the mainstream arena there’s a lot of really good stuff.
It’s not just well crafted, but profoundly organic, thought-provoking and fascinating. Seek and you shall find.
Being a classically educated composer, pianist and musicologist with a sincere interest also in contemporary pop music, I find this type of article a bit narrow-minded. Yes, the West (perhaps the whole world) is definitely culturally declining, but it is neither a simple nor linear process.
Moreover, being also a professional sound engineer, I find the author’s comments on audio limiting, usually added in the mastering process, to be rather outdated. The “loudness war” is practically over, with the new LUFS-standard. Mainstream pop has surely been over-limited many times during the last decade, but still the human ear/brain is not a level meter. It primarily reacts on musical impacts, not the amplitude.
Besides, when jazz was introduced, the well-educated generations saw it as anti-music, mere noise lacking any sophistication.
In addition to school programs and private instrumental lessons, in the past many children learned music at church. From a “square” white guy like me learning the basics of Renaissance and classical choir music in the Episcopal choir to Aretha Franklin getting her start in the gospel tradition, places of worship were an invaluable resource not only spiritually but musically.
What you said is very true! I’m a musician myself. No, I don’t practice as much as Coltrane, but I do practice enough to get the job done. Yes, music has taken a beating in the last thirty years; and it’s only getting worse. No wonder the folks at Guantanamo Bay use today’s music to torture detainees.
I take some serious issues with this argument.
I certainly agree with the concluding point of this article: schools should offer more music options for students. That’s an easy thing to agree with. But I can’t help but disagree with the, to my mind, misguided and malformed preceding paragraphs lamenting the state of modern ‘pop music’.
I’d like to be generous with the author, particularly because again, I agree with the conclusion that increasing musical education is a good thing, but it’s hard not to read unnecessary bitterness into this, and more than a few unexamined personal biases? I personally find no issue with people having personal biases: I am of course biased towards plenty of things. But being aware of my biases for what they are, I find no need to go out and denigrate the personal biases of others to justify my own proclivities…
In particular, this article takes a poorly aimed potshot at modern pop music. This wording in particular reveals some clear ignorance on the matter: “Besides the decline of music literacy and participation, there has also been a decline in the quality of music which has been proven scientifically by Joan Serra, a postdoctoral scholar at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute of the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona.”
Proven? Scientifically? I mean, you can’t just throw words like those two around. The study was an effort in data analysis (a bit different than science, but the difference is slim enough I suppose to be popularly forgivable), and it did not ‘prove’ anything other than the following: According to the metrics devised by Serra and whomever they were working with, the timbral diversity of popular music has declined over time, as has pitch content, and ‘loudness’ has increased.
You cannot ‘prove’ that the quality of music has declined. That’s an absurd thing to claim. Musical quality is humanly subjective. That’s part of what makes music beautiful. That’s why, although it CAN be mathematical, it’s certainly NOT math. It’s disingenuous to say that science has proven a decline in music quality. What you might instead say is “this *particular* study has demonstrated a temporal correlation between properties x, y, and z of music. I personally value that properties x, y, and z would follow the opposite correlation, and so I conclude that *in my opinion* this study furnishes evidence that music has declined in quality.” And then you can have a good faith argument with those who disagree.
For example I could then contend that there’s no reason to assert that the quantity of chords you use in a song should necessarily correlate with how ‘good’ that song is, much like the number of colours you use in a painting doesn’t necessarily have any bearing on how good the painting is…
Notably absent is any comment on what music is actually being analyzed, how much music has been analyzed, etcetera. There are more people making music now than anytime previous in history. There was just much less music in the past, and fewer people making music. I find it difficult to believe, just on the grounds of numbers, that there is less diversity in music being produced nowadays than there was in the 60s.
Speculation ahead: It seems to me that what this study has probably revealed, more than anything else, is that there has been a narrowing of the definition of popular music. Radio music is a genre unto itself nowadays, radio is seriously just not as relevant as it once was now that we’re in the era of streaming. Yet we still label radio music as ‘pop’ music and vice versa. In the past, pop music was more diverse because the radio was a source for music listeners of ALL genres. It seems to me that pop music is just a more defined, narrower genre than it once was. The narrower your net, the more homogenous your music will be.
You don’t need to listen to the radio to hear what you want. It’s MUCH easier to just open spotify or soundcloud, or hell, even youtube, and go straight to the source. Because of this, I imagine radio has withered to what is truly most accessible to the majority. There’s no reason to tune in otherwise. If you want to hear something else, you just go elsewhere.
If you aren’t finding exciting jazz to listen to, or crunchy, novel electronic music, or heartwrenching singer-songwriter fare, or rebellious punk, or what have you, it’s because you just haven’t learned where to look. This fuddy duddying is just unnecessary pessimism. Anyone with their ear to the ground knows there’s just as much exciting music being produced nowadays, if not more, than there was in the 60s.
Hear, Hear! Literally
Reading sheet music is an important skill, but definitely not the rubicon of Jazz … What is most important to immediately impress upon a student is LISTENING. Ear training IS the most important piece to mastering jazz. I say this for a very simple reason illustrated in primary and secondary education. When a student studies English/language, they begin by learning what makes up a phrase; Noun, Verb, Adjective..etc..this progresses to complete sentences, compound sentences…then to paragraphs. The eventual goal is a Technical Paper, Thesis, and eventual Dissertation. The student has learned all the pieces necessary to write and publish a text. Jazz is no different. The student can not learn to play jazz if their ears cannot translate what they are listening to, into improvised lines on the instrument. If an individual is able only to hear the 1-4-5, how can they be expected to hear anything else but that? When you make a steady habit out of listening to different jazz artists your ears will gradually open up, and you will be able to listen to improvised lines on albums and hear the chord changes.
I agree with everything apart from slating the Edge. Too much is made of his guitar effects. He is one of the most original musicians of his generation and a proven songwriter for 40 years.
I am not a musician and I am one baby boomer that didn’t like rock and doesn’t have much of an ear for jazz. That being said, I recently stopped into a T-Mobile store and was appalled at what I heard. The music was a collection of electronic sounds that to me seemed anti-human. Taking us further away from our human souls rather than toward them. The repetitive beat timed to sexual intercourse never let up. I kept wondering what a steady diet of that all day long does to the mind and the human soul. People in the store kept time robotically in my opinion. All I though was, “Give me Bach, Mozart, Handel and Beethoven anyday!”
Completely and totally agree with your statements, although I’m probably at least 40 years your younger.
If you prefer real-time music over electronica, that’s fine.
But electronic music can have soul in it as well.
I agree wholeheartedly. Modern music all sounds the same. There is no originality or talent in the musicians.
Strange that we’re citing Billy Joel as an example of compositional literacy. Compare Joel’s creative “peaks” with his contemporaries. The Piano Man era coincided with the best music of Pink Floyd, David Bowie , The Who and Stevie Wonder, not to mention supremely talented (though not “pop”, by any means) acts like King Crimson or Frank Zappa. His abysmal 80’s work contrasts to a period of (relatively speaking) high quality pop. His early 90’s River of Nightmares work shares a time period with the peaks of grunge and gangsta rap (which were derivative in and of themselves, but at least they were derivative of quality genres – circa-1970 hard rock and mid 70’s funk). I can think of no period in which Billy Joel stands out. He is the problem.
Now that my anti-Billy Joel rant is over, I think the problem is our overall cultural push toward anti-intellectualism. The classic rock era was characterized by a move to elevate the genre to an art form. Here we see expansions of melody and harmony, inclusion of non-traditional instrumentation, more varied time signatures, increased usage of the studio as instrument, lyrics that are more poetic or socially conscious, and increased complexity of compositions. The mid 70’s saw a sharp rebellion against this, intelligence re-branded as “excess” and stigmatized as a relic of an older generation. This pattern repeats itself. A period of diverse and creative pop circa ’83 – ’84 gave way to homogenized hair metal and power ballads. The early 90’s alternative breakthrough begat bland self-serious crossover pop (Matchbox 20) and aggressive nu-metal. Hip hop transitioned from Wu Tang to Puffy Combs overnight and has devolved to dirty south then to crunk to trap (whatever the hell that is) to mumble rap. Even the indie rock period of the mid 2000’s has given way to bland, safe dance-oriented pop. Anytime something legitimately creative and intelligent is dropped on the world, it is met with a massive, anti-intellectual response.
In 2020 a new, broader phenomenon has emerged, in which rock is dismissed as being a relic of “white, male, boomer” society, and that an advanced people will gravitate to new music on grounds that it is more inclusive. This depresses me to no end. Not to bring politics into a discussion about music, but this points toward a several bad tendencies of liberally minded youth and self-identified liberal elites – attributing bias to personal preference, dismissing the desire for intellectually stimulating art as a “white value”, as if other cultures are incapable of such sophistication. This mindset devalues the contributions of all kinds of culturally significant works of music. Should Afrobeat and Music Popular Brazil be dismissed for its rock influence while we simultaneously embrace reggaeton and K-pop? Has the whole world gone crazy?
Objection to the idea that music cannot be empirically quantified using science is anti-science. Music is nothing but a harnessing of the complex mathematics of harnessed vibration. It is literally a derivative of time. Tonal and harmonic structures can be quantified, as can time signatures. King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard creates qualtifiably more complex work than Greta Von Fleet. Kendrick Lamar has a quantifiably larger and more varied vocabulary than Flo Rida. Studies show fans of Radiohead and Phish have higher SAT scores than fans of Nickelback and Dashboard Confessional. Spend an hour listening to Funkadelic and Stevie Wonder, then spend an hour listening to Migos and 6ix9ine. If you cannot recognize that the former is of significantly higher quality, then I have no hope to offer you.
I too agree, that music of the present day is a disaster, well, pop/rock music to be exact.
But is the inability to read or write music the main factor for that decline? What about Paul McCartney for exampel? He certainly produced great work over decades, without the ability to read or write music. Billy Joel would confirm that.
I believe it’s all about imagination. That’s where the trouble is, in my humble opinion. All the greats from the past were able to create complex work without being Beethovens or Bachs.
In my country, Germany, it’s the same.Total rubbish….and the kids will never know beauty, I’m afraid.
Greetings from Germany.
Stay healthy!
Bernd Rödiger
hi, im a 15 year old who hates pop and loves rock n roll, bring back zeppelin, kiss, osbourne, sabbath, gnr, maiden, etc.!!!!!!!!
I really hated pop before, but I never knew it was this bad. Now I hate pop even more.
Because of one article? These studies don’t mean anything in actual music quality.
Nice article! I would like to add that a computer is no different than any other instrument. It is the mind and skill of the artist that creates the final product. To clarify, when you speak of ‘today’s music’, you are referring to what makes it through the new system to actually be heard. There are plenty of composers and song writers that never are heard because of the algorithms of digital streaming.
in my opinion, Andreas’ comment is very on point. . It saved me about 16 minutes and you typed it better than i would have. Just to add to this a bit… In the 60’s , there were roughly 5,000 albums being released each year. Today, there are about 100,000 songs being released every day. The quality of music being released in the 60’s was consistently ‘good’ as the only artists who even made it into the studio to record were those selected by labels. Obviously major labels chose these artists for a reason… they were talented and they usually guaranteed a certain amount of success. A lot of incredible music came out of this era, but a lot of it was produced in a factory/assemnly line like fashion. These hit factories like Motown almost never failed to produce hits, but you’re listening to the same few musicians and a rotation of (super talented) singers. Think about all of the incredible potential artists that were never even given a shot at making a record because they weren’t chosen by a major label? And all of the kids that were discouraged from even pursuing music as a career because the likelihood of any sort of success was extremely low. We may be lacking music and arts programs in school today, but any child (or adult) can create their own music with tools that were unimaginable in the 60’s (up to fairly recently) for VERY little cost, comparatively speaking. And that is exactly what countless musicians and artists around the world are doing. And they are creating music having heard all of the great music that came before us. What do you think influences music today? Music of the past. Sure, modern ‘radio’ pop is rubbish… like another post mentioned, we are not living in the radio era anymore. We are living in the streaming era, and there is SO much amazing music that literally blows the minds of artists from the 60’s. Artists like David Bowie and Paul McCartney often speak/spoke of this. Music has evolved into so many different genres that spotify can’t even keep up… when submitting music, choosing from their genre list is overwhelming and they haven’t even covered a fraction of what’s actually out there. To say music has gotten worse is a pretty big dis on humanity as a whole. it suggests that we are incapable, when in reality we have become more capable than ever. Great music is out there… and a ton of it. Like most good things today, it’s probably not going to be spoon fed to you, so you’ll have to do a little digging. If you truly care about music you’ll drop the pessimism and pick up a shovel. I hope you find what you’re looking for.