The State of Pop Music

Be honest, who read the title and thought, “Hell no!”

That’s what I would think. Pop music is a genre that has long since gone down the tubes. It’s all over-dubbed, over-synthesized, and all you need, to be frank, is a nice rack. Boom! You’re a mega-superstar. Even those who have talent waste it. Mariah Carey can sing, excuse me, “That girl can saang!” But she doesn’t. Lady Gaga? Same thing. For her, it’s more about the gimmick than the music. –If you need proof, feel free to watch her here as Stefani Germanotta, before she was Gaga. She was a regular girl, in regular clothes, with a great voice, but that wasn’t enough. Even when she got signed and started going by Gaga, she couldn’t make it big so she sold her musical soul to the devil and made it more about the theatrics than the music.

I’m not dumb, I know people like a show. I like a show, too. I don’t mind when theatrics are abundant in a performance, but when it gets in the way of the music, when it becomes the main focus of the artist, it’s too much.

What I’m saying is that video really did kill the radio star. Did anyone happen to catch the 2013 VMA’s over the weekend? I haven’t watched in a few years, but the thirteen-year-old *Nsync‘er that still lives somewhere deep inside of me was just a little bit excited about watching the Justin Timberlake/Nsync performance, so I tuned in. Aside from him and Bruno Mars, I witnessed a live train wreck and wasted a few hours of my life that I will never get back.

Then sometimes, an artist or two will come along and re-instill your belief in something.

Examples:

Adele
Bruno Mars
P!nk
Fun.
Kelly Clarkson

Maybe you don’t like these artists, and that’s fine, but there’s no denying they actually have talent, they use it, and they give a damn about what they put out there. Mainstream radio needs a lot more of this and lot less of this:

Kids, let it be known that this image depicts a disaster, not a deity.