People love to say that everything wrong with music is all pop’s fault. This standpoint is especially popular with progressive-rock heads who only consider King Crimson and Yes good music. Well unfortunately, a 200-minute-long instrumental segment is not a requisite for quality in a song. Don’t get me wrong, rock is my favourite genre, but Rockism and similar ideologies are just elitist and unhelpful. The problem with modern pop music isn’t that it’s catchy, but rather that it’s unoriginal.
I used to hate pop, so much so that I once said to a friend that there hasn’t been a good album since Juice WRLD—needless to say, this isn’t an opinion I hold anymore. Yet despite my disdain for the genre, I never really knew why I hated it. Eventually, I realised that my issue with pop wasn’t unique to it. Look at the biggest names in pop right now, like Sabrina Carpenter. I like ‘Espresso’, but is it going to be engraved in music history? I doubt it. Pop music is boring because it’s samey. But it’s not even the worst offender of this.
In Reggaetón, every single song sounds the same (coming from someone who speaks Spanish). They all sing about sex, money and fame over a similar sounding beat every time. This is similar in mumble-rap. The lack of originality in songwriting in the last 10-15 years, instead favouring chart success, has produced a musical climate in which everyone joins trends initially, but when the hype fades, forget the music. ‘Happy’ was HUGE when it came out in 2013, but is anyone still talking about it? Not really, and when they do, it usually isn’t positive. Released in 1983, ‘Billie Jean’ came out thirty years before ‘Happy’, and yet it’s still as relevant as ever.
Both ‘Happy’ and ‘Billie Jean’ are catchy; that isn’t the problem. The difference is originality. Lyrics don’t have to be profound, but they have to be interesting or at least clever in a unique way. There’s a certain mystery behind ‘Billie Jean’. Who is she? Why does she say he is “the one”? Songs like ‘Happy’, ‘Gangnam Style’ and ‘Despacito’ don’t have intrigue, profundity and aren’t clever. Hence, they come and go.
And it isn’t just lyrics; it’s instrumentation, too. For example, Björk is pop but she’s so unique— from weird experimental beats in songs like ‘Army of Me’ to strange lyrics about cars “always existing” in ‘The Modern Things’. She fuses pop with electronica, trip-hop, alt-rock and even big band jazz.
There are modern artists who do this: Charli xcx’s Brat is a lyrically insightful dance pop record that subtly contrasts inner doubt with a “365 party” life and Billie Eilish draws on several genres to produce raw and vulnerable accounts of love, depression and superficiality in the life of a young artist. The best example of modern originality though is Rosalía who blends pop, electronica, reggaetón and flamenco to produce a sound that has never existed before her. These artists make unique blends of pop with other genres that feel refreshing and original.
So, when people complain about pop music, they fail to realise that the main issue with musical culture is permeated throughout all genres. From identical reggaetón beats, samey pop lyrics and an annoying mumble-rap army, unoriginality is the problem and also inescapable. Look at it this way: classics are a Michelin Star restaurant meal and modern music is a branded chocolate bar. The chocolate is tasty at the moment but so forgettable. The restaurant isn’t that same cheap dopamine that chocolate is, but it stays embedded in your memory forever.
“Sabrina Carpenter – O2 Arena 2025 – 070 (cropped)” by Raph_PH is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
