Is pop music inherently stupid?

[jancivil]

Pop music that is pleasant is likely to be stupid as well, yes.
It might sound gloomy, but in my view only serious and sad topics are not stupid.

That's really shallow, I think.

[incubus]

@Birdy: Nice. Not sure I'd call it pop.

@French rap/white: It's gotta be better than lil wayne

WAIT

@ghettosynth: FFS, you beat me to it.

[Aleatoriac]

Dooood, I'm totally there with you on that. Please tell me that you're going to do the raps yourself? And ohmyfookingawd there'd better be some triangle if you know what's good for you.

It goes without saying.

I went with the cowbell, actually.

Triangle and cowbell are METAL as f**k

Pop music is the only TROO music all else is pretend

[ghettosynth]

You have to have triangle!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNEgUPKxk7A

[Hank the Knife]

I'd say pop music has to be stupid. Otherwise it wouldn't be irritating so many
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Avvh5H-EPWU

[herodotus]

You know, people are getting all bent out of shape about these huge generalizations, but I was just talking about this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEfFOd8TDZA

And for the record it contains neither triangle nor cowbell.


Sheesh.

[fluffy_little_something]

Pop music that is pleasant is likely to be stupid as well, yes.
It might sound gloomy, but in my view only serious and sad topics are not stupid.

That's really shallow, I think.

It has been my impression over the decades...
Serious topics usually go hand in hand with higher-quality music unless there is a disconnect between music and lyrics.

Take Madonna for instance, in my view she only had one quality song, namely This used to be my playground.

[Hank the Knife]

@Herodotus
Bursts with brass though. Me like brass

[ghettosynth]

You know, people are getting all bent out of shape about these huge generalizations, but I was just talking about this song:

And for the record it contains neither triangle nor cowbell.


Sheesh.

Um, it's also not New Jack Swing, which needs triangle.

[Phazma]

As pop music people define music that can easily be sold to many people, so obviously it needs to be kept simple and be based on something that has already be heard and it needs to fit the current trend. Some people manage however to make some intelligent music within those restrictions. But I guess most intelectuals prefer other kinds of music to express themselves.

[jancivil]

I always liked the record, Pop Muzik by M.

Sometimes stupid is brilliant, sometimes smart is not what it makes itself out to be. As to 'topics' and music, there is a basic confusion, isn't there. Pop or rock music writing is lifestyle writing. It typically isn't talking about a piece of music qua music, it's a comparison with other things and it's about the culture. Does it validate this idea. Famous rock writers such a Christgau or Bangs were never concerned with music really.

What music a person chooses is too often just an advertisement for the image they want to project to the world. A serious topic in the words to a song are surely no guarantee of the quality of the music. Who defines 'serious' here in the first place? No, I don't think sad vs happy is a predictor of smart/stupid. I'm put in mind of people advising 'minor key' as more serious-y than major. Shallow. Now it shouldn't even be pleasant in service of the avoidance of stupidity. Stupidity is harder to avoid than this. It's too prevalent.

[ghettosynth]

Sometimes stupid is brilliant, sometimes smart is not what it makes itself out to be. ...No, I don't think sad vs happy is a predictor of smart/stupid. I'm put in mind of people advising 'minor key' as more serious-y than major. Shallow. Now it shouldn't even be pleasant in service of the avoidance of stupidity. Stupidity is harder to avoid than this. It's too prevalent.

Spot on.

[jancivil]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR2JtsVumFA

[aciddose]

Popular music is inherently normalized.

"Half of all people have an IQ below 100." This is of course dependent upon the reference used and the population sampled.

The most "popular" (defined as: listened to by the most listeners?) music should not require advanced intelligence or experience to satisfy the listener.

I'm not able to generalize about the tastes of any group, I have the feeling to a degree that this question is pointless and begs the question through making several assumptions.

If we were to assume that music carries something like an "IQ" and that compatibility is expressed as the reciprocal of the absolute difference in IQ or similar we could then draw some conclusions.

The most popular music under these assumptions will be centered on some "IQ" and must contain properties which widen the lobe it covers to the maximum extent, ideally toward the center of the distribution.

Say the music is designed with a rectangular window two sigma wide in total. If this lobe is centered on the mean of the population (100) it reaches an audience of more than 68% of the population.

If instead it is moved positive by one sigma (~115) it only reaches over 47% of the population.

Moving the right edge in the positive direction has a diminishing return. Moving the left edge toward the mean (100) has a growing return up to the edge reaching the mean. It continues to have a greater return than moving the right edge until the edge reaches negative three sigma.

[fmr]

Popular music is inherently normalized.

"Half of all people have an IQ below 100." This is of course dependent upon the reference used and the population sampled.

The most "popular" (defined as: listened to by the most listeners?) music should not require advanced intelligence or experience to satisfy the listener.

I'm not able to generalize about the tastes of any group, I have the feeling to a degree that this question is pointless and begs the question through making several assumptions.

If we were to assume that music carries something like an "IQ" and that compatibility is expressed as the reciprocal of the absolute difference in IQ or similar we could then draw some conclusions.

The most popular music under these assumptions will be centered on some "IQ" and must contain properties which widen the lobe it covers to the maximum extent, ideally toward the center of the distribution.

Say the music is designed with a rectangular window two sigma wide in total. If this lobe is centered on the mean of the population (100) it reaches an audience of more than 68% of the population.

If instead it is moved positive by one sigma (~115) it only reaches over 47% of the population.

Moving the right edge in the positive direction has a diminishing return. Moving the left edge toward the mean (100) has a growing return up to the edge reaching the mean. It continues to have a greater return than moving the right edge until the edge reaches negative three sigma.

What a piece of bullshit this is. First, if you start talking about music as a "prodict" with a "target audience", then we are not talking about "Music" anymore, but rather about market and merchandising. I, for once, absolutely refuse to talk about music in such terms.

Second, a lot of pseudo "sociological scientists" have tried to come with such "formulas" to create a product whose success is guaranteed. Sometimes, they reach momentuaneous success, but soon the "product" disappears. Other times, that even fail miserably right on the first atempt, which means that these "studies" have very little validity.

Third, if your relation between popularity of music and IQ had some validity, then we had to conclude that younger people (which, most of the times, are the main target market for pop music) are mostly retarded, otherwise, the "manufacturers" had made a mistake when defining them as their target market.

All in all, there was always music that was more "market oriented" as there was music that was more "art oriented". This is not exclusive to music. It happens with all art forms. Some artists have more personal and outsider languages than others, and tend to produce works less oriented to the common audience. However, tastes evolve, and those artists eventually may become the "trend artists", creating new currents, and becoming the main current.

If you look at the History of the arts, you will see exemples of this in many arts. Van Gogh died almost in misery, and had to be supported by his brother. Now, his paintings are the most valuable. When Stravinsky premiered the Sacre, there was a riot in Paris. Now, that work is considered one of the XXth century masterpieces.

Pop is very little about music. It's a consumer product. Eventually, some pop musicians may achieve something that is durable, and will remain, but the vast majority just makes product to be used momentarily and then trashed.