2024/07/25 15:52
Why is pop music getting boring?
2024/07/25 15:52
Author: Li Qinyu, Editor: Fan Zhihui
Recently, well-known United States producer Rick Beato shared a 12-minute video titled "The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse" on YouTube. He mentioned that the current pop music technology is simplified, the content is boring, and the entire music industry is getting worse and worse due to the many over-commercialized works.
The video has been viewed more than 2.87 million times on YouTube, and some netizens ridiculed that Rick Beato is just an old man who complains that today's emerging musicians no longer make music as before, and even thinks that Rick Beato is an old-fashioned anti-tech person.
In response, Rick Beato followed up with a video of "The Simpsons" scene "Old man yells at cloud" in response to ageism in the comment section, and once again insisted on his point that humans don't care about music as much as they used to.
"Old man yells at cloud" refers to the criticism and anger of older people who have derailed from the times, often with hints of old age and grotesqueness. In 2021, Trump criticized Musk's company Tesla for relying on government subsidies in a speech, and Musk also used this meme to allude to Trump.
When Rick beato personally performed the "Old Man Roaring Clouds" meme, it was ironic and at the same time, it also made people wonder, is pop music really getting more and more boring?
In the 40s and 50s of the 20th century, limited by the limitations of single-microphone technology and real-time recording, singers often had to stand in front of the band when recording music. At that time, the recording process was usually done in one go, requiring perfect coordination between the band members, and any mistake could lead to a re-recording.
By the 70s, the advent of the multi-track recorder revolutionized music production. This allows musicians to record their parts at different times and places, driving a significant increase in musical complexity. For example, Pink Floyd's producer, Alan Parsons, used multi-track recording to create the complex sound effects of the classic Time.
In October 1998, with the release of United States pop singer Cher's album "Believe", Autotune was introduced into the field of music production, revolutionizing the way music is made. Originally, Autotune's main function was to correct the vocals and add coloring effects to the vocals, but with the popularity of this technology, some non-professional singers saw the great success of musicians using Autotune, and hoped to achieve similar results with this technology, becoming "style speculators".
This may not be unfamiliar to domestic audiences, and "Andy Lau" sung by Bu Fan in "New Rap Showdown" is a typical case. In 2023, Eight Mile Underground also introduced new competition rules, "NO AUTOTUNE ONLY RAP", and so far, Autotune has become a catalyst for genius and a fig leaf for mediocrity.
Nowadays, the threshold for music creation has been greatly lowered, and anyone can complete the production process of lyrics, music, arrangement, recording, and mixing with just a computer and some software. This convenience has led many musicians to use the same sound effects and production techniques, resulting in a homogenization of musical styles, especially pop music. On the music charts, many of the hits show striking similarities in structure, rhythm, and melody.
Ed Sheeran has demonstrated playing almost all pop songs with four chords (Em, C, G and D) on the Netherlands TV show RTL Late Night. In this way, he has performed several hits from artists such as Passenger, Craig David, Spice Girls and Beyoncé.
Rick Beato also said in the video: "Music production is becoming more and more dependent on technology rather than the talent and effort of the artist. Music has become more homogeneous, lacking the innovation and dynamics it should be. ”
In May, YouTube channel David Bennett Piano counted 940 songs in the top 40 of the United States Billboard charts since 2001, only 32 were not 4/4 beats, meaning that 96.57% of the hits followed the same beat structure. The popularity of this structure reflects the preference for a specific beat structure in popular music production and dissemination to meet listener expectations and market demand.
The rise of short video platforms has further exacerbated the fragmentation of music consumption. Listeners are exposed to music through short videos of 15 seconds to 1 minute, and this consumption pattern significantly reduces people's patience and interest in the full work. The MIDiA Research report notes that modern streamers frequently skip songs while listening to songs, with about 24% of songs being skipped within the first 5 seconds of playback and 35% of songs being skipped within the first 30 seconds.
Global pop music has always faced a trend of being compressed by technology. At the same time, changes in consumer habits have brought unprecedented challenges to the music industry.
Music has lost its original dynamics, listeners' patience has diminished, creators have been forced to follow a repetitive formulaic creative model, every link of the entire music industry chain seems to be slightly tired, and pop music is gradually becoming less interesting.
The quality of music may depend on personal taste, but modern factors such as technological iteration, cultural exchange, scene segmentation, and audience feedback have undoubtedly reshaped the development direction of pop music.
This controversial factor has also given the music industry a positive significance in terms of commercial and cultural structural changes, such as technology and the trend of democratization. Among many factors, the "over-extension" of music genres seems to be the key factor in changing the trajectory of popular music.
The "over-extension" of musical genres is mainly reflected in two aspects: first, the hybridization of genres has become the main way for creators to innovate, and second, the fragmented definition of genres has made it lose the initial distinction between musical styles.
In the past, music genres served as a compass for listeners to find musical preferences. For example, pop music in the 60s, rock in the 70s, dance music and hip-hop in the 80s, and electronic dance music in the 90s, each genre emerged in a specific cultural context.
However, today's music genres are mostly variations of these traditional genres. Mark Mulligan, founder of Midia Research, pointed out in an article that the popular music genres of the 21st century can be grouped into four main categories:
The first category is the localization genres dominated by amapiano and Brazilian funk, which blended local rhythms and international musical elements and quickly became popular around the world. For example, Kabza De Small and DJ Maphorisa's "Emcimbini" is a party music that combines deep house, jazz, bass and piano melodies with South Africa rhythms. Between 2019 and 2023, the music of the Amapano genre on Spotify has grown by more than 500%.
The second category is the scene-driven subgenre represented by Drill and Trap, which reflect the local characteristics and cultural life of a specific community through direct lyric content and visual presentation. For example, in 2012, 17-year-old Chief Keef released "I Don't Like," with straightforward lyrics describing gang life and street fighting in South Chicago, United States. Visually, this type of music video is often filmed in the artists' neighborhoods, showcasing the local streets, architecture, and residents' lives.
These two music styles will not be unfamiliar to domestic listeners, after all, domestic rappers have done a lot of discussions on "whether there is a drill in China", and Drill and Trap have also become the most topical styles in the domestic rap circle.
The third category is the reinvention genre represented by MumbleRap, that is, the reinterpretation of existing musical styles, such as Mumble Rap, which was originally a genre of rap music formed by artists singing with "grunt" or slurred voices, which was mainly spread through the online audio distribution platform SoundCloud in the 2010s. Previously, the genre was seen as pejorative, but now it has attracted a younger audience and has given rise to iconic titles such as Lil Uzi Vert's XO TOUR Llif3.
The fourth category is the revival genre represented by post-punk and shoegaze, both of which originated in the style of the 70s and 80s and regained attention at the beginning of the 21st century. In particular, the revival of post-punk was originally intended to refer to the early 2000s when indie bands and musicians were influenced by post-punk music and incorporated elements into their musical compositions. For example, in 2001, The Strokes released a masterpiece "Last Nite", the music style and production method of this song was significantly influenced by the old band The Velvet Underground in the 70s, and reached number 1 on the United Kingdom independent singles chart, staying in the top 20 for 9 weeks, for a total of 17 weeks in the top 100.
In recent years, under the influence of the three seasons of "Le Xia", Chinese bands with strong elements such as hedgehogs and the right to reshape statues have gradually become well-known to listeners.
The shoegaze is characterized by its thick guitar sound wall, bizarre musical atmosphere and fuzzy voice, which has set off this "shoe craze" in the independent music industry at home and abroad in the past two years. For example, Wisp, a 19-year-old girl from San Francisco, wrote "Your Face", inspired by the classic shoe-watching band My Bloody Valentine, which quickly became an instant hit on TikTok and accumulated more than 48 million views on Spotify, making her a rising star in the modern shoe-watching renaissance scene.
It can be seen that every genre of the current genre is pushing pop music to iterate in a new direction, and the essence of the current emerging music genre is still the product of the permutation and combination of classic genres.
As it became easier to "create" a new genre, comments on the new genre, clarifications, and the discussions that came with it began to emerge.
In today's age of social media, music critics seem to be drifting away from their traditional career trajectories. As the barriers to music dissemination have been broken, professional critics no longer act as "intermediaries" between content and listeners, and their status and authority have been challenged by "music critics for all".
Both professional critics and ordinary listeners have shown excessive enthusiasm for the identification and naming of new musical genres. For example, overseas music critics often argue on the Internet about the imprecise naming and name of Afrobeats and Afrobeats. Some people have even coined terms such as Spotify-core, TikTok-core, Roblox-core, etc., to describe the music style according to the characteristics of the music platform.
Mark Mulligan argues that perhaps in the 2020s, we no longer need complex genre jargon to understand music, but should look at it from more angles.
In terms of technology, the rapid development of artificial intelligence and various AI music production tools has profoundly affected the way musicians create. For example, the Hyper Pop style breaks the boundaries of traditional pop music, blending multiple "hyper-pop" styles such as electronic and rock, and its sound is often auto-tuned, showing a sense of machine-like precision and unnaturalness.
In terms of users, the birth of short video platforms allows more listeners and song washing teams to adjust the speed and rhythm of songs and quickly produce so-called DJ versions, which is becoming more and more common, resulting in the homogenization of popular music works in style.
Based on the content mechanism of short videos, more unpopular, and grassroots works that were previously rejected by mainstream record companies have been heard by the public, such as "Baby Face" released by Hou Xian in 2009, which returned to No. 11 on the Douyin hot song list after 15 years; Another example is Hailai Amu, Liu Shuang, Guo Youcai and others, which are also examples of equal rights by short video technology.
At the same time, modern music is more adaptable and dependent on the scene and environment in which it is placed. The Nightcore style, for example, has now been reduced to being synonymous with speed and pitch-up, while serving as background music in the online gaming and anime communities, serving the atmosphere and emotional needs of these scenes.
The music content that originated on short video platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and TikTok, because of the traffic-first logic and time limit, is more inclined to attract attention in a short time, such as card music, show-off performances, beauty singing, etc., and the style is also popular. This style has recently been named TikTok-core by overseas music critics, referring to those styles of music that are popular on TikTok. Whereas, Spotify-core refers to the style of music made in order to get more playback and attention on Spotify, usually including a grand intro and an easy-to-remember chorus to adapt to the playback habits and user needs of the streaming platform.
There are too many hot songs that can't be defined, and then over-defining music works by genre seems a bit "old man roaring".
Genre is no longer important, and the iteration of media technology, the simplification of music content, and the changes in user patterns and venue environments are driving pop music to undergo a complex and irreversible transformation. While this change brings with it some uncomfortable illusions, while the genre role is constantly weakened, the music becomes more diverse, replaced by a richer and more nuanced musical landscape.
However, in the process of the collision of the old and the new, there are also people who take shortcuts in pursuit of short-term interests and abuse new technologies, resulting in the creation becoming formulaic and the content becoming superficial and vulgar, making the reputation of pop music much less than before.
Flaws and loopholes are often temporary, and we need to be wary of opportunistic works and reverse domestication of users' aesthetics, but we should still be more open-minded to try new combinations, styles, and techniques, and explore the path of new musicians.
It has also become a cliché that pop music is criticized for being monotonous and boring.
With a whopping 120,000 new tracks still hitting streaming platforms every day, listeners' ears are tired of it, and music genres are no longer signposts, but can become barriers to creation. The rise of streaming, the development of new technologies, and the emergence of speculators seem to have confined the development of popular music to a single path.
In such an environment, music creators need to have the ability and courage to master technology and adapt to new environments, rather than being at the mercy of technology and environment.
In March 2023, Shanni Chen launched a new single "Teach Me How to Be Your Lover" sung by her own AI model, and even the cover of the single was generated by AI. She posted: "At the moment when the development of AI is hotly discussed, creators are excited and worried at the same time, and I hope that through this song, I hope to promote the thinking of all those who care about artistic creation - if the era of AI will come, what creators should care about may not be "whether we will be replaced", but "what else can we do".
When a musical work is created solely for the sake of commercial success, rather than a deeper meaning and emotional expression, the boundaries between it and AI-generated musical work become blurred. This commercially-oriented creative paradigm not only weakens the artistic value of musical works, but also may lead to the gradual degradation of the listener's ability to perceive and appreciate music.
In the long run, pop music may face a more "homogeneous" market, where originality and diversity are overwhelmed by a large number of reproductions and formulaic melodies. And it is only with the two-way effort of creation and appreciation that music can truly return to its essence.
The rolling forward of technology and the inclusiveness and diversity of listeners can help creators make the greatest works, but what kind of spirituality, flesh and blood are behind the works, and what kind of people the creators have become in the process, may be more meaningful to the music itself.
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