sounddesignerjeans:

Why does popular music suck?

This gets thrown around a lot by musicians and listeners alike, so I thought I’d answer it as concisely as I can. The reason is that music is really only about one thing: expectation.

Music is a dance between fulfilling our expectations as listeners and denying them. As a man I went to high school with put it, it’s about that “ooh” moment. He demonstrated this by playing a couple fairly basic chords on piano, and then threw something spicy in there – something I definitely was not expecting. Without thinking, I said “Ooh!” And he turned excitedly to me and exclaimed “Exactly!” And it’s a balance. If it was only spicy chords, it would sound like noise. If it’s all boring chords, it sounds samey. So you have to live up to your audience’s expectation of music, and then put a twist on it.

But everyone has a different expectation when they start listening to a song. Some people have listened to whatever’s on the radio their whole life. Some people listen to IDM. Some people listen to only xylophone music, maybe. The point is, if you’re hearing a xylophone for the first time, maybe even the second or twelfth time, that’s gonna be your “ooh” moment. If it’s what you listen to all the time, the xylophone is the boring piano chords.

So the reason you hate popular music, if you do in fact hate popular music? Because it’s all “ooh” moment to you and no boring piano chords. Popular music is made for someone who has lived an average musical experience, who has listened to more or less the same music as everyone else. They listen to the music on the radio and hear some annoying auto-tuned nonsense, and that’s what’s the same for them. That’s their boring piano chords. But then there’s a bassline that’s like nothing they’ve never heard, or maybe this idol is the same as every other but she plays lute. Maybe the autotuned nonsense is autotuned differently in a way you don’t even know about because you don’t know what it usually sounds like. And that’s their “ooh” moment. For you, you’re not even used to the auto-tuned nonsense. So it’s all “ooh” and it sounds like garbage.

But you’re not better than them for that. You willingly sat there and listened to noise until it became familiar so that different patterns and styles of it would be your “ooh.” You listened to an accordion of all instruments until a unique little trill would be your “ooh.” No matter who you are or what you listen to, you listen to music that sounds just like your other music to someone who isn’t familiar with it – because unless you know what’s “ooh” and what’s not, it’s just noise.

It’s just how your brain works. It gives you dopamine when you listen to music that mostly does what you expect but then does something just a little different. No need to pretend it’s anything more or less than that.