I honestly don't know the answer, but a few decades ago in most towns the majority of the public listened to just a few radio stations and everybody knew the top songs. In the Spotify age, I'm far from certain that's true.
The Musical Diversity of Pop Songs
41–50 of 72 posts
Re: The Musical Diversity of Pop Songs
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except that websites are intended to be functional while songs are intended to be works of art. Thats the problem. Why are we treating music like an industrial product? (The answer is money)
Two hundred years ago, most popular music existed primarily as simply a support for public dancing. The audience didn't expect to sit and listen to compelling virtuosos perform. It was only the advent of recorded music that allowed individual performers of popular music to gain specific audiences (with free jazz performers of 1930s being perhaps the first popular recording artists noted for producing "works of art").…
Re: The Musical Diversity of Pop Songs
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except that websites are intended to be functional while songs are intended to be works of art. Thats the problem. Why are we treating music like an industrial product? (The answer is money)
The second you put music on “cd” its not art but a product. The idea of the musician as an artist is highly inaccurate.
Re: The Musical Diversity of Pop Songs
#44Re: The Musical Diversity of Pop Songs
#45Actually, pop songs follow the same basic chord progression formula... Elton John MASTERED it - revealed here: https://twitter.com/TheMarkusAllen/status/996830643949522944
Re: The Musical Diversity of Pop Songs
#46Actually, pop songs follow the same basic chord progression formula... Elton John MASTERED it - revealed here: https://twitter.com/TheMarkusAllen/status/996830643949522944
A song is so much more than a chord progression.
For those playing along at home: modern pop favorite I–V–vi–IV is also the chord progression used in some arrangements of the 1788 classic Auld Lang Syne.
Re: The Musical Diversity of Pop Songs
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except that websites are intended to be functional while songs are intended to be works of art. Thats the problem. Why are we treating music like an industrial product? (The answer is money)
> The answer is money The individual artist or producer which want's to have a number one song is not driven mainly by money. The drive is just wanting to be the best. And being the best in such a competitive field requires having a highly polished product.
Re: The Musical Diversity of Pop Songs
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you say is true, although it misses a larger point: that even though we CAN listen to unlimited variety, since the labels control the distribution systems (radio plays, featured music, music sold in big box stores, publicity etc etc) the music they produce becomes inevitably popular. Turn on the radio, walk into Walmart, turn on the tv, watch a movie and you’re not going to hear independent Tibetan chants. You’r…
That's like saying that people are eating bananas and oranges and apples because there is a huge PR campaign to push them, and that this is destroying the chances for less popular fruits. Sure, there is that, but let's not kid ourselves, those fruit are popular because they are actually preferred by a vast majority.
If it was not for the music industry. Pop bands would not exist. Boy bands would not exist. Etc. They are as artificil as bananas.
Re: The Musical Diversity of Pop Songs
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm no music expert, but that (specifically your statement about dancing being premier) doesn't jive with what little bits I know. Granted you could narrowly define bits and pieces of what you said to constrain the set of artists you're talking about, but insofar as you mention free jazz of the 1930s as an early example of producing "art for art's sake", there are certainly earlier comparable examples, the "futurists…
And what about the obvious example of classical music?
Classical music was pop for it's time. People danced, drank, and even had massive riots when a controversial composer came to town.
Re: The Musical Diversity of Pop Songs
#50"My Heart Will Go On" gets a top-5 score for use of flute, but I believe the flute-like sound is a recorder of some type, not a flute.