#and I think it adds an interesting spin to Dua Lipa's song where in the original she sounds like she's thriving

[sillimancer]

Hello and welcome to my thread of song mashups/remixes/covers I would make if I had the skills and know-how cuz I think they'd work but idk how to do any of that so I can only put it out into the universe and hope someone more musically-inclined feels inspired to try it themselves let's go

mashup of Missing You by John Waite and Don't Start Now by Dua Lipa

[eunique]

new york, london, paris, munich, everybody's talking about how awful modern pop music is.

I used to think that modern pop music is awful. Now, not so much. Awful is a strong word and I'd rather use simpler. That is, in terms of hamorny wise.

However, your claim is incenuating that pop music is objectively bad. That, I wholeheartedly disagree with.

In general, if you wanted to write pop music, you'd really need chords I, IV, V, vi and V7 if you wanted to add a bit of ✨spice✨ to it. Learn those 5 chords and you can basically play almost any pop song or write an easy pop song. That is only harmony wise and we haven't even gotten into the instrumentation, textures and timbre of the music. There are exceptions to this where some pop songs will use chords that us, as listeners, don't typically expect to hear in modern pop songs.

And putting aside the harmony part, you've also got instrumentation. What you're typically thinking of anon (I assume), is stuff that is all made electronically through a DAW. I will admit, some of the stuff does end up sounding similar and that's more in part with the bass or the kick beat of a song and the sample library used that really factors into that.

A major factor into why pop music almost sounds the same is basically the above but also the fact, music has trends. Like everything else, music goes through phases where certain things will be in favour over other things. Go listen to songs from the early 2010s and you'll hear a lot of similarities between each song. You can hear this in different eras of classical music (classical music as in the genre overall, not the era though that also has trends within it's own era).

Another factor, especially with music within the last 2, maybe 3 years, is that pop music nowadays tends to pull influences from many different genres but mainly R & B and Hip-Hop. This means that the lines for what is defined as pop music is blurred as many songs can fall into many different genres. Take Dua Lipa's Dance the Night for example, you can classify it as pop but you can also tell the song has disco influences but could also technically fall under disco and there are so many pop songs that can fall under other genres. There is no clear cut line of what is truly pop music.

And don't get me into the tik-tok-ification of music because that is a whole other discussion in itself. But just so we all know, it has really factored into pop music as of recent years.

However that being said, the above I just said mainly applies to western pop music. What about pop music from outside of the west?

Pop music from other countries such as China, has their own version of pop music (called mando-pop or C-pop). While they do follow western songwriting structures (verse 1, chorus, verse 2, chorus, bridge, recapitulation, end) integrate their own spin on it.

C-pop will integrate traditional Chinese instruments and/or traditional Chinese performance arts such as Peking Opera into their songs. Listen to Jay Chou or even Lay Zhang. Some of their songs integrate Chinese integuments or Chinese opera.

K-pop uses incredibly interesting harmonies in their music and subverts listeners' expectations incredibly well. Go watch react to the K on YouTube. They have a long running series called Classical Musicians React where classical musicians react to K-pop and analyse the music.

J-pop has its own instrumentations and their sample libraries are completely different from what the western pop music sample libraries are. The way J-pop will use those libraries and push it to it's limits is what makes it so interesting. Hell, they even made a synth voicebank (vocaloid) and that in itself is it's subgenre.

All of those I've just mentioned is only 3 of so many other pop music from other nations. So to say all pop music is awful is a very narrow minded view point to be looking at it. Yes, all of those can fall subject to sounding similar but this I'm talking about western pop vs. International pop music.

Of course art is subjective. Music is a form of art so it is subjective from person to person. If pop, isn't for you, that is fine. But pop maybe someone else's favourite genre. If you think all pop is awful then that's your opinion. I personally think pop does have its moments where it does shine. Do I prefer international pop over western pop? Absolutely! But I think pop is still a valuable genre. Can't complain about more music to listen to.

Regardless, I think it's really important to broaden your listening horizons and listen to all kinds of music because it allows you to see what the music scene is like for other places in the world or what music was like maybe during the 60s or even the Baroque Period. That's just my 2 cents on this anon's opinion.