Pop Music’s Suckiness Now Proven by Science

Katy Perry Bad Music

Pop music is terrible. This should be obvious to everyone with ears. But Katy Perry still sells records and somehow “Born This Way” had a record for weeks at number one by a female Interscope “artist” even though it’s just “Express Yourself” without all that messy creativity and originality. A song hasn’t been that much of a ripoff hasn’t been such a big hit since “Ice Ice Baby.”

Of course “Born This Way” has had its record usurped by “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jepsen, an “artist” we’ll all promptly forget about in three months, if it takes that long.

The news is that now those of us who have been pointing out how terrible, mundane, cynical, and bland all this crap is finally have science on our side! SCIENCE!

It’s really really sad how much better and more fun that song is than pretty much anything on terrestrial radio today. I’m so disappointed in humanity.

Music today, is basically the same simple song over and over again altered slightly by computers and sold by boobs (I know you can’t tell the difference, but boobs and music are not the same thing, Katy Perry) in order to put more money in the pockets of TimeWarner executives. Science now proves this. According to a team of Spanish researchers led by Joan Serra:

“We found evidence of a progressive homogenization of the musical discourse. In particular, we obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations – roughly speaking chords plus melodies – has consistently diminished in the last 50 years.”

Ka-boom! Score one for me in every argument I’ve ever had about pop music.

Look, no one needs or expects pop songs to be great works of art. Tchaikovsky’s dead and I know expecting something the level of Al Green is probably too hopeful on my part. But we can still do better than what’s out there now. We can have fun without giving up our souls completely. And …. My god! Who let dubstep in here? It’s getting itself all over everything. Aw! No! No. It’s making out with every movie trailer and commercial. Now we’ll never get him to leave. Nobody likes you, dubstep! Go back to your home! You know, broken down meth lab raves.

Where was I before I was so rudely interrupted? Oh yes, is it really too much to ask that pop music build on what came before it instead of just repackaging it and dumbing it down?

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