“Dude, you’re listening to Katy Perry? That isn’t real music!” 

I'm guessing, you got what I'm talking about here. You may have heard this from someone or you may be the person (Rock Musician/Fan/Listener/Follower/Professional ) saying it. Here's the thing, musicians usually are very opinionated. Especially when it comes to pop music. They’d be the ones first to tell you how easy it is to create pop music and their oversimplified answer usually sounds something like this,

Autotune Vocals + Write Lame Lyrics + Come Up With Some Crappy beat = Pop Song!  

via GIPHY Honestly, No! That's not what Pop Music is about. My teenage years were fuelled with Metallica and lots of other metal & rock music. I was that guy who would scoff at whatever pop music would be played on the radio and I was quite confrontational about it too. But then I grew up and I started to hear things in pop music that to me, were revelatory.

But, What Is Pop Music?

"Pop music is a genre of popular music which originated in its modern form in the 1950’s deriving from rock and roll. The terms popular music and pop music are often used interchangeably, even though the former is a description of music which is popular while the latter is a specific genre containing qualities of mass appeal” (Kay, Amanda, cite lighter.com)

One of the moments that piqued my interest in pop music was when I heard ‘Royals’ by Lorde in my studio. The vocal production is on point in that song. It is unbelievably precise and the performance by Lorde is extraordinary.

Oh, check out Bruno Mars' 24K Magic for more stellar production. 

via GIPHY

The people who are actually making pop music are the ones who have a desire to do it. If you’re a metal vocalist brought up on a healthy diet of Pantera and are asked to sing ‘Stay With Me’ by Sam Smith, chances are you’ll probably not be able to perform that well. In the music business, if you aren’t true to yourself, it’ll be visible and your career will never take off. 

“The amount of time and energy that went into them is obvious to me. you can’t approach anything with any degree of cynicism towards the craft that you are doing and expect it to come out well." - Adam Neely 

 As musicians, we should appreciate the time and effort songwriters, producers, musicians and artists put in to create these massive hits. The production value that pop songs possess is a great learning tool for artists to understand songwriting techniques such as arrangements, harmony, chord progressions and how to craft an identity that has mass appeal. 

This article is a first in what is a planned series of articles where I analyze and examine particular pop culture based on multiple aspects such as, production, music theory, performance & business of it all.

Introducing POP Inc., a content series by Loudest.in, a series of opinion, business, reviews, critics, informative & analytical pieces all on POP Culture & Business!