We Find Ourselves In The Age Of Ke$ha

Yes, these are strange times for the world of pop music. Or maybe not. Maybe it has always been this way and we are just to o blinded by nostalgia to realize it. I am of course referring to the state of Top 40 pop music. It seems that songs topping the charts now are horrifically bad. I'm not saying that they aren't catchy or memorable or fun to listen to. Most of them are. The problem is when you take a closer listen to the lyrics.

The current popular music scene has confined itself to 4 base concepts:

Party Anthems. An old staple of modern music. The essential archetype could best be described as we dance and drink and screw, because there's nothing else to do. (Apologies to Jarvis Cocker).

The Unrequited Love Song. You and I are destined to be together and someday we will be and everything will be perfect. Till then I'll just watch you go out with other people and secretly judge them. these songs are essentially what happens when you transcribe a teenage diary and make it rhyme.

The Requited Love Song. Perhaps better known as the epitome of ignorance being bliss. Most of these songs look at love in the basest terms. Relationships are complicated things, but not in pop music. Being in love in a pop song means no fighting, no compromising, no awkward dinners with her family. Everything is just dreamy. That is until we get to...

The Heartbreak Ballad. Ah, yes. Losing the one you love is never easy. But you can take solace in the fact that the other people who want to join your sorrow. There are two sub-genres to this type of style. For lack better terms, let's call them "I love you, you left me, please take me back." and "I loved you, you left me, now I hate you, and I wish bad things towards you." This is why you should tread cautiously in the Requited Love Song territory, because shit will get complicated eventually.

I would just like to point out that there is nothing inherently wrong with these archetypes. They have been around as long as there has been music with lyrics. The problem with these songs we are being bombarded with currently is the fact they address these ideas with very simplistic and hyperbolic terms. The emotion is very bombastic and big in every way, but the emotion seems shallow and confined entirely to the surface. There is no depth to these feelings, no grey areas and this is why I feel they are dangerous. People are being inundated with these very narrow world views, consciously and subconsciously. They are in constant rotation on the radio, in our stores, and in our restaurants.

Now, I should provide you with a little background on myself. I work at a business where a top 40 station is used as the background music. Over the course of a typical work day, I will hear a handful of songs repeated 3 to 4 times. At a point, it gets so bad that I wake up with them stuck in my head. Now having heard these songs so much, I have started wondering about what exactly is going on in them. Hence, why I am writing this. I intend make to regular entries here dissecting the lyrical content of the most played songs in America right now and finding out exactly what is going on in them. I plan on being frightened by this. I plan on worrying about young kids who spend their time singing along to Lady Gaga and Nickelback. I plan on developing a new ulcer. I hope you plan on reading.

Next Week: Our First Entry Taylor Swift "You Belong With Me."