No, don't worry, this isn't going to be a snobby and elitist blog post about why classical music is better, and why only stupid people like pop music. I like pop music, in all (well, nearly all) it's many incarnations. In my time, I've bought albums by Steps and Coldplay, Bananarama and Kylie, The Beatles, Abba, Meat Loaf, Human League... the list goes on.
I like pop music (I'll be using that to mean all popular music styles and not just those songs of a particular style or chart success), and I admire the craft that goes into producing many a perfect pop song.
But it's just a pop song!
However great a piece of pop music is, however well structured or crafted it is, however much the music and lyrics work together in perfect harmony, in the end it is just a pop song - it is, and always will be, ephemera - it is all part of the popular culture detritus that every generation leaves behind.
In the art world, nobody believes that the paintings of Jack Vettriano or the recently deceased Thomas Kinkade are worthy of much merit. They are pleasant pieces of art that put no demands on the viewer and are intended for a commercial market place. I'm sure the artists are well aware that they will almost certainly have no long lasting legacy. They are creating images for money and money alone.
In the theatre, nobody makes out that pantomime and farces are anything more than simple entertainment, and while the best of them can be memorable and bring a smile to the audience I very much doubt that it is scripts of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves" that will be the scripts from our time that are remembered in generations to come.
In the world of literature, many love and devour the works of Dan Brown, Jackie Collins or J.K.Rowling but only the most die-hard of fans would suggest they are anything more than good yarns. If the start of the third millennium is remembered for the "Da Vinci Code" and the Harry Potter books the world will have gone mad.
In the movie world, everyone knows that the vast majority of the big blockbusters are there for entertainment but do nothing to advance the art of movie making and are produced as a means to get you to part with your ticket money. They have no pretensions to being art.
In all these other arts people seem happy to accept that there is nothing wrong with popularity or commercialism. They don't seem to care that the book that they are reading is nothing more than a good story to occupy their time and wash over them but has no lasting worth - so why do people take pop music so seriously?
Why do so many people treat simple formulaic songs as if they are the greatest thing ever created by mankind?
And why do normally sensible and serious newspapers give so much coverage to what, in food terms, is little more than an unhealthy take away?
Yes, pop music is fab, pop music is fun, pop music can lift your spirits, but it Is just pop music. However hungry you are you wouldn't eat a Big Mac and fries and think it was the best meal in the world, worthy of Michelin stars. But that is just what loads of people do with pop music.
Now I've made it clear, I like pop music. Sure, as I get older I find myself getting more picky and selective. There is very little Hip Hop or R'n'B that I like, and I find jazz often just ends up rambling, but I'll listen to most things, and I have my favourites.
But, were I to be stranded on the BBC's Desert Island and asked to select just 8 pieces of music to keep me company, I doubt, very much, that the final list would have many pop songs on the list.
Pop music is instant aural gratification. Pop songs are crafted by very able songwriters who know exactly how to tug on the heart strings of the listener, but they are not art.
By their very definition and purpose a pop song cannot be art.
Let's get some things straight:
•Eminem is NOT the modern day equivalent of Shakespeare. His amusing, and often crude, rhyming couplets bare no reasonable comparison to the works of what many would argue is the greatest writer in the English language ever.
•Lennon & McCartney wrote some very effective songs and stretched what was acceptable in a pop song (thanks, in no small part, to the influence and input of George Martin) but their output is mere flotsam and jetsom compared to the works of the truly great composers. Any number of perfect 4-minute pop songs don't compare to the symphonies and operas and sonatas and string quartets of the genuine musical geniuses.
•If Mozart were alive today it is highly unlikely he'd have been writing chart hits. If he were alive today I'm not sure what Wolfgang would be doing but I suspect he might be writing Sondheim-like pieces of music theatre, or fantastic movie scores, or sticking to classical music and doing that brilliantly.
•However much time and effort is put into the production of a pop record is irrelevant to the composition. Songs, of all styles, stand, or fall, by the quality of the composition and not the production or the video. In a ideal world all these elements work together, combining to give the listener the best product, but the vast majority of pop songwriters, and all of those with any sense of proportion, realise their track will disappear with them, or probably long before them, save for a few PRSeRning plays on retro/gold radio stations.
Pop music is great, but let's not pretend it has any worth or longevity. The Beatles won't be remembered in anything more than an interesting footnote in 200 years and it's time that arts editors stopped pretending that they, and the rest of pop music, are anything more important than that.
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