Rio Hondo College Newspaper

El Paisano

Rio Hondo College Newspaper

El Paisano

Rio Hondo College Newspaper

El Paisano

Tarnished reputation of pop music

In pop music, the central focus is to include numerous sexual references and as a result, cheapens this genre as a whole. For awhile, this narrow definition of pop has been dominating the music scene.

On Billboard.com, “The Hot 100” which is the top songs of last week, consisted of music screaming about the urge for sex. The number one song is an idiotic, mindless rambling “Uptown Funk” by Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars. This hit has a catchy beat and flow though lacks any true sentiment with gravely unoriginal, tiresome lyrics. “Girls hit your hallelujah (whoo) [x3]/Cause uptown funk gon’ give it to you [x3]”.

Basically, girls serve his sexual needs and they do so since he is outrageously good looking. Depressingly, this message of unsentimental sexual drive and single-minded thoughts is what most pop artists create, especially if a chosen song is specifically meant to be a promotional single.

Nonetheless, pop hasn’t always been interpreted as solely a sex driven genre.  The King of Pop, Michael Jackson, artfully wrote unique music by incorporating diverse intellectual and emotional lyrics that cover an extensive amount of topics. For instance, naming a few of Jackson’s numerous hit singles – “Thriller” is a horror themed song about zombies and werewolves; “Rock With You” he is expressing emotional feelings as he is dancing with someone he loves; “Man in the Mirror” a political song about the reflection of oneself who must be apart of the movement to improve the world’s problems.

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Overall, The King of Pop has perfectly exemplified that pop music can be a creative and inspiring outlet of emotional connectivity. Inspiring his fans worldwide, continuously ’til this day beyond his death.

Despite his unique approach to pop, this genre grew stale. Nowadays, labeled as sex driven music created by hackneyed musicians selling sexual content as their main target point. Their only purpose for writing these songs is to feel empowerment by gaining self-esteem in feeling sexy, having multiple arousal moments, and superficial unrealistic love.

However, there is a small-scale of pop artists and even fewer well-known ones who don’t entirely limit their pop music to arousal nonsense. Artists such as Kelly Clarkson, whom has never done sexual music, including in her new album “Piece by Piece”. She continues to write her lyrics in a pop genre style and at the same time, embrace good qualities within oneself to build up confidence and acceptance.

The main problem is not the pop genre, rather the overwhelming amount of musicians creating this uninspiring music. Musicians who have real talent, such as Bruno Mars, shouldn’t limit themselves to this simplistic gibberish. They should expand their boundaries and create music that will forever be memorable, touching the hearts of millions of fans.

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