too elitist for pop music

[pjaul]

I finally admitted to myself today that I neither enjoy nor respect pop music.  Am I an elitist?  Am a classical snob?  What is the theoretical difference between pop and classical?

[j_menz]

I finally admitted to myself today that I neither enjoy nor respect pop music.  Am I an elitist?  Am a classical snob?  What is the theoretical difference between pop and classical?

If you were a real elitist, you would call it "serious art music", not classical - which you would only use to refer to serious art music of the classical period. You would have contempt for people who did otherwise.

If you were a real classical snob you would like Mozart's opera seria operas and regard his opera buffa ones as a waste of his talent. You would prefer JC Bach to CPE (or vice versa) and laugh at people who held the opposite view.

I cannot answer your last question until you clarify in what sense you mean "classical". If you do, and I cease to talk to you, you will see the validity of my answer to your first question in action.

[faulty_damper]

I used to look down upon pop for being too shallow and unskillful.  But once I started trying to sing pop, I realized just how difficult it is.  It's so much easier to sing classical than it is to sing pop.

And for me, pop includes oldies pop, metal, rock, rap, hip hop, and other genres of music that is popular.  I like many of these genres.

[bronnestam]

I generally don't like playing "pop songs" on the piano, because the arrangements often are boring as h*ll. A nice melody in the right hand, and the left hand has to do some tedious bass chord accompaniment, everything in the safe middle register. I mean, compare this with composers like Chopin and Beethoven, who wrote for a pianist with two healthy hands, and a piano with 88 usable  keys ... sort of.

So my major objection against playing pop music is that it is seldom music written for the piano, hence not as fun and challenging as real piano music.

Otherwise I love modern music as well, but not all of it of course. I am a HUGE fan of Pink Floyd. And Bee Gees. And Queen. And one million other songwriters and artists. I love music in general, actually. The human race is guilty of so much destruction, stupidity, bad things, evil things ... sometimes we seem to be a plague on this planet. And then I listen to a good piece of music, may it be written in 2005 or 1770, and then I feel pride of mankind again. Suddenly our existence seems to have a point, after all.

 

[le_poete_mourant]

You're not a snob. You just have good taste. It's like saying "I like a nice filet mignon and I hate McDonald's, am I a snob?" 

But seriously, the pop music that's out there today is a far cry from Pink Floyd, Queen, the Beatles, etc. I love Stevie Wonder. Earth Wind & Fire. Pop music used to be better. Now it just feels commercialized to me. All about money. Worth noting that pop music also used to be Sinatra and his contemporaries. I find very few artists out there who are actually interesting these days. I even admit I was a fan of the Black Eyed Peas in their early days, with their first couple albums, but now I think they've sold out and become very uninteresting. Even Adele, who everybody loved, gets boring to me after the third or fourth time I hear one of her songs.

I think the reason you can't play pop songs on the piano is because there isn't much content there, not because of the way they are arranged.

Singing pop music well is difficult. But most people don't even do that. It's all overproduced now. You can be a mediocre singer and go into a studio and sound way better than you are. You don't need to practice or study or train. The real talent these days is in the engineering booth.

[ted]

So my major objection against playing pop music is that it is seldom music written for the piano, hence not as fun and challenging as real piano music.

It was certainly written for the piano during the first four decades of the twentieth century, when the main popular idioms centred on ragtime, stride and swing, and gave rise to a tremendous wave of creative pianistic talent. Gershwin, Waller, Blake, Johnson (Charleston) and hundreds of others conceived and played their tunes at the piano. It was an era of massive pianistic talent we'll never see again. Players such as Raymond Turner, Billy Mayerl and Charlie Kunz come to mind. And going back to the very beginning of popular music, I understand that the first million selling sheet music was Maple Leaf Rag, a piano solo.

The thing was, that up until about the early sixties most homes had a piano, and it was the primary instrument of popular music. Then domestic piano playing was pushed out by record players and the guitar, which rapidly took over as the main instrument of popular music. Instead of standing around the piano and singing, people mostly played records and guitars and sang. Now nobody seems to sing at all. With it, the character of most (not all) popular music changed; in particular much less emphasis was put on lyric melody.

[hfmadopter]

I generally don't like playing "pop songs" on the piano, because the arrangements often are boring as h*ll. A nice melody in the right hand, and the left hand has to do some tedious bass chord accompaniment, everything in the safe middle register.

 

You haven't found the right arrangements for you yet. Or on another note start thinking about arranging some for yourself perhaps. I first learned of this by going to a local talents public recital. he featured Chopin and Debussy, then broke into a Beatles piece done Chopinesque and the most wonderful arrangement of Rainbow Connection you could ever imagine hearing. Very up scale, very wonderful stuff, fists full of music all over the keyboard. And I thought, one day I will do this, it raised goose bumps all over ones body ! 

The man has passed on now but what a talent. Me ? I keep working at it a bit at a time.

[ted]

Hard as it is to believe now, according to Wikipedia, Russ Conway and Gladys Mills displaced Elvis Presley and The Beatles respectively from the top twenty for a while.

[indianajo]

I think we are going through a non-musical phase in pop "music".  There are good new songs out there, but they don't get played very much and they don't sell very well.  I think video  affected what is popular in pop "music" to such an extent that there is not much music.  Certainly not much melody or chord structure.  there has also been a phase of the lyrics edifying the most base emotions, violence, hate, egocentrism.  This appears to be declining finally, but I recently viewed outtakes from a "music' festival in Jamaica where very little of any songs were performed. Instead the artists spent a lot of time on stage talking about themselves and their lives, interspersed with snippets of songs.  Sort of performance being the art of the television interview, only live.  
The segmentation of the radio/media markets has forced a trend that people that like melody and complex arrangements, listen only to "classic rock" or "classic country" and never hear anything new.  I've certainly tried, I listened to my local art FM station on New Year's eve for the DJ's idea of the top new songs of 2012. I hated everything they played. I know I had heard good songs occasionally on that new music station when the classical station next to it dove repeatedly into the trite baroque, but those songs were not the favorites of anybody working there.  I have to say that Adele's performance on "Live from the Artist's Den" left me wanting to go read a good book.  
"Good" pop songs- Kelly Clarkson did something on Dancing with the Stars a couple of years ago that could have been a rock standard, but her songs that get on the radio has nothing in common with that song.  I was intruigued by Australian band "Jet" a few years ago, mostly in videos on the now bankrupt video service "the Tube" but Jet's CD's were never for sale anywhere.  I have heard a couple of good new songs recently by Carol Wunderland  the Dave Mayfield Parade, Arcade Fire,  Shekina Copeland, Miranda Lambert, Rhonda Vincent,Robert Earle Keane, the Vespers, Sierra Hull & Hwy 111, Kacy Bowles, Sydny Perry & Cafe Blue,  all on public television.  Only the country artists have any sort of popularity.  I have to say the programmers at Kentucky Educational Television have much more musical sense IMHO than anybody programming for FM radio, live or simulcast.  
As far as playing any of this pop music, I'm have more fun playing 3 lines on the organ and trying to sing another. That is a bit more fulfilling than trying to play pop with the limited palette of the piano.  George Winston pieces excepted.  My organ has a sort of a Rhodes piano simulator with one tab, so I haven't really consigned my piano playing entirely to classical music written by dead Europeans.  

[thalbergmad]

Hard as it is to believe now, according to Wikipedia, Russ Conway and Gladys Mills displaced Elvis Presley and The Beatles respectively from the top twenty for a while.

The Beatles also borrowed Mrs Mills piano as well as they recorded in the same studio.

I like the Beatles, but I love Mrs Mills.

Thal

[evitaevita]

I used to look down upon pop for being too shallow and unskillful.  But once I started trying to sing pop, I realized just how difficult it is.  It's so much easier to sing classical than it is to sing pop.

What do you mean when saying "classical"? Opera, etc.?
What do you mean when saying that it's easier than singing pop?

I'm neither an elitist nor a snob... But, from my experience (I have taken singing lessons for years, I've been in choirs, etc.), I just find classical music far more difficult to interpret than pop or other similar genres, as I feel the same when playing the piano.

[nanabush]

A lot of people just like simpler music...I'm not a fan of the radio-pop stuff just because it's SOOOO overplayed, and a lot of people gravitate towards the same 3-4 hits for months on end.

I listen to a lot of progressive rock, experimental/alternative music, and some other stuff that *might see radio play, but I wouldn't categorize it in the same group as 'pop'.

I can't say I have no respect for pop music; I have a ton of respect for the audio engineers who can actually piece all the components together, and maybe a little less for the singer who gave about 35 seconds of vocals before it went through the plastic factory.

But ya, some music with a simple vocal line and a little guitar riff never hurt anybody... it can be catchy, have a good lyric, even if it is as simple as a nursery rhyme haha.  Might not be my cup of tea, but I'm not going to go all high and mighty and say "that is not true music!!" while shooting lightning bolts at the singer 

[ajspiano]

I can't take that crap lying down. I have to fight back.

So sometimes when I play the accompaniment for beyonce's "broken hearted girl" (my wife sings) I play it arranged with a multitude of chord inversions and as if its the ocean etude.. 

All the elitists, a-put your hands up. Whoa-oh-a.
If you don't like it put a chopin style arrangement on it.

[hfmadopter]

I can't take that crap lying down. I have to fight back.

So sometimes when I play the accompaniment for beyonce's "broken hearted girl" (my wife sings) I play it arranged with a multitude of chord inversions and as if its the ocean etude.. 

All the elitists, a-put your hands up. Whoa-oh-a.
If you don't like it put a chopin style arrangement on it.

Correct, you da man ! That is my goal in pop, I'm maybe half way there or a bit less. What I do I do well, it just isn't up to where I want it to be just yet ( pop that is). People still love it even if it isn't meeting my goal as yet.

That's what the performer Ken Manzer did years ago that I heard locally.

[hardy_practice]

Pop musicians tend to be not so highly skilled.  They're good at their own tiny (and limiting) oeuvre.

[tdawe]

You're not a snob. You just have good taste. It's like saying "I like a nice filet mignon and I hate McDonald's, am I a snob?" 

No it is not. It is more like saying 'I only eat food over a certain price range. I won't even consider looking at food that costs below a certain amount.' Whilst I am a fan of 'serious art music' to dismiss an entire genre is simply the mark of an ignorant person. There is great music to be found in pop as anywhere else. There is plenty of bad - and even terrible - music, but the same could be said for classical music.

[bronnestam]

I can't say I have no respect for pop music; I have a ton of respect for the audio engineers who can actually piece all the components together, and maybe a little less for the singer who gave about 35 seconds of vocals before it went through the plastic factory.

Well ... I wouldn't call Whitney Houston, Freddie Mercury or Celine Dion bad singers. For example.

[hardy_practice]

No it is not. It is more like saying 'I only eat food over a certain price range.

Well, I certainly wouldn't eat a hot dog!  and why eat a burger when you can afford fillet steak? (I don't eat anything less than sirloin).

[le_poete_mourant]

Well ... I wouldn't call Whitney Houston, Freddie Mercury or Celine Dion bad singers. For example.

Yes, but look at who you're citing. All singers whose careers peaked decades ago, and two of whom are dead. Name me three current pop stars who are great singers.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Yes, but look at who you're citing. All singers whose careers peaked decades ago, and two of whom are dead. Name me three current pop stars who are great singers.

I know you guys are gonna attack me for this but...

...
...
...

Nicki Minaj isn't a bad singer.  She's like pretty solid I think.  But she like rarely uses her voice what the heck?!

However, I HATE her music!  OH MY GOD she's terrible!

[pjaul]

However, I HATE her music!  OH MY GOD she's terrible!

Starships was the main song remixed for my squad's competition cheerleading routine last year, so Nicki Minaj has a special place in my heart

[tdawe]

Well, I certainly wouldn't eat a hot dog!  and why eat a burger when you can afford fillet steak? (I don't eat anything less than sirloin).

Yes, but that is not the point. Imagine the hot dog was priced at more than the fillet steak, and you chose it due to that.

[bronnestam]

Yes, but look at who you're citing. All singers whose careers peaked decades ago, and two of whom are dead. Name me three current pop stars who are great singers.

Baaah, I'm so old that "decades ago" seems as yesterday to me. I don't give a sh*t about the music taste of my children ...

Or, in short: I cannot name three "current pop stars".

[ted]

Certain popular tunes provide me with a fabulous psychological vent. I can imagine, internally and harmlessly, while listening to this one, the sterling work I could do with a silver hammer upon a number of individuals.

[indianajo]

Yes, but look at who you're citing. All singers whose careers peaked decades ago, and two of whom are dead. Name me three current pop stars who are great singers.

Jordan Sparks, Sheryl Crow, Kelly Clarkson, Diana Krall, Miranda Lambert

[g_s_223]

What I find bizarre is why anyone listens to rap: aural toxic waste.

[ajspiano]

What I find bizarre is why anyone listens to rap: aural toxic waste.

you're clearly listening to c/rap not rap.

Hip hop is a wonderfully creative genre full of wit and improvisation. Good freestyle rappers impress me like any good jazz musician does. It just doesnt appeal to everyone because it dwells almost exclusively in the rhythm and lyric domains.. saying rap is waste is tantamount to saying poetry is waste.

[outin]

The best singers outside art music will not usually become huge stars because they tend not to do stuff that is marketed to the widest audience...I guess if you have the ability you would not want to waste it on simple BS.

But the soul/funk/jazz scene is filled with good singers. The best contempopary female singer IMO is Maysa Leak, who is also classically trained. But there are many others who are also highly skilled.

[nystul]

I like pop music.  The cheesier the better.  One thing I don't like here in the 21st century is the canned music passing for concerts.  I understand it is not possible to dance fast and sing well at the same time, but it just isn't right to have "live" performance that is just the CD playing over a PA system.  Most of pop singers seem to be musically gifted from what I've seen but they don't get to show it very much any more. 

[ajspiano]

but it just isn't right to have "live" performance that is just the CD playing over a PA system. 

Indeed, i was unfortunate enough to see a bit of "The Voice, Australia" the other night.. and after all the crapping on about connection to an audience and making someone believe what you are singing the OBVIOUS (like several seconds out in places) lip syncing in the performance by Ricky Martin was enough to make me notably nauseous..   

The reality talent shows are pretty much all bad, but 'the voice' is a whole other level of disgusting, scripted crap.