Overload's also great.

I don't really have a wish that pop would sound like any particular thing at all. After all, there's a huge variety of pop out there, so there's bound to be some stuff I like and some stuff I don't.

My beef with pop is, not what it is or isn't, but what is popular. Let's just say I would have a higher regard for humanity (or, at least their musical tastes ;) ) if the most popular music out there was complex and challenging, musically. Instead, the most popular stuff tends to be pretty simple (maybe even simplistic) musically.

In my fantasy world Centipede Hz would still be on the charts, like Adele's or the Imagine Dragon's 2011/12 albums still are. And the video below would have, like, 337 million views instead of 337K.



Instead, we get the following video with over 215 million views after just 4 months!



Now, don't get me wrong, I think Taylor Swift has a lot of talent, and her songs are decent. But they're still rather conventional, which is a bit disappointing.

Great album in my top 10

and yeah there is a lot of amazing pop..

Bjork
The Knife
Goldfrapp
Fever ray
FKA Twigs
Perfume Genius
Grimes' earlier stuff

couple of examples

lol no thanks.

ill take simple pop over animal collective 10 times out of 10. they just aren't good. flaccid experimental if you will.

I didn't even necessarily mean Animal Collective in particular, was just using them as an example. Any reasonably complex pop music would do. And I don't consider Taylor Swift or the Imagine Dragons to be reasonably complex.

Is complexity really the only thing you look for in music? Something can be complex and still be ****e (ie Genesis, several Yes records, pretty much most prog bands) and something can be simple and brilliant (see Velvet Underground, Renaldo and the Loaf).

No, it's not the only thing. There are plenty of simple songs I like, and there is plenty of complex music that is crap. However, ability to appreciate complex music indicates to me that the listener has more sophisticated musical tastes (generally) - and that, in turn, tells me the listener will tend to have a wee bit more gray matter between the ears. Basically, I use musical tastes as a sort of social barometer (though by no means the only one). A population in which, say, Schoenberg or Coltrane, was the most popular musical artist, is probably going to be a nicer population to live amongst, than a population in which, say, Johnny Cash or Fats Domino, were the most popular artists.

And it's not that Johnny Cash and Fats Domino don't have their own virtues (I actually like both), but their music doesn't tend to be very complex. Not much gray matter needed to appreciate it. If society's most popular stuff was also the most simple, to me that reflects on society.

Well at least I'm not that pretentious.

ya id bet the exact opposite would be true

"DriveYourCar" would like to see more complex, challenging music in the pop charts, but I'm happy to look elsewhere for that kind of music. For me, pop should stay simple.

Firstly, it's a chance for sophisticated discerning listeners (like what we is on MB) to loosen up once in a while. On stage one time, Zappa was explaining how he'd rearranged The Black Page, which was too complicated for many people, and he ended his introduction like this :"Get down with your bad self and enjoy the easy New York teenage version..." Well, imo pop music should be an opportunity for us to get down with our bad selves.

More importantly though, pop music is the route by which children begin to fall in love with music. They don't usually want anything too fancy or harsh, so good pop should include plenty of songs that are happy and harmless. This song did it for me when I was eight years old and spent my birthday money on Little Eva's single:-

...."Chugga chugga motion like a railroad train" - That's what we need more of in pop!!