Music Genres

For the blog this week I chose to listen to four songs that would be categorized as ‘pop’ music. You can usually find me listening to country or folk or some sort music that wouldn’t be found on popular radio stations. I went on iTunes and found the top four songs on the pop charts and went from there.

The music categorized as ‘pop’ differs greatly from the country music I normally listen to. While country music tends to tell some sort of a story I feel like pop music could sing about absolutely nothing as long as it has a catchy beat. Adorno says that people who listen to popular music are childish, and are likely to distraction and inattention. In my opinion you cant pay close attention to the lyrics of pop music or you will disappointed in how dumb some of the lyrics may be.

Country music talks about love a lot, maybe too much sometimes. But the songs tend to be focused on getting over break ups or actual true love songs. I feel like listeners can easily relate. Pop music tends to focus on the physical aspects of love, if you catch my drift. Not as many listeners can relate to ‘making love in the club’ as they can to having their heart broken or something of the sort. Pop music also doesn’t seem to sing about family very much. I didn’t find a single song that had family as the focus. Country music doesn’t sing as much about family as it does about love, but a lot of the lyrics include family and family values.

Country and Pop also differ when talking about play. In country terms, playing is going fishing and riding tractors and playing in the dirt. Pop music defines playing as dancing and singing and clubbing. I think that the differences in the lyrics of country and pop are based on the values that the writers and singers have. Each genre portrays a different lifestyle and relates with different groups of people. Pop music to me would be categorized as popular music because it fills the air on numerous radio stations. Adorno also talks about the standardization of music, which makes listeners think they are listening to something new and different when in reality its all the same. To me, that completely defines pop music. All the lyrics are similar and all the beats are similar, there is always just a small difference in the tune or how the beat goes that makes people think the songs are different. I’ll stick to my country music.