It bothers me a bit when people link this to 'explain away' pop music.
It's my belief this is an oversimplification - many of these songs are written in different keys, which can create different sounds and feelings of songs. Sure, you can transpose them to a common key (as they've done here), but at that point, it's not really the same song anymore.
Also, I've found that chord progressions can be quite flexible if only 'snip-its' of certain songs are being used, namely the standard chorus or verse. Much of the genius of songwriting comes in transitions or bridges.
I'm not denying this is not entertaining, and it works to an extent, but I would say that there is a degree to which this hinges on the widespread renown of these songs. It's not so easy to say they would have become so popular if they were all written in the same key, and not the one of the original artist.
Pop music is frequently spoken down upon, that it's 'talent-less' or 'garbage', but it really is like any other expert discipline - if it were so easy, there wouldn't be such a saturation of experts dominating the field. My opinion most of the talent is in production - Dr. Luke, Red One, Max Martin, etc.
> Pop music is frequently spoken down upon, that it's 'talent-less' or 'garbage', but it really is like any other expert discipline - if it were so easy, there wouldn't be such a saturation of experts dominating the field.
Pop music and folk songs use common chord progressions with variations for the simple reason that such songs are easy to pick up and play. To that end, pop music is the opposite of an expert discipline, it is a form that is accessible to people who want to play music. That doesn't mean that a pop song can't be complicated or have lots of technical finesse, but that wouldn't be the typical kind of pop song people play.
Pop resolutely is an expert discipline, but the expertise is of a type that many classically-trained musicians barely register.
Skilled musicians tend to be timbre-deaf; In addition, classically-trained musicians are invariably groove-deaf. They mentally process melody and harmony very efficiently, which is tremendously useful but inevitably means discarding a lot of musical information that is highly meaningful to the lay listener.
If you listen with a musician's ear to most pop records, you hear a simple melody, a simple chord progression, maybe some simple harmonies, all at a fixed tempo and time signature. If you listen with a pop songwriter's ear, you hear hooks and earworms and prosody, you hear a perfectly honed and polished lyric and a melody that carries the meaning of that lyric without a wasted beat. If you listen with a producer's ear, you hear the product of sixty years of evolution in creating sonic landscapes that sound big and rich and engaging on anything from a nightclub soundsystem to a pocket radio.
In pop production, you've got to grab someone's attention in ten seconds, engage them in thirty seconds and move their emotions in three minutes. When most of your potential listeners are scarcely paying attention, that's fiendishly difficult. Pop has it's own virtuosi, an elite of songwriters and topliners and producers who can tell a story and convey a feeling with haiku-like efficiency.
You've said what I've been trying to articulate for a long time - in much better terms than I ever could. Thank you!
I like the dichotomy of songwriter vs. producer - but I would guess it isn't always so discrete - i.e., production and mastering is essential to conveying the emotions and moods of the songwriting. In fact, I would argue the lyrics are often overemphasized in analysis - they are more of a vessel for tones and cadence of the song.
If you start with a minor chord and always follow the most likely chords, you end up having the exact chord progression from the song. They were right after all.
