…is basically rubbish, isn’t it? Ed Sheeran, Adele, Taylor Swift, Drake, Rihanna, Lorde…hardly interesting 3 dimensional characters. It’s like the music version of gentrification.
Hopefully this new Sheeran album will tip the scales in favour of a backlash
#opinion
No. For one thereis no revisionism of these artists. Secondly Rihanna, Lorde and Taylor Swift have all made interesting, good songs
^^ revisionism at its finest
lolwut
I forgot liking Taylor Swift was the same as liking Ed Sheeran
Couple of things about Poptimism:
Manufactured pop music (or whatever you want to call it) has got much better at picking up on music trends and turning them into mass product. e.g. Drake’s whole career, Bieber’s “Where are U Now” popularity with the likes of Four Tet and Rustie, PC Music going from the avant garde to chart producing in the space of about a year, Lemonade name checking hip musicians across the board etc. It’s less cynical that it sounds, that’s influence for you. Why shouldn’t pop musicians produce interesting credible music?
Music journalism focuses on clicks and clicks mean headline news from big pop stars. It’s in most publications interest that those “credible” pop stars recieve the most coverage.
So between mainstream pop music actually producing more credible output and it being more profitable for publications to cover big artists you get pop stars dominating the conversation. Ed Sheeran’s record shows when they get it wrong they might still get called out, though Adele shows you might still get a pass for producing MOR rubbish as long as you’re popular enough.
Nice to see wonton argue their poinr
plop music
I liked pop music before it was cool
Never change, DiS
Which way has it swung now? Pop music isn’t bad, it’s good. Or pop music isn’t good, it’s bad. Or maybe the golden age of pop is over.
currently, the debate is at a meta level, where we all point out how opinions change and hence we mark ourselves as so cool and above it all (meta comment)
Pejorative, unhelpful discussion which lacks nuance. 
Mainly because I’m regretting the OP. Still can’t stand a lot of the music I refer to, though.
Haha fair enough! Rihannas good though
There’s absolutely nothing new about this. For as long as I can remember every now and then there’s phase of ‘serious’ music critics saying ‘do you know what? Some of the stuff in the charts is actually brilliant’ - remember Paul Morley’s ‘new pop’ in the early eighties?
The truth is some of it is, most of it isn’t. It’s also perfectly possible to admire the skill and art in turning out product like Adele and Ed Sheeran do but at the same time never want to ever listen to it. I can admire the skill it takes to produce Eastenders, but that doesn’t mean I want to watch it.
Good that the normalcy of DiS has been maintained
i’m no fan of blur but remember when damon albarn called adele’s new music middle of the road and people jumped on him for it? jesus christus
She’s definitely middle of road, but that doesn’t preclude her from expressing genuine emotions in her music (I think she does for what it’s worth).
I’m not sure she’s any more middle of the road than Elbow are these days for instance, and they are apparently DiS’s favourite band.
Personally I wouldn’t listen to either of them by choice.