Quote:
Originally Posted by Ska Lagos Jew Sun Ra
Maybe if I could afford the silicone tits, and the massive hype campaign. Even if it's 'out there' it doesn't matter because unless it's a freak show attention grabber like Rebecca Black, or somebody who just happens to be 'discovered' like Justin Biebar, quality won't really matter.
Writing a great pop song IS easy. Pop songs are 99% post production. It's more knowing the 'in-techniques' that you must conform to in order to be considered 'professional' or 'legitimate'. Which is the game of a bourgeoisie industry uses to protect itself from having to take risks on free spirited musicians.
As for what you said:
Dynamics - everything has to be mixed down to mids, and compressed to be an even flow of volume. Where you can find dynamics in that, I don't know.
Lyricisim - Uh... "It's gettin' hot in here... so take off all your clothes"
Correct Application of Hooks - constant inane repetition of them works. Take Just Dance for example. The second half of that song is NOTHING but the word dance being panned right then left then right then left.
Time Signatures - Well, you have two choices: 3/4 and 4/4. Chose wisely, I guess...
Melody - Essentially, this is how low to mix the melody in order to make it seem like it's non-existent. MAYBE have some instruments there but usually in the modern electro-pop world, it has to be a 5 second loop of voice over a drum machine that NEVER varies patterns.
Production Techniques - again, 'industry technique' which is more used as a filter for record companies, and radio than it is, in a sense, something that relates to the listener/output.
With that said, ANY form of music is complicated. Music itself is a difficult beast to manifest. However, in comparison to the vast majority of music stylings out there, pop is sometimes retardedly simple, and effective non-the-less. Since quality is arguable, I think any song which you can string out to 5 seconds of melody if you arrange every piece in a row, and is 3 minutes long, is simple. Not to disrespect pop, but more out of respect to things like classical which obviously are well more complex(generally).
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Everything you've said here refers to chart music created to rake in as much sales for record companies as possible. There are vast amounts of bands out there that have made the creation of a GENUINELY GREAT pop songs an art form.
Let's take the most obvious example - the Beatles. Throughout their recording career they wrote some truly exceptional 3-minute bursts of pop music that expertly made use of melody, hooks, lyricism etc to maximise listener engagement. Songs such as Help! utilised various components essential to a great pop music and they're rightly remembered as one of the greatest bands of all time.
Not all pop music is top 40 fare. You have bands like The Smiths who essentially made a living off pop songs. They just constructed them in a way that communicated with their audience.
Their is a real craft in writing great pop songs, Rebecca Black's Friday is not an example of a great pop song...