The Pleasure of Pop: Why It Is Okay to Feel Good

For the past few decades, many people (especially those of an older generation) have argued that popular music is getting worse and worse. But what has changed specifically? According to Serra et al. (2012), the variance of timbre—the quality of sound as distinct from its pitch and intensity—is on a steady decline. This implies that instrumentation and recording techniques have homogenized. Additionally, although the same notes and chords from older popular music are used in today’s, modern syntax yields fewer variations in chord or note-changing patterns. Finally, today’s pop music is louder (Serra et al., 2012). Researchers argue that a collective increase in volume prevents certain elements of a song to stand out.

According to Rose Eveleth (2012), “All pop music sounds the same now.”

Despite the research suggesting all pop music does—indeed—sound the same, I still question whether or not this a) is true, and b) matters. In his adaptation of the Serra et al. article, John Matson (2012) suggests some limitations to the initial research. First, he points out that the songs being tested were selected based on popularity and digitization, yet old songs that people like now may not accurately reflect what songs were popular back then. Further, people who purchased music in the past were older and richer, while anybody with internet (meaning roughly all ages) can access music today. Regardless, does the homogeneity of pop music negate its value as a genre?

Music, independent of genre, poses many benefits to the human race: community building, prosocial behavior, mating, etc. Because many prominent studies supporting this notion have been done on infants, one could even argue that music is evolutionary. For example, if an experimenter bounces in sync with the song a baby is listening to, the baby is more likely to help pick up the experimenter’s “dropped” object, implying that interpersonal synchrony increases prosocial behavior in infants (Cirelli et al., 2014). This phenomenon reminds me of all the pop concerts I have attended. As the singers perform, they occasionally clap along to the beat, encouraging the audience to do the same. In this moment, when all the fans are synchronizing with one another, everyone whoops and howls in excitement because of how connected they all are. While in this environment, I have found that everyone starts complimenting strangers on their outfits or makeup or posters. In fact, one time at a One Direction concert, my friend picked up a little girl who couldn’t see the stage—how much more prosocial can you get?

Another infant study suggests that melodies are social. Infants are more likely to pay attention to someone singing a familiar song rather than an unfamiliar song (Mehr et al., 2016). Assuming people innately pay more attention to things they enjoy, one could argue that familiarity brings happiness. Car rides, for example, are far more fun when singing along to music; not knowing the words to a catchy song makes you feel like an outsider, and nobody wants that. Pop music’s easy-to-follow structure allows us to quickly become familiar with songs so we can belt them out with our friends behind the wheel or by ourselves in the shower. What could be better?

Pop music is also an identifier. Frith (1981) describes the subcategories of pop music as badges that one wears in order to identify themselves to the public. People often use these badges to form bonds with other people who like the same type of music. For example, I have met so many of my best friends through our mutual love of boybands, whether through school, social media, or concerts. Because I share this interest with them, we always have something to talk about or something to do, thus strengthening our relationship. Similarly, people who listen to “edgier” music (like pop punk) are stereotypically more prone to rebellious behavior. Whether we like it or not, music can define our character. The up side? Music can help us find our community, and this is easier to do as a fan of popular music. While there are millions of One Direction fans who dedicate Twitter accounts to the band members, there are hardly any dedicated to lesser known artists, making it harder to find a community.

Pop music can even heal. While there are many benefits to music therapy in general, research suggests an even stronger effect of pop music on psychological health. In a study targeting a young man with schizophrenia, a music therapist improvised on drums, and the patient improvised on electric guitar. At first, the guitar playing was described as chaotic and dissonant, but as the sessions progressed, the patient and therapist were more in accord (Solli, 2008). This phenomenon became more evident when the therapist implicated musical codes from pop/rock music. Such codes included ‘counting in’ and ‘joint endings’. Next, the therapist emphasized 8-bar structures, which yielded more notes commonly found in pop music. Finally, the therapist would exclaim “yeah!” or “hey!” anytime they successfully played together, emphasizing their interpersonal relationship and associating it with positive emotions. As a result, the patient played less chaotically and was more apt to tune his guitar. He also produced more coherent chord progressions and melodies. Outside the realm of music, the patient’s behavior improved significantly; he showered more, had no incidents of violence, wore cleaner clothes, and communicated with others more. Soon after the experiment, he was released from inpatient treatment (Solli, 2008). The results of this study imply that playing music, especially music influenced by pop/rock, improves interpersonal relationships and general behavior.

The beauty of pop music is its accessibility; you don’t have to be a Juilliard graduate to appreciate it. You don’t even have to be a musician at all. In fact, violations of expectancies affect ERP results in nonmusicians as well as musicians, indicating an implicit musical ability in the human brain (Koelsch et al., 2000). Whether or not you have studied music theory, you are still qualified to bob your head to Ke$ha or Britney. No one will yank out your headphones and say, “Excuse me, but have you stopped to notice the key change and how it’s a commentary on police brutality?” … or something like that.

What makes pop music more comfortable to listen to? There are several reasons, one of them being its use of major keys. Previous research has used priming paradigms to assess musical expectancy among major and minor chords. According to Bharucha and Stoeckig (1986), listeners detect errors more quickly and more accurately when the test chord is major. In other words, people are better at predicting chords in a major key rather than a minor key. Because most pop songs are in major, one could conclude that their chords are more familiar—and therefore pleasant—to listeners.

Juslin and Vastfjall (2008) argue that research has neglected the study of the psychological functions underlying musical pleasure. They identify them as (a) brain stem reflexes, (b) evaluative conditioning, (c) emotional contagion, (d) visual imagery, (e) episodic memory, and (f) musical expectancy. Such functions imply an influence of both neurology and culture. With this, they propose a universal breakdown of how music relates to our emotions, claiming that it includes functions not unique to music. However, other researchers have objected to this paradigm. Vuust and Frith (2008) believe the psychological functions should be listed hierarchically with musical expectancy at the top of the list. Additionally, they object to Juslin and Vastfjall’s belief that much of musical experience stems from psychological functions unrelated to music. Instead, Vuust and Frith propose that musical expectancy depends on the structure of the actual music and the interpreting brain. While Juslin and Vastfjall view musical expectancy as something that develops slowly over time, Vuust and Frith recognize that it can develop even before birth, at least in response to basic musical structures (Vuust & Frith, 2008). This brings us back to pop music. Because the structures are simpler, a wider range of people can develop expectancies toward it, thus increasing the likelihood of an emotional response.  

However, some would argue that familiarity and predictability are negative components of music. Why listen to something if it doesn’t make you feel anything other than content? To that, I would ask another question: what is wrong with being purely content? Besides, just because today’s music has lost some forms of complexity does not mean it hasn’t gained new forms of complexity. For example, the way we make music now is extremely complex. The use of technology is not always lazy; the way artists sample, remix, and layer songs is extremely innovative. Modern songs have intricate and dynamic layering, meaning different layers of the track stop and start at different times in order to emphasize various parts. Before a beat drop in an EDM song, for example, all layers besides the vocals might drop out in order to give the drop more punch.

Repetition also poses an issue for pop music critics. As music is often compared to language, many have questioned why we must repeat so much in music and not in language; such repetition is silly according to people like composer and writer Ferdinand Praeger, who does not believe in repetition. He remarks:

Would ever a poet think of repeating half of his poem; a
dramatist a whole act; a novelist a whole chapter? Such
a proposition would be at once rejected as childish. Why
should it be otherwise with music?…Since any whole
part-repetition in poetry would be rejected as childish, or
as the emanation of a disordered brain, why should it be
otherwise with music?

Yet repetition is not completely alien to language. Think about catchphrases—the “Hi ho” from Kurt Vonnegut, the “Come on down!” from Bob Barker, the “You got it dude” from Michelle Tanner. Often, repeated phrases not only establish someone’s voice but also provide familiarity and constancy. And, as stated before, familiarity and constancy bring people pleasure. What’s wrong with that?

Previous research has also explored the reasons as to why people listen to pop music in comparison to why people listen to other genres. In a study conducted by North, Hargreaves, and O’Neill (2000), adolescents looked at 12 possible reasons to listen to either pop or classical music and had to rate how much that reason applied to them. For both genres, the top reason was “to enjoy the music,” yet a significantly greater amount of people said this about pop music (M = 8.87) compared to classical music (M = 5.39), t(2121) = 39.08, p <.001. In addition, “to be creative/use his/her imagination” was rated significantly higher for pop music (M = 4.83) compared to classical music (M = 4.54), t(2102) = 3.17, p < .01. The following are other reasons that scored significantly higher for pop music: “to help get through difficult times,” “to relieve tension/stress,” and “to reduce loneliness.” These results imply that adolescents use pop music (more so than classical music) to improve their emotional and mental states. Meanwhile, people reportedly listen to classical music to please their parents and teachers. Perhaps the same implication does not apply to adults. But it is important to note that adolescents are a massive part of the world of music. In fact, in an interview with Rolling Stone after recently going solo, Harry Styles states:

Who’s to say that young girls who like pop music—short for popular, right?—have worse musical taste than a 30-year-old hipster guy? That’s not up to you to say. Young girls like The Beatles. You gonna tell me they’re not serious? How can you say young girls don’t get it? They’re our future. Our future doctors, lawyers, mothers, presidents, they kind of keep the world going.

Maybe today’s pop music is louder, but its volume reflects how good it makes us feel. We feel pleasure, yet we crave more of it, so we demand more volume. Maybe there has been increased homogeneity in timbre and chord progressions, but that does not devalue the positive effects of pop music. Listeners have formed friendships, displayed prosocial behavior, and dealt with difficult times all because of the emotions elicited from pop music. Going to concerts has allowed me to be completely hysterical and not be judged for it (because everyone at a pop concert is completely hysterical). Pop music allows us to feel our emotions—whether happy, sad, or angry—instead of requiring us to strain our brains dissecting complex structures that appear in other genres. Pop is what makes music a key component of human life; it establishes communities without discrimination and encourages emotion without judgment. Pop is what makes music evolutionary.

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References

Bharucha, J.J. & Stoeckig, K. (1986). Reaction Time and Musical Expectancy: Priming of Chords. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 12, 403–410.

Cirelli, L.K., Einarson, K.M., & Trainor L.J. (2014). Interpersonal synchrony increases prosocial behavior in infants. Developmental Science, 1–9.

Eveleth, R. (2012). Science Proves: Pop Music Has Actually Gotten Worse. Retrieved from https://smithsonian.com.

Juslin, P.N. & Vastfjall, D. (2008). Emotional responses to music: The need to consider underlying mechanisms. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31, 559–621.

Koelsch, S & Siebel, W.A. (2005). Towards a neural basis of music perception. TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 578–584.

Margulis, E.H. (2013). The Puzzle of Musical Repetition. On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind. Oxford University Press.

Matson, J. (2012). Is Pop Music Evolving, or Is It Just Getting Louder? Scientific American.

Mehr, S.A., Song, L.A., & Spelke, E.S. (2016). For 5-Month-Old Infants, Melodies

Are Social. Psychological Science, 27, 486–501.

North, A.C., Hargreaves D.J., & O’Neill, S.A. (2000). The importance of music to adolescents. British Joumal of Educational Psychology, 70, 255–272.

Serra, A., Corral, A., Boguna, M., Haro, M., & Arcos, J. (2012). Measuring the Evolution of Contemporary Western Popular Music. Scientific Reports, 2, 1–6.

Solli, H.P. (2008). Shut Up and Play!: Improvisational Use of Popular Music for a Man With Schizophrenia. Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, 17, 67–77.

Vuust, P. & Frith, C.D. (2008). Anticipation is the key to understanding music and the effects of music on emotion. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31, 599–600.

 

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