Surprise midsummer check-in! I recently took some time to
examine the pool of songs from which I’ll be choosing my Top 20 Hits of 2014
list later this year. Usually, by the end of the year, I have trouble whittling
the list down to just 20 songs I liked, because there are so many great, or at
least solid, hits that year.
Well, this year, through the end of July, we are way, way
short on actually enjoyable songs. I’ll keep it a secret for now, but there
only 6 or 7 songs that I find even remotely palatable in the pool so far. Unless we get a landslide of great pop
songs in the late summer and fall, I may have to switch up my formula or change
the title to “The 20 Tolerable Pop Songs of 2014,” which would really shake the
foundations of this blog, since it’s supposed to be a celebration of pop music.
So, the question is, what’s happened to pop music this year
that has made it less enjoyable? Am I just getting older and finally aging out
of the genre, or has the music changed somehow?
There is no easy answer to this question. Truthfully, it’s
probably a little of both. We tend to enjoy pop music because it travels with
us wherever we go; therefore, we like a song more if we associate it with
something happy. As I’ve gone out and joined the “real world” (or tried to,
anyway), I’ve had fewer happy interactions with pop songs where I could have
created positive connections with them. Nonetheless, I think this goes beyond
my own personal experiences.
For instance, here is a partial list of hit songs released
in 2014 that can in no way be considered “music:”
