Vox pop

I've heard some strange criticisms of popular music over the years, usually from people trying to claim (or at least trying to imply) classical music is somehow inherently better. One of the most common complaints I've heard is that popular music abuses the song structure. I admit that it is ubiquitous. I think it would be fair to say 9 out of every 10 songs you hear on the radio are written thusly: verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus, with the possibility for minor variants, such as an intro or an extro (if it doesn't get cut for the radio edit), or a pre-chorus/extra bridge. Unless you listen to very progressive music, it's unlikely there will be a lot of variety on any given CD.

Alright, that's a little strange then, isn't it? And it must get boring to listen to songs written in the same structure over and over again! After all, people keep complaining about all these songs with "catchy choruses" and "sweet hooks." On paper, it looks like they all sound the same.

Except. Except. Except. Classical musicians are totally hipsters and were doing it way before it was cool. Remember the sonata-allegro form? I have never heard anyone complain that composers relied too much on the sonata. Why is that? After all, it can be quite simply broken down into three sections (exposition, development, recapitulation), and more often than not has a plain overarching structure of I-V-I. Why would composers keep coming back to this same form for sonatas, songs, symphonies and movements of suites? What could possibly make the sonata interesting after Beethoven and Schubert and Haydn wrote so many of them?

Content. It's all about content. And structure has no bearing on it. I could write a sonata that sounds just like any other sonata, the same as I could write a song that sounds just like any other song. But I don't because /that/ would be boring. Structure helps give me a guideline for organising the music I write, but does not dictate what the music is.

Of course content is subjective. That's the whole point of music. Music is a universal language, and everyone understands it, but not everyone speaks or understands the same dialect. After Nightwish's Once came out I often used "Nemo" as a way of getting people familiar with Nightwish. It embodies a lot of their qualities, it's short and straightforward, it's catchy, and I think a very nice piece of music. I once played it for someone who I thought might appreciate its beauty and who should know better than to say to me, "Well, it's just circle of fifths, isn't it?" This person is a highly educated musician, and I think that's a very basic way of talking about music. I don't care if they didn't like the song, but to debase it like that is unacceptable because if "Nemo" is "just circle of fifths" then what are all the sonatas written during the classical and early romantic period? And the worst part is that "Nemo" isn't even based on circle of fifths. Taken from the official Once Notebook, the verse is: ||: Dm, C/D, Bb/D, Dm, Dm, C/E, Gm, Csus, C :|| (or i, VIIadd9, VI6, i, i, VII6, iv, VII) and the chorus is ||: Dm, Csus, C, Dm, F, C :|| (or i, VII, VII, i, III, VII). And when it does modulate during the second verse and at the end of the song, it goes to Fm. That is not the circle of fifths that I learned about.
Also, I once heard someone complain that Nightwish never changes the tempo in their songs. That's a ridiculous complaint because there are hardly any tempo changes in any single piece of music in any style of any time period. Sonatas will change tempo from movement to movement, but rarely during.

So why do educated people persist in talking about "popular music" as if it can't be taken seriously? For all the times in school I was told to keep an open mind about serial and 20th-century music, I think I should be allowed to say at least once that you should keep an open mind about any type of music. No one genre is the be-all end-all of music. I never want to restrict myself to listening to or composing one style because there are too many emotions, and too many things to be said. Sometimes I need to listen to Sibelius, and sometimes I need Andy Moor, and sometimes I need to listen to Ryu Kyu Freestyle. Some days I want to write piano quartets because I feel that's the best way to express myself, and other days I want to write a heavy metal song because that's the only way I can tell my story.