Contemporary pop music is a fairly young art form that developed in the 20th and 21st centuries into one of the most influential cultural industries. The phenomenon of popular music is so pervasive that sometimes a person is not inclined to pay critical attention to this phenomenon. People live in a world shaped by popular culture to such an extent that pop music can be perceived as something extremely superficial, like interior design. The goal of this study is, among other things, to change the habitual perception of pop music as something not worthy of analysis.
Popular music generally does not seek to appeal to any particular subculture or class. Pop focuses on subjects that are thematically relevant to the widest possible audience and presents them in the most comprehensible way. The very structure and composition of a pop song are organized in such a way that it is as easy to perceive and memorize as possible. The choruses and verses make the song not only comprehensible but also intuitively predictable. However, popular music reflects human needs and values at one point or another in the development of society. Music and lyrics can be a powerful tool for criticizing society and changing it for the better.
Suffice it to recall the unprecedentedly grandiose Live Aid festival, which raised a large amount of money-drawing attention to the problem of hunger in Africa. The issues of social inequality, identity, sexuality, and gender in pop music are an intense subject of academic research. There are a variety of scientific journals researching not only pop culture, but even celebrities. Popular music lyrics are often viewed from a sociological and anthropological perspective.
A popular song can be a significant stimulus for empathy, since music in general has the most direct emotional impact, more than any propaganda. Thus, using the emotional potential of music, a popular artist has the opportunity to give the listener a deeper sense of the problem underlying the message of the song. A pop artist is always looking for a certain resonance with the listener, seeking to get some kind of emotional feedback or agreement from them.
Therefore, a professionally written, tenacious pop song with an important social message is capable of turning the heads of a fairly large number of people. At the same time, it is important that the song contains a message that will not be delivered directly, but subtly enough so as not to alienate aesthetically. The work will use modern cultural prisms often used in Popular Music Studies, a distinctive sphere of academic research for at least 40 years (Prior, 2018). For the most successful implementation of the project, an interdisciplinary apparatus is required, capable of including sociological, cultural, musicological, and textological developments.
It would be no exaggeration to say that in many respects problems in society begin with the relationship of people with each other. Pop songs, many of which are already dedicated to the theme of happy, unhappy or unrequited love, can describe the complex relationship between a man and a woman. At the same time, in modern pop music, these relations can be problematized at the level of social inequality or toxic masculinity. It is important that this problematization can be carried out not only by the performer but also by the researcher. In order to fit all the developments into several pages, one needs to pay attention to those songs that contain a clear social message on a planetary scale.
The lens of this study of contemporary pop music is limited to the 2010s for maximum relevance of the information produced. Moreover, in the process of research, several female performers singing about the problem of gender relations will be mentioned and problematized at the social level. Issues of social injustice and black identity also correlate with the field of popular music in terms of its commercial success.
Reference
Prior, N. (2018). Popular music, digital technology and society. Sage Books.