Hits are for squares?

“People may not understand music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes.”
– Sir Thomas Beecham.

Everyone likes pop music. This is an unequivocal fact.

I want to find out — using a combination of in-depth musicology (possibly the worst word ever) and bad jokes — why the bloody hell this is.

Taking a few songs each week, I will deconstruct their key aspects and hopefully engender some discussion about what people think is good/abhorrent about them. Hopefully, through examining the grotesque, calculating underbelly of a pop song, we can better understand its Meduser-like gaze.

You can be as haughty, snooty and alternative as you like. Even the most excessive music-snob has, at some point in their self-righteous anorak they call their ‘life’, caught themselves enjoying a pop record — regardless of how many limited-edition, Herbie Hancock vinyls they own.

This is an unsurprising notion when we consider pop music is no accident. There is no special committee which decrees one song should be confined to a basement marked ‘In memory of John Peel’; and another worthy to be mass-marketed and let onto the airwaves like a bucking, frolicsome stallion. Pop is a science.

It’s written for the sole purpose of getting into peoples’ heads, setting up camp and staying there until another, similarly Machiavellian concoction, squeezes it out.

Of course, not all pop is initially written with this in mind. People such as Lennon and McCartney — and more recently Amy Winehouse — have a natural ability to write to the formula.

However, with these ‘natural pop’ cases, although there is no Guy Chambers (Robbie Williams’ erstwhile songwriter) or The Corporation (the Motown song-writing super-collective which penned The Jackson 5’s ‘ABC’, among others), there is always someone — usually a record company A&R man — who sees £££’s coming out of the stereo.

This is what defines pop music: it is any song which is either constructed or released with the primary goal of lining pockets. It’s very good at this, and by analysing some contemporary smash-hits — on a level I hope will be both in-depth and insightful yet accessible and light hearted — I want to find out why.

This is by no means an original idea.

However, most attempts at articulating this denouement have been conducted by ageing men whose fashion sense appears to have a distinctly ‘acid-flashback’ vibe (jazzy waistcoats, hats with tassels etc) — the kind of bewildered, bearded old guffer who gets confused because Lord Ga Ga never appears to take his seat in The House of Lords.

Granted, I too have ‘classically-trained-itus’ and get a little too excited when a song uses an imperfect cadence or the much lauded ‘4-5-1’ chord sequence.

I’m hoping, however, that the fact I actually enjoy pop music, and my ability not to sound like I have a fugal horn shoved somewhere unpleasant when talking about it (two traits sadly absent in many people who know their dotted-crochets from their anacruses), will make for some insightful, accessible reading and discussion…

Any thoughts on which current chart-botherer should get the ‘why-is-it-so-bleeding-catchy?’ analysis first?