Rolling Stone's Top 100: Why does "popular" music suck?

One of the oldest, most renowned, widely respected music magazines has decreed the most popular music for the year. 2007’s #1 song, as declared by Rolling Stone: “Roc Boys” by Jay-Z. #3: “Umbrella” – Rihanna. #6: “Dough is What I Got” – Lil Wayne. #7: “Rehab” – Amy Winehouse. #14: “I Get Money” – 50 Cent. #15: “Piece of Me” – Britney Spears. #35: “Girlfriend” – Avril Lavigne.



Does anyone else notice what I’m seeing? A good half of RS’s Top 100 is shitty music. Catchy, maybe. But displaying talent, originality, creativity, and vision? Definitely not. Another quarter, I had never even heard of. A lonesome 25 % of the “Best Songs of 2007” were songs I deemed actually talented and worthy of their position. Feist, Bright Eyes, Radiohead, Arcade Fire, the Shins, Spoon, and the New Pornographers were drowned amongst the likes of T.I., Fountains of Wayne, T-Pain, Nickelback, and Kelly Clarkson.

If you’ve tried listening to the radio lately, you’d probably rather eat your own left testicle rather than do it again. Why does the most generally “popular” and publicly appealing music suck? Some bands have managed to achieve cult recognition and still be incredibly talented – Radiohead and Tool, to name a couple. But with Paris Hilton selling 722,400 albums, Jessica Simpson hitting 219,000, and Britney Spears reaching 1,200,000+ Blackout sales in 2007 alone……that doesn’t seem to mean much.





I have a couple theories as to why the most advertised, “popular” music is actually nauseatingly terrible.

1) It’s catchy! Lazy listeners (i.e. many young Americans) like entertaining ear candy.

2) It’s all great dancing music. If you can’t grind your ass off against some poor frat boy’s groin under neon lights while sloshing around a Solo cup of cheap beer, it’s not good.

3) It’s easily accessible. The most successful pop culture artists are constantly featured on the radio, front covers of magazines, etc. The vast majority of Americans are lazy and know only what the media tells them. So, if all Rolling Stone/the radio/People Magazine talk about are Britney Spears, 50 Cent, Avril Lavigne, and Amy Winehouse, that's all most teens will be repeatedly exposed to and what they're most likely to listen to, because they're familiar with the artists. Thusly, the most ubiquitous-in-media songs with the catchiest beats achieve the highest sales.

I speak from experience – I used to LOVE Britney and Jessica Simpson and Bewitched when I was 13. And let’s face it…their music was never, ever good. I was young, it was catchy, and I heard it everywhere.





However, I think lists like Rolling Stone’s are not really compiled according to record sales OR popularity. It reads more of like a “Who’s Who and New Developments in Music” for 2007. Britney came out with (hopefully) her last album after a tumultuous year, so they give her music a nod just because she’s been in the news so much. Kanye and 50 had a highly-publicized album sales competition, so songs from both of their records got a mention. Rolling Stone feels like they have to include music from all genres in the interest of fairness, so artists like Kylie Minogue, Herman Dune, Black Francis, and the Fratellis are all featured. (I’ve never heard of any of them, have you?) Maybe there’s SOME hope for the world if Rolling Stone was just kidding when they said “Umbrella” was better than “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”.



I wonder who’s writing for Rolling Stone nowadays. Probably the same idiots that predicted Angels and Airwaves would be the next Radiohead in ten years.