Six songs, deconstructed.
One of my fondest prepandemic memories was a meeting. |
Hear me out — I'm not talking about a required departmental meeting or the kind that could have been an email. It was the sort of in-person meet-up that has gone from a delight to a public health risk over the past year. |
In this case, it was an hourslong coffee last winter with two of my favorite cultural thinkers, Nate Sloan, a musicologist at the University of Southern California, and the songwriter Charlie Harding. Besides being best pals, they co-host the widely acclaimed music podcast "Switched On Pop." In every episode, they summon the most colorful highlights of a current trend in music, then deconstruct and reconstruct the forces behind it: Why, for instance, that looping sample in a new Top 40 track is so addictive, or why the zeitgeist may have created a market for that sort of song. |
The podcast is brilliant stuff, equal parts fun and expertly argued. So I reached out to them about writing for Times Opinion, the first result of which was "The Glorious Return of Funk," written by Nate. |
Just in time for the Grammys, they're back together bearing the fruits of our Before Times in-person brainstorm: an interactive Op-Ed that explores how the structure of pop songs has been quietly transformed since the 1960s. Deconstructing six songs, they demonstrate how pop music has shifted away from the verse-chorus form that's dominated since midcentury and toward newer, freer structures. |
"The 2020s, as weird as they already are, may cement the next great tectonic shift in pop music, offering new horizons for artists to express themselves in negotiation with new technological and commercial pressures," they write. |
New technologies, the economic incentives of the streaming economy and a new generation of artists — from Bad Bunny to Billie Eilish — have made this shift possible, they explain. |
Whether the trend becomes a more permanent paradigm shift remains an open question. But it's clear that pop's new guard has already expanded the dimensions of what artistic experiments can connect with listeners. As Nate and Charlie write, "We may lose the chorus as we knew it, but gain previously unimagined sounds that will score the decade to come." |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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