[Image description: a collage of photos of the 10 musicians and musical groups featured in this poll. In order from left to right, top to bottom: Glass Animals, Harry Styles, The Kid Laroi, Adele, Ed Sheeran, Jack Harlow, Lotto, Justin Bieber, Kodak Black, Elton John and Dua Lipa. End description]
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And now we're at the final poll. Much like the previous years, many of the songs featured here are from previous years. This is mostly due to how Billboard calculates their hits and there are other methods of calculating the charts. But since this blog focuses in Billboard, that's the metric we're going with.
It's hard to know for certain which direction pop music is headed at this moment since we're still in it. Depending on how things go, it seems like TikTok is going to continue to be a taste maker when it comes to popular music. This could also account for why pop songs are getting shorter. The "verse chorus verse chorus bridge chorus" format is not set in stone. In fact if you followed this blog since the beginning, you've seen the beginning and rise of this pop song format in the late 1950's.
Also from what I can see, it looks like pop music is taking a more meta direction, with overt influences and references to recent pop music history. This can be seen in both stylistic choices, such as the synth-pop influences in Harry Styles' As It Was, to the way samples are used. Jack Harlow's First Class samples previous poll entry, Fergie's Glamorous, and Latto's Big Energy samples Mariah Carey's Fantasy -- which samples The Tom Tom Club's Genius of Love.
The charts are admittedly in an awkward place right now. I'm looking at the Hot 100 right now and I'm having trouble putting together a narrative (other than "wow, people forgave Morgan Wallen fast lol"). Between the lockdown, shifting tastes and listening habits of audiences, economic factors, and the splintering of the streaming industry, "pop music" doesn't mean the same thing it did fifty years ago. Or even twenty years ago. But between influences from the changing political climates, the rise and fall of different genres, developments in music technology, and the question over the cost of music, the one consistent thing about pop music is that it isn't consistent.
Thank you to everyone who took part in these polls. I'll post a follow-up post shortly wrapping things up and discussing the future of this blog.
I may not understand all the hype about the new Barbie movie but I do understand that there should be WAY more hype about the soundtrack of the new Barbie movie. I mean look at this lineup!!!