Whenever I have the misfortune of hearing a pop song these days – usually if I’m in a taxi and feel too British to request that a radio be switched off (and in any case, the alternative – LBC – is too horrible to contemplate) – I’m reminded of Julia’s job in 1984. That’s what future ‘art’ will be: algorithm-driven self-obsessed rubbish (as beautifully skewered here by Ms Burchill, long may she reign), churned out by indifferent technicians and released into the culture like a bacillus emerging from sewage. I never thought I’d look back on ABC with nostalgia, but the popular art of the 1960s, 70s and 80s really was of a higher standard than anything today. Thank you for a great article!

Burchill’s just nailed it.

The pop “rut” has been ongoing for maybe 20-25 years, the length of the internet generation. Can anyone name a truly great song from this period (compared, for instance, with “Wouldn’t it be nice” which she unexpectedly cites) that’ll still not just be remembered but actually resonate more than half a century in the future?

Pop songs are/were about the longings of youth but young people seem afraid to “long” anymore. Nothing is withheld, nothing reserved. Nothing, therefore, to be gained. Current songs simply reflect that, but the reflection is shallow, lacking imagination or any sense of breaking a mould which the spirit of youth should require.

If it’s true that “teenagers” arrived with the advent of pop in the 50s, they and great love songs departed with the ironic ubiquity of binary code.

Just wait; it’s about to get worse: AI will be our songwriters soon, and it’s no Irving Berlin!
The best artists, whether visual or musical, take chances, experiment, and innovate. Maybe my view of AI is too cynical, but I believe these qualities to be uniquely human. I suspect AI will bring about even more homogeneity, especially in popular culture.

The question of “Where did the pop love song come from? “might answer the question” Where did the pop love song go?”

Late Victorian industrialisation saw the birth of mass, popular, entertainment. Suddenly millenia of culture could be raided and creatively retold in a new contemporary theatrical form and played to the masses. So popular was this that fortunes were made and modern celebrity was born.

Building on the music hall, the early 20th century saw the birth of mass distribution of music by vinyl record and radio. Suddenly millenia of culture could be raided and creatively replayed in contemporary musical form and bought by the masses. This too created fortunes that funded an exponential expansion of music production.

Transport technology revolutions in the 19th century propelled mass migration, which by the 20th century had produced large populations of very different heritages mixing millenias of cultures. At the same time, social barriers fell, encouraging even more mixing of cultures.

The early 20th century also saw a rapid fall in infant mortality amongst high birth rates. Combined with longer education, and greater wealth, the teenager was born, and there was a lot of them. Our younger selves are extraordinarily fickle, rebellious and yet hopelessly in need of identity. The mass distribution of music had barely begun when this demographic change occurred. This huge new market funded the hyper creation of new music, now tapping millenia of different cultures. This is when popular became pop.

Then came a rapid succession of new musical technologies in the middle and late 20th century. From electric to electronic, millenia of cultures could be fused in entirely new sounds and sound scapes. This is how pop became Pop! and sustained itself up to the end of the 20th century. Just as Western birth rates collapsed and the demographic bulge in teenagers became middle aged.

Pop music was born out of rapid social upheaval, economic improvement, demographic change, technological advancement, and – most importantly of all – music technology advancement. Pop music in less than a century reworked all the world’s cultural heritage dating back millenia in a million creative ways to produce something undeniably new and arresting.

But once all the new sounds are exhausted, what comes next will always sound a lot like what went before. This isn’t due to a lack of creativity or talent, just the limitations of using the same sounds to make genuinely new music. Take northern soul as an example. An entire genre of pop was fuelled by the rediscovery of 1960s motown “flops”. Motown itself had run out of genuinely fresh ideas in the late 1970s when a small number of these old flops were rediscovered. These flops were produced with real talent and creativity but had failed in a crowded market place. Once the record shops had been raided of all their obscure 1960s motown there was nothing left to fuel northern soul but nostalgia and perhaps the rare occasional new take on northern soul.

Pop will continue, new contemporary themes will arrive, but the pace of creating new memorable pop will be far slower. This loss of momentum will serve only to slow that pace further as young people look for other outlets to be rebellious and find identity. You will have to wait a longer for great new pop love songs.

Rick Beato on YouTube provides many excellent technical analyses of why 21st century pop music is such thin gruel – but I suspect that the real reason it fails to satisfy is that ,in common with most contemporary cultural output, there’s just too much of it. Artists, like governments, need to do much less, and do it much better. If Ed Sheeran wrote a third as many songs, they’d likely be three times better. But, of course, that wouldn’t work as a business model in the age of streaming.

Illiteracy. People cannot write good lyrics.

Well, I blame the sexual revolution. Songs used to be about the anticipation of love. But now, as Blanche complained, girls are expected to “put out.”

aaaah such good writing and intelligent analysis, strikes a chord (so to speak). Often annoying – but not here- and provocative. Keep on going Burchill for the good of everyone with a brain.

Two of my favourites are, ‘A Kiss To Build A Dream On’ by Louis Armstrong, and, ‘Bus Stop’ by the Hollies. Dreams and courting. Innocence rather than leaping into bed and banging her brains out.

What seems to be missing in the music of today is soul. The soulful songs and singing of the likes of Otis Redding is hard to beat. To hear him sing “these arms of mine’ is to go weak at the knees.

I suspect the love song still thrives away from the hyper-commercialization and nihilism of pop. In the country/blue grass genre, for example, Sarah Jarosz writes some beautiful stuff. Check out her “Build Me Up From Bones” on youtube if you’re interested.

I don’t have the slightest problem with Julie’s take on Lexicon Of Love or what has become of the love song, but (at the risk of sounding like a contrarian) I’ve always thought Beauty Stab to be the better ABC album and an overlooked minor classic.
While it lacks the pop sensibility of Poison Arrow and Look Of Love, I think the songs are more consistent, its mix of heavy guitars, horns and synths sounded ahead of its time, and I take my hat off to the band for not playing it safe when following up such a successful debut.

The Lexicon of Love pretty much epitomises all that went wrong with popular music in the 80s, with the arrival of computers, FM synthesis, sampling and the departure of organic human warmth. I’ve always believed the 80s were the decade when rock became light entertainment (just like football) so it was gratifying to see the phrase appear later in the piece, though ironic given JB’s “contribution” to music journalism at the time. The fact that the NME, after her review of Television’s second album (far from an example of second album syndrome) gave the job to a grownup, the following week, is enough to cast doubt on her assessment of LOL. Lol.

Even ABC sounds like aural slurry when compared to the incomparable June Christy & Stan Kenton’s version of “Every Time We Say Goodbye”.

Old woman complains about modern music and says it was way better in her day.
World yawns and moves on (except for a few geriatric moaners who agree because they hate everything).