Today’s blog is short due to getting Christmas stuff done for the next two weeks, but this subject really had me shaking my head this week.
I have previously complained about the poor writing found with American Songwriter magazine and online postings. Well, it now has competition with incompetence. The website singersroom.com just put out an article that can only be compared to complete idiocy” “15 Best Pop Music Songs of All Time” (https://singersroom.com/w70/best-pop-music-songs-of-all-time/). To make a statement like that, you had better be a true expert in the field. However, I have never hear of the author Samuel Moore, and his credit only states him as a frequent contributor to the site.
I won’t list the songs he tabulated, but will list the artists: Michael Jackson (2x), Madonna, Adele (2x), Whitney Houston, Britney Spears, Ed Sheeran, Mark Ronson w/ Bruno Mars, Carley Rae Jepsen, Queen, Taylor Swift, John Legend, Mariah Carey, and Lady Gaga.
WTF?!?!?!? If you are going to make the statement “of all time,” you better sure know what you are talking about! Popular music (just in the US) has been around since the late 18th century, and even if we were to limit to recorded music, we could go back to perhaps the 1920s. The earliest song on the list is Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” from 1975, three from the 1980s, two from the 1990s, and the rest coming in during the 21st century.
This list easily shows how uneducated the author truly is. There is NOTHING listed from Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Elton John, or Aretha Franklin just to name a few legendary artists. How about probably the greatest pop song of all time, Judy Garland’s version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”? While I have heard of almost off of the artists that Moore listed (I could not tell you who Carley Rae Jepsen is), none of them, with the exception of Michael Jackson, has ever put out a credible pop song that can compare to the artists that I have listed.
Since I do not subscribe to singersroom.com, I am not able to post comments to the artice. Moore should be glad that is the case, as I would be taking him to task for his lack of pop music knowledge. Hopefully he catches wind of this blog (as I have learned that a few people from American Songwriter have done with my previous blogs), and I welcome him to contact me so that I can fully explain to him what the definition of both “pop music” and “of all time” means. While I do not consider myself the greatest expert on pop music, I do know that there is a lot more out there than what Moore considers the best.
Chew on it and comment.
Luegra 