There has been terrible pop music since pop music began. Try and make it all the way to the end of this song from the golden 60s - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhYLz63csS0
As far as intelligence, at least this song is trying to comment on what was current at the time with a nod towards a political message.
Who cares what games we choose
Little to win, but nothing to lose
It's easy to see it as nonsense pandering now but I think people really bought into these types of songs when it came out.
Now do kids today listen to pop music with a message? I'm not qualified to say because I tend to listen to music that came out around the time of the song you cited so I'm biased. But I'm sure my parents thought music was stupider when I grew up then when they did, that's just a natural progression.
I think the author's methodology is a bit too rigid to define music as stupid or not. Without examining underlying nuance, I don't see how you can fairly judge the differences.
I dunno... I quite like that song. It feels like a good example of psychedelic pop.
Similarly, there's this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uo9tMoew6o (Yummy Yummy Yummy by Ohio Express) which has fairly silly lyrics, but it's undeniably a good (ie, catchy) pop song.
I'd argue that this is more of a subjective terrible-ness. Technically, this song more skillfully crafted than a lot of pop music today. Even on a basic level, no auto-tune = you actually need to be able to sing (to some degree).
Songs used to require more skillful performers. That skill and complexity has in large part been reallocated to engineers and producers who actually have to program and edit on a much more sophisticated level these days to do things like make the auto-tune actually sound good (whether or not you subjectively like the effect).
As far as intelligence, at least this song is trying to comment on what was current at the time with a nod towards a political message.
Who cares what games we choose Little to win, but nothing to lose
It's easy to see it as nonsense pandering now but I think people really bought into these types of songs when it came out.
Now do kids today listen to pop music with a message? I'm not qualified to say because I tend to listen to music that came out around the time of the song you cited so I'm biased. But I'm sure my parents thought music was stupider when I grew up then when they did, that's just a natural progression.
I think the author's methodology is a bit too rigid to define music as stupid or not. Without examining underlying nuance, I don't see how you can fairly judge the differences.