What I Don't Like About Pop Music

"Pop Music". Quite the term isn't it? Ask 10 people what pop music means and you'll receive 10 different answers. I mean when used with the widest umbrella, 'popular music' includes everything that is just that: popular. The Wikipedia page claims:

Popular music is music belonging to any of a number of musical styles that are accessible to the general public and are disseminated by one or more of the mass media. It stands in contrast to art music, which historically was the music of the elite and upper strata of society, and traditional music which was disseminated orally. It is sometimes abbreviated to pop music, although pop music is more often used for a narrower branch of popular music.

It is the very last part of that quote that I'm talking about, the "narrower branch of popular music". This is the type of pop music that I often don't like. As Bill Hicks would say, any wanna-be performer who wants to be a star but has no talent is a "sucker of Satan's c@ck". Back in Hicks' day, he name-dropped performers like MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice. Today he could substitute Paris Hilton and the Pussy Cat Dolls without changing another word of his skit. Some would call me a "rockist" but I disagree. Christina Aguilera is a highly talented singer, and I guess I would place her under my own arbitrary label of "good pop" ;)

Last summer Ontario Tourism ran an add campaign using 4 different Canadian artists to sing a song called "There's No Place Like This" over a video montage of various beautiful Ontario locations. I absolutely loved the first three interpretations of the song. Molly Johnson, Brian Byrne and Tomi Swick each made the song their own, while not attempting to be the center of attention. On the other hand in my opinion Keshia Chanté's rendition is lacking in... something, while annoying me with her choreography.

Check out each of the vids to see if you know what I mean. Just to be clear, I'm not saying Keshia Chanté's version sucks, it's just that 'm much more drawn to the three other versions, particularly Tomi Swick's.

Tomi Swick:


Molly Johnson:


Brian Byrne:


Keshia Chanté:


So what do you think? Each of these four Canadian performers can definitely be placed under the pop music label, but does anyone else see my point about how Keshia's version compared to the other three?