I n the last few years, the shift in the type of music we have available has been something that has caught many off guard. From streaming hour-long albums to having the attention span for only 3 minutes, our habits have changed the music industry entirely. So, what about this year? Let's get into the trends for pop music in 2021.
In the past, longer songs were not only expected but anticipated. The average run-time would be 3-5 minutes which has now shortened into 2-3 minutes. Except for a few longer songs (case in point: Taylor Swift's 'All Too Well'), there have been very few songs that have gotten the popularity they may have deserved with a longer run-time. The only reason for 'All Too Well' success also has little to do with the song itself. While the song is lyrically rich with a catchy beat, the biggest reason for its success was the fan base, known for its fierce devotion to Taylor. In fact, this is precisely why it managed to become the longest song ever to top the charts.
For other songs, the secret to success is a short, catchy tune that people can memorize and sing easily. Gone are the days of storytelling with longer run-times; it's about staying with the crowd now.
It was quite the hard-hitting truth once it's realized how much the scene for albums has completely shifted. From properly set and sequenced albums like The Mountain Goats' Tallahassee' or even Kanye's previous records, we've gone to albums that are just a hop-scotch of popular catchy singles with no thought for sequencing or storyline. There is nothing that all the tracks have in common a lot of the time, even!
A notable outlier to this was Glass Animals' latest Album 'Dreamland.' However, even Dreamland as an album was not successful but rather its track 'Heat Waves.'
The demand for albums as an adequately constructed artform has all but completely vanished, and it's pretty evident from the reactions to such albums being released in 2021. Kanye West's latest 'Donda' was hyped up for a week at most and then completely disappeared without a trace.
One good thing that is brought to the limelight, though, is the increasing diversity in the music industry. From cishet white men dominating the pop industry, it is now more diverse with a lot of the fanbase moving more towards Korean Pop music, a genre whose popularity in the west can be easily attributed to K-pop group 'BTS.' This group led the way for more non-caucasian groups in the west too including K-pop, J-pop, and even Spanish music. Recently, BTS released an entire album in just Korean, with some English, that ruled the charts for weeks. Their summer hits and collaborations with popular artists like Coldplay and Megan Thee Stallion are still trending on the charts as we write this. With nominations in Grammy and other worldwide award shows, BTS has definitely put the K-Pop scene on the map.
At the end of the day, music by popular K–pop groups like BLACKPINK, BTS, and DAY6, among others, is a welcome breeze in the sweltering and suffocating room of homogenous pop the industry has become now.
The focus of the music has dramatically changed from lyricism to producing a catchy beat. While, no doubt, chart-toppers throughout decades have been more catchy than their literary-heavy counterparts, this has only increased tenfold in the last few years. The songs that are the most popular will usually be short, having repetitive lyrics over a constant catchy beat.
While samples add a welcome effect to music and enhance it, the choice of samples has shrunken more and more with the rise of a few major record labels collecting artists. More than that, they are placed in a way that makes no sense, sound-wise or lyrically. Sampling, rather than being an artistic choice, has become something expected and present as one of the welcome trends for pop music recently. This has led to a more generic sound across the genre as a whole, making a lot of the music forgettable and even boring.
