Who Broke Pop Music?

Think about pop music and you’ll probably define it as vapid Top 40 Max Martin-produced trash. Songs that are always about falling in love, falling out of love, being in love, not being in love anymore, structured in verse-chorus-verse perfection and set to an annoyingly catchy beat. But the calculated, confectionary, Mandy Moore-esque (may her 90’s legacy live on) era of pop music is over. Nope, today’s biggest stars are rebelling against the cookie-cutter pop that we’re used to consuming. The past year has seen huge artists like Frank Ocean, Beyonce, and Rihanna drop albums that challenge standards of pop music through edgy experimentation of sound and defiance of social norms. We’re starting to see the big names in the industry channel Bowie and push boundaries, both sonically and culturally.

With the end of summer came the release of Frank Ocean’s “Blond/e.” Yes, we had to wait a while, but the release was just as gratifying as that of a delayed orgasm. In classic Frank Ocean fashion, our favorite tease released his album on Tumblr with a note : “FUCK, SORRY.. I TOOK A NAP, BUT IT’S PLAYING ON APPLE RADIO RN.”

In a way, the album is like a transcribed nap; the album flits in and out of Ocean’s consciousness, playing like a lucid dream without a current. In Skyline To, sleepy instrumentals are interrupted by urgent whispers (Smoke! Haze!). A huge departure from the heavily structured channel orange, Blond/e challenges genre—people aren’t really sure what to call it so Pitchfork hipsters have created “avant-garde soul.” He neglects bassline and beats on most of the songs in the album, and some of his songs completely abandon tempo (can someone please explain the acid trip that is “Pretty Sweet”??). His inspirations come from an eclectic place: he credits artists from Jamie XX, Elliott Smith, Kanye West, David Bowie and more. The album is a genreless, complex climax. In the same way, Ocean as an artist exists in this spectrum of in-between that we see in Blond/e. Even for being one of the most acclaimed artists of our generation, we don’t see a lot (or frank-ly any) of Frank Ocean in the media. His stardom is complex- he keeps himself under the radar, yet he’s all we seemed to talk about this summer. People know who Frank Ocean is, but do they really know Frank Ocean? He exists in the public conscious, barely yet so pervasively. His entire brand is a bit hazy in general- he refuses the hypermasculine ideal of men, references “gay bars” in his music, and subtly rejects heteronormativity by declining to consistently gender his album title. For being a subtle guy, Frank isn’t afraid to cut through the bullshit and make a point. In Nikes, he nods at Trayvon Martin and in Siegfried, recognizes the impossibility of having “two kids and a pool” as a queer man. Frank Ocean and his album exist on a new spectrum: an in-between of consciousness, sexuality, gender, genre.

But we can’t talk about pop music movement toward the experimental without bringing up Beyonce- cue the “yas queen”’s. Beyonce’s eponymous album, AKA the album drop heard ‘round the world, marked the era of a new Beyonce. In a sense, we got to see Beyonce more raw and real than we ever did, thanks to her creative direction in the visual album. The catalog revealed her most experimental effort yet, permeated with samples of feminist musings, more restrained, darker production, and grittier ideas. Beyonce opened the floodgates to the complex inner workings of Beyonce Knowles-Carter, who we truly got to know in Lemonade. Where Beyonce let us peek into her world, Lemonade invited us into her narrative. Where Beyonce was alternative R&B, Lemonade is proudly genreless and sees Beyonce flirting with genre from country song “Daddy Lessons” to the gritty, rock and roll Jack White collaboration “Don’t Hurt Yourself.” Following the arc of Beyonce’s consciousness, Lemonade is narrated in poetry by London-based Somali poet Warsan Shire, and the whole thing looks like it should be a video display at the MOMA. The film is also a celebration of black womanhood, a sentiment that earned the anger of many an ignoramus and cued Beyonce Boycotts and an unlikely SNL video. Beyonce responded by selling merch emblazoned with “Boycott Beyonce” logos. She no longer buys into the pop music machine; Beyonce is not here for your easy consumption.

Rihanna’s Anti is a statement in itself: the album’s sonic rebellion is captured in its name. Look at Rihanna’s repertoire and you’ll see her face printed on all of her albums, save for Anti- the first indication that her newest album is a departure from her past sound. The entire collection plays like a blasé, 20’s-inspired weed-infused, love song, blasting with utter disregard for the pop industry. The songs are not radio ready- between 1 minute long “James Joint” and 6-minute “Never-Ending,” you could even say it’s anti-radio. Work, with its Caribbean influence and jargon, was an unlikely radio hit, and was received with complaints of “What the hell is she saying?” Rihanna’s response? “That’s how we speak in the Caribbean.“ The Caribbean-inspired dancehall hit and its usage of Jamaican Patois, an English-based creole language with West African influences, is a declaration of the culture that Rihanna has been pressured to bury; she has spoken before of changing her Barbadian accent to appease American audiences. While not deliberately feminist, Anti is a raunchy celebration of sex and self-love (“Sex with me, so amazing.” What I wouldn’t give, Rihanna.). Musically, it’s her most dynamic album: we’re able to see more of Rihanna vocally than we ever had as she half-raps and growls over darker alt-R&B tracks like “Consideration” and “Love On the Brain”. “Goodnight Gotham” samples across genres, pulling from indie artist Florence and the Machine’s “Only if For a Night” and sounds like Rihanna destroying a city in a - the video actually shows her stomping around Paris. In a way, Anti is her most self-aware album yet with its gritty, experimental production and unfiltered rawness.

Of course, we’re always going to have our radio-ready, frat party pop songs. There’s nothing wrong with pop that plays by the rules- I still can’t stop listening to “Closer.” But trailblazers like Beyonce, Rihanna, Frank Ocean (and more that I haven’t even begun to touch on) are opening up pop music for a sound more dynamic than we’ve ever heard in the genre.