The glorious days of the late ‘90s included Britney Spears, The Backstreet Boys and NSync. With these artists’ songs we came to personally understand the term “guilty pleasure.” At some point or another we jammed out to Britney’s “Oops I Did it Again” or NSync’s “Bye, Bye, Bye” — even though we may be hesitant to own up to that today. But somewhere along the way we no longer admit to being obsessed with the artists who were on any radio station that played the top hits of the day.
The Quality of Success
This mentality carried over to singers like Justin Bieber and Carly Rae Jepsen. With their songs “Baby” and “Call Me Maybe,” the two were boiled down to just a couple of pop artists we would forget about in a year. But why does this happen? Is it just because Bieber and Jepsen’s songs were popular and managed to be on all the major radio stations, earning them television appearances? I must have missed the memo that being successful automatically equates with poor quality of music.
Tuning out artists on the radio waves all the time leads to them being written off as sell-outs and not checking out the rest of their albums to hear what else they created. Take Carly Rae Jepsen for example. Discovered by Scooter Braun, who manages Justin Bieber and Tori Kelly, the Canadian artist made it big with the ridiculously catchy “Call Me Maybe,” but now people laugh when I say how I am addicted to her new album “Emotion.” I admit, I was also skeptical when my friend told me to listen to her music, but after listening to “All That” about five times on repeat, I realized something. The Carly Rae we hear on the radio is only the tip of the iceberg of who she is as an artist.
Up Front Depth
Stations playing the Top 40 charts may give us our guilty pleasures, but they also give us artists who have more up front depth who we might have missed if we write off these kinds of stations completely. James Bay, who sings “Hold Back the River” exemplifies this kind of artist. Bay’s debut album “Chaos and the Calm” is full of resonating songs that will give you all the feels and have you singing way too loud in the car. But if you just skip over stations like KIIS FM you will not only miss out on a new guilty pleasure from Carly Rae Jepsen, but you will also miss out on James Bay. After hearing Bay on the radio I checked out the rest of his album and fell in love with the crooning sound of “Let it Go.”
Embrace the Pop
We need to take a page out of our childhood self’s book and learn to embrace the stations that play pop music. Because after all, pop singers are so much more than their one song that gets overplayed on the radio — they are true artists who deserve the benefit of the doubt.
