What Makes a Great Pop Song?: On Listening to "Problem" Fifty Billion Times

Now that I'm done blogging about movies for a while, it's time to make like Monty Python and do something completely different. That completely different thing: pop songs. Like, top 40 radio pop songs. More specifically, Ariana Grande and Iggy Azalea.

Excited? Good. Now let's back up for a second.

My question (which you probably already guessed if you read the title of this post) is, what exactly is it that makes a pop song great?

Now, that's a ridiculously broad question that I have no hope of ever answering, and even if I did answer it, the music industry would send its men in black to harvest the idea from my mind faster than you can say "Whatever happened to Taylor Hicks, anyway?" So no, sorry, I don't have any nifty formula that will instantly turn youngsters into Lennon/McCartneys. But I do have a theory of what at least part of the answer must be.

Here it is: a great pop song must be able to maintain the good will of its audience after hundreds upon hundreds of replays. To put it a different way, the greatness of a pop song must have something to do with why I get sick of every Maroon 5 song after a few listens but still get excited about "Since U Been Gone" or "Call Me Maybe" whenever they come on the radio, despite liking all of the above about equally on the first listen.

A more recent example: I like Ariana Grande's "Problem." It's well-produced, catchy, Ariana makes good (read: fun) use of her vocal range, and man, that saxophone. But is it a great pop song? If you had asked me at the beginning of the summer, I would have most definitely said yes. In fact, after hearing it a few times, I'd probably have told you that it was going to be one of my favorite radio hits of the year. In May, "Problem" felt fresh and vibrant to me, and I'd always pause my dial-searching on a radio station playing the song. Three months of near continuous radio play later, though, I'm beginning to find myself changing that dial more and more often when "Problem" comes on. Saxophone notwithstanding, its charm is wearing thin. I'm sure there are all sorts of technical and psychological analyses that could be done regarding the song's relationship with my brain, but I think the easiest explanation of my tepidizing opinion is that I have now heard the song a million billion times.

Becoming sick of a musical piece is a weird phenomenon; I mean, it's not like the song itself changes when you replay it, but almost invariably, listening to a song a lot will significantly affect one's feelings toward it. My theory for why this is the case, at least for me, is that listening to a song many, many times makes us, by sheer mental bludgeoning, pay more attention to the minutiae of the piece and, consequently, magnifies the strengths and weaknesses of that piece. Take "Problem": the more I listened to it, the more I became aware of things that had probably always bothered me but I hadn't paid much thought to previously, like the airy tone of Ariana Grande's voice and the forced hipness of Iggy Azalea's rap verse—in fact, okay, can I just say that I really don't like the Iggy verse at all? The rhymes are weak, her flow is erratic, and the whole "99 problems" thing was barely even clever when Ice-T came up with it[1]. All of this would have gone unrealized had I not had to listened to "Problem" so much. I still like the song, but all the replay has made me start to reevaluate just how much I do like it. We'll see if it makes my year-end list.

When I say I don't like something (a movie, TV show, book, music, whatever), depending on what it is, people sometimes tell me that I don't like that piece of entertainment "just because it's popular," the implication being that I'm trying to be a contrarian instead of giving a sincere opinion. I usually respond by pointing out that I do like some popular things (Star Wars, pizza, Harry Potter, "Since U Been Gone"), but, if I'm being completely honest, I should probably also admit that yes, it's true, there are things I now dislike because they became popular. Don't get me wrong; I'm not opposed to popularity. But once something starts gaining cultural clout, you can bet I'm going to have to experience that cultural artifact quite a few times, and the more I experience it, the more aware I'm going to become of the things about it that I dislike. Often that increased awareness leads to me ending up disliking the whole thing. It's a matter of scrutiny, not contrarianism[2].

This is all very subjective, of course. What songs one person can hear a thousand times before becoming sick of them are going to be much different from what songs another person will still put up with after a thousand listens. The magnified dislikes that make someone sick of a song are going to differ from individual to individual, too. But I'd still argue that no matter what it is that makes somebody dislike a song, those dislikes became even more defined after the radio played the song every day of their lives.

Maybe this is all really obvious to you folks out there. I'll admit that it's not the most sophisticated idea, even for one of these blog posts. I'd still love to hear what you think, though.

Until next time!


1] Given Iggy's part in "Problem" and that Charli XCX pretty much makes "Fancy" work in spite of her, I'm beginning to think that Iggy Azalea's real talent is positioning herself alongside more appealing artists. I dunno, y'all, maybe that's mean, so I'll take that back. But know this, readers: I really don't care for her musicianship.

2] This is exactly what happened to me with Mumford and Sons, by the way. I bought their first album on a friend's recommendation just a couple months before "Little Lion Man" blew up on pop radio and turned them into superstars, and in those pre-stardom months, I enjoyed the CD. I mean, it wasn't life-changing or anything, but it was pleasant enough. Hearing them on the radio in much greater frequency than in my own personal listening, however, forced me to pay more attention to their songs, magnifying the quibbles I already had with the band (the lyrics, the way that their pop-as-folk approach diluted both the pop and folk elements of their music) into full-blown irritations.

One Year Later: "Call Me Maybe"

It can be a fool's errand to explain in objective terms why we like the songs we do. Oftentimes, we like what we like, and that's that.

And I think that's okay.

There's no need to feel guilty about why you like a tune; it happens. We get obsessed with songs. That's not to say that we shouldn't discuss music critically or try to parse out why we like them or why there may or may not be ethical problems with some songs, etc. But as far as explaining why or why not a melody attracts us, this seems to be one of the least explainable and most subjective qualities in music criticism, especially in radio pop, where most of the songs do their darnedest to find the line between playful and irritating.

So, now that I've spent two paragraphs and change rationalizing what I'm about to say, here's what I'm getting at: I think "Call Me Maybe" is wonderful, and I would even call it one of the finest pop songs of recent years.

Seriously. Like, seriously. When "Call Me Maybe" spent nine consecutive weeks at the top of the pop charts, it was one of those rare, luminous moments when I felt like I was in on the national party that is Top 40 radio. I'd even go so far as to profess love for "Call Me Maybe;" luff, even—I luff "Call Me Maybe."

Yeah, I'm being a little over-the-top here. But I sincerely think it's a great song; no guilt or irony here. However, a lot of folks who know me find my adoration for such a piece of pop fluff to be inexplicable, given my other musical preferences (R.E.M., Miles Davis, and, um, progressive rock, for the most part). So, in answer to my friends' year-long befuddlement and in celebration of the rough anniversary of my first hearing of the song, here are five reasons why "Call Me Maybe" is great.

As I said before, there's a certain ineffable quality to the song—and every pop song—that defies explanation, much less my own infatuation with it. Listen, it's almost as mysterious to me as to my friends why I like "Call Me Maybe" as much as I do. But I'll do my best to quantify the tangible good in the song. And plus, it's been a year since its pop dominance; I say it's about time to reexamine its excellence. So here we go: five reasons.

1. It's a freaking catchy song. Holy cow, is it catchy. I defy you to name a bigger earworm from last year. Once you hit that little skip in the melody at "Now you're in my way," you know there's no way that tune is ever going to let go. Not that all good songs are catchy, mind you. I happen to think that "Call Me Maybe" toes the aforementioned line between playfulness and irritatingness handily, but I know a lot of people who find that same catchiness annoying. To be clear: it would not be good if mnemonic tenacity were its only strength. That's why I've got four more reasons.
2. It's short and sweet. Clocking in at just 3 minutes and 13 seconds, "Call Me Maybe" is brief enough to drop in, sprinkle its charm on listener ears, and leave without overstaying its welcome. Even if you dislike the song, you've got to admit that it's at least over quickly. Not only that, but the song has a airy sweetness to its melody that makes it go down easy. It's lightheartedness gives it a nimble sound that makes it a joy to experience. There's nothing heavy about the song whatsoever, and this is, I think, what rescues the lyrics from their would-be triviality; the song never tries to be anything but trivial, right down to its musical arrangement. It would be annoying and trivial if the song were a "Someone Like You"-esque, stone-cold-serious, bleeding-heart ballad. But it isn't. It's fun and light and nothing but fluff...
3. ...except for that "call me" moment. Okay, here's where I get a little overly analytical. There's this one moment in the chorus—the most important moment, I might argue—when Carly Rae sings, "But here's my number/So call me, maybe?" And yeah, duh, of course she sings that, since it's the title of the song and everything. But it's the way she sings that pair of lines, specifically the way her she sings the "call me" part, that is subtly great. At the word call, her voice cracks ever-so-slightly, and the tune takes a momentary shift to a minor chord. It's this fantastic moment of vulnerability in the center of all the song's fluffiness, and it proves that there's a heart at the center of this song. Robert Christgau says that a cornerstone of pop music is "sadness made pretty," and if this is true, "Call Me Maybe"'s moment of vulnerability is just the touch to make the song essential pop.
4. Then there's the music video. Dat music video. Not to let anyone think Ms. Jepsen was too serious about "Call Me Maybe"'s content, the video introduces a vicious streak of self-parody to the song's tone. Please, do yourself a favor and watch it. Mute the sound if you must, but... just watch it. It's one of the most hilarious and self-aware music videos to come out of the music video renaissance of the YouTube era.
5. The response of the culture at large. Every once in a while, some bit of pop culture ephemera hits all the right chords to take on a mutated alternate life outside of its original context that goes way beyond anything the original creators envisioned. Such is the case with "Call Me Maybe," which has been subject to an unusual outgrowth of Internet parody, tribute, and mimicry. My three favorites: NPR's spoken-word rendition, Cookie Monster's "Share It Maybe," and, most gloriously, this arrangement for choir and orchestra.

Oh, and bonus reason #6, for all you bandwagoners out there: "Call Me Maybe" even got a fair amount of critical acclaim. Pitchfork (I mean, goodness, hipper-than-thou Pitchfork) ranked it the 29th best song of 2012, Rolling Stone called it the 50th best, and The Guardian called it the best song of last year. And that's not even all the accolades it collected. Do a quick Google search on last year's year-end lists. "Call Me Maybe" pops up a surprisingly frequent number of times.

But listen, I know lots of people who hate it. Maybe you even hate it. And that's okay. You like what you like. But let me know why you hate it in the comments. I'll be happy to discuss.

Until next time.