Um, are there still any pop stars?

[.jon]

Mediocrity is not an option in today's world.

Keep telling yourself that, but at least try to get a clue and study the abovementioned scores.

You keep telling yourself that, maybe you should study the scores made after the 60s who knows, you might even find a song or two that aren't Stevie Wonder covers.

[VariKusBrainZ]

More and more over the years the super Pop stars must have "ugly, unfashionable" people write their music.

Ed Sheeran, is unatractive, dweeby, lets his mother clothe him yet is the product and creates the product, along with product for others

[VariKusBrainZ]

More and more over the years the super Pop stars must have "ugly, unfashionable" people write their music.

Ed Sheeran, is unatractive, dweeby, lets his mother clothe him yet is the product and creates the product, along with product for others

Also have you seen Lady Ga Ga without makeup..............ouch

[tehlord]

Stardom is not what it used to be, there are no true super stars universally loved by everyone with careers in the limelight spanning for decades. Blame global cultural mass ADHD, dramatic change in the technical ways music is consumed, and shattering of the music scene into smaller and smaller subcultures.

Or

Record companies don't like the idea of somebody buying an album and listening to it for decades, so everything is deliberately throw away.

This actually happens.

[.jon]

More and more over the years the super Pop stars must have "ugly, unfashionable" people write their music.

Ed Sheeran, is unatractive, dweeby, lets his mother clothe him yet is the product and creates the product, along with product for others

Also have you seen Lady Ga Ga without makeup..............ouch

I didn't write that, just for the record

[incubus]

More and more over the years the super Pop stars must have "ugly, unfashionable" people write their music.

Ed Sheeran, is unatractive, dweeby, lets his mother clothe him yet is the product and creates the product, along with product for others

Please stop making the product!

[IncarnateX]

Like Fluffy I was lost decades ago as far as pop stars concern. Was never into Madonna, Britney, Ga-ga, Carey or boy bands for that matter. I am really not into pop at all. And yet, sometimes I fall in by coincidence. The other day I was searching YouTube for tunes with the electro duo "The Knife" and found a pop song with an artist whose existence I didn't even know about. I fell in love instantly. The song was not special as such but combined with the video some otherworldly magic seemed to occur. But then I search for other tunes with the artist and they didn't turn me on at all. Anyway point is that now a days you may have to dig up the stars in the massive stream of multimedia releases. Here is the vid:

[AnX]

Its funny seeing ppl pretend they dont know who 'pop(ular) artists' are.... gotta stay cool

If you really want to know who todays 'popstars' are, you can find out in 5 minutes on google... but of course, you dont really need to

[IncarnateX]

Its funny seeing ppl pretend they dont know who 'pop(ular) artists' are.... gotta stay cool

If you really want to know who todays 'popstars' are, you can find out in 5 minutes on google... but of course, you dont really need to

Pfft. Lame strawman reading if you think that was the point. Everybody know who Rihanne is but there are actually other stars than her that may not be known to people unless you are into it.

[AnX]

Its funny seeing ppl pretend they dont know who 'pop(ular) artists' are.... gotta stay cool

If you really want to know who todays 'popstars' are, you can find out in 5 minutes on google... but of course, you dont really need to

Pfft. Lame strawman reading if you think that was the point. Everybody know who Rihanne is but there are actually other stars than her that may not be known to people unless you are into it.

Im not into pop music much, but i still know who's toppin the charts these days. Those kind of acts are all over the media. Its impossible to avoid.

[IncarnateX]

That was what I said. But there are other stars than them who are less known. Do I really have to repeat myself? Just gave an example with Kyla. Here is another with Zara Larsson who is often mistaken for Rihanna due to similarities of voices:

[fluffy_little_something]

Its funny seeing ppl pretend they dont know who 'pop(ular) artists' are.... gotta stay cool

If you really want to know who todays 'popstars' are, you can find out in 5 minutes on google... but of course, you dont really need to

Pfft. Lame strawman reading if you think that was the point. Everybody know who Rihanne is but there are actually other stars than her that may not be known to people unless you are into it.

Im not into pop music much, but i still know who's toppin the charts these days. Those kind of acts are all over the media. Its impossible to avoid.

That's the point, I don't know the charts these days. Hence I only know the stars that are in the media for other reasons. I know Rihanna is a star, but I am not sure I know any of her songs. I simply know it because I read that she received lots of music awards the other day.

Unlike 30 years ago, people are no longer confronted with chart music against their will. Many have mobile devices that they can also connect to their car stereos, so they tend to listen to their own playlists.
Many also listen to online stations, which are often genre-specific, so again, no automatic exposure to pop music.

When I was younger, people simply knew MJ, Prince, Madonna etc., even if they hated the music. It was harder to escape them.

[Jace-BeOS]

More and more over the years the super Pop stars must have "ugly, unfashionable" people write their music.

Ed Sheeran, is unatractive, dweeby, lets his mother clothe him yet is the product and creates the product, along with product for others

Also have you seen Lady Ga Ga without makeup..............ouch

I think makeup makes people ugly.

[Jace-BeOS]

It's mostly perception. Things have changed but it's more calcification, rather than fundamental change. The pathology of capitalism was affecting the actual art produced in the music industry for decades. As soon as it became an industry, really. It's just more exaggerated and "purer" corporatism today.

I always hated radio. From the music selection (after actual free-format DJs were killed off by corporatism), to commercials, to the sound of interference and bad tuning. Internet streaming "radio" isn't any better.

I never understood how people could listen to music like that. But most people weren't really into the music. They seemed to me to just want familiar noise and some kind of celebrity bond.

Maybe it's just because I wanted to create music myself that I paid more attention to the craft (radio and a cheap speaker destroys all the production work, to my ears). Or maybe I wanted to create music myself because of how much I liked the potential of music. [shrug]

I'm far from the average music listener. But I'm also far from an ideal musician too. I'm not even a proper instrumentalist myself. If I was performing, I'd require a band to play the music I sang to (I wouldn't do it; got bad enough hearing damage as is).

Regardless of why, commercial broadcasts sucked to me, so I avoided it.

I didn't pay attention to pop stars themselves when I was young. Popularity turned me off. I ended up liking some popular artists <b>in spite of</b> their popularity (if the musicianship was good). I was aware of popular acts because of school peers and TV.

In my 20s, I kept following the few artists I had acquired an interest in up to then, but pretty much blocked out everything else aside from a few things my hipster friend and my girlfriend introduced me to. My four person peer group hated commercialized junk.

Today, I'm even more isolated (no musical hipster friend, no musically motivated girlfriend). I haven't watched broadcast TV in more than a decade. I don't spend much time in public spaces (can't afford restaurants or such). I'm even less aware of pop stars, but there are still plenty of them. Facebook posts and "news" pages obsess over them.

The industry has turned into a caricature of itsself, with all the worst of corporate MBA-type thinking in charge, but pop stars are still there, with celebrity overshadowing content like it always did. Occasionally there's an actual creator among them, I guess.

The current way of promoting "music" and "stars" is even less relevant to me now than ever before. The instruments seem to have vanished (even more than I noticed back in the day), because there seem to be no star BANDS. Just divas. I've never been a fan of dancing divas. Without instruments, I've no motive to pay attention to performers. Dance is like formalized body movement disorders to me. I don't care to see it.

I find "new" music by accident, mostly on the Internet (every artist I follow today is either someone I acquired familiarity with prior to 2000, or someone I discovered randomly on the Internet; two or three via sites like this and Future Music). But I think I've made the point that I'm irrelevant to the industry...

[aMUSEd]

That was what I said. But there are other stars than them who are less known. Do I really have to repeat myself? Just gave an example with Kyla. Here is another with Zara Larsson who is often mistaken for Rihanna due to similarities of voices:

God that is awful - and I think the 'dancing' is even worse than the song - wondering if the vocal similarities are due to the excessive autotune?