The Problem with Pop Music These Days (and a Really Good Finnish Term to Capture It with)

I am not someone who you could reasonably describe as a “music enthusiast.” Over the past decade or so I haven’t bought more than maybe three or four albums plus a few dozen singular songs from iTunes, and I do not usually listen to radio or watch any of the latest music videos from TV or online. But I don’t hate music in general either, can very well stand listening to most genres, even enjoy much of it. If I can choose, I usually prefer heavy metal, but I can also tolerate or even enjoy most pop music. Except for, as I have just recently discovered, much of the most popular (American and English) pop music released over the past few years. I fear that something has gone terribly wrong in that field of industry. This post will consist mostly of good old fashioned ranting against the major problem as I see it.

As said, I do not listen to radio much or watch recent music videos. But I get exposed to pop music at the gym where I go, about thrice a week, an hour or so at a time. The radio channels that they mostly play there lean heavily toward recent pop music and appear to have rather short play lists. The songs on the play lists of typical pop music radio channels change only slowly over a given period of a few months, so if one gets exposed to such play lists regularly enough, one is bound to hear the most popular current pop songs several times over in that period.  This year alone, for example, I believe I have heard each of the following international hit songs at least ten, maybe fifteen or twenty times, at the gym:

Rag’n’Bone Man: “Human”;

Ed Sheeran: “Shape Of You”;

Clean Bandit (feat. Anne-Marie & Sean Paul):“Rockabye”;

Sean Paul (feat. Dua Lipa): “No Lie”; and

Alan Walker: “Alone”

Yes. These would be the songs that I have been mostly listening to this year [a reference here being to the recurring sketch called “Jesse’s Diets” in the turn of the century British TV comedy series The Fast Show]. And, I am sorry to tell you, these songs have been driving me f’n nuts! For one reason in particular.

I mean, nothing much wrong with any of these songs when I heard them the first time, maybe even the second and third time; heck, I still kind of like that Rag’n’Bone Man’s song – such a distinctive and pleasant sound in his voice. But having had to listen to them 10 to 20 times over the past few months, by gods I feel like ripping off some heads. The problem is that each of these songs has so freaking repetitive lyrics. They belabor their message; fully intentionally most likely, with the purpose of making it an earworm (brainworm), through the sheer volume of tenacious repetition of some or a few simple lines. They do have other verses, or at least some rapping, beside the chorus, of course, some of them quite a few other words actually, but they seem all of them fiendishly designed to stupefyingly repeat some very simple message over and over, ad nauseam, so that at the end the listener only remembers those couple of words and sentences. And the fact that most of these songs vary the chorus a little bit every other time, I would have to say, that does not help much. It might be like with that legendary thing they call Chinese water torture, where one is supposedly strapped down and buckets of water are dripped one drop at a time to a specific spot on one’s head until one goes insane: my guess is that the technique would be even more effective if the drops did not come quite evenly – if there were some seemingly random variation on how quickly a drop followed the one before it.

To demonstrate the repetetiveness of pop song lyrics these days, I am afraid, I have no choice but to go through some of the lyrics of the five songs I mentioned above. (These five are just an exemplification, the first five songs that came easiest to my mind when I started thinking about this; there would certainly be many other recent songs that I could pick on.) To start with the (in my opinion) best one of those five songs, the one that I do not actually hate much, but which nevertheless illustrates the basic problem pretty well in a simple miniature form, Rag’n’Bone Man’s “Human.”

The song (written by Jamie Hartman and Rory Graham) begins, as most songs do, with the first verse. I will here skip that and all other non-repetetive verses and only tell you the repetetive parts. In this case I do not have to leave out an awful lot of other text, because the song repeats a version of the chorus after each and every verse and the verses are pretty short (the first verse is six lines (short sentences); the second, five; the third is just four lines; the fourth verse jumps back up to five lines; but the fifth is again only four lines long; and after that there are but two more lines sang in between two times two chorus). So after the first, full six-lines verse it is time to do the chorus the first time, pretty much in its basic form:

But I’m only human after all

I’m only human after all

Don’t put your blame on me

Don’t put your blame on me

Another, five-lines long verse of other stuff then follows; and, as said, after that, we come back to the chorus, only slightly modified this time around, so that the first line now starts with ’Cause and the second line with You’re:

’Cause I’m only human after all

You’re only human after all

Don’t put your blame on me

Don’t put your blame on me

As one might expect, we have a third verse of other stuff then, this time an even shorter clip – we are down to four lines at this point; and again after that we return to reiterating the point of the song. This third time it is close to the basic form again – that is, the first two lines start with I’m:

I’m only human after all

I’m only human after all

Don’t put your blame on me

Don’t put your blame on me

A fourth, five-lines long verse of other lyrics  then follows, but of course we get back to the chorus soon enough. This time it starts with ’Cause, but now the second line starts with I’m, instead of the refreshing You’re that Rag’n’Bone Man surprised us with the previous time the chorus started with ’Cause. So now we are told that:

’Cause I’m only human after all

I’m only human after all

Don’t put your blame on me

Don’t put your blame on me

Now you might think – might you not – that we are getting close to the end of the song? You would be wrong: we are only about halfway through. Perhaps Rag’n’Bone Man wants to play it safe; or, what is perhaps more likely, given that this sort of repetetiveness is pretty much the norm in pop music these days, some record company guy may have adviced Rag’n’Bone Man on this: Real cool song, man, real cool, but do you really think it is enough to repeat the chorus just four or five times? No, no, no, you have to do it like eight times; that is what the listeners want, otherwise they forget it, maaan, they forget! So again there is a short (four lines) verse of other stuff, and then again we are back with the chorus. And at this point they are doubling up on it, so the chorus is done twice, albeit the latter time with some new little twists:

I’m only human after all

I’m only human after all

Don’t put your blame on me

Don’t put your blame on me


I’m only human, I make mistakes
I’m only human that’s all it takes
To put the blame on me
Don’t put your blame on me

Then follows one more, albeit now only a two-lines long, stretch of other words, sandwiched between doubled versions of chorus. That is to say, the song also ends with yet another pair of chorus:

I’m only human after all
I’m only human after all
Don’t put your blame on me
Don’t put your blame on me

I’m only human, I do what I can
I’m just a man, I do what I can
Don’t put your blame on me
Don’t put your blame on me

Now if I counted correctly, that makes eight times the chorus. The words change a little here and there, but the point of the song, the point that the singer is only human, gets mentioned fourteen (14) times (discounting that one time when he tells us that you’re only human and the time when he says I’m just a man instead). Moreover, Don’t put your blame on me is likewise said fourteen times (discounting the one To put the blame on me). And keep in mind that the verses are pretty short, so the chorus gets reiterated with short intervals; indeed, all the lyrics are sang in a time of about three minutes, so both I’m only human and Don’t put your blame on me are said once in every thirteen seconds or so. (Also: as there are not much other lyrics, there is not much of a story being told in this song; but that would be a topic for another rant.)

Needless to say, I find that somewhat irritating. Especially when I am made to listen to this song like a dozen times over. But if it were just this one song, I could easily live with that. It is not the worst song you will hear, a pretty good one actually, and there is lots of music in this world so who cares if one song happens to be a little repetetive! However, the horrible reality is that most other pop songs at the moment are even worse in terms of repetitiveness. Consider, next, Ed Sheeran’s “Shape Of You” (written by Ed Sheeran and Steve Mac, with writing contributions also from John McDaid, Kandi Burruss, Kevin Briggs, and Tameka Cottle). You will be pleased to hear that I will not go through it as painstakingly as I did with the Rag’n’Bone Man’s song. Let me just point out that, over the course of the less than four-minute-long song, Mr. Sheeran repeats the following phrases or sounds the following number of times:

“I’m in love with the shape of you” x6

“Oh I oh I oh I oh I” x6

“Mmmm” x6

“Come on now, follow my lead” x6

“Come on, be my baby, come on” x14

“I’m in love with your body” x15

Alright, alright, you say: pop music may be a little repetetive these days. But has it not always been? That is how pop songs are. Even some of the best pop songs of all times! Alphaville: “Big In Japan” repeats the title of the song twenty-five times (if I counted correctly); The Human League: “Don’t You Want Me” and Bee Gees: “Stayin’ Alive” do it about the same number of times respectively. Yes, I know this. And I should confess that even those great, legendary pop songs will start to get on my nerves if I am forced to listen to them several times in a row. But I think, overall, pop music truly used to be better in that respect when I was young: there used to be more variety then, so that not every song went on and on about some couple of words. Perhaps the youngest generation of pop music consumers does not even know this because they have grown accustomed to the repetetiveness of pop lyrics? But consider Michael Jackson: “Billie Jean” – a great song, arguably the best pop song ever, and it is not very repetetive lyrics-wise. 

But wait! Not repetetive? Does it not repeat quite a bit that phrase Billie Jean is not my lover?

Wrong, you idiot! “Billie Jean” has plenty of good lyrics, it tells you a proper story. There are four different verses, and the song is in no hurry to get into the chorus. Also consider the structuring of the lyrics: after the first verse, there is a second one, and then comes a transitional bridge part; only then comes the chorus. After the chorus, we hear the third and the fourth verse; then the bridge again; and then the song ends with the chorus done a couple times, plus some repetition of the key line of chorus, which is indeed Billie Jean is not my lover ... But that line is done  no more than about ten times, I think (it fades away at the end, so it is hard to be precise). Ten, that is, not fifteen or twenty times. Moreover, the structure is such that the song does not repeat much anything until at the very end, when the repetition can be seen as a stylistic device, if you will, climaxing the song. That is very different from the present-day strategy of repeating the chorus after every little strip of verse that they have bothered to scribble down, and doing this four or five or six times, likely doubling up on the chorus in the latter parts of the song.

It has indeed been proven hundreds of times that you can write a very good pop song with very little repetition of any specific line; many of the best pop songs of all times are not very repetetive. My hunch is that some of those songs may surprise you with how little repetetive they actually are – that you might have thought that they are rather repetetive, although in fact they are not. That may be because many of them share a somewhat similar basic structure with “Billie Jean” – a structure where the majority of the little repetition they do all comes at the very end of the song. Prince: “When Doves Cry” is a good example, mostly repeating the name of the song toward the end of the song. But all in all, Prince only sings the line like nine times in the whole song. Madonna: “Like A Virgin” repeats Like a virgin actually only eight times. Simon & Garfunkel: “Mrs. Robinson” says the words Mrs. Robinson a pitiful seven times (in a couple different sentences, so there is hardly any repetetiveness at all).





Sadly, present-day artists do not do songs like those anymore. No, it is more like a competition over who is the most repetetive in pop lyrics these days. And a strong candidate for the winner of that competition is Clean Bandit (feat. Anne-Marie & Sean Paul) and their song “Rockabye” (for which the writing credits have been given to Ina Wroldsen, Steve Mac, Jack Robert Patterson, Sean Paul Henriques, Sean Paul, and Anmar Malik).

To leave off the other verses again and go straight to the juicy, repetetive parts of the song, the first time those parts go like this:

So, rockabye baby, rockabye

I’m gonna rock you

Rockabye baby, don’t you cry

Somebody’s got you

Rockabye baby, rockabye

I’m gonna rock you

Rockabye baby, don’t you cry

Rockabye, no

 Rockabye-rocka-rocka-rocka-bye

Rockabye, yeah, oh, oh

Rockabye-rocka-rocka-rocka-bye

This theme they return to a few times during the rest of the song, although it changes a little bit every time. To be more specific, the second time that they do it, they do the beginning like above, but stop at the second Rockaby baby, don’t you cry and after that they go:

Oh-badda-bang-bang-bang, alright then

Rockabye, no

Rockaby-rocka-rocka-rocka-bye

Rockabye, yeah, oh, oh

Rockabye-rocka-rocka-rocka-bye

 Rockabye, don’t bother cry

Lift up your head, lift up to the sky

Rockabye, don’t bother cry

Angels surround you, just dry your eye

Indeed. Getting a little repetetive already, are we? But this is not the end of it. The third time they do it, they, as might have been recommended by some able Chinese torturer, do it again a little differently. In particular, they put that rocka-rocka-rocka thing into the second line already and then repeat it more frequently. And now the chorus is getting longer; actually they stretch it and keep it going until the end of the song, so there are no other verses anymore. Perhaps I should just lay out those final parts of the lyrics to give you a good sense of just how infernally repetetive they get, if I may:

So, rockabye baby, rockabye

Rockabye-rocka-rocka-rocka-bye

I’m gonna rock you

Rockabye baby, don’t you cry

Rockabye-rocka-rocka-rocka-bye

Somebody’s got you

Rockabye baby, rockabye

Rockabye-rocka-rocka-rocka-bye

I’m gonna rock you

Rockabye baby, don’t you cry

Oh-badda-bang-bang-bang, alright then

Rockabye

 Rockabye, don’t bother cry

Lift up your head, lift it up to the sky.

Rockabye

Rockabye, don’t bother cry, yeah

Angels surround you, just dry your eye

Yeah

 Rockaby, don’t bother cry, no

Lift up your head, lift it up to the sky, oh

Rockabye, don’t bother cry

Angels surround you, just dry your eye

The other night I woke up and a part of the chorus of this song was playing in my mind. I could not make it stop. There I was, suffering from a burst of insomnia and listening to “Rockabye” in my mind, over and over and over again. Perhaps that was the intention of the people who wrote the song. But let me tell you, it did not make me consider purchasing the song, let alone the album. It made me want to write this post, to send this as a kind of open letter to you people who cursed me with “Rockabye,” to shake my fist at you and shout: Godsdamn you! Godsdamn you to eternal pain and torment! To listen to this song of your own design a f’n ten thousand times over!

You could have made the point in about half the length of this song, did you know? You could and you should have. Next time, please try to be a little more concise. Out of perverse curiosity I counted how many times Rockabye or rocka-rocka-rocka-bye is repeated in these Satanic verses. Could you believe it, forty-four (44) times.

Yes, I really hate this song.

But I do not want to leave the impression that it is an altogether exceptional piece of sheit amongst present-day pop songs. Alas, that would be far from the truth. Re-introducing Mr. Sean Paul (yes, the same guy who did the rapping in the “Rockabye”), this time featuring the very beautiful (making a career as a model as well as a singer and songwriter) young lady called Dua Lipa, and the song “No Lie” (written by Andrew Jackson, Sean Paul Henriques, Jamie Michael Robert Sanderson, Emily Warren, and Philip Kembo).



Hope you don’t mind if I spoil it a little bit for you by revealing right here at the outset that, this song is not one bit more imaginatively entitled than the previous: it is indeed the phrase No lie that you will find forming the centerpiece of this one.

There is some repetition of a few other lines, too (“Feel your eyes / They all over me / Don’t be shy / Take control of me ...” x4 ; “[Shake / Move] that body, let me see you just do it” x4 ; “It’s gonna be lit tonight” x12 ; and “Feels like we do it” x12), to be sure, but there is no question that it is the No lie that they are out to drive into your brain. If I did not lose count, the phrase No lie is parroted a very respectable thirty (30) times in this song. Admittedly, that would only amount to about 66% of the times that rockabye was repeated in the “Rockabye,” but it might just actually be a little more irritating due to the most damned simplicity (these being just two one-syllable words, all their information value straight out in your face) and the fact that Miss Dua Lipa sings them with pretty much the same note each and every time, elongating the end so that it comes out No li-i-i-ie). That, times thirty, equals despair on my part.



To adapt to Forrest Gump: that is all I have to say about that song. But there is one more of those five I mentioned at the beginning: Mr. Alan Walker and “Alone” (written by Gunnar Greve, Anders Froen, Alan Olav Walker, Jonnali Parmenius, Noonie Bao, and Jesper Borgen). A little bit more imaginatively entitled song than the previous one, I would have to admit, because the message (sang by Noonie Bao, I was told) that the song is trying to sell you is actually I’m not alone. Mercifully, this message is repeated only (or, “only”) twenty (20) times. But on the other hand, the song is only about 2 minutes and 40 seconds long, 160 seconds, so that makes one I’m not alone per every eight seconds. Unsurprisingly, there are hardly any other lyrics in the song at all: lyrics-wise, it mostly consists of trolling those I’m not alones twenty times.

Now, listening to those seemingly endless I’m not alones, I have to say, I get the impression that this could be sang by a child, or some mentally handicapped person, with the intention of picking on and harassing someone who is alone, teasing that other person like: “Ner ner ner ner ner ner, I’m not alo-o-ne! Ner ner ner ner ner ner, I’m not alo-o-ne! Ner ner ner ner ner ner, I’m not alo-o-ne! Ner ner ner ner ner ner, I’m not alo-o-ne ...!” as long as it takes to make the victim break down and cry.

And it is this association that brings me to what I promised in the title of this post: the really good Finnish term to capture the format of present-day pop songs. For we actually have a clear and very expressive noun derived from the verb for (one of) the Finnish version(s) of “ner ner ner ner” -sort of singing, which of course we have been hearing from every preschool and elementary school yard in this country from times immemorial.

The noun is lällätys; the verb from which it is derived is lällättää; and those terms come pretty straightforwardly from the sounds “läl läl lää, läl läl lää, läl läl lää ...!” (The vowel “ä” in Finnish words is pronounced pretty much the same as the voice you often hear in an infant’s cry – a Finnish person might indeed transacribe an infant’s cry like this: “Ä-ä-ä-ä-ä-ä-ä...!”)

One can add words and rhymes to the basic form of lällätys. Perhaps the most iconic, classic version of lällätys is: “läl läl läl läl lieru, sinulta pääsi pieru...!” And here we can see in action a very typical children’s method of songwriting, because “lieru” doesn’t mean anything; it is added for the sole purpose that, first, it begins with “l” and thereby goes phonetically well together with “läl läl”; and, second, of all the possible sounds in the world that begin with “l,” “lieru” is the one that best rhymes with “pieru” (“fart”). The latter part of this particular lällätys, “sinulta pääsi pieru,” means pretty much the same as “you farted” or “you passed gas.” (There is a slight nuance difference between “sinulta pääsi pieru” and another Finnish phrase that could be translated “you farted” or “you passed gas,” namely “sinä pieraisit,” though, the latter being in the form of active doing, so that it can be used to describe also a situation where a person has intentionally farted; whereas in the former case, signaled in particular by the term “pääsi,” the passive imperfect inflection of the verb “päästä,” which has a few English translations but in this case probably best translates as “to get out of,” the meaning seems better fit also to a situation where the person farts or passes gas altogether unintentionally, including even a situation where one has been trying to hold the fart in but then finally fails at that, so that the gas gets out of the body.)

Never mind. So lällätys is something pretty f-ing dumb and childish. It can consist of a mere repetition of läl läl läl läl voices and some stupid ass phrase, over and over and over again, with the singular purpose of mocking someone and making them mad. Yeah, lällätys is stupid as hell. So perhaps it does not paint a very pretty picture of us Finns as people that we should even have such a concept as lällätys. On the other hand, when we do lällätys it is usually when we are like five, six or maybe seven years of age. What’s the excuse for the pop song writers these days, I do not know.