Music has always been a fairly large part of my life.
When I was a ripe young lad my mom got me started on piano lessons. My siblings and both parents are all musically inclined so my entire household was generally characterized by the boisterous clamor of singing voices. Now, an engineering college student, music provides me with a much-needed creative outlet. To say the least, I think about music a lot. Ed Sheeran’s newest single, “Shape of You” has got me thinking a lot about what makes a song popular, and what folks seem to find so appealing about pop music in general.
I think you’ll find that all pop songs have some, most, or all of these elements:
SYNCOPATION
First and foremost, you gotta be able to shake your booty to it. The demographic of people to turn their Spotify to Today’s Top Hits are usually the ones who look forward to the club or party on the weekend. I have determined from personal experience that “Shape of You” is a great booty-shaker. The marimba opening has a wonderful samba feel that just goes right to your hips. The vocals match match these hits with accentuated words popping out of each line.
CONCEPT
Pop songs nowadays fall into three basic categories, which I have named as such:
1.) I Don’t Have You and I’m Really Sad, 2.) I Have You and I’m Really Happy, and 3.) I’m Super Awesome.
In the beginning of “Shape of You”, Sheeran is stuck in #1, but gets together with this girl, and the rest of the song becomes #2. The most import part about Concept is the emotions that inspired the song and the emotions that the song will inspire in the listener. Personally I have a thing for sad songs, and I love when art can elicit from me the sorrowful emotion. From Billboard’s Top 40, I counted 18 songs that use this Concept, leading me to believe that I am not alone in this preference.
ASSOCIATION
We all know that this song is going to be big, because the dude who wrote it is huge. As soon as we see the name Ed Sheeran, we already like the song. In fact, the first time I heard it, I didn’t like it all that much. I hung around though, and re-listened a couple times, and I have to say it’s grown on me in a big way. The same thing happened to me with the Chainsmokers’ “Closer”, which makes me wonder if I would still love these songs if I didn’t like these artists so much.
VOICE
Lastly, and most importantly, Ed Sheeran is an excellent singer. A wonderful Concept and acute Syncopation would be nothing if it wasn’t executed correctly in the Voice. All songs that are popular are voiced correctly. I hear people complain that pop artists aren’t good singers. All I can say to that is they wouldn’t be popular if they weren’t good singers. The 2 billion people who clicked on the artist’s VEVO page were each affirming their vote to this fact.
This new song of Sheeran’s conforms to these standards that I have laid out for pop music so I would be very very surprised if we don’t see it head through the roof in the next couple of weeks and bump Ariana out of the No. 1 spot.
