Not so guilty pleasures

It's time to drop any pretense of cool and admit to some completely mainstream pop that I'm liking -- I need to confess and this blog is the place to do it!  Actually, I've always liked top 40 pop music; not everything of course, but I was never too snobby about something being too mainstream, whether it was Tony De Bart or Take That.  Lately I've found myself (and I know I'm not alone, and that there is a hipster factor to take into consideration) grooving to "Sorry" by Justin Bieber.  I have a feeling this song is produced by either Diplo or Skrillex.  I've never really given any thought to the latter, but I remember Diplo from the mid-2000's, when he was more an up and coming producer and quite underground.  Now, despite what I said about not being snobby, I am full of contradictions, and part of me is thinking "Diplo has sold out!".  But another part, the better part, is OK with that, because at least he's bringing some good sounds to the masses!  Especially the US masses, who've been in need of quality pop for a long time.  When I first got here in the mid-90's the situation was particularly dire, and for a long time the best pop music, the most forward-thinking, was R&B and rap, which is why a British brown kid living in suburban Detroit was watching BET and had the local black radio stations tuned to the buttons in the car stereo.


I'm also liking the Zayn Malik solo stuff.  I'm not sure if it's first-mover advantage, or the cool that comes from being good-looking and an ethnic minority, but I don't think any of the other boys from One Direction could pull off the solo career that Zayn may be able to.  All he has to do is pick the right songs and the right producers and he should be all set.  It's funny how pop is now -- not too long ago, a song like "It's You" would've been thought of as quite weird and underground, and probably would've been championed as some great twisted indie R&B, but in 2016 it's being put out by someone who was about as mainstream as you can get.  Again, I think it's great -- I'd rather good music be mass-market than crap music!


Lastly, Disclosure + Lorde.  I've heard this track a few times, and the last time I just thought to myself "this is perfect pop".  Lorde is on a different level of credibility than the two boys above, but it's all on the same continuum really.  Everything is cool now!  Or at least it can be.