Ian Anderson’s brutal address of “unoriginal” pop music
Prog music was never meant to be strictly for the mainstream. The average pop music fan was never going to be completely onboard with a band that liked to expand the definition of what traditional songs could be, but Ian Anderson did end up looking at the new charts and wondered where all the fun went.
Because when Jethro Tull first started making inroads into the charts, it’s not like everything was set on one genre on pop radio. There were some great pop rock acts coming out of the tail end of the 1960s, but anyone who wanted to make a dent in the charts had to go up against everything from the country music machine in Nashville to the biggest Motown hits to pop geniuses like Burt Bacharach.
And it’s not like radio singles were the most stable formulas for people to innovate in. The Beatles had certainly pushed the boundaries of what was allowed on the charts much of the time, but since there was only three minutes for someone to make their mark, it’s not exactly shocking that some of the biggest acts of the 1970s eventually made the album their medium of choice rather than worrying about earning a hit.
But at the time, radio play wasn’t an artist’s only road to success. Thick as a Brick is known as one of the finest prog compositions of all time, but was anyone really expecting Anderson’s masterpiece with Jethro Tull to be played in all of its 43-minute glory whenever they turned on the rock stations? Probably not. There had to be some balance between innovation and accessibility, but all Anderson saw was the lines being drawn between different genres.
In the same way that prog rock was getting more expansive in later decades, pop music was also going in the reverse direction. There were always going to be exceptions to the rule, of course, but for every Lady Gaga that likes to toy with the confines of pop, Anderson saw a million other pop stars giving the people what they know they want.
When looking at the modern idea of a pop star, Anderson felt singled out people like Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift as the reasons why the industry isn’t innovating anymore, saying, “No offense to Ed Sheeran, he’s a very talented pop singer and pop songwriter. But I don’t think you can claim that it’s very original. Because the way he sings, the contents of his lyrics and music. It’s stuff we’ve heard many, many, many times over the years, like Taylor Swift.”
Then again, the real problem with these artists have a lot less to do with their songs than most people think. Everyone likes to critique people like Sheeran for their songs sounding simplistic, but there’s certainly room for that kind of tune on the charts. The only problem is that most listeners are seeing that as their only choice, since most radio stations are content with picking the least offensive thing they can possibly put on the charts and playing it incessantly until their listeners get sick of it.
So while it’s any artist’s choice as to what to do with their music, sometimes the biggest names in the world only succeed by going against the grain. There are plenty of people that can make music like Taylor Swift and try to crack the code of a pop song with four chords, but the key to sticking around is making a catchy tune that makes the listener do a little more digging with every listen.
