Throughout 2008, as America was transfixed by a historical and climactic presidential election and a scary economic meltdown, pop music became blurry.
Styles morphed more than they did the year before as mainstream acts dissolved sonic barriers. Easy signifiers of certain genres all but disappeared. So-called indie rock, which generally prided itself on a ragged, warts-and-all style musicianship, was suffused with inventive textures (a layering of strings, for instance) and compelling melodies.
Kanye West, one of hip-hop's most successful rappers, eschewed street beats and rhymes for noisy electronica and Auto-Tuned singing. If any sound dominated pop in 2008, it was produced by Auto-Tunes, software that manipulates pitch, producing fluttering, robotic vocals.
On the flip side, so to speak, some marquee artists (namely Duffy and Raphael Saadiq) refused any studio wizardry. Instead, they went out of their way to re-create the vintage sounds of Chess and Motown, extending the approach that garnered Amy Winehouse acclaim and multiple Grammys in 2007.
The fragmentation of pop was certainly nothing new in 2008. In fact, it was an old story two years ago. But as the record industry has continued to become more irrelevant, and as consumers' budgets have shrunk and downloading has continued to spike, it has become less and less likely that any two pop fans were listening to the same thing.
"Music used to have a giant center in the Top 40, songs that casual listeners from all demographics sang along to whether they liked them or not," says Bill Crandall, editor of spinner.com, an AOL-owned media player. "Now, thanks to technology, the Web and niche radio programming, more and more listeners are seeking out music they're passionate about. ... In a climate like this, ... it's better to be loved by a smaller core audience than to try to be merely tolerated by a vanishing giant one."
Although pop may have been more sonically daring in 2008, some of what topped the charts didn't exactly define the year.
Huge hits such as Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" and Beyonce's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" were shrill and very derivative. The simple but captivating video for "Single Ladies," an obvious rewrite of Beyonce's earlier hit "Get Me Bodied," is largely responsible for making the cut such a smash.
