Before I got my iPhone, and when I still lived with TV, I made an effort to stay in touch with pop music. I’d been mostly about alternative music since the format was conceived, with occasional forays into a metal ghetto, but I didn’t want to become some kind of obscurist. No hipster, I.

But my iPod radio gadgets kept breaking and I decided I’d rather drink my cable budget, so my trips to Z100 and MTV gradually wasted away. Then Bally started its own music video station. I’d forgotten how fucking catchy a pop tune was. Have music engineers perfected the earbug, or are my ears just out of shape?

Example: I read about “I Kissed A Girl” (Perry, not Sobule) on the web long before I heard the song. Queer organizations getting weepy about capitalizing on trysexuality or some bullshit. Then I’m in a tenant space and they’re playing some musical insipidity and once the beat is engraved in my ear drum I catch the chorus and I realize this is that song. I STILL catch myself humming the drum machine line. It’s insidious.

Sure, I remember “Mmm-bop” (Who the fuck old enough doesn’t? God damned Hansen!), I know the earbug isn’t new, but it always seemed like lightning in a bottle before. Now it’s a damned industry. And is it just me, or does Auto Tune only make it worse?

Take Jason Derulo’s lead (I think) single, yet another execrable R&B cheating apology (although one with a clear post-Kobe thread of buying his way out of trouble). The music is entirely unremarkable but the hook seems to be a voice autotuned into asexuality. Also, that thrice damned Kesha (I refuse use her pseudo-leet/pseudo-gangsta dollar sign spelling). My first exposure to what seems to be Mickey Avalon with tits was when her record label wrangled her onto the iTunes Music Store free single of the week. I don’t even think the file made it through a single play before I trashed it. But after just a few days on Bally TV I can NOT get “don’t stop make it pop” out of my damned head. The music? Pfft. I wouldn’t be surprised if that song lacks a single live instrument. The vocals seem to be mostly straight but there’s some definite intentional vocoder action up in that bitch. I could even legitimately like the track if she wasn’t badly rapping in that weird nasally accent thing. I like Mickey Avalon and I absolutely support a woman’s right to be a dirty skank if she likes. But that faux New England-jersey-whatever. It’s a definite problem.

Katy Perry’s song had that drum machine to provide a remove from the rest of the song, but pop music seems to have taken care of that. It now seems to be all about the sponsored performer (I can’t bring myself to say “singer” or especially “artist”) now. Is this new? A result of a small sample size?

And does one have to be a trained dancer now to get a record contract these days? Maybe I should just stick to metal.