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Comment by jacoblyles | Hacker News Reader

Modern popular music is ear-candy, all calories and no nutrients. It requires little effort for the listener to enjoy. In exchange it provides constant small doses of pleasure, heavily optimized to be as addictive as possible. In that respect, it is much like the internet, TV, or smoking.

It is one of the many shiny, bright, loud, or tasty super-stimuli that we savanna apes must struggle with in the modern world.

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All else being equal, requiring less effort is a good thing. Artists who optimize on that variable are better than those who don't. Sure, you can trade it for depth (which is why good art often takes effort) but it is backwards to therefore disparage work that is easier to understand.

Nabokov is a great writer who, unlike Joyce, was able to make his work relatively accessible. A first reading will be very rewarding. Nevertheless, repeated readings bring out more depth and continue to be rewarding. I think this is a skill to be admired.

Aren't you describing pop music in general? I don't see how what you said only applies to "modern" pop.

Aren't you describing pop music in general?

Yeah, to me "all calories and no nutrients" is pretty much the definition of pop music. Ear candy.

Sure. But I do think it is more heavily produced and optimized to be catchy than ever before. There is a quantitative, though not qualitative, difference.

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