Here 15 Of My "Controversial" Pop Culture Opinions, And, Yes, I Will Die On Each Of These Hills
Hello there! I'm Ajani, a lover of TV, movies, and music, and I have a lot of things to get off of my mind. So below, I've listed some of my "controversial" opinions related to pop culture, along with polls so you can vote on how divisive my opinions truly are. Let's see if you guys have the same pop culture pet peeves as me!
1.It’s weird that TV shows and movies are edited ~after~ they’re released because they received a negative piece of criticism.
A recent example is how the audience booing Kim Kardashian at Tom Brady's roast was edited out. Another example is how the digital release of the Mean Girls musical film cut a joke about Lindsay Lohan after she expressed her upset over it. I know the intention behind editing stuff like this out is to be considerate to people who were hurt, but I also think there is something so dystopian about attempting to rewrite history or trying to erase it, especially over stuff this small. It's a slippery slope to normalize editing, cutting, or censoring media like this over little things.
2.It's time for us as a society to move past spinoffs and reboots series.
It's tired. It's overdone. It's been going on too long. It's rarely good, and it sometimes ruins the ending of the original series. Every time I see a headline about one of my old favorite shows getting a reboot, I audibly groan. Of course, out of curiosity, I'll tune in at the beginning, but it's very rarely worth continuing. We need wayyyyyy less reboots and need more new original shows. Television is getting kind of boring.
3.Songs are becoming way too short.
Now, I understand that songs are generally shorter now because shorter songs lead to more streams, but I kind of hate that!
It's too normal for pop songs today to have only two choruses instead of three, but that third chorus makes the song feel finished and satisfying. Listening to music today feels like I'm being edged and denied an eargasm. This doesn't apply to all music. Some artists and songs are so damn good they really do get the job done in a couple of minutes. Some.
But too many pop songs today are just a little over 2-minutes long. That is not a song! That is an interlude on an album! When I open an album and see it's less than 40 minutes, I just think, "What are we doing here? Get back in the studio and finish it!"
4.A song should almost always have a bridge.
Hopping off of my last point, another reason today's songs are getting shorter is because they're missing bridges. The bridge is sometimes the best part of the song. You change up the production, say something different, take the vibe to a new place, and build up to that explosive third chorus. A bridge completes the song! And I fear we're about a decade away before pop songs are just one verse, a chorus, and then an outro.
5.Most movies today do not need to be longer than 90 minutes.
IDK if I'm misremembering but I just don't think movies were this long 10 years ago. Every time I look up a new release I want to see, it's nearly three hours long. And almost every time I watch it, I think they definitely could've gotten their point across in a lot less time. Sure, occasionally, there really is just THAT much story to tell, but I think most times, some edits wouldn't have hurt. Every movie doesn't need to feel like I'm watching the Director's Cut.
6.We need more romcoms in the theaters!
What happened to romance on the big screen? Streaming services pump them out like a fast-fashion retailer, but we're not getting nearly enough theatrical releases! Anyone But You is the only major romcom release I can think of from this year so far, and that's far too little. We need to get romcoms back in the theaters. We need to be reminded to live, LAUGH, and LOVE.
7.Most original series on streaming platforms need to have 13 episodes per season AT THE VERY LEAST.
In the past few years, the standard for shows on streaming has gone from 13 episodes a season to 8. And if we're not careful, soon it'll be 6. (There are already some that are getting away with that, actually). If it were up to me, shows on streaming would have a minimum of 13 episodes per season. Writing a satisfying story arc with proper pacing is hard, and most of these streaming services' original series proves that. And that's because a lot of the drama series on streaming are truly melodramatic soaps that need a lot of episodes to benefit the storytelling.
8.It's weird (and wrong) that music on streaming platforms can be edited or removed by the artist or label.
A couple of years ago, Beyoncé removed her sample of "Milkshake" by Kellis from her song "Energy" after Kelis called her out for sampling the song without her permission. The song is still spectacular without it, but there was an lil extra umph it gave to the song that I miss. And unless you have a physical copy of the album, you can't easily listen to the OG version of it. I understand the sample was removed probably out of respect to Kellis, but it's wild to me that tracks can be altered after their official release. I don't like this, not just because a great part of a song can be changed but because it makes me fearful of the other possibilities that come with the future of music streaming. For example, besides altering released songs, artists and labels can also completely take a song off of the streaming service. A couple of years ago, Dove Cameron removed all her songs that came out before "Boyfriend" — her first song to chart on the US Hot 100 — because she felt they were not authentically her. And that's a 1000% valid feeling that many musicians feel, but I thinks it's so unfair to fans to delete songs they they loved and got attached to. Imagine if your favorite artists started taking their earlier music off streaming platforms because they no longer felt like that person. You'd be mad!!!
9.The normalization of "sped-up" song versions needs to be undone.
Again, I know it's to increase the song's streams, but I cannot take those versions seriously. It's one thing to hear 15 seconds of it on TikTok, but listening to a full song's sped-up version is like the new version of streaming Alvin and the Chipmunk covers. We need to get serious, people.
10.We need to bring back PROPER music remixes.
Song remixes today are SO LAZY. I know it's because if the remix is deemed too different from the original, it's considered a different song and, therefore, can't count towards Billboard charts. But I wish more artists cared about the artistry than the music charts. Remember in the 2000s and before when a song's remix almost sounded like a whole new song? It would still have some of the same elements, but they would switch up the arrangement and production a lot. Nowadays, most remixes are just the original song except with the one verse sung by the featured artist. BORING. Great examples of popular remixes from the past few years are "The Boy Is Mine Remix" by Ariana Grande, Brandy, and Monica and the "Savage Remix" by Megan Thee Stallion and Beyoncé. Those remixes completely revamped the original, and we need to bring that kind of creativity back to remixes!
11.AI covers of songs with another artist "singing" on them are so creepy and kind of disrespectful.
I haaaaaaaate it so much. I'll see these viral AI covers circulating on Twitter or TikTok, and it's so eerie. Especially the more realistic it sounds. Duplicating a real person's voice to put on a track that they never sung in their life is some Black Mirror stuff. (Literally though, it happened on Black Mirror). And to me, it also just feels disrespectful to take an actual person's voice and create things in their likeness. It's 10x more disrespectful if that person is dead.
12.Leaking an artist's songs that they didn't plan to release is so disrespectful.
If someone doesn't want to release music for whatever reason, it's so messed up to leak it. Whether a musician didn't put it out because the material is very personal, because it didn't align with their brand, or just because they didn't like it, they didn't want it out in the world for a reason! Leaking is a massive invasion of privacy, and downloading leaks onto my phone and adding them to my files just makes me feel like I'm reading someone's diary without their knowledge.
13.Music charts do not determine how good an artist is.
Now more than ever, music charts matter to musician's fans, especially when they're comparing them to other artists. When stans debate over two musicians' artistry, they LOVE to pull out the stats, and I'm sorry, that just does not matter. Music is art. Not a sports game. You can't judge something as subjective as art based on how well the song or the artist charts. Uniqueness, creativity, innovation, technique, skill, cultural impact, and more are all way more important when discussing the quality of a musician's work than just the numbers.
14.Movies go from the theater to streaming way too quickly these days.
Since COVID, it seems that unless a movie absolutely obliterates the box office during its first week in theaters, it'll go to VOD in a month tops. The thing is, lot of us moviegoers like to wait a couple of weeks before going to the movies so that it won't be so crowded. Give us some time to get there! We also need more time to let these movies marinate in the theatres and generate buzz so more people can go see them. Studios don't have the patience to build up hype anymore.
15.We shouldn't completely move away from the TV-binging model that streaming services were known for.
I kinda hate that more and more often, shows are dropping episodes weekly instead of the whole season. Or splitting the season into two parts and dropping them separately, which is even more annoying, in my opinion. Now, I'm not saying I'd like EVERY show on streaming to drop a whole season at once. However, I think there are a ton of shows that aren't deep enough to need a week of audience reflection and discussion before releasing the next episode. I still appreciate a good ol' fashioned, mind-rotting binge session of a kinda trashy melodrama! Some shows are just meant to be binged.
Now tell me, what are some of YOUR controversial pop culture opinions?
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