I
I cannot tell a lie.
I will never be able to get into that kind of music. I still hear the use of autotune, which is uncalled for.
Call me old fashioned, but I think the talent is in the natural human voice.
That's fine. Everyone has different taste. I actually don't mind some autotune if it fits the song. In Japan, autotune, when it's called for, is believed to make a song better. And I've heard these girls sing live, they sound just as good.
That's another thing.
2. More Depth and Layers
There is something to be said for a song that can be a strong, memorable song without being difficult to play or sing. However, I believe in the Western World we take this idea of simplicity in our music a bit too far. Yes, it is true that simplistic melodies based on several short motifs will often have good results. But this shouldn’t give us an excuse to restrict our musical creativity to the point where we start cutting necessary layers from the song.
I think we generally stick to fewer layers in our music here in the U.S. and Europe for a couple different reasons. First of all, we (for the most part, correctly) identify that our audience enjoys a simple, easy to follow recording. Secondly, it’s just easier and less time consuming. The flaw I see with this reasoning is that while making our melodies and rhythms easy to follow in popular music makes sense, I don’t think we should cut out on the layers. Nobody likes a thin, empty sound in a recording they paid money for. Simply put, if I can count the number of audible layers on one hand there is probably room for more.