The real meaning of commercial, as an adjective, means that it sells. But lately, it has got a wrong connotation and now it is equals to bad quality and shallow. With this we could describe tunes as the summer song or some songs made to dance at clubs (Lady GaGa, Flo Rida...).
The problem are some people that think they are very clever and they feel superior to the rest. These people tag a musician as commercial as soon as his or her songs are played on the radio, and as soon as many people like it. Or even because it is a catchy song. That usually happens with pop singers, and other singers who mix pop with rock, punk or other genre.
The truth is, and they have to face it, that all the musicians want to sell. No matter how much they love music. They want their music to be listened, appreciated and to get some reward from it. In short, they want to live from music.
The answer to why pop (or its sub-genres and mixed genres) is tagged nowadays as commercial is that it has become very popular, as its name says (pop comes from popular). But it doesn't have to be like this in all the cases. It is true that some pop music sounds artificial, shallow and of course it can be named commercial, but there are a lot pop bands who aren't like this.
About the catchy songs, or catchy chorus, I would like to make a distinction. First of all, you have the true catchy songs with simple lyrics. And then, you have the catchy chorus of a normal song, probably with nice and worked lyrics. Why is this chorus catchy? Well, in my opinion, all chorus can be catchy. They are repeated along the song and they stick in our minds no matter what they are about. It is a normal thing that has to do with our brains.
On the other hand, I believe you can divide singers and bands in three groups.
- First of all, the typical and unquestionable commercial singer. This is the one-song singer (like the summer songs), the artificially created bands or singers (Spice Girls, Back Street Boys or Boney M back in the 70s) and the bands or singers that write simple catchy songs (or they are written by others) to sell (as Aqua or Boney M). But hey, they make us dance and we have a good time, don't we?
- Secondly, those artists who are called bad or commercial because many people like them and obviously they sell. This would be, as I said before, some pop artists like Mcfly, Son of Dork, Simple Plan (pop rock happy punk), even Hedley (pop rock punk) and Green Day (pop rock punk). And in Spain – El sueño de Morfeo, El canto del loco, etc.
- On the third and last place, we have the untouchable, the never-will-be commercial. These are mainly rappers and plain rockers (also classic rockers). It seems like these could never be called commercial and they will never be. And people who only like one of those feel superior and untouchable.
P.S: As you might have noticed, some of my favorite bands (Simple Plan, Mcfly and Hedley) were included on the second group. This is probably one of the reasons of why I wrote this post. I don't like my favorite artists to be called commercial and shallow when they are great musicians and songwriters. Fame came to them because of the latter!
P.S 2: I believe that if The Beatles sang nowadays, with the same style, they would be called commercial by some people. Of course, in their time they couldn't be commercial because they were pioneers on pop and very original. But nowadays, all their happy nice catchy songs would be looked down by many. Don't worry, I think they were great, that was just something I thought.
