The music business at work on dance-pop track.

 

So, let’s talk about the much maligned state of the music industry. While people will constantly discuss the idea of over sexualisation ruining it, in reality it’s been pretty ruined for quite a while now. For decades, the business has been shifting the scales to favour image more than music – appealing completely to the wrong sense.

Phoebe Ryan is an artist who, while somewhat talented, seems to be the latest residue clinging to the cramped pipes of the music machine that is mass-producing popstars. Her new single, Boyz N Poizn, should give you enough of an indicator from the title alone that this is a track with little substance.

On one hand, Ryan has experience writing pop songs – it is most likely the case that she did write this. Yet the problem is that her previous position of pop songwriter has turned into pop songstress, despite a vocal that gives immediate feels of adolescent teen singing in her room – a breathy air of youthful naivity and a tonality that adds little to the depth of sound. This is only exaccerbated by lyrics that have little solid meaning, and an underlying melody that feels like an homage to The 1975.

If there were ever a doubt as to why Phoebe Ryan is striking so much success as a solo artist, the odds are that it has something to do with the aesthetically pleasing face she’s sporting and placing on every track cover. It’s the music industry at work. Yet unless Ryan is able to start writing songs that are more than just aesthetic and have some substance and depth to them, the music industry won’t work for her for too long.