My view on the pop landscape’s not all that grim — “Climax” is going to be in my top ten songs of the year barring an onslaught of amazing tracks in the last two quarters, stretches of Roman Reloaded are downright astonishing (sadly, they’re rarely stretches that last entire songs).

A lot of this seems arbitrary, though, or externally imposed — as plausible as it is that everyone suddenly discovered they loved, say, David Guetta or learning to rap at the same time, (actually, it’s really plausible now…), it just doesn’t seem true, particularly when the results are too often too predictable. At this point it’s almost a given that any major pop release will have a Diplo song that sounds like a Diplo song, something that Rihanna probably turned down, etc., so forth….