I agree about the disappearance/ vanishing of melodies, especially melodies with a few more notes and the monotonism and repeatism of lot of songs. And also have to say that it's not so easy to do some formulaish stuff with just less ideas.
Right now I'm trying to do a hiphop-piece and I studied some ingredients which have to be there. First take missed the point. Too many breaks and changes.
Hm, starting again after listening and watching some typical stuff... there is so much in minimalism there, some hats in triplets for a short time, or just some rare ticks here and there. Though it still sounds often too monotonous and builds on only one theme.
That form of minimalism is kind of its own art form. By contrast, I've heard some member compositions here where it's like "Wow that's impressive... but it sounds like you just tried to squeeze every device you've ever studied into that 11 minute thing" and I find that sort of thing kind of turns me off to the song, no matter how impressive it may be.
On the other hand, put on some A Tribe Called Quest and people in the room can't help but at least nod their heads to it. It sets a mood,
and then gets out of the way. And I think that's kind of the point of a lot of the mainstream music we hear now; it's about conveying a certain mood/texture/feeling/style, rather than trying to weave a narrative arc or a complex story (like a lot of the stuff we seem to emulate around here, e.g. Williams/Horner/Elfman/Silvestri et al).
Yeah, that brand of hip-hop might lack the level of development and structure you seek as a trained musician/composer, but that was never its goal. And yeah, we can talk about how today's pop artists don't make music like the Beatles did. But you know what? They don't want to. And that's fine. If you want The Beatles, go listen to them. Their records aren't going anywhere.
So if you go looking for this deep substance in a place where none was actually intended (i.e. today's pop hits in question by the OP), then it's really about a mismatch of expectations. Some people are fishing for king crab in a swimming pool, and then blaming the pool when they don't catch any.
My point is, even the mindless drivel out there is just fine, as long as you accept it for what it is instead of treating it like what you think it should have been. It serves its purpose just fine, or else it wouldn't be as prevalent and successful as it is.
And besides, there's tons of excellent music being made today that
does (in my opinion) live up to, or even surpass, the standard of quality that made the classics, well,
classic. You just won't hear it on the mainstream radio stations.
(I mean the proverbial
you, of course.)