Aesthetic reduction as a systemic principle of pop music: the transformation of musical language in 20th–21st century mass culture

Abstract

The article investigates aesthetic reduction as a systemic principle governing the organization of pop music within the context of 20th–21st century mass culture. Aesthetic reduction is defined as the multidimensional simplification of the structural, semantic, and expressive organization of a musical text, ensuring its high reproducibility, algorithmic compatibility with platform environments, and immediate recognizability. The significance of this inquiry is reinforced by the transformation of the digital media environment, which has embedded the pop composition within an attention economy that privileges rapid audience capture over formal depth. The purpose of the study is to identify and describe the mechanism of aesthetic reduction as a systemic principle of pop music and to trace its operation at structural, semantic, and cultural levels. The methodological framework is multilevel and interdisciplinary: it combines structural musical analysis, discourse analysis of lyrical texts, comparative-typological method, and cultural-theoretical interpretation grounded in Theodor Adorno's concept of the culture industry and Simon Frith's sociology of popular music. The study establishes that reduction operates across all key levels of musical language. Specific analysis of works by J. Bieber, E. Sheeran, M. Shufutinsky, and M. Krug demonstrates the uniformity of the reduction mechanism across genre-distinct contexts. Russian chanson is examined as an instructive case of genre-level primitivization, in which mass appeal is systematically accompanied by cliché, formulaic intonation, and thematic predictability.