In a brilliant essay on The Quietus website, Dan Barrow analysed the tendency in a slew of chartpop over the past few years – including Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’s ‘Empire State of Mind’ Kesha’s ‘Tik Tok’, Flo Rida’s ‘Club Can’t Even Handle Me Yet’ – ‘to give the listener the pay–off, the sonic money-shot, as soon and as obviously as possible’. Pop has always delivered sugar-sweet pleasure, of course, but, Barrow argues, there’s a tyrannical desperation about this
