Yes Rihanna's Unapologetic set a standard in pop music tbh

Not saying you think this, but I hate when people think that because pop music isn't as dance oriented it's all of a sudden much more credible and has much more quality. I actually find JT's songs and the R&B/Indie songs out right now to be much more "generic" and typical because they all sound the same to me, generally.

That could just be me though, since I prefer dance music way more than indie.

No, its just getting more diverse. However pop music will never be highly lauded because its a watered down version of what is popular at the moment.

Funny how everyone up there is male

I think that despite illusions of the contrary, pop music is always improving, diversifying, and changing. I don't think there's any single period in pop music that stands out as more objectively "bad", and that complaints about overall quality stem from a variety of things such as subjective taste in music and negative reaction to change in the mainstream sound.

Yup

No time period of music has ever been better than another. If you think the music of your time is "bad" or "not as good as it used to be", you're not looking hard enough.

Not really. I think Pop hit its peak in quality around 2008-2010 personally

Diamonds & Stay set the bar so high...I mean I guess so but how will it improve from that ? I guess R #8 is coming in 6 months to raise it again.

This tbh.

Don't get me wrong, I like EDM, popular EDM songs were not very good, and does not uphold the same principles original EDM set out to do. and JT isn't indie

I think this is especially true of the now, but not necessarily always.

In the late 90's early 2000's it was at its best because only a few select artist were truly making pop music.

In the Mid 2000's the quality fell. One reason was because everyone and their mother's wanted a hit by jumping onto the dance/pop trend.

Jump to late 2012-2013 a lot of the quality of music is raising because all the bandwagoners are finally ditching the pop/dance trend.

Some weren't very good, but in general I liked them. And I know, he's R&B/Pop, but I just used him as an example.

It really depends on what you define as quality.

You say the number of "simple" sounding songs had increased, but just because you interpret a song as simple, it can be anything but. As any songwriter will tell you, it's harder to write a pop hook than anything else and the fact that songs can sound so "simple" but still be infectious is a testament to the production, which, despite what many seem to believe, is a complicated art form.

I think the reason pop music is considered low "low quality" is due to the nature of the lyrics and the youthful face of the performers - both intentional to sell to the lowest common denominator. But that doesn't mean there isn't anyone actual toiling over the quality of the music.

That being said, of course there's awful, lazy and/or poorly thought out/executed music, but I think that's always been the case and not some recent development that we're just starting to move away from with the return of "serious" artists like Daft Punk and JT putting out new records.

Like any and all pop music, all they're doing is reactionary to what prevailing mainstream tastes have been. They both brought electronic music out when hip hop/r&b were prominent, and now they're doing the same with funk-influenced tracks at a time where electronic music is flourishing. And both have largely been carried by the hype of their name and comeback, so let's not make them more than what are are: opportunists.

As a songwriter/producer, I know. But you can't tell me that huge pop hits like Firework, and WFL were complex to make. Similarly, there are songs that are brilliantly produced.

I've recently found a vast variety of music by pulling my head out of the Billboard charts.

I would advise everyone to do the same.

I'm not trying to tell you anything. I was responding to the widely accepted notion suggested in the OP's question that pop music is something so simplistic that it can be identified as either "good" or "bad" by objective standards of quality, because it isn't. Barring cultural and personal attitudes and standards of pop music, the construction of pop music alone involves a lot more than most people realize.

Yes, of course there are still incredibly simple pop songs, but does that make them of "low" quality?

Personally I think pop music has been deteriorating since the 80s. But I mean that's just me. Pop songs today don't give me what I look for in a song but they might give that to others.

It's important to remember not just current pop music but also the vibrant history of pop music. After all pop isn't a genre but rather an umbrella term for popular styles at the moment. It wasn't a recent invention.