Does Music Today Suck Now, Or Am I Finally 'Old'?

[MorganL4]

your getting old, happens to all of us. Pop music by enlarge is never good no matter the era.

Tell that to these guys:

I mean when you have bands like The Beatles, Elvis, and The Beach Boys as the three main "pop" acts you can't really argue that pop was bad in the 60's.

Granted the 60's had its knock off acts that weren't all that good. But even The Monkees had a couple good songs.

 

[Timmaaaah]

Nope. Music today is fucking awesome, you just have to look somewhere other than the mainstream media. Rock is not dead. Musicians are more inventive than ever. What country are you living in? I'm currently in Sydney where magazines are prattling on about how Australian music is circling the drain, but the truth is that all it takes is to explore the live music scene. There are sooo many bands out there. Even if one 1% of them are great then that's still 1% of thousands of bands... Which is enough to fill your music void for a decent amount of time. All this pessimism concerning music annoys me. Music is art and you're not going to see the masterpieces unless you look. It's also incredibly personal. Don't look for the next "big hit" and expect it to resonate with you. Find something new that gives YOU chills.

Who cares if pop music today is a stagnant cesspool of shock marketing and tween crap? Record execs have figured out the formula to make a shitload of money and they're going to do just that. Turn off the TV and start exploring soundcloud or something.

Anyway, if you want something new and pretty much genreless, check out Alt J's album An Awesome Wave. They've got a new one out too but it's not quite as exiting as the first. Goes best on amazing headphones. The only negative thing I've heard about them is that some people aren't particularly into the timbre of the lead singers' voice, but I recommend that you give them a chance.

 

[Timmaaaah]

I think people always forget that for every 'classic' song that came out decades ago and that we still listen to today, there were 1000 other songs that people have completely forgotten about.

Whenever people point out how people had "so much better taste back then", I always like to remind them that "Disco Duck" was the #1 song in America for a while.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irgJPqkuakM

Everyone seems to have already forgotten about Crazy Frog too

 

[Funyahns]

There is bad music in every era. The problem with getting older is that you have found a decent amount of music that you really enjoy. So why go through the headache of digging through new music when you already have tons of stuff you love. the other part of being older is a smaller social circle, which means less friends listening to and finding new music. I don't know about you but from late 80s till early 00s I didn't find any band I loved on the radio. Friends showed me music, or siblings found music mostly. Go back through any era and most pop music is crap, you will get a handful of good bands on the radio true. But that is after they are already pretty popular.

 

[Conner42]

It depends if you use to really get into popular music. I've always hated modern day pop music and have usually just listened to older rock songs. Now that I'm older, I haven't really expanded much on taste, but even some of the older songs I used to like are...well, there are bands I used to think were good but now I just fucking hate them. Especially Guns n' Roses...like, seriously, fuck those guys! I can't believe I ever liked any of their songs.

So, I guess my point is that I didn't stop listening to what was current in music, but I think me getting older gave me a bit of a change in taste and I am now shaking my head at some of the stuff I used to listen to...I mean, shaking my head in disapproval, I'm not shaking my head to the beat or anything...

So, did you use to listen to what was popular during the time?

 

[Tanis]

Man, this thread got a LOT more responses than I figured it would.

Thing is...I kind of like POP music.

Savage Garden, Maroon 5 (though, less and less), Matchbox 20, Garbage, Incubus, etc.

Sure, I like Early Man and Ozzy and Yoko Kanno and Silversun Pickups, but I don' mind some 'simple' music.

It's just, a lot of this 'auto-tune to the point of derpy' just don't jive with me.
Either you're a singer/raper, or you aren't.

Auto-tune and HORRIBLE lyrics doesn't make you an artist.
It makes you a youtuber with a record deal.

 

[Hoplon]

your getting old, happens to all of us. Pop music by and large is never good no matter the era.

Tell that to these guys:

I mean when you have bands like The Beatles, Elvis, and The Beach Boys as the three main "pop" acts you can't really argue that pop was bad in the 60's.

Granted the 60's had its knock off acts that weren't all that good. But even The Monkees had a couple good songs.

I really can, the majority in fact was fucking terrible because those bands you meantion where a tiny minority.

 

[omega 616]

I think it's to do with repetition and how much people love it. The easiest examples are kiddies programmes, it's just about the same shit every week. As far as music goes, just listen to any song by Rhianna ... after listening to one song, it's like you've listened to it 100 times.

To be honest, I barely count any of todays music, as music. I mean, things like rap takes skill to write the lyrics, rock takes ability to play the instrument, orchestra's take a large amount of people working together ... they are all beautiful in there own way, the way instruments kind of ring/linger after they are played.

Then you have things like gabba and dubstep, which all it takes is a music programme, maybe some other equipment and an ear for it (you like what most people who like the genre like. So your tastes are in line with the majority of that musics fans) and then create a track. Shit, there was a game called music (and music 2000) on the PS1 which was a stripped down version of these programmes. You can work on this shit for hours until it's perfect, then you press play and it plays infinity.

I know a lot of people will disagree are about to say "well music is just sounds that have a beat and rhythm, that people enjoy listening to" (or words to that effect) but I think it's more than that. By that previous definition, pressing one sound byte 100 times from a soundboard is music.

To prevent 10 quotes from appearing in my inbox, can we just accept that I disagree that what some people consider music to be "kind of not" music. You can disagree with me all the live long day 'cos I know this is an unpopular opinion but I can't consider deadmou5 to be doing the same thing as Vivaldi.

Not saying all modern pop is crap, I like "Lorde - royals" and a couple of others but not a lot.

 

[BoldBaldBastard]

What people tend to forget is that people tend to forget the bad songs and only remember the good songs.

There were plenty of bad songs back in the good old days, but we fortunately forgot about most of them.

The modern bad being more bad than the old bad could also be true to an extend by the way.

 

[MorganL4]

your getting old, happens to all of us. Pop music by and large is never good no matter the era.

Tell that to these guys:

I mean when you have bands like The Beatles, Elvis, and The Beach Boys as the three main "pop" acts you can't really argue that pop was bad in the 60's.

Granted the 60's had its knock off acts that weren't all that good. But even The Monkees had a couple good songs.

I really can, the majority in fact was fucking terrible because those bands you meantion where a tiny minority.

I wasn't saying there weren't bad acts, but when the pop acts that topped the charts back then were of such caliber, and the groups that top modern charts are "Kids Bop #X" and the various Glee soundtracks then you have to recognize the discrepancy.

 

[BarkBarker]

Too many damn people on this planet with a dream of creating something incredibly mediocre with their voice for money fame and all that shit they think is good. As a kid American idol was the closest thing I ever knew to actually promoting this sorta thing, now look, there are a good couple of handfuls of shows and means for no name people to get their voice to people, and even more people who have a very limited palette to promote and endorse their stupid shit.

 

[KissingSunlight]

You can't rely on radio to be an informed music fan. The only thing that radio and record companies seem to know how to promote is bubblegum music. Every once in a while a good band or artist breaks through.

I buy new music every week. Last week, I got the 2 new Prince albums. (My favorite of the two is Plectrum Electrum.) Lucinda Williams, Pentatonix, and Lenny Kravitz. This week, I was in the mood for some obscure artists like Hozier (He was going to be on SNL. So, I got curious what his music was like.), Lucius, and Shit Robot (With a name like "Shit Robot", they got to be good.).

Good new music is out there. It's just harder to find. What I do is check out music reviews. If I like what I read, I go to youtube and watch their videos.

I would recommend giving Sia "Chandelier" another chance. It's a pretty dark song for a pop hit.

 

[MrBaskerville]

There are some annoying trends in pop these days, but it also sucked pretty hard in the late 90s (with all the bubblegum stuff). I defineately prefer pop music from the 80s, there were a lot of stuff about partying, but also stuff with more meaning like Phil Collins, Tears For Fears, Siouxie and the Banshees and the like. Back then (70s, 80s and 90s) you could have an important message while being massively popular, that doesn´t seem to happen so often these days (but it will probably get better later, nothing is permanent in the world of music).

I don´t get why anyone would say that music as a whole was shit these days, it doesn´t take much effort to find tons of excellent bands in rock, electronic, pop (to some extend, while there´s stuff like Nicki Minaj, there´s also singers like Lykke Li and Oh Land), rap, metal and so on. I like music from most ages, but i´m very happy to be able to appreaciate all the old stuff and all the new stuff, we live in some amazing times when it comes to music.

Some of the good bands from recent times(imo):

White Hex
Huntress
Vektor (Thrash fans NEED to check this out, it will make your brain melt)
Bosnian Rainbows
Royal Thunder
Jess and the Ancient Ones
Atoms for Peace
Syd Arthur
Susanne Sundfør - Silicon Veil (Brilliant pop)
Iamamiwhoami - Kin (More brilliant pop)

Some good albums from older(ish) bands (imo):
Amebix - Sonic Mass
Omar Rodriguez Lopez - Octopus KoolAid (and a ton of other albums)
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Push The Sky Away
Royksopp - Junior
Pj Harvey - Let England Shake
Coheed and Cambria - The Afterman (both parts)
The Roots - Undun

I could probably go on forever, i probably like plenty of new albums and bands as much as i like tons of old stuff and i don´t see what other people are seeing when they complain about modern music.

 

[MrBaskerville]

Man, this thread got a LOT more responses than I figured it would.

Thing is...I kind of like POP music.

Savage Garden, Maroon 5 (though, less and less), Matchbox 20, Garbage, Incubus, etc.

Sure, I like Early Man and Ozzy and Yoko Kanno and Silversun Pickups, but I don' mind some 'simple' music.

It's just, a lot of this 'auto-tune to the point of derpy' just don't jive with me.
Either you're a singer/raper, or you aren't.

Auto-tune and HORRIBLE lyrics doesn't make you an artist.
It makes you a youtuber with a record deal.

It´s completely unrelated, but if you are a fan of early Incubus, then you defineately need to check some Faith No More!

 

[Raikas]

I think you're understating the power and significance that music has had at various times in history. Renaissance music with its sweeping holy melodies which were thought to come direct from god, the romantic tradition which swept away centuries of rigid formality, some of the music during the Vietnam war in which people felt they could feel their consciousness was being changed. Imagine hearing jazz with its shockingly free structure and sense of melody for the first time, or 12-tone music which broke all the rules of melody that you knew before. These might not have had such an impact in your life but for many people they did.

Saying "I like this" is only a fraction of the potential of art and it shouldn't be regarded as success if someone happens to like a song 30 years later. A part of every piece of music is timeless, but music usually has the most power when its own cultural and temporal context is current and relevant. We should look to that time to see its real significance.

I don't disagree with that, but if you're going to take personal connection and context to be a sign of power, then you can't dismiss the 11-year-old girls screaming at the popular boybands. Those girls are clearly having a supremely ecstatic experience of music, and it probably is having an impact on their expectations and ways of thinking - so that would suggest that your quick dismissal of modern pop music must be measuring the music by some other standard.

Admittedly that's a bit of a silly example, but I do think that there's still plenty of surprising music being made - if you're not hearing it, it may just be that it's aimed at a different segment of the population (or that you're just not seeking it out).

 

[Aleenik]

Yes, you are old.

Not because you realized that most (pop) music is garbage. But for nostalgically thinking that wasn't the case in the past...

Nostalgia really is dangerous. I actively try to avoid its influences on my life, especially in regards to entertainment.

 

[Sutter Cane]

hmm, looking at the top 25 from the year end hot 100 list, it doesn't seem like pop music is really any worse than it was around the time I was born. Though there did seem to be a time in the late 00's where pop music basically just died and pt out nothing of even moderate value.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

I think you're understating the power and significance that music has had at various times in history. Renaissance music with its sweeping holy melodies which were thought to come direct from god, the romantic tradition which swept away centuries of rigid formality, some of the music during the Vietnam war in which people felt they could feel their consciousness was being changed. Imagine hearing jazz with its shockingly free structure and sense of melody for the first time, or 12-tone music which broke all the rules of melody that you knew before. These might not have had such an impact in your life but for many people they did.

Saying "I like this" is only a fraction of the potential of art and it shouldn't be regarded as success if someone happens to like a song 30 years later. A part of every piece of music is timeless, but music usually has the most power when its own cultural and temporal context is current and relevant. We should look to that time to see its real significance.

I don't disagree with that, but if you're going to take personal connection and context to be a sign of power, then you can't dismiss the 11-year-old girls screaming at the popular boybands. Those girls are clearly having a supremely ecstatic experience of music, and it probably is having an impact on their expectations and ways of thinking - so that would suggest that your quick dismissal of modern pop music must be measuring the music by some other standard.

Admittedly that's a bit of a silly example, but I do think that there's still plenty of surprising music being made - if you're not hearing it, it may just be that it's aimed at a different segment of the population (or that you're just not seeking it out).

Yes, you're right. I suppose I just don't see an 11 year old's ecstatic experience as something life-changing in terms of ideals. They'll have an incredibly fun night, forget about it in a week and jump on the next trend, realizing how silly said previous boyband was. Can the Beatles be put in this category? For some people, I'm sure they can. For others, I think maybe they were the first taste of liberated sense of sexuality (at least white sexuality) and expression they were exposed to...the question is, did they change attitudes or was their popularity explained by changing attitudes? Probably more the second one.

But yeah, I don't know. That boyband thing is a phenomenon I can't understand.

 

[hermes]

your getting old, happens to all of us. Pop music by enlarge is never good no matter the era.

Tell that to these guys:

I mean when you have bands like The Beatles, Elvis, and The Beach Boys as the three main "pop" acts you can't really argue that pop was bad in the 60's.

Granted the 60's had its knock off acts that weren't all that good. But even The Monkees had a couple good songs.

Which is easy having 50 years of hindsight.

There has been a lot of good pop bands in the past decades, no one can deny that. But the ones we remember today are but a small fraction of the musical output of that era, we just remember them because we consider them good. Because we don't remember a lot of the bad stuff, we tend to believe the good outweighed the bad, but 99% of the rest was as crappy as it could get...