Music [3]

Great crowd.

Been on a bit of a new wave kick recently, though I heard a fair bit of it from my mom's collection when I was younger. I was more into hard rock at that age, though. AC/DC was my favorite band for many years so I appreciate chris posting 'em.

I like this.

When I was a kid we had a record of Russian balilaika music. Kalinka was my favorite, brings back memories. The Russians have an incredible musical tradition.

I like how the conductor often stops conducting and lets them just run with it. Man that tenor has lungs.

Amazing very uplifting too

Oh those Russians

this is what I call music. what happened? why is it all Ed Sheeran/Sam Smith pap these days?

Because that's what's popular nowadays? Popular music of any current time period is usually targeted to younger people. Elvis in the 50s, Beatles in the 60s, all the rock bands in the 70s and 80s, the shift of focus to pop and rap in the 90s. We've seen an amazing explosion of musical styles in the past 50 years. And now we've really reached an incredible point in time where we can go on our electronic devices and find music from 1000 years ago, to the latest hits. I think it's great, it's all music.

I think the mistake we make is saying "What happened to music!" When what we are saying is, what happened to popular music. The thing is there is more music released in some form now than at any point in history to a worldwide audience. The good music is out there, but it is probably not what they, the major producers of "popular" music are trying to sell you.

Sometimes music is just light and breezy:



Sometimes music impacts you deeply:



But it is all music, good and bad, as Bungo says.

I understand that times change and you cant have a mono-culture, but the point is the mainstream music today is bland plastic pop which is evident in the best sellers in the market being bland pop 'stars' like Tayler Swift rather than the Beatles etc etc. the mainstream pop music today, is crap. Britpop is as dead as a Dodo. I haven't 'made a mistake'. its provable.

I think it comes down to a change on paradigm that happened in music, probably right about with the Beatles. With the Beatles, music suddenly made the industry. Hell, the Beatles probably made the modern music industry pretty much themselves. Now, the industry makes the music. At some point after the Beatles music became a big enough industry that the people that move into a business to make money got interested. Now we are getting to the other side, because with file sharing music has been tanking like an industry for a long time. Which is why we have more independent acts, but we are still in the stage as far as popular music is concerned that music is made by the industry, and not the other way around. Honestly, compared to now, the 90s was plent worse, all manufactured. In the 60s, 80s, and 00s at least you had rebel acts making music for the music, as you did with grunge in the early 90s, I guess. But modern manufactured pop can trace its roots back pretty far.

I am a bit surprised someone like Sheeran has got caught up in it, because he is actually a singer-songwriter with some decent work behind him:




Now he is writing bland songs for just about everyone. I guess something changed. :/

Mrs Figg wrote:

this is what I call music. what happened? why is it all Ed Sheeran/Sam Smith pap these days?

Modern-day GnR-ish bands are only a web search away. This group formed in 2004:


Anyway, I'm but a poor little millennial, did GnR actually fill the same role in "pop" that, say, Justin Bieber does now? Is the comparison a fair one?

My argument is based on pop chart music, top 10 stuff, not interesting indy bands which have always existed. obviously there are valid and creative talent if you look for it, but my discussion is about stuff you hear everyday as ambient sound as a backdrop to your psyche, stuff you grow up with which defines your particular era. for example,

1970
1. Layla - Derek and the Dominos
2. Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon and Garfunkel
3. Let It Be - The Beatles
4. Your Song - Elton John
5. Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine - James Brown
6. Lola - The Kinks
7. Who'll Stop the Rain - Creedence Clearwater Revival
8. Fire and Rain - James Taylor
9. Paranoid - Black Sabbath
10. All Right Now - Free


1980
1. Call Me - Blondie
2. Celebration - Kool & The Gang
3. Another One Bites the Dust - Queen
4. You Shook Me All Night Long - AC/DC
5. Whip It - Devo
6. Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division
7. Rapture - Blondie
8. Back In Black - AC/DC
9. The Breaks - Kurtis Blow
10. Once In a Lifetime - Talking Heads

1990
1. Nothing Compares 2 U - Sinead O'Connor
2. Enjoy The Silence - Depeche Mode
3. U Can't Touch This - MC Hammer
4. Vogue - Madonna
5. Groove Is In The Heart - Deee-Lite
6. Man In The Box - Alice In Chains
7. Vision of Love - Mariah Carey
8. Mama Said Knock You Out - LL Cool J
9. Gonna Make You Sweat - C & C Music Factory
10. Been Caught Stealing - Jane's Addiction

2000
1. Idioteque - Radiohead
2. Yellow - Coldplay
3. Beautiful Day - U2
4. Ms. Jackson - OutKast
5. One More Time - Daft Punk
6. Stan - Eminem
7. Try Again - Aaliyah
8. B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad) - OutKast
9. In the End - Linkin Park
10. Music - Madonna

this is where it gets crappy, really crappy
2010
1. Rolling in the Deep - Adele
2. F**k You - Cee Lo Green
3. Pumped Up Kicks - Foster the People
4. Just the Way You Are - Bruno Mars
5. Only Girl (In the World) - Rihanna
6. Runaway - Kanye West (featuring Pusha T)
7. Firework - Katy Perry
8. Tighten Up - The Black Keys
9. California Gurls - Katy Perry (featuring Snoop Dogg)
10. S&M - Rihanna

2016/7 dominated by Bieber, Sheeran, et al.

I like Rolling in the Deep.  F**k You is cute.  I think the 2000's were worse than currently; I think music is getting better, mainly due to the retro movement: the current generation has recognized the sterility of current music and is digging back into the past for inspiration.  Rolling in the Deep is a prime example.

its not just quality its variety, for example in the 70s - Beatles to Black Sabbath,  80s top ten, you could have enormous differences, Kool and the gang to Joy Division, 90s - MC Hammer to Janes Addiction, 2000s Daft Punk to Radiohead, where is the variety now, its all the same, its homogenous.

I like "U Can't Touch This" as much as anyone else, but to hold MC Hammer up as a model of artistic achievement in comparison to either his contemporaries or current rap is kinda ... weird, IMO.  I'm not familiar enough with pop music as a whole to comment on it, but the fact that two of the biggest hip hop albums of the last five years are experimental, highly radio-unfriendly works - Yeezus and To Pimp a Butterfly - which nonetheless were both #1 albums in the US and the UK as well as adored by critics (both won the Pazz & Jop poll for their year of release) indicates to me that the mainstream music scene is far from stale.

Most of the music I remember in the top 10 in the late 90s was awful manufactured stuff a la Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys, the god awful boy band genre.. (People are nostalgic for that these days.. Yikes!)

Eldorion wrote:I like "U Can't Touch This" as much as anyone else, but to hold MC Hammer up as a model of artistic achievement in comparison to either his contemporaries or current rap is kinda ... weird, IMO.  I'm not familiar enough with pop music as a whole to comment on it, but the fact that two of the biggest hip hop albums of the last five years are experimental, highly radio-unfriendly works - Yeezus and To Pimp a Butterfly - which nonetheless were both #1 albums in the US and the UK as well as adored by critics (both won the Pazz & Jop poll for their year of release) indicates to me that the mainstream music scene is far from stale.

If you read my post you will see I wasn't holding MC Hammer up as a model of artistic achievement, I was using him as an example of the vast diversity in music in that particular top 10 year. The fact that MC Hammer is as about far away from Jane's Addiction as its possible to get. that's my whole point.
and saying one hip hop album is great doesn't really make me change my opinion.
but I get the impression from all your replies that basically you all think its a generational thing, as in most generations think their music is better than 'young people today and their nasty rock n roll *shakes fist* bullshit.

but I guess you just had to be around in the 80s to get what I mean.

old fart rant #2

Mrs Figg wrote:
but I guess you just had to be around in the 80s to get what I mean.

I get it Mrs. Figg. I have to wonder if it doesn't have less to do with the artists and more to do with how hits are made. I can get really nostalgic for our old local independent radio stations with DJ's that took requests over the air and had a lot of latitude to play what they liked (and NOT play what they thought was shit! )

By the 90's and 00's the radio stations were all being bought up by corporate marketing syndicates...  

Now I'll confess I don't even have a clue how an unknown artist goes about getting their first hit, other than that it's almost got to be online. Can anybody explain?