Ditto. In high school, it was punk and new wave and whatever REM was considered. A huge group of bands* came through the club I hung out in from HS through college (including a pre-fame Nirvana). I saw live: Jane’s Addiction, Camper Van Beethoven (who became Cracker), Husker Du, The Dead Milkmen, the B-52s, Poi Dog Pondering, X, 10,000 Maniacs, the Ramones, the Meat Puppets, Faith No More, Fishbone, Living Color, Aleka’s Attic (River Phoenix’s band), They Might be Giants, Concrete Blonde, and oodles of jangly-guitar bands that I can’t remember. None of them relied on autotune or slick appearances or backup singers.
I listen to the local college station, which plays a weird and wide variety of music. I first heard Franz Ferdinand on that station, also a few other bands that I quite like.
I also hate autotune “vocals” and won’t listen to anything with it. Also anything where “uhhhh, uhhhh” is a lyric. So, no, I don’t listen to that kind of “pop” and don’t feel bad for not liking it.
There surely was a lot of crap music back in the '60s. But we didn’t have to look for the good stuff; it was all around us, and easy to separate from the crap.
It’s actually the exact same now. It’s just in different places than you may have looked in the 1960s (such as, which teen or 20-something listens to the radio these days?)
Exactly. The good stuff will continue to be listened to (or even finally appreciated after the fact) while the crap fades away. As time goes by, that carefully curated collection of songs/bands becomes The Music of (era); it makes sense because its constant presence as the only enduring music from then reinforces that perception.
Also, most people like music from their teens and 20s and generally stay there. Other life shit takes precedence over spending hours finding the cool new music. Then your default exposure to current music is passive (whatever happens to be played on the radio et al), aka the crap that will fade away in a few years… just like songs from years past.
Harry Nillson? Garbage? Hmm…you must have been listening to later stuff, after he ruined his voice doing Pussycats. I can’t recall anyone describing his work up until then as garbage. YMMV of course.
I always listen to the alternative station on the car radio. If I hear something I like, I go home and pull up a live version on YouTube so I can watch the artist perform. George Ezra was a huge shock - not at all what I was expecting from hearing his voice <grin>.
Muse, Mumford & Sons, Alt-J, the Kongos (just for the rock accordion) and the ACOUSTIC versions of Imagine Dragon’s two hits are all worth trying. Just my 2 cents’ worth.
No offense intended. I now know his body of work was good, and he was very talented. But in my house, we only knew “I can’t liiiiiiiiiiive if living is without youuuuuuu!” and sang it at the top of our lungs. I still lump it in with the rest of the 70’s/early '80’s pop my parents listened to.
I had the opposite problem in the '80s. Pop was everywhere- Tiffany, Rick Springfield, WHAM!, and every single Jackson as a solo artist. I stayed up all night waiting to make tapes of whatever came on the low-power college radio station to get REM, the Clash, Madness, or anything else the top 40 channels didn’t deem worthy. There was no “alternative” station on mainstream radio, and not a lot of kids in my neighborhood or school knew about the music I loved.
I feel the need to clarify my OP (this not directed at any particular response).
I’m not looking for new music to love. (Well, I am, but that’s not the intent of the thread).
I am merely reinforcing the accuracy of my assumption that the more popular the dance/pop artist of today, the suckier and less creative/original/clever their music. My foray into this world is an honest attempt to discover how correct I am.
Also, I want to make sure that I am not missing something amazing. So far, it appears I am not.
mmm
You may be missing something amazing, but it is not to be found on most of the NOW collections. While it may be argued that Rihanna and Bruno make some good music, I’d wager that 95% of NOW is auto tuned pretty people being pushed through the forgettable pop music factory. What I have heard from Iggy Azalea, Jason Derulo, Justin Bieber, Chris Brown, and most others featured on this collection is not worth listening to. YMMV. The stuff worth listening to, like Bruno & Marc Ronson or Sam Smith, will find its way to you through other sources (again, that’s in my experience).
Wait–are “Now That’s What I Call Music” Cds a brand? Yeah, it looks like they are. A quick Wikipedia look shows what songs appeared on the first album:
Some of these are undoubtedly catchy pop tunes, but I’m not seeing Elvis Costello or Lou Reed or Elton John anywhere on that list.
If you’re genuinely interested in finding modern music of the sort you like, this doesn’t appear to be the best approach. That is, if you “want to make sure that [you’re] not missing something amazing,” you’re almost certainly not going to meet that goal by looking at a collection series that never specialized in the type of music you like.
There’s a ton of really good music out there right now. But you are not going to find it on tv or on the radio.
I so agree with you, OP, regarding canned music tracks and auto-tuned vocals, it truly IS the disco-era redux. Music designed for dancing/clubbing/raving only.
Check into some of the many many streaming services out there. The good ones will start throwing stuff at you when they learn what type of music you like. I’ve recently been listening to a lot of Australian music (no, not Aboriginal diggeridoo folk stuff), Irish music (no, not Celtic, although I like some Celtic now and then), and that band from Iceland whose name I can’t remember just now. All because they were suggested to me based on my listening habits.
Pull up some of the SXSW acts if you want to hear some exciting new music. Not all of it will float your boat, but I’m positive some will. They’ve got a wide wide range of artists.
Look into some of the retro-soul acts. Great stuff if you fondly remember the early Motown and other early 60s soul acts like I do.
And don’t forget the ladies - Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, Z Z Ward, Shannon LaBrie.
ETA (said in a small voice) I do kinda like Bruno Mars, though.
Seriously, back away from the radio and run for the streaming radio services. You’ll thank us.
I get what you intended this thread to be about, even if not everyone else does.
The question here is not “Is there good music being made today and if so how can I find it?” The question is “Is there any value in this particular set of music that’s popular amongst the kids these days?”
I’ve wondered this myself, and thought of doing similar investigation. For instance, when Meghan Trainor’s (of “All About That Bass” fame) album became free to listen to on Amazon Prime, I listened to some of the 30-second samples to see if the album might be worth my time to listen to in full. And I thought that it sounded decent enough—nothing special, but catchy and I could see the appeal—but the lyrics turned me off. Not just insipid, but “the kind of person who would say/sing that is not the kind of person I can really relate to, or find interesting or appealing.” Maybe that’s because I’m too old, or otherwise the wrong demographic. But, in my limited exposure to the kind of music this thread is talking about, I’ve found that, in many though not all cases, the lyrics are one reason I don’t enjoy it.
Likely it’s because both. She was 20 when she wrote it, and it’s not an especially incisive feminist critique of body image or anything–but then, I don’t think it’s trying to be. If you’re not 20, and if you’re not interested in a white girl answer to “Baby Got Back,” it’s probably not for you.
On the other hand, I’d put its lyrics up against anything by KISS.
Edit: also, for me at least, a lot of modern pop music (and by “modern” I suppose I mean anything from the last thirty years) is made or broken by the video. If you’re interested in checking out a pop song, I really recommend Youtubing it.
I know where to look for new musical adventures, and I do that. The Dope, in fact, is a great resource. I just want to know if there is anything worthwhile in the most popular music of today.
I know you’ve said you’re not looking for people to just recommend music, but maybe you can address a couple of the most popular hits from today: Uptown Funk, Bruno Mars at his funkiest, with a pretty hilarious bit of taking-the-pissitude. Chandelier, Sia’s tragic song about party girls. Bailando, Enrique Iglesias’s homage to West Side Story (maybe, I could be persuaded otherwise).
My criteria for calling these “pop” is that they all have more than a hundred million Youtube views–and the first two have more than half a billion. That seems pretty decent criteria for calling them “pop.”
If you want to exclude them, sticking to Taylor Swift and Katy Perry and Justin Bieber, I think you need to narrow your definition beyond simply pop music, more into teenybopper music. And that’s never been the deepest, richest vein to mine.
I’ve had the same problems with the current country music. Its like the genre I know and loved completely disappeared. I like most of Blake Sheltons songs. I like a couple of his wife Miranda Lambert songs. Little Big Town isn’t even close to being country. The best modern country star is Alan Jackson. But really his biggest hits were in the 90’s. He’s not current. Same thing with Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw. I like them too but they’re already considered dated.
The absolute worst is Taylor Swift. I’ve tried listening to her stuff and I just don’t see the appeal.
