Is today's music crap?

Cafe Society
41

Yay! I have a slant that hasn’t emerged yet!

Technology likes to take a concept, a thing, an action, and won’t let it go until It’s commoditised and rampantly cheap…then it makes it irrelevant. (1200 baud modems were $400, then 9600 baud modems were $200, then 56k modems were $50…and now? nobody sells them.) It’s currently doing that to film. The $250 last-years-model digital camera today takes a better picture than most of the last 100 years of consumer photography…and does so at ZERO after purchase cost - no film, no developing, no waiting, instant feedback.

We’re living in a time where music no longer degrades. Once that wax cylinder is digitized and cleaned up, it’ll sound the same (assuming you retain your data), to your grandchildren’s grandchildren.

I have two itunes music libraries. Everything I’ve collected is 200-ish Gb, the second is the one I care about, nearly 100% legal, and only about 40 gb.

only.

One Hundred Twenty Six Days of uninterrupted music, and it’ll fit in your pocket.

And my musical tastes leave out a TON of genres. No classical, hip hop, metal, country. There’s more people making more music now, and more people CAN make music now, then ever before.

Garageband is included in Every Mac that’s been sold over the past few years. Anyone with a little interest has a more powerful recording studio in their lap than the Big companies had in 1992. (I remember when buying a DDD CD was special…that is, ALL aspects of the recording was handled digitally)

As a teenager, I had 12 records and a shoebox full of cassettes. I now have 20 times that in my pocket. (and I’m happy to see you :smiley: )

42

Similarly, I’ve had Foobar since about May this year. Since then, I’ve listened to 4 weeks, 6 days, 9 minutes, 20 odd seconds of music. That doesn’t include in the car, at the radio station, anywhere, just when I’m at the computer. When was that ever possible before?

43

I fully agree! There’s no point doing a cover if you’re going to do that. Hence my Mark Ronson links above.

The emotional attachment is to the album as a whole, for non-musical reasons. The song, I knew since hearing it at the end of Baz Luhrmann’s Romero & Juliet. But never mind that, the Vampire Weekend version just came across to me as a whole junkyard of rhythms thrown in just because they could. The catastrophe is the ‘and you can laugh a spineless laugh’ moment. Rather than being the buildup to the crux of the lyrics, ‘we hope your rules and wisdom choke you’, there’s a complete change of pulse, with a small child bashing on the drumkit in the background. My biggest problem is with the way this distances this passage from the rest of the song. Yes, of course, Radiohead’s version has the (I presume) analogue synth come in with those enourmous sustained bass notes, but these have a feel of crushing inevitability (especially when the song is put in its original context) rather than a change of gear.

44

OP, are you by any chance a Boomer? I have noticed that Boomers have a strong tendency to dismiss any music that is not from their generation. There is just as much good music today as there was any other decade; I would go so far as to say that there is better music now than before. Today’s music can be more sophisticated, more multi-layered, more textured, more lush; it has a lot of energy and enthusiasm. One criticism I will make of modern musicians is that I believe a lot of “talent” is created in production - when I hear a singer singing live and they have no pipes, I lose much respect for them. In the olden days, if you couldn’t sing, you didn’t become a singer. What came out of your mouth was what people heard.

When I want to get up and boogie, nobody does it better than Justin Timberlake. When I want an excruciatingly beautiful ballad, I listen to Christina Aguilera’s “Hurt.” The only music recently that really left me cold was the grunge movement of the 90’s and the Bitter Girl movement (you know, a young, pretty girl with a guitar singing about how terrible her life is). I’ll listen to just about anything else (even rap).

  • featherlou, 41 and still listening to and loving current Top 40.
45

Again, indie is where it’s at. While there are a lot of indie bands that exist solely due to production (Panda Bear, although not a bad thing in this case), the indie bands that become really popular do so because they have chops. Atleast, they sound good to a lot of people. Everyone in an indie band has jobs they have to work or else they would be homeless. They have lives. So they have to fight just to have studio time. In the studio, it’s probably not going to be much cheaper than 500 or 1,000 dollars a day. After that’s done, they go on a grueling tour where they move heavy shit, sit around a lot, play for 30 minutes at most, and drive hours and hours every night and day. Bands that can go through this and still exist are dedicated. Bands that become popular out of this process are talented. It’s rare that a band becomes popular due to their live set, but Bishop Allen, Health, and Black Lips are exceptions. In other cases, it’s either Shins or Arcade Fire. Arcade Fire/Clap Your Hands Say Yeah became popular off of one album, before they even really started touring. The Shins were a few albums in before they somehow broke through. It’s not until now, after they have sold umpteen albums, that they are even allowed to play with all the knobs in the studio.

46

I’m not moved by the “Exit Music” cover (pretty unfuckwithable track, IMO), but I totally have to add some more love for Vampire Weekend. Can’t wait for their full album.

Others have made my point–there is more good music out there than there has ever been before, and what’s popular right now has nothing to do with what is going to stand the test of time. It would be easy to see my high school years (1990-1994) as the golden era when Nirvana and Pearl Jam ruled the musical world, but the most popular act on the charts and the radio at the time was Ace of Base.

47

I know I’m talking a lot in this thread, but I used Vampire Weekend as an example of how much the paradigm has shifted. They don’t even have an album, yet with just a few songs they became the next Beloved Indie Band and got signed to a label. Blogs made a band popular before they even had a full album. That’s strange and beautiful.

48

I somewhat agree with what you’re saying, but I can’t fully agree that all eras are similar in terms of music quality.

Maybe “good musicians” are common enough that they are distributed evenly across decades, but “geniuses” are so rare that not all decades have them.

As a simple example, I would think that the decades that had a Mozart or a Beethoven in them had different caliber output than when no such genius was around. (Bob Dylan and John Lennon are two more recent examples)

In addition to the sparseness of geniuses, the socio/cultural/economic/technological environment of each decade has a big impact on the number and quality of musicians that arise and the type of music they produce.

For example, look at the types of musicians and songs the 60s produced vs the types of musicians and songs the 80s produced. I’m not saying one was better than the other, but very different musicians and songs emerged, because the 80s music scene was not as politicized/rebellious as the 60s music scene.

So, overall, even though statements such as “Like all music from all eras, 90% of it sucks… A similar percentage of today’s music will be just as durable” are roughly correct, they are not totally correct, because not all eras are created equal.

Some eras just get more lucky by having the right conditions and a higher incidence of music geniuses.

49

But, that’s just the problem. I don’t want to work hard to find good music.
I just want to turn the radio on and have some great music come on.

Was Stairway to Heaven or Hotel California played on mainstream radio in the 70s? Were the Beatles played on mainstream radio in the 60s and 70s?

Stuff from the 80s has not reached the legendary status of Led Zeppelin or the Beatles, but the radio still played some great music in the 80s (Eurythmics, Pet Shop Boys, Def Leppard, Scorpions, etc)

Is anything that good on mainstream media anymore?

I *could *sift through loads of stuff online and find some stuff I like but

  1. Thats a lot of work.

    That was the work of music agents and producers. They did the sifting and selecting, and filtering out of the less talented musicians. Of course, the problem is that their tastes influenced who got chosen, but, as a rule, things used to work out OK, and we got great music, without having to do a lot of work.

and

  1. This may sound weird, but even if I find the perfect song, by some tiny band in Belgium, if I’m the only one who knows about the song outside of the band, then I don’t enjoy it as much as when it is a shared experience.

“Hey Jude”, “Stairway to Heaven”, “Livin’ on a Prayer”, etc would not be as enjoyable if I was one of only few people on the planet who knew about them.

Maybe it’s crazy, but it’s great to have some collective musical experiences that define our culture and our time, and give us something we can share with more than an handful of people in our immediate environment.

50

I’m younger than you :slight_smile:

51

There are few subjects which are more subject to subjectivity than this subject. So I’m gonna go ahead and disagree with you. :wink:

52

That’s interesting. I’m about your age and have the exact opposite opinion about the comparitive quality of popular music in the 90’s and the last few years. I find it hard to believe any woman above voting age would still be interested in listening to Justin Timberlake. Aguilera, on the other hand, I can take or leave.

53

Actually, rap music was very unpopular in terms of music sales in 2006, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Rock, R & B and Alternative had the highest music sales, respectively. In fact, no rap albums, singles, or digital downloads appeared in any of the top 10 sales lists last year. Not even in the top 10 radio airplay or internet streams did a rap song make an appearance.

Unfortunately, Nickelback had the most radio airplay of any artist which just supports my opinion that most top 40 music is crap. But I’ll still agree with the others in this thread who feel that there is a lot of great music being made today. In fact, I think the best music has come from the 00s, but that may be because there’s so much out there to choose from (if you take the time to search for it).

54

I think you’d have a hard time arguing this. A thoroughly inreliable and subjective but visually useful set of timelines on Wikipedia shows how much of an even spread of significant or notable composers there has been. (Especially if, on the first one, you ignore the one-hit-wonders such as Bruch and Offenbach and filled in the unjustified gap in the sixteenth century. Told you it was subjective :smiley: ) There’s also a fluid plurality of styles and genres - especially when you look at how Beethoven was certainly a towering presence over the next generation in central and western Europe (Schumann, Berlioz, Wagner, Brahms), but at the same time there’s the Italian opera composers going about their business with little interest in all that Teutonic stuff.

55

:smack:

56

Hmm, the top 50 album Billboard list puts Mary J Blige at 7 and Eminem at 8. I wonder how their tracking methodology differs. In any case, though, it’s definitely not as dominating as I thought, so consider my ignorance fought. I remember shortly before leaving for China a few years ago that the charts usually seemed to be filled with hip hop (and country) artists. I guess the pendulum is starting to swing away.

By the way, I’m feeling extremely out of the loop, not having heard of about half of the artists on the Top X lists… I guess that’s what happens when all of the music I discover now is solely through the internet or through friends’ recs. Actually, I’m usually getting what I want to listen to, so I guess it’s good I’m out of the loop. I’ll take Nellie Mckay over Kelly Clarkson any day!

57

It depends what radio station you listen to. I listen to JJJ the best youth oriented station on earth and it keeps me in touch with plenty of good new stuff.

You can find what listeners voted the top 100 tracks for the year here to remind yourself of what was released. Most of the unfamiliar stuff will be Aussie acts who were better than the overseas bands.

There is plenty of stuff to stream or download from the site.

58

Well, my young friend, you can’t rely on the radio to give you good music these days (radio is just for when you can’t play your iPod or satellite radio), but finding good new music really isn’t that hard. Go to your local music store and listen to samples of new albums (I recently found Blonde Redhead, Addisfly, Aqueduct, and Wolf and Cub that way - I’m about due for another trip down there), and go check out the recommendations from Dopers. A lot of the stuff young Dopers recommend is unlistenable crap, but then the tenth one will be just lovely. You have to go into it with an open mind.

What’s not to like about Justin Timberlake? I don’t listen to him for deep, moving important songs - I listen to him for fun songs with a great beat.

ETA: I just went and listened to Nellie McKay, Windwalker - she’s a lot of fun.

59

Hey! Actually, maybe, but I promise you I can find you amazing music if you want to take it elsewhere.

Also, not all radio is crap. College radio baby! Every major city with a semimajor university probably has a college radio station. Tell me where you live and I’ll find you one.

(For instance, here is the CMJ Top 200: CMJ - The Music Marathon 2021 The most played in the country is Band of Horses.)

60

Ain’t she lovely? She’s kind of what I wanted Norah Jones to be, and indeed, she even titled her first album (Get Away From Me) as a way to distinguish herself from Norah.