# Pop music too loud and all sounds the same: official **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 26, 2012, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-music-too-loud-and-all-sounds-the-same-official/629462 "2012-07-26T16:36:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![amanset](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8dc957/32.png) [@amanset](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amanset)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-music-too-loud-and-all-sounds-the-same-official/629462/21 "2012-07-27T12:08:55Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > And no band will ever be louder than My Bloody Valentine. Especially as many venues now restrict how loud music can be to avoid lawsuits regarding hearing damage. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-music-too-loud-and-all-sounds-the-same-official/629462/22 "2012-07-27T12:23:53Z")
> [@Diceman](#): > > This confirms what I’ve suspected for years. The RIAA thinks that music sales are diminishing because people are pirating music, but the truth is, modern pop music is mostly bland formulaic crap. Heard the latest? Indie musicians are quietly [getting behind](http://thetrichordist.wordpress.com) what’s left of the record industry because Google, who wants stuff to be all, like, free and stuff, is now the Big Media to fear. Hey, you can’t spell _artists_ without R I A A ! Or _aartists_, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Mama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b5ac83/32.png) [@Atomic\_Mama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Mama)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-music-too-loud-and-all-sounds-the-same-official/629462/23 "2012-07-27T12:33:48Z")
No S\*\*T !!! I’m a 62-y-o geezer and concur with the experts :rolleyes:🆒😃 ---
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Mama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b5ac83/32.png) [@Atomic\_Mama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Mama)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-music-too-loud-and-all-sounds-the-same-official/629462/24 "2012-07-27T12:36:25Z")
> [@Atomic\_Mama](#): > > No S\*\*T !!! > > I’m a 62-y-o geezer and concur with the experts :rolleyes:🆒😃 Yrs truly is also a hardcore blues fan(atic) and, yes, it’s all supposed to be 12 bars, AAB rhyme, & sad … and it ain’t! That last remark is probably irelevant, but I just had to post it …:smack: ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-music-too-loud-and-all-sounds-the-same-official/629462/25 "2012-07-27T14:34:01Z")
It is possible for a Mama to be a geezer now, is it? Never mind modern pop, it’s modern medicine that scares me. ---
**Author:** ![Tanbarkie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a698b9/32.png) [@Tanbarkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tanbarkie)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-music-too-loud-and-all-sounds-the-same-official/629462/26 "2012-07-27T14:44:42Z")
This is the old people-iest thread on the internet. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Ashley\_Pomeroy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c68b51/32.png) [@Ashley\_Pomeroy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ashley_Pomeroy)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-music-too-loud-and-all-sounds-the-same-official/629462/27 "2012-07-27T16:19:17Z")
> [@Rachellelogram](#): > > But could they \*dance \*to it?? Seriously though, there’s a lot more dancing today than there was 50 years ago. Probably in absolute terms - there are more people, there’s more music - but I’m not sure that it’s spiritually correct. e.g. [this photograph from 1953](http://imgur.com/9PTv6), which has some young people clearly getting their freak on. Now, that photograph wasn’t all of 1953. (waves hands) But, yes, I’d say that most early rock’n’roll _was_ dance music, designed to make people wiggle their uptight 50s asses off; the sitty-down-thinky stuff didn’t emerge until _rock_, and _prog rock_. Prog rockers did not dance unless they were into Hawkwind, who weren’t prog, they were space-rock. My perspective on this is coloured by the fact I grew up with _acid house_. I was 13 in 1989. [This](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_bL0hFyslg) was what my generation danced to. And [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyMZDBdoe8g). A few years later there was a dad-rock counter-revolution that elevated Paul Weller and Oasis to godhood. A reactionary tendency which produced a huge amount of landfill Britpop and Indie that no-one remembers today. The mistake that commentators are making is to assume that that a decline in the diversity of transitions between note combinations is _a bad thing_. It’s just _a thing_. I mean, Mike Oldfield’s _Incantations_ had transitions between note combinations up the wazoo; Yes’ _Tales from Topographic Oceans_ had so many transitions between note combinations that they actually ran out of notes and started using new ones. And they were both awful monuments to misguided cleverness. In contrast, Talking Heads’ _Remain in Light_ had almost no transitions between note combinations, and it was awesome. And clever. Yeah, there’s the jazz thing, the “short history of modern african-american music” that pops up every now and again; jazz and hip-hop are two different things, with different goals, from different eras. ---
**Author:** ![Speak\_to\_me\_Maddie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Speak\_to\_me\_Maddie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Speak_to_me_Maddie)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-music-too-loud-and-all-sounds-the-same-official/629462/28 "2012-07-27T16:28:08Z")
There has always been dancing. It is a basic human activity. Every culture, every musical style, throughout all of human history. People have been dancing their asses off for millennia before pop music was ever dreamed of, much less modern techno. ---
**Author:** ![Hero\_From\_Sector\_7G](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/65b543/32.png) [@Hero\_From\_Sector\_7G](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hero_From_Sector_7G)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2012, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-music-too-loud-and-all-sounds-the-same-official/629462/29 "2012-07-27T21:17:53Z")
Pop music is such a nebulous term to use that it is nearly meaningless. I assume the study used something like the [Billboard top 100](http://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100#/charts/hot-100) by year and analyzed that. It is no surprise then that there has been a lot of homogenization; the people who actually pay for music has become a [smaller and smaller set.](http://www.stereophile.com/news/11671/index.html) It should come as no surprise that pop music caters to the people who buy it. “The results indicate that teens and college-aged consumers have the highest per-capita sales rate.” " the NPD study asserts that the biggest decline in music sales in 2002 occurred in the 36-and-older age brackets" In other words, you old people stopped buying music, and now you’re complaining about how _radio_ pop music caters to kids. However, the sheer volume of new music being made is overwhelming and diverse. This is this week’s top 10 album list from a private torrent tracker: 1. Wild Nothing - Nocturne 2. TNGHT - TNGHT 3. Rick Ross - God Forgives, I Don’t 4. Flying Lotus - Between Friends 5. Crystal Castles - Plague 6. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy - Now Here’s My Plan 7. Sebadoh - Secret EP 8. Shed - The Killer 9. Boddika & Joy Orbison - Faint / Nil (Reece) / Moist 10. OM - Advaitic Songs That list is diverse as shit, and that is a good sampling of what all people are actually listening to this week. Youtube a few of those and tell me it all sounds the same. ---
**Author:** ![Yookeroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yookeroo/32/323_2.png) [@Yookeroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yookeroo)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2012, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-music-too-loud-and-all-sounds-the-same-official/629462/30 "2012-07-28T01:04:35Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > [Ha! I knew it!](http://entertainment.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/07/26/12973700-researchers-find-pop-music-is-too-loud-and-all-sounds-the-same?lite) > > Modern music all sounds the same. It just keeps getting louder and blander. We knew that, but now we have proof. > > Suck it, Millennials and Gen X. 😛 They found that modern **pop** music sounded the same. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find much diversity. > [@Ashley\_Pomeroy](#): > > My perspective on this is coloured by the fact I grew up with _acid house_. I was 13 in 1989. [This](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_bL0hFyslg) was what my generation danced to. And [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyMZDBdoe8g). Whatever happened to Altern8? They were great. ---
**Author:** ![CBEscapee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b19c9b/32.png) [@CBEscapee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CBEscapee)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2012, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-music-too-loud-and-all-sounds-the-same-official/629462/31 "2012-07-28T13:29:21Z")
> [@Hero\_From\_Sector\_7G](#): > > However, the sheer volume of new music being made is overwhelming and diverse. This is this week’s top 10 album list from a private torrent tracker: > > 1. Wild Nothing - Nocturne > 2. TNGHT - TNGHT > 3. Rick Ross - God Forgives, I Don’t > 4. Flying Lotus - Between Friends > 5. Crystal Castles - Plague > 6. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy - Now Here’s My Plan > 7. Sebadoh - Secret EP > 8. Shed - The Killer > 9. Boddika & Joy Orbison - Faint / Nil (Reece) / Moist > 10. OM - Advaitic Songs > > That list is diverse as shit, and that is a good sampling of what all people are actually listening to this week. Youtube a few of those and tell me it all sounds the same. I picked one at random from the list, number 4, and to be honest it sounded like a million other songs I’ve heard on the radio these days. So I picked another and surprise! Same result. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2012, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-music-too-loud-and-all-sounds-the-same-official/629462/32 "2012-07-28T16:28:24Z")
The increased frequency of mass shootings correlates with the degeneration of modern pop music. Or maybe it’s the vaccines. ---
**Author:** ![Hero\_From\_Sector\_7G](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/65b543/32.png) [@Hero\_From\_Sector\_7G](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hero_From_Sector_7G)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2012, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-music-too-loud-and-all-sounds-the-same-official/629462/33 "2012-07-28T20:29:02Z")
> [@CBEscapee](#): > > I picked one at random from the list, number 4, and to be honest it sounded like a million other songs I’ve heard on the radio these days. > > So I picked another and surprise! Same result. K, I’ll get off ur lawn. ---
**Author:** ![newcomer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/e5b9ba/32.png) [@newcomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/newcomer)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2012, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-music-too-loud-and-all-sounds-the-same-official/629462/34 "2012-07-28T21:47:34Z")
Ha! I read an article recently on the subject: [The Song Machine | The New Yorker](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/03/26/120326fa_fact_seabrook) The story explains why Kelly Clarkson - Already Gone and Beyonce - Halo are the same song. And it seems it’s going to get even worse. ---
**Author:** ![Simple\_Linctus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Simple\_Linctus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Simple_Linctus)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2012, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-music-too-loud-and-all-sounds-the-same-official/629462/35 "2012-07-28T22:44:30Z")
Does this mean that convergent evolution is going on in pop? We may then end up with “the best” ever tune and random oscillation around it. I wonder whether that would be a local maxima or a global one. I suspect the former in which case maybe what musicians have to do is get seeding with completely different sound forms that are nothing like current music… ---
**Author:** ![Jaledin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Jaledin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaledin)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2012, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-music-too-loud-and-all-sounds-the-same-official/629462/36 "2012-07-28T23:11:22Z")
I call horseshit and shenanigans on all this subdivision. Pop music has _always_ at least since the days of the Big Bands and before then to “Light Classical” tended to sound similar. The only difference in the past twenty years are aggressive techniques used by mixing and mastering engineers to compress everything to shit. I can’t really give an easy explanation of compression – all radio stations use their own compressors. It makes the soft sound as loud as the loud sounds soft. Even though Johnny Winter on _Second Winter_ said his goal was to make the music as loud as possible (which is good for vinyl – otherwise you get noise and you have to make the softest parts of your composition overcome the signal/inherent noise ratio inherent to the medium), and IIRC “We couldn’t give you more, and we didn’t want to give you less, so you just bought a double-LP set!”) It’s no secret, now that I’m thinking a bit more, that Tin Pan Alley/Great American Songbook cats tended to use the same chord progressions as well. It’s also why jazz musicians don’t really use a Real Book unless they’re just starting out – cause you can kind of feel your way through most of those tunes from the 1920s-1960s (I’m including people like Anthony Newley as a Tin-Pan cat) without a hitch. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pop-music-too-loud-and-all-sounds-the-same-official/629462.md?page=1)