I think a lot of the “music was better in my day” attitude doesn’t have anything to do with music at all. It’s about missing your youth, when you were full of energy, hanging with your friends, getting crushes, etc. Well those years had a soundtrack and when you look back, you’ll hear it again. Modern music can’t do that for you.
It’s like when people complain that their city used to be gritty and real, and now it’s bland and gentrified.You don’t miss public transit as a dangerous adventure. You miss your youth.
I have no idea who will be well regarded in 50 years. I guess I don’t really care either since that doesn’t impact what I enjoy today.
I suspect whoever is considered influential from the 2000s will be in other genres adjacent to rock/pop. K-Pop or EDM or some form of hip-hop, etc. The named groups (Beatles, Stones, Pink Floyd, etc) had the advantage of getting into rock when it was young and there was still a lot of fertile ground to be sown for the first time. They also had the advantage of a much, much smaller pool without 60,000 songs a day being added. So maybe some of today’s artists, if flung back in time, would be equally influential given those circumstances. Which is why I assume that the pioneers of 2001-2010 will be from other genres that haven’t been gone over for decades.
This isn’t to discredit the talent of early rock musicians but expecting someone to replicate it now is, like I said before, insisting that a modern explorer replicate the feats of Marco Polo or Magellan or Columbus to be considered worthwhile.
I think you are conflating musical quality with musical preference. They are both subjective, but are different things. One can recognize that a particular piece of music is well made (quality) but find it distasteful (preference). Or conversely, poorly made music can be appreciated.
Increased variety of music improves the chances of finding something that satisfies one’s preferences. But doesn’t lead to any conclusions about the quality.
So, do musicians improve over time or did they come out of the gate doing the best music possible for that new(ish) genre and everything else is a footnote?
The first quote is saying that you can only be groundbreaking once and there’s only so much ground to break. Demanding a new Beatles in rock music is foolish. If you truly want new and groundbreaking, turn to a new genre.
The second quote is saying that trying to turn “Science says…” into “Music shallow” or “Music dumb” or whatever is relying on someone liking older music more. If someone likes today’s music and hates that old stuff, they could take the opposite tack and be just as valid. I personally enjoy at least some rock/pop from most decades and don’t think it has progressively gotten better or worse.
Go back and read. Or don’t. I said “Hell, if you LIKE Top 100 music today, you could make a strong case that SCIENCE! shows that music today is far superior to music in the 70s…”
I didn’t say that this was my argument. I was saying that trying to use “But Science!” was stupid no matter which way you flipped it.
Of course there isn’t. Why would there be? You can objectively say that music is popular or made a lot of money and I suppose you could make an argument for music being influential. Good or bad is up to the individual listener though.
But none of the stuff being cited as “evidence” is purporting to say music is objectively good or bad either; that’s mainly the work of the clickbait title writers. And the conclusions you’re reaching from it seem especially misguided when you lament how few dishes are at your buffet in an era where a new song is being uploaded to streaming services nearly every second.
No, that’s just cacophony, but whether you like a three-chord Ramones song or Beethoven’s Ninth doesn’t say anything about the inner quality of the music.
But is it objectively as good to you? It has as much musical value as Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1. You have no way of expressing which is better objectively. You can only tell us your personal preference.
Correct. I have no objective metric for determining which one someone is more “correct” to enjoy. If asked which one someone should play at their dinner party, I would recommend the Concerto based on my knowledge of social situations but I’d do the same over Atom Heart Mother.
So schools that teach music theory are all bunk? Studying what humans like (such as melodies) is not objective because there may be one person who likes discordant sounds?
