The OP uses literal yacht rock as an example of “great music”, thereby handily invalidating it themselves and sparing me the trouble.
Great music continues to be made to this day, in any genre you care to name and a lot you’ve never even heard of. But if frigging Neil Young tribute band America is among your ne plus ultra, I already don’t expect you to recognize that.
Also, apparently no women make Real Music.
I agree to the larger point that the limited number of go-to pop producers and autotune etc. are a problem. But this one titbit, I can’t be having with. Drum machines are awesome. Just look at the Cocteau Twins or Sisters of Mercy. The problem is between drum keypad and studio chair.
I don’t have time to find the link to it but pop has been shown to have dumbed down and become formulaic over recent years - as can be shown objectively by counting repetition and variation in chord changes, lyrics etc.
That may represent a large proportion of music being played and sold, but it is only a small proportion of the music being produced - of which there is I suspect far more than ever. I listen to a variety of musicians mostly on youtube which I simply never would have had the opportunity to hear pre-internet.
“Pop” is “dumbed down and…formulaic” almost by definition. Every few years some musician or band comes along with a new innovation in sound (or more often, a new take on an old ‘sound’), and the labels overexpose it and search for other ‘talents’ (many who are technically good in their own right, if not as innovative) to promote, and then what was novel becomes an overplayed and tired genre, e.g. “yacht rock” or “adult contemporary” which is better know for the overpromoted mediocrity than the original novelty. This is true in every genre and every era of music.
Jack White blew off the doors with The White Stripes by taking old blues standards and the ‘Seventies era hard rock that it inspired, stripped it down to its essence, and played it with a grunge/basement band sensibility. And then so many imitators backed by big labels came along trying to do the same thing but by adding more noise on top of it, which is like trying to play bebop in an orchestra. Really good, innovative music just isn’t something you can synthesize in a corporate office or make out of mediocrity by following a formula, any more than great literature comes out of following a genre format. But you can make a lot of money pushing a less creative but more promotable artist or group with airplay and exposure, and the major labels are in the business of making money, not music.
I’ll bet this has been said about every generation of music. The Ramones are perhaps the most important band to come out of the 70’s, had a massive influence on music, and yet they are the epitomy of dumbed-down, formulaic music. That doesn’t prevent them from being a great band that produced amazing music. One generation’s “dumbed down” is the next generation’s “new and exciting”.
It could be that today’s Top 40 or Top 100 charts can be distilled down from a mechanical standpoint to a narrower selection than in the past. But we also live in an era where it’s never been easier to find new music or had more music at your fingertips above and beyond what’s on the Billboard charts. The days of being constrained by what’s on the radio or being fortunate enough to live in a place with a good record store or knowing someone who can get you that obscure import album are long over. So if you care enough to complain but don’t care enough to take advantage of what’s available, you have no one to blame but yourself.
The Dope often seems (to me) really myopic in its assessment of what is good music or not. I don’t know if it is an age thing. I love classic rock, which was made before I was born, but I also absolutely adore 80s music and 90s alternative which hardly ever gets a mention here. I think the mention of Pearl Jam is the first 90s reference I’ve seen in CS that I didn’t make myself. I remember when we were in college (early aughts) it seemed like every rock song on the radio sucked (I call this the Nickelback era), but after a while it evened back out to “take it or leave it.” There’s a lot of modern music that I haven’t heard, so how can I generalize?
As I said, the study to which I was referring was not a matter of someone offering a half-assed subjective opinion. It was based on data. Remarkably I’ve found the study is actually on line in full, on Nature, no less:
I don’t disagree with the facts but the opinion on whether this is good or bad is purely subjective. As I mentioned you can hardly find a more dumbed-down band than The Ramones but they are great (IMO) music.
There was an SDMB thread a while back that discussed the “Rock Era.” Apparently the Rock Era ended in the early 1990s according to people who study that sort of stuff. I found that interesting.
Don’t forget about Baroness… those guys are the real deal (albeit a tad different than what I grew up listening to), and that’s coming from an old 80’s metalhead.
Saying that data shows a homogenization in some aspects is objective. Saying that music is “dumbed down” is subjective. You could just as easily say that it is more refined or more skillfully crafted towards popular response.
Also, the chart seems (to my untrained eye) to show a gradual but even shift since 1955. So music from 1975 is as homogenized in relation to music from 1955 as music from 1995 is from 1975. Setting the 70s as a defining line based on this study feels misguided. Real music died in 1955!
Must have missed many threads - for instance, there were quite a few Taylor Swift-related ones, and the “current earworm” thread often has new music in it (I know I post current stuff in there)
But generally, I find discussing new music here is a bit of an uphill battle because of all the Boomer/Older GenXer dinosaur rock fans here. Nothing gets any response. It gets fucking tedious way too quickly.
I mean, I can make a post like this, where 70% of the artists listed are extremely current, and … nobody cares.
Yeah, what the hell happened to all that great 1970s music, like “Disco Duck”, the Captain And Tennille, Stars On 45, and the Starland Vocal Band totally rocking out with “Afternoon Delight”? From “You Light Up My Life” to Bo Donaldson And The Haywoods reminding Billy to not be a hero, the 1970s were truly the pinnacle of musical achievement. Or maybe it was just a decade full of the normal percentage of junk and genius, like every other decade.
Hell, rock critics now (they didn’t at the time) hail the Sex Pistols’ “Never Mind The Bollocks” as a great album, and it’s trash. The argument is basically that it’s important trash.