Yeah, that’s weird. Jagger was much more than the Stones’ lead vocalist. People went to Stones concerts to see the way he danced and strutted on stage. He was a showman in that regard. There was even a recent hit song called Moves Like Jagger.
Shaz Natch, My Bizzle Biotch!
Not quite. Many Boomers do feel that way about the Beatles, but Elvis’ fans are slightly older - not necessarily the parents of the Boomers, but perhaps their significantly older siblings.
Yeah, but those songs were totally underground. You would never hear them on the radio and were hard to get hold of on record. Today the explicit songs are just part of the everyday background. You might as well say that because pornography existed in the 1930s, nothing about it has changed today.
I’m not really sure why you’re posting a ‘yeah, but’ when you don’t appear to disagree with anything I said. I stated clearly in what you quoted that they are more common now, saying ‘yeah, but they were a lot harder to get ahold of then’ just confirms that. The dirty versions of songs may not have been on major-label records, but they were certainly recorded and passed around, and played in some performances. If someone stated that pornography only existed now and didn’t exist in the 1930s, I would point to documented evidence of pornography going back to the 1930s (and earlier) to show them wrong.
I think it’s more than just how common they were—it’s who heard or even knew about them at all, and where.
DId the “average person” know about them?
Yeah, underground vs. above ground.
Another thing that just struck me, was that modern music is so much more fragmented than in the past, with so many more options available. Yeah, I’m a dinosaur, but back in the 60s-70s in Chicago, it was top 40s on WLS and WCFL. As the 70s progressed, some FM options appeared. But even FM stations playing “deep cuts” offered nothing near the variety - and ease of access - as Youtube. In the past, for an artist to be widely heard, they generally had to have a record company behind them - or at least word of mouth resulting from touring and write-ups.
So someone I never heard of before is all over the media one day. Possibly on the basis of a single song. Will they still be making music tomorrow? That sort of ephemeral nature might contribute to consumers viewing some modern music as “less substantial.”
No, it’s just as good and as skilled as it’s ever been. Old people have bitched about new music for generations, and they always will.
Bob Dylan couldn’t sing for shit, The Ramones had far less talent than one thousand university bands active right now, and the drummer for the greatest band that ever existed was, let’s be honest, not all that great. KISS has twenty gold albums or whatever it’s up to, and they are entirely a marketing and merchandising operation (and are totally unapologetic about it.)
I don’t care about “lewd”. Lewd is fine. A lot of modern music is masculine posturing with a lot of threat, swagger, misogyny, etc, but so was a shitload of the stuff we listened to when I was 19, so I can’t point fingers.
TALENTLESS on the other hand…
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Who would know? Most of it, as I understand, now consists of loop tracks recorded once and then computer-replicated; my ears tell me I’m hearing the same sound and not multiple different renditions of the same phrases or refrains. There’s some process called “compression” that eliminates the quiet parts, jacking up the volume so it’s blandly uniform, albeit loudly so. And it’s autotuned to death, more about that in a moment. And, worst of all, it strikes me as passionless, uninspired, kind of whiny music that I just don’t much care for.
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So, autotune… I’m willing to deep-six the easy attack that says modern singers use autotune because they can’t hit the freaking pitch without electronic help. I’ll instead stipulate that autotune is in heavy use because the autotuned sound, itself, is trendy, and that today’s singers could indeed hit their notes on their own power, they use autotune to get that current-era sound. OK. Well, good god y’all, that sound sounds tinny and nasal and mechanical and whiny and generally awful. Maybe today’s singers have great voices but who can tell?
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I could make a similar concession about the loops and the processing; I guess today’s artists do perform live, on television or at concerts etc? And so they must be capable of simply picking up their instruments and standing in front of a live microphone and delivering music to the audience. But the music trend is towards that heavily processed packaged computer-generated perfectly-sculpted 0:767.1 seconds per looped measure (or whatever) repetitious stuff, that’s what gets the radio play, and it all freaking sounds the same, and it’s not a good same. That they can do an approximation of that when performing live doesn’t make it any better music.
None of this pretends to be objective. You’d be justified in saying the reason this particular “certain people” individual doesn’t like modern day music is that I’m a 60 year old fogey and 60 year old fogeys are notoriously inclined to go around saying “back in my day we had better music”.
Part of the problem here is semantics. What is “talent”?
When rock and roll came to be, lots of people said it didn’t require talent. I think that oversimplifies it.
The number of voices that could ever be trained to sing opera professionally is smaller than the number who could ever sing rock and country music professionally. Jazz is generally more complicated than most rock. And the aggregate amount of work it took for, say, a big band to develop a passable sound was more than it took 4-5 players with electric instruments to get there – whereas you generally took lessons to learn to play brass, woodwind, or string instruments, rock and country were more widely accessible.
A big change that took hold in the 1960s (although it started earlier) was bands writing their own material. Hired musicians who could read notation gave way to performers expressing themselves more personally. Some would claim the former have more “talent” but I think it’s more that the public wanted a different *type *of talent. (This trend was aided by the fact that record companies could sign unknown performers and own their song rights for less than professional songwriters would want, and it was cheaper to hire a four-piece band than a big band).
A member of Glenn Miller’s band couldn’t replace Buddy Holly. And vice versa. But both were talented.
I can’t comment knowledgeably on music of the last 30 years or so, being too freaking old.
Well, I mean, anyone who goes to a concert, or heck, just watches one of those singing shows.
Acknowledged @ the third asterisk.
To each their own, I guess. While I agree her SNL performance wasn’t particularly great (I imagine it’s difficult to pull off a strong vocal performance in a vertically rotating set with what appeared to be two sprained ankles). , Billie Eilish is who I initially thought of as the antithesis to “talentless modern day music”.
I grew up on the music of the 1960s, and there’s plenty of rock and pop from the current decade that I enjoy.
The 1960s, by the way, had a metric ton of Top-40 dreck, in addition to having the artists and bands we still remember today. If you listened to top-40 radio back then, most of what you heard was dreck. Same is almost certainly true of the stations that 15 year olds listen to nowadays.
A strong vocal performance wasn’t required with all of that prerecorded audio. Still, it wasn’t terrible.
You have to get down to the bar circuit to hear real live music nowadays. Professional ‘live’ music has real time pitch correction,prerecorded vocal and instrumental tracks, and God knows what other forms of sweetening.
Or small performance venues for the “acousticky” stuff I prefer. There is an amazing amount of talent out there. And - as an extremely mediocre musician - I’m regularly humbled by how hard they work for such little money. The contrast often confounds me, when I see someone who appears to be making big coin, with what impresses me as less obvious skills - other than PR.
It is cool when I see someone like St. Vincent - who writes her own material and has the chops to back up her impressive on-stage persona. Maybe I just am not engaged enough to make the effort to discern the “talent” of many popular acts.
I suspect for many of them, their greatest talent is in massaging the electronics - no mean feat, but not one that really draws me, and in presenting an image that sells.
I aspire to having an open mind. Can a fan of Billie Ellish direct me to something that will display her ability?
Listened to/watched a few vids. Not my preferred style, but I admit some of the tunes are catchy, and some of the lyrics clever. Doubt I’d ever intentionally listen to any, but I imagine you could dance to them. Personally not impressed by the whispery vocals. She obviously wants to portray an image that doesn’t resonate with this 58 yr old man. From what little I read about her and what I’ve seen, it seems several aspects of her “image” relate to several current issues/discussions.
Exactly. For those who aren’t familiar with how nearly all major hits are created today, here are two articles that explain it: Karl Martin Sandberg, Mikkel Eriksen, Tor Hermansen and Other Songwriters Behind the Hits of Katy Perry and Taylor Swift - The Atlantic
Every song you love was written by the same two guys
Back in the 50’s and 60’s there were a large number of small producers scattered around the country that had relationships with radio stations and music halls in their local area. If they had a talented star, they could arrange to get the star’s music on the radio and get some live performances scheduled and if the public liked it then nationwide fame would gradually arrive. The most famous example would be Sun Records, where Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Roy Orbison all got started. That type of system just doesn’t exist any more. Every song that makes the top 10 now is a corporate product manufactured by formula.
Utter nonsense.
Bob Dylan was praised for his singing when he first came along, mostly because he could find the emotional heart of the song and make the most of it. His voice was rough and he had limited range, but he always made the most of it. Trashing Bob Dylan’s singing is the type of cheap snark that shows you haven’t listened to him.
The Ramones were revolutionary. Sure their music was simple, but no one did it better. If those “thousands of university bands” were better, why don’t they revolutionize music themselves? Why are they playing Ramones songs, if the Ramones had no talent?
If you’re referring to Ringo Starr in the third sentence, you’re woefully mistaken. Ringo was an excellent drummer – he just wasn’t a flashy one. He was deliberately in the background, doing what was best for the song.
Marketing and merchandising only goes so far. If you can’t back it up, you vanish like New Coke and the Edsel.
There were certainly popular artists in the 60s who weren’t all that great (bubble gum music, for instance). And there are certainly musicians today who are just as good (Lada Gaga has impressed me a lot). But, really, those examples show a lack of knowledge about music.