4 ms·

Cry me a f*cking river. Their definition of "new music" is to blame. Most of this "new music" is cookie-cutter junk that is artificial, derivative, simplistic,

by teilo 5y ago

Cry me a f*cking river. Their definition of "new music" is to blame. Most of this "new music" is cookie-cutter junk that is artificial, derivative, simplistic, on-the-grid, auto-tuned, four-chord (or less) drivel. The labels intentionally manipulate the "top 200 tracks" so that this is nearly the only thing that makes it to the charts. The young audience has had enough of it. They have streaming. They don't listen to the "top 200" anymore. Their tastes have broadened not only into new music which is not being tracked by the "top 200" but they are mining the music of older eras which is, by almost any measure, superior. It's not auto-tuned. It has a dynamic tempo because it's not beat-matched in a DAW. It often has complex chord progressions and key changes. This is also true of a lot of the "new music" the charts don't track. And this is why the Grammys are also irrelevant. No one cares. We don't listen to that crap.

Apocryphon 5y ago
The Grammys didn't even recognize After Hours smdh
nfw2 5y ago
I love classic rock, but it's hard to argue that it is musically more complex than modern pop. Also if musical complexity was the same as merit then we would all just be listening to jazz and classical
- teilo 5y ago
  Complexity is but one component. I enjoy a lot of music that uses simple chord progressions. But when you have simplistic music, with artificial vocals, and every human elements digitally normalized out, with uninspiring melodies, it's just empty and tedious. I feel like I'm being spoon-fed by mommy and daddy.
  - nfw2 5y ago
    For what it's worth, I think the current wave of modern pop is much more interesting-sounding than 80's hair metal or the pop from the earlier 2000's that was autotuned ad nauseum. For example, look at the current top of the Billboard Hot 100. 1.) Easy On Me - Adele. Adele's music is always far from empty. She is a true artist. 2.) Stay - Kid Laroi. This may not be your type of music and there are certainly a lot vocal effect here, but there's a lot going on here rhythmically and melodically. The chord structure is also pretty unusual. 3.) We Don't Talk About Bruno - Lin-Manuel Miranda. LMM is a genius, but it's a Disney song, so let's skip this one. 4.) Glass Animals - A rare indie hit to make it to make it to the top, this one is arguable the "simplest" song on this list. It still feels like it has character and that the artist has put their stamp on it. 5.) Shivers - Ed Sheeran. If Sheeran's music feels tedious now, it might just be because his music has been at the top of the charts virtually non-stop for more than a decade. Still it's hard to deny his talent or argue that his songs are simple musical drivel. It's fair to say that MOST of what is produced is derivative drivel, but I would say that's probably true of pretty much any era. There were tedious grunge artists, tedious metal artists, tedius disco artists, tedious arena rock artists, etc.
    - nmfisher 5y ago
      I had never actively checked out the Billboard Hot 100 until you mentioned it just now. I had to laugh at how blissfully unaware I had been at the amount of country music that comes out of the USA! Going through those 100 songs, pop music doesn't seem to be noticeably worse than 20 years ago - except when it comes to the sheer volume of mumble rap. It stands out to me as uncharacteristically bad/monotonous/derivative/etc (and I say this as someone who was a big hip-hop fan all through the 80s/90s/2000s). I don't think it's just a matter of taste, either, because I definitely don't like most of the chart (Adele/country/indie/etc), but I would never say it's lacking in musicality. Mumble rap is just irredeemably bad.
    - cousin_it 5y ago
      Compared to a good 80s track like Jump https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwYN7mTi6HM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwYN7mTi6HM all songs you listed sound limp, fake and barely even alive. Maybe it's a matter of taste, but come on, tell me I'm wrong.
      - UncleMeat 5y ago
        You are wrong. Heck, even Jump was criticized to hell and back for being synth garbage instead of the shred metal that Van Halen was known for prior to that song. There has never been a time in history when more great music was being created and made accessible to the masses than today. And I say that as a crotchety jazz nerd.
        digisign 5y ago
        VH was never metal, they started before it with hard-blues reminiscent of Led Zeppelin with a party posture, then added piano chords and pop sensibility via synth. They were only in the neighborhood due to EVH imitators.
        Apocryphon 5y ago
        There's nothing bluesy about "Right Now."
computershit 5y ago
A-freaking-men. I listen to old music because it bangs and it’s real. I feel like this article posits a perceived problem and then makes no attempt to read between the lines to understand why no one is listening to a garbage product.
bambax 5y ago
I tend to agree, but this is exactly addressed in the article: > Some people—especially baby boomers—tell me that this decline in music is simply the result of lousy new songs. Music used to be better, or so they say. The old songs had better melodies, more interesting harmonies, and demonstrated genuine musicianship, not just software loops, Auto-Tuned vocals, and regurgitated samples. In fact the second part of the article (after that paragraph) is much more interesting than the first. It argues that the music industry tries very hard to bury and hide genuinely new music (and ways of making it), by fear of cannibalizing the old (?), and that it is killing itself in the process.
- pmontra 5y ago
  I think that every 50 yo in at least the last 100 years thought that the music liked by the 20 yo is s..t and so will be for the now 20 yo 30 years from now. There is no particular reason for that except that the 20 yo artists have to try something new and they are the models of the 10 / 15 yo. What's interesting is that the new models don't seem so hugely more interesting than the best of the old ones. Maybe young people got wiser, maybe the music industry got enough material to play safe, minimize costs and keep advertising and selling the old tunes.
- brazzy 5y ago
  > It argues that the music industry tries very hard to bury and hide genuinely new music (and ways of making it), by fear of cannibalizing the old (?), and that it is killing itself in the process. I read it a bit more nuanced: that the industry is failing to discover and promote new music because it's too preoccupied with making "safe bets" to profit from old music, and part of that is using lawsuits to defend it against plagiarism, which has the side effect of actively stifling new music.
lifeformed 5y ago
There is always lots of good new music in any generation if you look underground. If your tastes are open to the experimental and unconventional, you'll find an endless supply of great new sounds. But most people's tastes are strongly shaped by the older music they grew up with, so naturally they'll use that as their reference point for "good" music.
basisword 5y ago
You lost me when you complained about the number of chords. What a ridiculous argument. I guess Van Morrison, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan etc better go back to the drawing board.
- furiens 5y ago
  I don’t think it’s a ridiculous point, especially taken with the other elements mentioned. There wouldn’t be that much to the artists you mentioned if their lyrics were also banal, and they were deemed artificial or derivative. It’s a good idea to rely on a constraint of simplicity in some aspects, it’s just a problem when applied to everything at once.
- 988747 5y ago
  Bob Dylan was a poet, not musician. He wrote great lyrics, but did not have a shred of musical talent to make them into proper songs. That's why all his songs only became hits after someone else covered them. For reference check this: https://youtu.be/jzgLavD4vD4 https://youtu.be/jzgLavD4vD4 vs this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFDOSIecALU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFDOSIecALU
  - eesmith 5y ago
    People at the time disagreed with your assessment. > September 29, 1961 / 20-Year-Old Singer Is Bright New Face at Gerde’s Club / By ROBERT SHELTON / https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/04/reviews/dylan-gerde.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/04/r... > Resembling a cross between a choir boy and a beatnik, Mr. Dylan has a cherubic look and a mop of tousled hair he partly covers with a Huck Finn black corduroy cap. His clothes may need a bit of tailoring, but when he works his guitar, harmonica or piano and composes new songs faster than he can remember them, there is no doubt that he is bursting at the seams with talent. To be absolutely clear, more people preferred Dylan's songs as a cover because, from that same 1961 review, "Mr. Dylan’s voice is anything but pretty. He is consciously trying to recapture the rude beauty of a Southern field hand musing in melody on his porch. All the “husk and bark” are left on his notes and a searing intensity pervades his songs." Or from his Wikipedia entry: 'Many early songs reached the public through more palatable versions by other performers, such as Joan Baez' That you don't recognize it as talent seems therefore more a matter of personal taste. That same review ends with "But if not for every taste, his music-making has the mark of originality and inspiration, all the more noteworthy for his youth." Your reference is to a 2016 recording of 'All Along the Watchtower'?? Surely you should juxtapose Dylan's performance with that of Hendrix, recorded only 6 months later than Dylan's. But even then, when I think of "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'", I think of Dylan, not The Byrds or another cover. In any case, the comparison seems rather pointless. I like Disturbed's cover of "The Sound of Silence" better than the original. That doesn't mean Simon and Garfunkel didn't have a shred of musical talent.
Guessnotgauss 5y ago
I agree man, the lame banality of pop music is deafening. Songs are produced the same way, use the same build and drop structure and sound the same. Triplets and shitty bass. Forget complexity or originality, just use the same patterns as the last 10 years. Modern production can be good some people pull it off, but not without singers who sing in a similar cadence and timbre. People who want to sound like someone else rather than being influenced by other people's sounds. Out with the new back to tye new-old?

by teilo 5y ago

Apocryphon 5y ago

The Grammys didn't even recognize After Hours smdh

nfw2 5y ago

I love classic rock, but it's hard to argue that it is musically more complex than modern pop. Also if musical complexity was the same as merit then we would all just be listening to jazz and classical

teilo 5y ago
Complexity is but one component. I enjoy a lot of music that uses simple chord progressions. But when you have simplistic music, with artificial vocals, and every human elements digitally normalized out, with uninspiring melodies, it's just empty and tedious. I feel like I'm being spoon-fed by mommy and daddy.
- nfw2 5y ago
  For what it's worth, I think the current wave of modern pop is much more interesting-sounding than 80's hair metal or the pop from the earlier 2000's that was autotuned ad nauseum. For example, look at the current top of the Billboard Hot 100. 1.) Easy On Me - Adele. Adele's music is always far from empty. She is a true artist. 2.) Stay - Kid Laroi. This may not be your type of music and there are certainly a lot vocal effect here, but there's a lot going on here rhythmically and melodically. The chord structure is also pretty unusual. 3.) We Don't Talk About Bruno - Lin-Manuel Miranda. LMM is a genius, but it's a Disney song, so let's skip this one. 4.) Glass Animals - A rare indie hit to make it to make it to the top, this one is arguable the "simplest" song on this list. It still feels like it has character and that the artist has put their stamp on it. 5.) Shivers - Ed Sheeran. If Sheeran's music feels tedious now, it might just be because his music has been at the top of the charts virtually non-stop for more than a decade. Still it's hard to deny his talent or argue that his songs are simple musical drivel. It's fair to say that MOST of what is produced is derivative drivel, but I would say that's probably true of pretty much any era. There were tedious grunge artists, tedious metal artists, tedius disco artists, tedious arena rock artists, etc.
  - nmfisher 5y ago
    I had never actively checked out the Billboard Hot 100 until you mentioned it just now. I had to laugh at how blissfully unaware I had been at the amount of country music that comes out of the USA! Going through those 100 songs, pop music doesn't seem to be noticeably worse than 20 years ago - except when it comes to the sheer volume of mumble rap. It stands out to me as uncharacteristically bad/monotonous/derivative/etc (and I say this as someone who was a big hip-hop fan all through the 80s/90s/2000s). I don't think it's just a matter of taste, either, because I definitely don't like most of the chart (Adele/country/indie/etc), but I would never say it's lacking in musicality. Mumble rap is just irredeemably bad.
  - cousin_it 5y ago
    Compared to a good 80s track like Jump https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwYN7mTi6HM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwYN7mTi6HM all songs you listed sound limp, fake and barely even alive. Maybe it's a matter of taste, but come on, tell me I'm wrong.
    - UncleMeat 5y ago
      You are wrong. Heck, even Jump was criticized to hell and back for being synth garbage instead of the shred metal that Van Halen was known for prior to that song. There has never been a time in history when more great music was being created and made accessible to the masses than today. And I say that as a crotchety jazz nerd.
      - digisign 5y ago
        VH was never metal, they started before it with hard-blues reminiscent of Led Zeppelin with a party posture, then added piano chords and pop sensibility via synth. They were only in the neighborhood due to EVH imitators.
        Apocryphon 5y ago
        There's nothing bluesy about "Right Now."

computershit 5y ago

A-freaking-men. I listen to old music because it bangs and it’s real. I feel like this article posits a perceived problem and then makes no attempt to read between the lines to understand why no one is listening to a garbage product.

bambax 5y ago

I tend to agree, but this is exactly addressed in the article: > Some people—especially baby boomers—tell me that this decline in music is simply the result of lousy new songs. Music used to be better, or so they say. The old songs had better melodies, more interesting harmonies, and demonstrated genuine musicianship, not just software loops, Auto-Tuned vocals, and regurgitated samples. In fact the second part of the article (after that paragraph) is much more interesting than the first. It argues that the music industry tries very hard to bury and hide genuinely new music (and ways of making it), by fear of cannibalizing the old (?), and that it is killing itself in the process.

pmontra 5y ago
I think that every 50 yo in at least the last 100 years thought that the music liked by the 20 yo is s..t and so will be for the now 20 yo 30 years from now. There is no particular reason for that except that the 20 yo artists have to try something new and they are the models of the 10 / 15 yo. What's interesting is that the new models don't seem so hugely more interesting than the best of the old ones. Maybe young people got wiser, maybe the music industry got enough material to play safe, minimize costs and keep advertising and selling the old tunes.
brazzy 5y ago
> It argues that the music industry tries very hard to bury and hide genuinely new music (and ways of making it), by fear of cannibalizing the old (?), and that it is killing itself in the process. I read it a bit more nuanced: that the industry is failing to discover and promote new music because it's too preoccupied with making "safe bets" to profit from old music, and part of that is using lawsuits to defend it against plagiarism, which has the side effect of actively stifling new music.

lifeformed 5y ago

There is always lots of good new music in any generation if you look underground. If your tastes are open to the experimental and unconventional, you'll find an endless supply of great new sounds. But most people's tastes are strongly shaped by the older music they grew up with, so naturally they'll use that as their reference point for "good" music.

basisword 5y ago

You lost me when you complained about the number of chords. What a ridiculous argument. I guess Van Morrison, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan etc better go back to the drawing board.

furiens 5y ago
I don’t think it’s a ridiculous point, especially taken with the other elements mentioned. There wouldn’t be that much to the artists you mentioned if their lyrics were also banal, and they were deemed artificial or derivative. It’s a good idea to rely on a constraint of simplicity in some aspects, it’s just a problem when applied to everything at once.
988747 5y ago
Bob Dylan was a poet, not musician. He wrote great lyrics, but did not have a shred of musical talent to make them into proper songs. That's why all his songs only became hits after someone else covered them. For reference check this: https://youtu.be/jzgLavD4vD4 https://youtu.be/jzgLavD4vD4 vs this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFDOSIecALU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFDOSIecALU
- eesmith 5y ago
  People at the time disagreed with your assessment. > September 29, 1961 / 20-Year-Old Singer Is Bright New Face at Gerde’s Club / By ROBERT SHELTON / https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/04/reviews/dylan-gerde.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/04/r... > Resembling a cross between a choir boy and a beatnik, Mr. Dylan has a cherubic look and a mop of tousled hair he partly covers with a Huck Finn black corduroy cap. His clothes may need a bit of tailoring, but when he works his guitar, harmonica or piano and composes new songs faster than he can remember them, there is no doubt that he is bursting at the seams with talent. To be absolutely clear, more people preferred Dylan's songs as a cover because, from that same 1961 review, "Mr. Dylan’s voice is anything but pretty. He is consciously trying to recapture the rude beauty of a Southern field hand musing in melody on his porch. All the “husk and bark” are left on his notes and a searing intensity pervades his songs." Or from his Wikipedia entry: 'Many early songs reached the public through more palatable versions by other performers, such as Joan Baez' That you don't recognize it as talent seems therefore more a matter of personal taste. That same review ends with "But if not for every taste, his music-making has the mark of originality and inspiration, all the more noteworthy for his youth." Your reference is to a 2016 recording of 'All Along the Watchtower'?? Surely you should juxtapose Dylan's performance with that of Hendrix, recorded only 6 months later than Dylan's. But even then, when I think of "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'", I think of Dylan, not The Byrds or another cover. In any case, the comparison seems rather pointless. I like Disturbed's cover of "The Sound of Silence" better than the original. That doesn't mean Simon and Garfunkel didn't have a shred of musical talent.

Guessnotgauss 5y ago

I agree man, the lame banality of pop music is deafening. Songs are produced the same way, use the same build and drop structure and sound the same. Triplets and shitty bass. Forget complexity or originality, just use the same patterns as the last 10 years. Modern production can be good some people pull it off, but not without singers who sing in a similar cadence and timbre. People who want to sound like someone else rather than being influenced by other people's sounds. Out with the new back to tye new-old?