When did mainstream music start to go downhill?

nokia69

Zaph wrote: »

Oi, leave The Monkees out of this. :mad:

I love the Monkees. They were a huge influence on the Beatles

sxt

osarusan wrote: »

Probably just as much good and bad music around now as ever.

We just forget a lot of the sh!te that we heard in the past and remember the good stuff.

Music on TV has made stars of people on looks and sellability rather than talent though.

Probably. But. The most commercial mainstream acts today don't make great albums in comparison to the mainstream acts of before. . Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus etc vs Bowie, or the Beatles for example. All of these acts were mainstream albums. The Bieber and Cyrus albums will not be remembered as up there with the Beatles or Bowie in the best of that Era in 50 years.. I think/hope

FelineOverLord

Zaph wrote: »

You should thank your brother every day for exposing you to some of the finest pop music of all time. The show itself was harmless fluff and probably hasn't aged well, but their music is still brilliant.

I couldn't stand them, and I'm the older sibling, at least his taste in music improved with age.

Panic E

sxt wrote: »

The mainstream music of the sixties and seventies make up the brunt of the "best albums ever made" lists everywhere. Beatles, Rolling Stones, Dylan, Velvet underground, Bowie, pink flyod, led Zeppelin, Neil Young etc...

These bands were the Nicky minjas of today. They were mainstream gold

Good point actually.

Anesthetize

sxt wrote: »

Probably. But. The most commercial acts today don't make great albums. Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus etc vs Bowie, or the Beatles for example. All of these acts were mainstream albums. The Bieber and Cyrus albums will not be remembered in 50 years.. I think/hope

Why the hell are you comparing the likes of Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus to the likes of The Beatles? A better comparison would be to the likes of Engelbert Humperdinck, who was one of the biggest selling artists of the 60's and is goddamn awful.

Into The Blue

Zaph wrote: »

You should thank your brother every day for exposing you to some of the finest pop music of all time. The show itself was harmless fluff and probably hasn't aged well, but their music is still brilliant.

You change your username from Mickey Dolenz by any chance!?!?!?

Tony EH

sxt wrote: »

Not true! The mainstream music of the sixties and seventies make up the brunt of the "best albums ever made" lists everywhere. Beatles, Rolling Stones, Dylan, Velvet underground, Bowie, pink flyod, led Zeppelin, Neil Young etc...

These bands were the Nicky minjas of today. They were mainstream gold

Eh no. In between the hits of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, David Bowie et al, there is literally tons of shite acts making tons of shite records.

Those were the Nicky Mingebags of yesteryear. Barely remembered as a novelty, just like Mingebag and her big, deformed arse will be in decades to come.

By and large mainstream music has always been littered with dross and punctuated here and there with the odd bit of quality.

sxt

Anesthetize wrote: »

Why the hell are you comparing the likes of Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus to the likes of The Beatles? A better comparison would be to the likes of Engelbert Humperdinck, who was one of the biggest selling artists of the 60's and is goddamn awful.

Because the Beatles were mainstream and made great music..

Nodin

sxt wrote: »

Not true! The mainstream music of the sixties and seventies make up the brunt of the "best albums ever made" lists everywhere. Beatles, Rolling Stones, Dylan, Velvet underground, Bowie, pink flyod, led Zeppelin, Neil Young etc...

These bands were the Nicky minjas of today. They were mainstream gold

You could actually make full size replicas of everyone of those bands out of Ms Minajs ass and still have a cheek left over.

Christy42

Or you could listen to someone not named Justin Bieber/ Miley Cyrus? Seriously we still have bands making good music. Tinted glasses are at play here methinks. My own taste tends to along the lines of Chilli Peppers, Muse, imagine dragons but there are plenty of other acts putting out great work such as Eminem/Macklemore/Adele/Susan Boyle. There are plenty of others but I am really not bothered doing the research for an AH thread.

So yeah we have lost a lot of great bands to time but we still have great bands.


Also the Monkeys never made brilliant music, they could hold a note and were young attractive guys. A model that has been copied many times over for profit. They may have been the first (not sure about that though) but they aren't any better than the boybands of the past few decades.

Badly Drunk Boy

sxt wrote: »

If you use rateyourmusic as a guide.

Are we all supposed to be familiar with rateyourmusic.com? I went on to the site which can filter stuff many ways. The way I did it first, in 1979, the top 2 albums were Joy Division-Unknown Pleasures and The Clash-London Calling. In 1999, the top 2 were Sigur Rós-Ágætis Byrjun and The Flaming Lips-The Soft Bulletin. In my opinion, 4 great albums. (Further down the list not always so good.)

sxt wrote: »

These are albums rated supposed to be rated for music quality.

What has mainstream music got to do with musical quality?

Maybe your initial premise just has to do with the tastes of the users of rateyourmusic. Also the longer music is around, the better chance people have of hearing it. Maybe in 10 or 20 years, better quality albums will rise to the top of the 1999 list.


(Am I overthinking this?)

furiousox

The 90's were the last great musical decade.
Acid house, grunge, britpop.
All went into decline and haven't been replaced by anything of substance.
Can't see a grunge type revolution happening again.
Downloading has changed the landscape enormously too.
I can't help feeling it's all been done at this stage.

Tony EH

Anesthetize wrote: »

Why the hell are you comparing the likes of Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus to the likes of The Beatles? A better comparison would be to the likes of Engelbert Humperdinck, who was one of the biggest selling artists of the 60's and is goddamn awful.

sxt wrote: »

Because the Beatles were mainstream and made great music..

Exactly, so why are you comparing the likes of Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus to the likes of The Beatles?

:pac:

Aidric

sxt wrote: »

Because the Beatles were mainstream and made great music..

Helped by the production of George Martin. You could argue all day long about the merits of this thread but there are very few original artists out there who enjoy critical acclaim. Without the support of a mainstream label the chances are you'll never hear of the breakthrough artists and if you do they won't be commercially successful without a strong label.

A lot of mainstream hits are formulaic these days, a lot of them written by Swedish producers as it happens. What stands out is the voice.

I miss Amy Winehouse.

Anesthetize

sxt wrote: »

Because the Beatles were mainstream and made great music..

Exactly, so stopping insulting them...

Badly Drunk Boy wrote: »

Are we all supposed to be familiar with rateyourmusic.com? I went on to the site which can filter stuff many ways. The way I did it first, in 1979, the top 2 albums were Joy Division-Unknown Pleasures and The Clash-London Calling. In 1999, the top 2 were Sigur Rós-Ágætis Byrjun and The Flaming Lips-The Soft Bulletin. In my opinion, 4 great albums. (Further down the list not always so good.)



What has mainstream music got to do with musical quality?

Maybe your initial premise just has to do with the tastes of the users of rateyourmusic. Also the longer music is around, the better chance people have of hearing it. Maybe in 10 or 20 years, better quality albums will rise to the top of the 1999 list.


(Am I overthinking this?)

RYM is a very popular website and one of the best music resources on the internet. However it does come with it's flaws. A lot users tend to rate albums based on only one listen rather than take some time to form a real opinion on an album, and also there tends to be some bias towards certain sub-genres such as progressive metal.

sxt

The Honey Monster wrote: »

January the 8th.

Tony EH wrote: »

Exactly, so why are you comparing the likes of Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus to the likes of The Beatles?

They were all the mainstream artists . I'm soley talking about mainstream artists and quality of said albums

Anesthetize

sxt wrote: »

They were all mainstream.

You need to think about why you are comparing mainstream artists in the first place, since mainstream artists represent music as a whole in the same way that spoilt celebrities represent all of humanity.

Panic E

I was gonna the say the 90's also. There were some good songs coming through in a variety of genres, although that's the only time I was actively interested in mainstream music so...

Somebody posted in another thread this week, clearly a troll I'd imagine, that 'Now 91' the latest one is the best album they ever heard. I was bored so I looked at the tracklist and was shocked. It's all that samey samey imitation hip-hop and dance crap that's geared towards pre-teen girls or whatever, from what I could deduce.


I just looked back at the tracklist's for 'Now' 1 & 2 out of interest and they are peppered with acts like The Stones, Bowie, The Cure, The Smiths, UB40 as a brief comparison...

sxt

Anesthetize wrote: »

You need to think about why you are comparing mainstream artists in the first place, since mainstream artists represent music as a whole in the same way that spoilt celebrities represent all of humanity.

I think it represents a business model, it doesn't represent music at all. The biggest selling artists are good looking and marketable let's face it. Justin Bieber is not there for his song writing skills

The record companies used to work for the artists! now it is obviously the other way round!

Matt_Trakker

Mainstream music has never been good.
The mainstream beatles were crap, they only got good when they started taking drugs.
Stones were never mainstream.
Zeppelin were hated for an awful long time.

Pop music has always been dire, it's only the people trying to be original that have ever been any good. And thanks to the interwebs there's more of them around than ever before. Radio is dead, long like streaming. There's a whole world of great new music out there, don't be settling for the ****e that 2FM or Today FM serve ya.

Panic E

sxt wrote: »

The record companies used to work for the artists! now it is obviously the other way round!

Therein lies the answer! /thread

Matt_Trakker wrote: »

The mainstream beatles were crap.

True that.

drdidlittle

That would have been the day the music died

Tony EH

Record companies never worked the artists. They worked for their own profit, from the artist's work. As soon as the artist was yesterday's news, they were dropped like a hot snot.

Cold War Kid

"Chart music is the same standard as it always was, you're just getting old" - not correct.

That is all.

Anesthetize

sxt wrote: »

I think it represents a business model, it doesn't represent music at all. The biggest selling artists are good looking and marketable let's face it. Justin Bieber is not there for his song writing skills

The record companies used to work for the artists! now it is obviously the other way round!

I would agree a small bit as there's less major labels today but they have more power. But that kind of stuff has been going on for decades. In the late 60's during the bubblegum craze, one-hit wonders were being churned out like a factory assembly line.

cml387

What downloading and steaming has done is destroyed the concept of "the album" as a musical artform.
If you heard a song and liked it you might be inclined to by the whole lp it came from.
But no artist is going to sweat blood (as many did in the past) to create a selection of songs that blend together an artistic whole, To give one example "Sgt Pepper's lonely Hearts Club Band" could never be done today because the artist cannot control how the album will be played.

That may not matter any more, but in my opinion it's a pity that young folk will never again be able to "discover" an album like we used to do.

nyarlothothep

Around 2007. After that and with the beginning of the 10s I experienced a total disconnect with what was and is popular. Where are the rock bands? It's just singer songwriters and anthemic wimp music, the same 'souful' singer pouring their heart out accompanied by a guitar or piano which builds up with 4/4 drums etc.

connacht_man

sxt wrote: »

If you use rateyourmusic as a guide. These are albums rated supposed to be rated for music quality. Look at the band's rated highest in 1979 and the bands in 1999. The 1979 bands are all mainstream.. If Marty Morrissey went out into the streets and asked a random group of people did they recognise any of those bands from 1999, they wouldn't know many or none at all. They would recognise all the bands from 1979, therefore mainstream music died between 1979 and 1999

Mainstream artists today like Kathy Perry, one direction are fine and have great songs here and there and they obviously put on great shows and entertainment, but their albums are not original and will be forgotten in a few years. Kathy Perry is sexy and inspirational and so are one direction but they don't create classic music. They are encouraged not to write their own songs, not to play instruments or have much creative control.

When did mainstream music take a nosedive, was it MTVs music video fault ? Record companies greed? The evil of marketing and commercialism, are they all the same..

around 2000 , when talent shows became such an integral part of the industry , basically , simon cowells arrival

Tony EH

cml387 wrote: »

To give one example "Sgt Pepper's lonely Hearts Club Band" could never be done today because the artist cannot control how the album will be played.

You can if you're big enough.

But, record companies have always interfered in the likes of track lists.

connacht_man

KingBrian2 wrote: »

The late 00's mainstream music began to be replaced with niche music. Rap, popular music & R'B have all become specialised and less appealing to large audiences. Today's song are inferior to the great songs of the late 20th century and very early 21st.

your joking right ?

hip hop has been injected into almost every kind of pop music in the past ten to fifteen years , hip hop hasn't been fresh or specialised in nearly two decades