Is music today a bit shït?

Radiosonde

Herb Powell wrote: »

You think this isn't happening any more?

All I see in this thread is old people who've simply moved on with their lives and are out of touch. Nothing wrong with that, but it simply means the understanding of how things are is outdated.

I reckon no one posting in this thread is hanging out with the young people who are creating music today. They're there, working away, whether anyone notices or not.

I might as well add, nostalgia is an absolute poison.

There are still plenty of young people making music, and plenty more voraciously devouring new music, but pop music is not the heart of youth culture like it was 30 or 40 years ago. Pop was vital back then. Imagine going from the music of 1960 to what was available by 1980, and again by 1990; imagine how exciting hearing the changes and innovations across those years would have been. That was an artistic form that was going through its own adolescence - growing up just like its fans.

But compare 1997 to 2017: there's little if anything released today that would sound astonishingly new to a listener from the late 90s. It's hard to imagine, say, a young John Lennon listening to the umpteenth Beyonce or Radiohead album, or grime or the other myriad "new" genres that the music press talk about, and thinking "this is the future; this is what I have to do with my life."

Mr E

I was driving for an hour one evening before Christmas and found myself flicking between John Creedon and 4FM.

Maybe it's my age but modern music (on the radio anyway) is crap.

Boom_Bap

Mr E wrote: »

Maybe it's my age but modern music (on the radio anyway) is crap.

I'm a bit of a snob, but modern popular music is only being made for radio/impact plays and not longevity like it used to.

Bands used to have to get together, write, demo, gig, record, press, get media attention to get a single out.
Now you can make a track in your bedroom quickly so anyone can and will do it.

Parchment

Its sh!t. I just finished listening to a Rory Gallagher record then put on the radio. Ended up getting another R.G record and putting that on stat!

Irish_rat

Mr E wrote: »

Maybe it's my age but modern music (on the radio anyway) is crap.

You won't hear good stuff on the radio. Go onto Spotify. Only problem there is the bit rate is too compressed for my liking.

Rothko

Radiosonde wrote: »

There are still plenty of young people making music, and plenty more voraciously devouring new music, but pop music is not the heart of youth culture like it was 30 or 40 years ago. Pop was vital back then. Imagine going from the music of 1960 to what was available by 1980, and again by 1990; imagine how exciting hearing the changes and innovations across those years would have been. That was an artistic form that was going through its own adolescence - growing up just like its fans.

But compare 1997 to 2017: there's little if anything released today that would sound astonishingly new to a listener from the late 90s. It's hard to imagine, say, a young John Lennon listening to the umpteenth Beyonce or Radiohead album, or grime or the other myriad "new" genres that the music press talk about, and thinking "this is the future; this is what I have to do with my life."

Disagree about Radiohead

Effects

Noveight wrote: »

I'd consider this to be a masterpiece of recent times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqiH0ZSkM9I

James Bay is mediocre, singer songwriter pop music. Nowhere near 'masterpiece'.

DrumSteve

railer201 wrote: »

The whole pop scene is tired, played out, every combination of notes, riffs and melodies seem to have been covered, hence it's hard to experience something that seems new and fresh. Something completely new has to come along but it's hard to see how at the moment.

True.

I heard that James Arthur song the other day, if the script's lawyers aren't on to him for plagarism, I'd be surprised.

Irish Guitarist

I think if a singer uses their actual voice and doesn't cover it up with Autotune it stands out from the Beyonces of this world. That's why the likes of Adele are seen as having great voices. Music listeners under about 25 are so used to hearing bland 'perfect' voices for most of their lives that hearing a natural voice with some variation (and maybe even a slight mistake or two) is thrilling. If you sent Adele and James Bay in a time machine back to the sixties when Motown and Dusty Springfield were around their voices would be seen as average.

Smart Bug

Duck Soup wrote: »

Talk to any old farts and they'll tell you about the absolute centrality of music when we growing up. Not just that it was important - it still is to a lot of young people - but it was the absolute hub of youth culture. You talked about it, spent most of your money on it, were defined by what type of music you followed.

There used to be 3 rock music papers: New Musical Express, Melody Maker and Sounds. If you didn't get down to the newsagents by 9am, all the copies of the NME would be gone. If you got there at 10am, Sounds would be sold out and there'd only be Melody Maker left. After 11am, they'd all be sold out. Sometimes I'd be outside the newsagents at 7am when it opened and I'd be one of 4 or 5 other obsessives.

And a lot of people were in bands. You bought your Les Paul or Strat copy and scratched your records to buggery learning the songs by listening to the LPs.

Music simply doesn't have that all-consuming primacy any more; there isn't the level of engagement and the talent pool is smaller. Young creative people are pursuing other avenues and it shows in popular music.

Yes. One of the main causes of this is that music has been turned into a consumable product: download the latest instantly forgettable ****, listen to it for a little then on to the next piece of aural crap.

Music has been commoditised by disgusting ****ty marketing and music company execs.

Parachutes

Pop music has definitely gone downhill in recent years, take Coldplay in 2002-3 and compare what they're like now. It's sad.

Noveight

Effects wrote: »

James Bay is mediocre, singer songwriter pop music. Nowhere near 'masterpiece'.

I'd consider it a masterpiece of recent times. Far better crafted than most of the 39 other tunes that graced the top 40 when it was up there.

Irish_rat

Noveight wrote: »

I'd consider it a masterpiece of recent times. Far better crafted than most of the 39 other tunes that graced the top 40 when it was up there.

You need to listen to more music then

Noveight

Irish_rat wrote: »

You need to listen to more music then

Eh, horses for courses.

Can I ask what you'd consider to be a modern masterpiece?

FixdePitchmark

Parachutes wrote: »

Pop music has definitely gone downhill in recent years, take Coldplay in 2002-3 and compare what they're like now. It's sad.

I know Coldplay are now pure popular - but a bit harsh to put them in the "****" context.

They are all good musicians
Play instruments
Can sing
Write popular songs - some good songs.
Come from fairly good post Britpop period.

With many "artists" out there now - they wouldn't have anything like the talent of them.

I get the point they chased easy listening versus the stuff they did earlier.

But - One Direction and X factor is ****e - Coldplay are a band.

problemnext

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvFAQY5qqIc&list=PLdCCAGQmmKBZZgWpaUELdKBnzoLBwVleD

Agree Modern Music is 99% sh1te but there are some good artists out there Jack Garratt is one of them.

Effects

Noveight wrote: »

I'd consider it a masterpiece of recent times. Far better crafted than most of the 39 other tunes that graced the top 40 when it was up there.

You can't call it a masterpiece just because it's better than anything else in the top 40.

Goya

Glenster wrote: »

Its the same as it always was.

If you are complaining that the music you hear on the radio and on the music channels is dogbed today, it was ever thus.

That's not true though.

There was a time when there were musicians like David Bowie, Prince, Elvis Costello, The Jam, The Smiths, New Order, The Cure, Blondie, Roxy Music, The Who in the top ten and on Top Of The Pops. There will always be a "fringe" when it comes to music, but the point is, you didn't have to look to it exclusively for good music.

James Bay isn't bad in my opinion (I like that Fake Smile song) but the bar isn't very high. I actually prefer Coldplay's later poppier stuff to their first few years, which I found boring.

thevinylword

My usual answer with this is that you're probably not looking in the right places - we've never had so much music so easily at our disposal. YouTube, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Mixcloud, 8tracks etc or you can stream radio from anywhere all over the world on your phone... most of those apps/sites even tailor playlists/radio for you based on your listening habits - spoonfed! There's no excuse for not being able to find good stuff, start following bands/labels/DJs on these sites.

It's all down to taste obviously, but what's currently on 90% of Irish radio is not for me, certainly not during working hours anyway - but each to their own, I just don't tune in personally. Maybe there's an argument that the overall quality of 'commercial/primetime' radio music has dropped but I guess only time can tell that... maybe that's just down to the shift in the market and how it operates... and more importantly, how we consume music. It's not too long ago we had a handful of Irish stations to choose from to listen and get our fix, or off down to the record shop, and that was that. I can stumble across some deep funk from early 70s Florida on YouTube and be ordering it on Discogs or Ebay in minutes.

I have a few podcasts I listen to for my fixes,
6Music on the Beeb is brilliant,you can listen back to shows for a month - Gilles Peterson (he recently launched his own radio station WorldwideFM) - plays absolutely everything, Don Letts - good for reggae/roots etc, Craig Charles - funk/soul, Benji B - house/deep house etc
Red Light Radio out of Amsterdam have a wide variety of shows, there's an Aussie one I listen to via TuneIn Radio sometimes on Saturday mornings whose name escapes me, various DJ mixes or record label podcasts uploaded every week - Mixcloud is a great source for these especially - Core News Uploads is a channel constantly uploading a wide variety of stuff every day. I guess I'm lucky in one regard that I'm in a job I can work with headphones on so I spend hours every day dipping in and out of stuff.

The fun for me is in the diggin', I might be listening to Gilles Peterson here at work and come across a name from today or yesteryear I don't know, then jump on to Spotify and end up listening to their whole album (or catalogue!), look up Discogs to see who else is playing/collaborating in that lineup and go down another rabbit hole.

As for 2016, I thought it was another brilliant year for music - maybe not for the album though, not as many *standout* albums as in previous years for me (but plenty of very good ones of pretty equal quality)

(*start plug*)
I do a vinyl-only podcast a couple of times a month (I usually post them on the Electronic Music & DJ Forum and the Soul/R n B/Funk forum on here), here's my two Best of 2016 episodes for anyone interested or looking for some 2016 listenin'

https://www.mixcloud.com/WobbieCostelloe/episode-37-best-of-2016-part-1/listeners/

https://www.mixcloud.com/WobbieCostelloe/episode-38-best-of-2016-pt-2/

(*end plug*)

Oh and if you like a bands music, maybe buy it rather than download for free - I know from friends in original bands that it's bloody hard to make any sort of a living out if it or even meet your costs - supporting the artists enables them to keep creating new music for you

Irish_rat

Noveight wrote: »

Eh, horses for courses.

Can I ask what you'd consider to be a modern masterpiece?

Living in the dream by The war on drugs is a big favourite of mine over the last few years.

Glenster

Flimpson wrote: »

That's not true though.

There was a time when there were musicians like David Bowie, Prince, Elvis Costello, The Jam, The Smiths, New Order, The Cure, Blondie, Roxy Music, The Who in the top ten and on Top Of The Pops. There will always be a "fringe" when it comes to music, but the point is, you didn't have to look to it exclusively for good music.

James Bay isn't bad in my opinion (I like that Fake Smile song) but the bar isn't very high. I actually prefer Coldplay's later poppier stuff to their first few years, which I found boring.

People forget that it wasn't the commercial stations who were playing that music, they were all boney m and chris de burgh all the time.

If you have a problem with commercial music being dogs bed these days blame the refinements in advertising which have meant that music is now targeted at middle aged people in their cars on their way to work. AKA bland drones.

If you want to hear good mainstream modern music look no further than bbc radio one, I think their playlist is great and it is not obscure for the sake of obscure.

paleoperson

What about this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3wKzyIN1yk

Amazing voice, no gimmicks, not derivative and great tune.

Tell me how

Irish_rat wrote: »

Living in the dream by The war on drugs is a big favourite of mine over the last few years.

Do you mean "Lost in the Dream"?

Noveight

Effects wrote: »

You can't call it a masterpiece just because it's better than anything else in the top 40.

Of course you can't. I consider it to be a very well put together song on its own merit.

Omackeral

paleoperson wrote: »

What about this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3wKzyIN1yk

Amazing voice, no gimmicks, not derivative and great tune.

No. It's in the charts so it's sh*t. You have to know where to look.

Totofan99

Atari Jaguar wrote: »

It's of a slightly higher caliber but not for me. Is there no one around like years ago no? Disturbed, AC/DC, Zeppelin, etc. Have artists in that vein died off?

There's plenty of bands producing music like that, they just don't get the exposure. And here's a shameless plug for my band as one example. I wouldn't dare compare us to Zepp or AC/DC, but it's a bit different from the Top 40 anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcRkVkgjQTk

Billy86

And finally (sorry went on a load of them there!) in my opinion maybe the best "pure pop" song by a ridiculously underrated artist Robyn. We to 8 in the UK, didn't even chart in Ireland. Great live performance too.

Shannon757

I agree with you about Macklemore but not the others. And that Robyn song did very well when sung by Calum Scott

Billy86

(who would have thought one of the gayest songs/videos you'd come across would be a rap song? :pac: )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

Billy86