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Worst year ever for music?

sryanbruen

What was the worst year ever for music in your opinion? So far, it has been 2016 for me. This year has not seen even one good song in my ears. I hear the same beats I hear in every respective song. By respective I mean its genre like those house beats and drums that annoy me of how frequently they're used. The closest song I could find that I like in 2016 is Lukas Graham - 7 Years but at the same time, I am not mad about it.

2016 - worst year ever for music in my opinion.

This is only my opinion. Let's see yours.

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Anesthetize

DanielODonnell wrote: »

However regarding metal and rock music there have been poor releases over the past year such as Triviums disaster of a record.

When have Trivium ever released a good record? On the other hand we had some great releases from Enslaved and Steven Wilson last year.

sameoldname

Whatever about good music, I'd argue that there hasn't been any advancement in music in at least 20 years. The fact that Aphex Twin's Richard D. James album sounds as cutting edge as anything you'd hear nowadays is pretty damning... and that was released in 1996.

colossus-x

Are you talking about pop music OP ?

Pop music had never been good since the '90's.

Good voices are very important in a tune, even if it's just trashy pop, but now one doesn't need a good voice, just one that can be manipulated by a computer to sound good.

Taylor Swift is the only artist I can think off that does good pop songs but it's not like she's a vocal genius but she's not bad at all.

Michael Jackson did everything. He did great videos. He was an amazing singer. He was an amazing dancer. And his song's weren't all the same, like Rihanna for example. Plastic videos , same beats all the time. All done for the pub venues with a thump thump thump beat.

When was the last time you had a well rounded performer who could do it all? It doesn't happen anymore. You have someone who goes on xfactor who we might agree they have a good voice. But that's it. No personality. No nothing. Just a short skirt or big thighs that looks good in some flashy boring music video.

The better question is "When was the last year we found a gem who had amazing musical/performing talent".

I don't listen to pop music anymore. I have gotten into other music genres and I'm glad off it. I'll always love my trance/electro/pop stuff from the 80/90/2000 but that scene is all over.

DEFTLEFTHAND

sryanbruen wrote: »

Can anybody show me any good music of 2016? I can't find any which is why I consider it the worst. I can't see why you say it is a good year for music :mad:

This is good imo.

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

fatknacker

I haven't heard of most the bands in some of these posts. Am I so out of touch with modern music, or are people trying to deliberately post the most obscure bands they know of to be hip?
No, no. It's the children who are out of touch

colossus-x

Bands all sound the same to me.

Edit: I listened to the above linked track without watching the video. I find it totally depressing.

nyarlothothep

Taylor Swift: ****
Adele: ****, you want depressing, listen to Warning, then come back to me
Ed Sheeran: ****
Kanye West: the pinnacle of **** and the emperor's new clothes syndrome personified.

Major labels gobbelled up indies and are extremely prejudiced against releasing interesting music that doesn't fit into the hip hop/pop genres. Just ignore the mainstream and listen to whatever you want, the only problem is that interesting, actually talented artists, much moreso than the ones mentioned above are getting overlooked and even if you play them to the average 2010s listener they'll still willfully stick to their mainstream, garbage crap, because they've been indoctrinated, so **** them too.

fatknacker

Why are you giving all these boring pop artists four stars?

greedygoblin

Anesthetize wrote: »

When have Trivium ever released a good record? On the other hand we had some great releases from Enslaved and Steven Wilson last year.

2015 was all about Clutch and Wilderun for me. Great albums.

Antar Bolaeisk

Music benefits greatly from, what I like to call, the temporal anti-Doppler effect. Meaning, the further away from a certain point in time you are, the more often good music seems to be released.

In thirty years time this will be hailed as the new 80's!

[Deleted User]

1828.

Beethoven dead, Mozart a distant memory...

Hercule Poirot

Does it really matter if this is a sh1tty year for music? We have access to all the music we could want, with the youtubing, and the ituning and the digitamal downloading - it's a great time to be a music lover

And don't get upset about what's in the charts, I've learnt since the days of Britney Spears et al that you can't control the machine, listen to whatever the hell you want and don't be fretting

Hemerodrome

Isn't it a good thing that music tastes aren't at all subjective and the OP kindly came along to tell us what not to like.
Title track from the album Sarcasm by Hemerodrome.

jackwigan

Painkillers by Brian Fallon is out tomorrow, year 2016 saved.

Badly Drunk Boy

Hemerodrome wrote: »

Isn't it a good thing that music tastes aren't at all subjective and the OP kindly came along to tell us what not to like.
Title track from the album Sarcasm by Hemerodrome.

Hemerodrome sold out with that overhyped third album. It's a scientifically proven fact!

sryanbruen

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

This is good imo.

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

About time! Somebody actually showed me something I like here. Thank you.

nacho libre

Hercule Poirot wrote: »

Does it really matter if this is a sh1tty year for music? We have access to all the music we could want, with the youtubing, and the ituning and the digitamal downloading - it's a great time to be a music lover

And don't get upset about what's in the charts, I've learnt since the days of Britney Spears et al that you can't control the machine, listen to whatever the hell you want and don't be fretting

Thank you. With that in mind, this is my favourite release of the last few years:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSObRNcPAv8

it is, as you say, indeed a great time to be a music lover

Anesthetize

fatknacker wrote: »

I haven't heard of most the bands in some of these posts. Am I so out of touch with modern music, or are people trying to deliberately post the most obscure bands they know of to be hip?
No, no. It's the children who are out of touch

None of the artists posted in this thread are obscure. People who actually follow music publications and websites would have stumbled across them at some stage.

Chain Smoker

I dunno about there being a "worst year" but 2014 at the time seemed shockingly bereft of great albums, 2 years on and I've yet to discover anything to change my mind.

http://www.metacritic.com/feature/critics-pick-top-10-albums-of-2014

Capt'n Midnight

Antar Bolaeisk wrote: »

Music benefits greatly from, what I like to call, the temporal anti-Doppler effect. Meaning, the further away from a certain point in time you are, the more often good music seems to be released.

In thirty years time this will be hailed as the new 80's!

Late 70's early 80's music was good at the time. Even allowing for the filter of nostalgia and forgetting the utter dross today's chart music is meh at best.

Back then there were new sounds, from synthesisers to punk to ska and new romantics , a massive change from the mid 70's

BBC4 have been showing Top Of The Pops for a while now and just look at what was in the charts back then. Yes there was a lot of *cringe* but the good stuff was great.

There were times in the 90's when entire NOW albums would only have a single song that wasn't bad. Music got better later and then went dire again.

The music industry has to take a lot of the blame. Things like drum machines , vocal harmonisers, and especially wall of sound means that over time mass market music has become more formulaic and less differentiated than in the past. How many songwriting crews are there for the charts these days ?
I'm reminded of 1984 and the songs for the proles.

"It was only an 'opeless fancy,
It passed lika an Ipril dye,
But a look an' a word an' the dreams they stirred
They 'ave stolen my 'eart awye!'

Sometimes I can't even guess the decade of the nondescript music on the low rent music channels on satellite.

Joe prim

I don't know how you can slag off 2016, when it witnessed the release of Sir Andrew Davis's new recording of Elgar's Dream of Gerontius!

Joe prim

Deleted User wrote: »

1828.

Beethoven dead, Mozart a distant memory...

With the greatest of respect, sir, in 1828, Paganini had commenced his European tour, which was to bring him to international attention, Schubert published his Winterreise song-cycle (although he also died, which was a downer, man), and Chopin, for one, was at the height of his powers. I must put it to you therefore, sir, that you are talking through your proverbial orifice.

sryanbruen

Joe prim wrote: »

I don't know how you can slag off 2016, when it witnessed the release of Sir Andrew Davis's new recording of Elgar's Dream of Gerontius!

May I ask you, who in God's name is Sir Andrew Davis?

Custardpi

I've never been a fan of absolute relativism when it comes to cultural matters. While obviously people's opinions are going to be different & subjective can we really say that all music is as good or bad as it's ever been & any objections to this argument are just based on people being "too old, man!"? Are there really no cultural highs & lows? Are those who look to the past & hold the eras of Hendrix, Miles Davis, Led Zeppelin etc to be better than the fairly forgettable Indie/electronica scene these days just musical snobs? While I'd agree that bad, cheesy music is probably no worse than in previous eras (I actually quite like a lot of pop music, not knocking it as a whole genre) I'm really not convinced that at the other end of the spectrum there is music being produced today that will stand the test of time & still be recognised as great in a few decades.

While it's always going to be hard to find an exactly objective standard for what's good or bad & while I think you'll find skilled musicians in just about any era since our ancestors started banging rocks together in a systemic manner I simply don't see these past few years as being ones which people will look back on with nostalgia for the music, except on a purely personal level i.e. the songs that remind them of their youth.

We're probably in by no means the worst year ever for music but can we set any standards for greatness at all? Where is the 2016 equivalent of Dark Side Of The Moon - ground breaking album still revered 40 years later? Who excites & scandalises the music scene like The Rolling Stones in their heyday? Going further back who in 2016 is revolutionising the Western understanding of rhythmic structure in the same way that Dave Brubeck & Joe Morello did on Take Five? What female chanteuse of today will be listened to with the same awe in decades to come that today one listens to Nina Simone or Ella Fitzgerald?

In short I can readily agree that our musical lows are probably a constant across the ages but don't tell me our musical highs haven't been higher in the past. As difficult as judging cultural output in an objective way is just throwing up our hands & saying that it's all subjective & everything depends on one's age will lead to cultural stagnation.

I wonder as an aside if in say 30 years time the television industry (or whatever technology television + streaming morphs into) runs out of ideas, ambition & funding & is reduced to producing run of the mill fare along with the cheap trash that's here already will those who then look back nostagically towards the golden era of The Wire, Breaking Bad, Forbrydelsen etc be mocked in the same way that their musical equivalents are?

Capt'n Midnight

compare the UK chart this week
in 1981 http://www.officialcharts.com/charts/singles-chart/19810308/7501/
or 1980 http://www.officialcharts.com/charts/singles-chart/19800309/7501/
or 1979 http://www.officialcharts.com/charts/singles-chart/19790304/7501/

to now
www.officialcharts.com/charts/singles-chart/20160304/7501/

Ol' Donie

What year was that drippy pillock out of Coldplay born?

That was a dreadful, dreadful year.

Capt'n Midnight

Custardpi wrote: »

I wonder as an aside if in say 30 years time the television industry (or whatever technology television + streaming morphs into) runs out of ideas, ambition & funding & is reduced to producing run of the mill fare along with the cheap trash that's here already will those who then look back nostagically towards the golden era of The Wire, Breaking Bad, Forbrydelsen etc be mocked in the same way that their musical equivalents are?

It's already happened in Cinema.

With the exception of Avatar, Titanic and Inception and cartoons the biggest 50 grossing movies are fall into one (or more) of the following categories.

Sequel/Reboot/Remake
Very successful Books or Comics with a proven fan base
And many of the cartoons fall into this.

All safe stuff. Avatar and Inception both relied on special special effects.

Titanic sort of bucks the trend but it is old enough to drink.
Armageddon in 1998 was the last time the biggest grossing film of the year wasn't a reboot/remake/sequel or cartoon.

donegaLroad

I remember around 1985 being particularly unremarkable for all chart music, with the notable exception of a few songs

She Sells Sanctuary by The Cult.

In a Lifetime by Clannad featuring Bono

Money's Too Tight to Mention by Simply Red. (wasn't bad)

the rest of the charts was meh

Custardpi

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

It's already happened in Cinema.

With the exception of Avatar, Titanic and Inception and cartoons the biggest 50 grossing movies are fall into one (or more) of the following categories.

Sequel/Reboot/Remake
Very successful Books or Comics with a proven fan base
And many of the cartoons fall into this.

All safe stuff. Avatar and Inception both relied on special special effects.

Titanic sort of bucks the trend but it is old enough to drink.
Armageddon in 1998 was the last time the biggest grossing film of the year wasn't a reboot/remake/sequel or cartoon.

It's a pity that the Hollywood side of things has gone that way alright, though there are great films being produced outside of Hollywood, both in the US itself & abroad. It doesn't even need to be as bland as it is. BBC critic Mark Kermode has actually argued that if you actually look at the numbers so long as a blockbuster movie follows a few simple rules they're virtually guaranteed not to lose money, though in some cases they may have to rely on Bluray/DVD sales etc to get into the black.

MacauDragon

All I know is that we as a country were responsible for B*witched.

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

Yes...Jesus Christ