What Has Happened To Music?

[total-recoil]

Here I go on my customary rant: I'll get straight to the point and lay my cards out on the table. Modern music is a serious decline from the standards of the past. The other day someone showed me a supposedly top rank pop star of today singing around a video setting and then he told me this guy was brilliant and so on. I listened for a bit and my reply was, sure, he did have a good voice and a degree of talent but the whole thing looked fake, staged and shallow. This was probably a song that had been "engineered" on the basis of market appeal with a lot of audio enhancement to the single. Even worse, the music was saying nothing.
I'll go even further. When I'm out walking my dog very often a car will speed past and you hear a car stereo on loud and 80 per cent of the track is beat. I mean, bang, bang, bang and maybe a few profanities voiced to the beat. Might as well be honest as what goes through my head is not flattering. I consider it marketed, shallow, "all sounds the same" semi garbage.
So, what's the problem? Well, musicians especially in the sixties were actually creative and definitely didn't do their music on the basis of what they think might sell (dictated by record companies). Music was done for the love of it and as a means of expression of ideas, trends and concepts. Bob Dylan came along with his poetic folk which attracted a whole movement around him, The Stones were shocking people with their blues and Rock influences and The Beatles practically led the alternative counter culture with lots and lots of diverse, even experimental material. And then you had Jimmy Hendrix, Brian Wilson, Jefferson Airplane and Santana. Now, all I can say to people is listen to all of these bands and do they all sound the same like today's bands? Nope! They were all doing their own thing and kind of unique and they all had their own followers.
Go to the so-called stagnant seventies and really it was still pretty good. Abba were a bit tame but still great and Queen were technically brilliant and had a unique sound. Plus, the funky dance groove scene was also good fun.
Seems to me have really gone downhill since the mid nineties. I can only guess what happened is that somehow groups stopped forming and playing because they wanted to become proper bands and then record companies managed to engineer material they thought people would understand easier and just buy. Now, this has happened before like with the Monkees in the U.S.A. (a kind of faked group to provide an American Beatles). However, today it has somehow strangled genuine bands except those who are under kind of obscure Indie labels making peanuts.
What I'd like to see is real bands, doing real live singing without all the autotune and excessive electronic backing but playing a few real instruments to a real beat. I'd also like to see new trends, new ideas, the return of music as means to challenge the status quo and the system as well as genuine sex appeal. In the past I have been accused of being closed minded to modern music but still maintain 90 per cent of it does nothing for me at all.

 

[total-recoil]

 

[Judge]

My uptake: Pop and country haven't skipped a beat. On the other hand rock fell off a cliff around the early 90s and r&b and soul has been missing in action for an equally long time.

Consequently I've been quite content to listen to music of the 60s, 70s and 80s for decades. (Never a big fan of pop or country.)

Disclaimer: Opinions of music are highly subjective....

 

[King_Oni]

Well.. the music industry isn't about who the most creative artist is anymore. It's about who sells most, and that's pretty much all these bands that are in the charts right now. And even if you look at specific genres that cater to a smaller audience; unless a band/artist is just in it for the fun (and thus doesn't make a living from doing music) even the tops in those charts are the most generic and bland albums/artists/songs to appeal to the biggest audience possible.

I'm not much of a 60's, 70's and 80's music fan as much, but I can appreciate the quality and skill that went in those songs. It's rarely that I would call "oldies" bad, as opposed to what I sometimes hear now, and that's anywhere from pop music, to rap, up to more obscure heavy metal music up to dance music (and all it's variations and itterations).

As Judge pointed out, opinions on music are highly subjective. The other day, I heard a girl passing by on the street blaring music through her cellphone speaker. To me it sounded terrible, but I guess that there's plenty of music I blast through my ipod she would think is really, really horrible.

What however does get buried under all this superficial stuff, is that we fail to recognize skill and musical genius at times. If anything I miss the time where musicians actually could sing, but also played the guitar and did the whole thing rather than just being a pretty face that can sing in tune... and act within a certain image that goes to sell said music. There's nothing wrong with having an image as an artist, it's just pretty laughable that some musicians act like they own the world while their contribution to a song is only minimal.

 

[Judge]

There's nothing wrong with having an image as an artist, it's just pretty laughable that some musicians act like they own the world while their contribution to a song is only minimal.

IMO the "problem" is when both the artist and their audience becomes more focused on their image than their music.

 

[King_Oni]

IMO the "problem" is when both the artist and their audience becomes more focused on their image than their music.

Well, you can portray a ****** artist and the audience will still enjoy it, lol

But you're right though... image over music kinda defeats the purpose of being a MUSICIAN

 

[Judge]

Well, you can portray a ****** artist and the audience will still enjoy it, lol

True. An evolved form of schadenfreude?

Personally I just get no pleasure from seeing potentially talented vocalists and musicians abasing themselves to their audience when they really don't need to. I just don't get it, myself.

 

[Tarragon]

I hate to say it, but the value of music has dropped off the radar. Musicians have never been in a stable economic job anyway, and why bother trying to be brilliant at it when mass media pushes McDonalds down everyone's ears? There is no sane reason to want to get into pop music nowadays, unless you are a total narcissist, which it would appear these pop stars are nowadays. Image has triumphed over content. There are no boundaries to explore anymore.

I shudder to think just how mindbendingly banal it must be to write commercial pop for artists with no creative talent of their own. Where's the fun in it? Aside from earning a paycheque?

I write this having spent 20 years working as a musician and seeing what position this gives you in society (ie, less dignity and respect than a road sweeper!)

I think I'd have made more money road sweeping too!

Bitter and twisted? Nope, but a realist over the total lack of openness pop music of today has for new innovation. The snake is eating itself...

 

[Flinty]

But the all-image stuff has always been around. Have you forgotten the Monkees? Bobby Sherman? The Archies? Bay City Rollers? New Kids On The Block? Milli Vanilli? Don Johnson, Bruce Willis, and Eddie Murphy as singers? The most recent of that list is about 25 years old.

We are incredibly overdue for a rock backlash such as the ones led by Nirvana and The Knack. In the meantime, the cream will rise to the top in the long term, even if it's hard to find now.

I noted a while back that the music of 1983 hasn't aged well. The music of 1984 appears to have done better, though Duran Duran was still a thing at that time.

 

[GoofKing]

Well Disney and Nickelodeon seemed to have taken over the music industry and things like talent and ability we're replaced with auto-tune and a pretty face :/

 

[nowwhat]

t's about who sells most

Ding ding ding ding! What did he WIN, Bob? Sad thing is, the defalut, most common consumer likes CRAP.

 

[Judge]

Ding ding ding ding! What did he WIN, Bob? Sad thing is, the default, most common consumer likes CRAP.

Music has succumbed to a dynamic long present in business. The trend no longer being in making a better mousetrap, but rather how to effectively market an inferior mousetrap better.

Exploiting demand is not as clever or lucrative as creating it where it didn't previously exist. Even if or when it shouldn't be done at all.

 

[Flinty]

Ding ding ding ding! What did he WIN, Bob? Sad thing is, the defalut, most common consumer likes CRAP.

If all you've ever known is crap, of course you'll like crap. And many are noncurious enough that it's all they've known. Thank you, Clear Channel.

 

[total-recoil]

"The other day, I heard a girl passing by on the street blaring music through her cellphone speaker. To me it sounded terrible, but I guess that there's plenty of music I blast through my ipod she would think is really, really horrible"

Have you thought, though, that a problem we now face is that sort of music you heard her play is dumbing down the market (no1) and making people tone deaf(no2).
My own theory is the actual market in the sixties and seventies and so on was on a far higher level of quality than today as people were better enabled to understand what constitutes good music and talented musicians. I mean, I feel quite confident I could now retire to my room, set my synth on max volume and a very basic bang bang boom boom drumbeat, repeat about 3 or 4 chords and simply yell something like, "Hey, ho do you wanna know I'm smoking dope tanight!!"
And I kid you not. That is what I tend to be subjected to by cars blasting out when I take the dog for a walk.
There comes a point where not liking something isn't the same as being subjected to simplistic junk. I mean, to give an example, I've never really liked Queen as I found them too serious and dry whereas I always like music that makes me wanna dance or cry like Michael Jackson or at the softer end of the spectrum John Denver or Mccartney. However, I can recognise Queen were brilliant musicians regardless of my not digging their scene. Bohememian Rhapsody was probably the most synchronised, revolutionary no 1 single to have ever topped the charts. I mean what a difference between that sort of quality and the shallow stuff we get today. Sure, I am aware today there is still good music around but much of it is in Indie circles and the artists don't pull in the same kind of money.

Well.. the music industry isn't about who the most creative artist is anymore. It's about who sells most, and that's pretty much all these bands that are in the charts right now. And even if you look at specific genres that cater to a smaller audience; unless a band/artist is just in it for the fun (and thus doesn't make a living from doing music) even the tops in those charts are the most generic and bland albums/artists/songs to appeal to the biggest audience possible.

I'm not much of a 60's, 70's and 80's music fan as much, but I can appreciate the quality and skill that went in those songs. It's rarely that I would call "oldies" bad, as opposed to what I sometimes hear now, and that's anywhere from pop music, to rap, up to more obscure heavy metal music up to dance music (and all it's variations and itterations).

As Judge pointed out, opinions on music are highly subjective. The other day, I heard a girl passing by on the street blaring music through her cellphone speaker. To me it sounded terrible, but I guess that there's plenty of music I blast through my ipod she would think is really, really horrible.

What however does get buried under all this superficial stuff, is that we fail to recognize skill and musical genius at times. If anything I miss the time where musicians actually could sing, but also played the guitar and did the whole thing rather than just being a pretty face that can sing in tune... and act within a certain image that goes to sell said music. There's nothing wrong with having an image as an artist, it's just pretty laughable that some musicians act like they own the world while their contribution to a song is only minimal.

 

[142857]

Back when I was a teenager, in the late 70s and early 80s, I used to talk about this issue with my mother from time to time. My mother told me that all the current music was just toneless dirges and that she expected that people would eventually see that and the music that was popular when she was a teenager in the 50s would come back into style.

I asked her what people who were her parents' age thought about 50s music at the time. Of course they thought it was rubbish.

This criticism of popular music has been around for at least 60 or 70 years to my knowledge. Probably a lot longer.

20 or 30 years from now the youngsters of today will be saying the same thing about the music that their children listen to.

 

[total-recoil]

Bear in mind, evidence suggests music has declined steadily over the decades, which might explain your theory. I was listening to Moonlight Sonata the other day and the story goes Yoko Ono was playing it on piano one day and it inspired John Lennon to write Because for Abbey Road. Well, the difference is Because sounds a bit like Moonlight Sonata but the latter is far more complex overall. My point is, classical music was often a lot more complex than modern music and taken very seriously at the time.
Today, it has gotten far far simpler so that, by comparison, hits like Good Vibrations were far more complex.
So, music has gotten ever more simple. In some cases it's now down to 80 per cent drumbeat like boom boom bang boom. Even compared to the eighties there is clear decline although I don't see any steep decline from sixties to eighties as you still had solid bands in the eighties and Michael Jackson who was brilliant
I am aware today there is still lots of talent but there are people you never see in the media or hear on the radio (not often anyway).Also, recently Bill Wyman stated that if the Rolling Stones were starting over again today as a band of young rockers they would never get air time or make it. Wyman reckons people today simply want to hear the same sound and aren't open to anything being radically different. Whereas in the sixties people were far more open to new sounds and new ideas.

Back when I was a teenager, in the late 70s and early 80s, I used to talk about this issue with my mother from time to time. My mother told me that all the current music was just toneless dirges and that she expected that people would eventually see that and the music that was popular when she was a teenager in the 50s would come back into style.

I asked her what people who were her parents' age thought about 50s music at the time. Of course they thought it was rubbish.

This criticism of popular music has been around for at least 60 or 70 years to my knowledge. Probably a lot longer.

20 or 30 years from now the youngsters of today will be saying the same thing about the music that their children listen to.