Current Events > There's scientific proof for why pop music has gotten so terrible.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Or you're just old. Old and broken and whiny.

wah_wah_wah posted...

Or you're just old. Old and broken and whiny.

wah_wah_wah
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NeonOctopus posted...

wah_wah_wah posted...

Or you're just old. Old and broken and whiny.

wah_wah_wah

Exactly. Happens to the best of us lol

wah_wah_wah posted...

DoctorPiranha3 posted...

wah_wah_wah posted...

I couldn't go much further in the video once it started with yet another fellating of The Beatles.

Pop music today sucks if you're old. Just like old people back in the 60's were bitching that the Beatles were not Frank Sinatra. Just like old people in the 40's were bitching that that damn slick Italian Sinatra was nothing like Gershwin. On and on it goes.

True to some extent, but I think it's true that pop has become totally homogenized. In the 80s and 90s, there was a much bigger variety of how the mainstream songs sounded. Those were really adventurous times, before it became a total cow factory.

lol no. Pop music has always been about money and marketability. John Lennon used to go into recording sessions with Paul and announce, "Now let's write us a new boat!"

I'm mainly talking about the 80s and 90s. Of course it's always been about money, but in those two decades, the sounds were varied. It's like when music expression really started to take off among everybody.

I'm not a master in this subject, that's just what I've perceived.

DoctorPiranha3 posted...

I'm mainly talking about the 80s and 90s. Of course it's always been about money, but in those two decades, the sounds were varied. It's like when music expression really started to take off among everybody.

They were varied because you lived through those times and committed yourself to listening to most or all of that music. It's really hard for you to make the definite claim that music today is not varied when you have already deemed it to be terrible and probably don't listen to it for more than five seconds at a time.

I can tell you that the 1980's hair band era wasn't particularly "varied" from what I remember. Even the bands names didn't really have much variability. Just take a predator and go with it - Poison, Whitesnake, Scorpions, WASP etc.

*Goes out of his way to explain that today's pop is specifically engineered to be pleasant and samey*
*Spends 2 minutes telling all of us that we are brainwashed into enjoying music and asking if we really enjoyed today's songs the first time we heard them*
"Music as an art form is dying"

Oh this dude can fuck right off.

I will admit, I lol'd when I looked at related videos in the sidebar and his other video is "Intelligent people have fewer friends, here's why...". Maybe if you stop indirectly accusing everyone of being stupid or incapable of their own thoughts, then you'd have more friends you narcissistic little twit.
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Question for anybody who is defending modern pop music and saying complaints are nothing more than a generational gap. Is there any modern pop artist you'd compare to Don McLean in terms of lyrical quality?
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The lyrical quality of an entire artist? That is a confusing as hell question. I think Weird Al's parody of American Pie about the Star Wars prequels was better than American Pie the song, which is overly long and doesn't have much of a point. I don't even think it is among the best of Weird Al, but it at least made me laugh.

wah_wah_wah posted...

DoctorPiranha3 posted...

I'm mainly talking about the 80s and 90s. Of course it's always been about money, but in those two decades, the sounds were varied. It's like when music expression really started to take off among everybody.

They were varied because you lived through those times and committed yourself to listening to most or all of that music. It's really hard for you to make the definite claim that music today is not varied when you have already deemed it to be terrible and probably don't listen to it for more than five seconds at a time.

I can tell you that the 1980's hair band era wasn't particularly "varied" from what I remember. Even the bands names didn't really have much variability. Just take a predator and go with it - Poison, Whitesnake, Scorpions, WASP etc.

I'm an 00s kid, so my experience with the previous decades music isn't first hand experience. I'm not saying there weren't consistent tunes in those decades, it just felt like people were willing to take more risks, and those risks were getting publicized. Each decade has an identity, but the 2010s kind of blur with the later 00s IMO, and it's hard to see where it goes from here.

wah_wah_wah posted...

The lyrical quality of an entire artist? That is a confusing as hell question. I think Weird Al's parody of American Pie about the Star Wars prequels was better than American Pie the song, which is overly long and doesn't have much of a point. I don't even think it is among the best of Weird Al, but it at least made me laugh.

While I disagree with you and still enjoy Wierd Al's version, Don isn't only famous for that song. Vincent for example was a great song with great lyrics.
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tennisdude818 posted...

wah_wah_wah posted...

The lyrical quality of an entire artist? That is a confusing as hell question. I think Weird Al's parody of American Pie about the Star Wars prequels was better than American Pie the song, which is overly long and doesn't have much of a point. I don't even think it is among the best of Weird Al, but it at least made me laugh.

While I disagree with you and still enjoy Wierd Al's version, Don isn't only famous for that song. Vincent for example was a great song with great lyrics.

That's basically it for his pop success. And let's face it, he is mostly famous for American Pie.

Ten bucks says this is another case of "The good shit isn't being spoonfed to me so I'll just assume it doesn't exist."

Same as how there's no good rock music (there is - you just have to look for it) or good metal (there is - you just have to look for it) or good hip-hop (there is - you just have to look for it).
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ImAMarvel posted...

LinksLiege posted...

Ten bucks says this is another case of "The good shit isn't being spoonfed to me so I'll just assume it doesn't exist."

Same as how there's no good rock music (there is - you just have to look for it) or good metal (there is - you just have to look for it) or good hip-hop (there is - you just have to look for it).

This is also true. Mainstream pop does in fact suck, but the mantra that all modern music sucks isn't even remotely true. There's still plenty of good shit being made, you just need to look beneath the surface.

Overall I'd say there's more good stuff being made that ever before with the rise of independent music and platforms for self distribution. The top 40 charts just isn't the place you find that.
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This guy's eyebrows are pissing me off
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Gamer99z posted...

ImAMarvel posted...

LinksLiege posted...

Ten bucks says this is another case of "The good shit isn't being spoonfed to me so I'll just assume it doesn't exist."

Same as how there's no good rock music (there is - you just have to look for it) or good metal (there is - you just have to look for it) or good hip-hop (there is - you just have to look for it).

This is also true. Mainstream pop does in fact suck, but the mantra that all modern music sucks isn't even remotely true. There's still plenty of good shit being made, you just need to look beneath the surface.

Overall I'd say there's more good stuff being made that ever before with the rise of independent music and platforms for self distribution. The top 40 charts just isn't the place you find that.

You still do quite often. I tend to notice that most of the bitching comes from white dudes (including the dude in the video). Yes most of the music in pop is not geared towards them exclusively as it was in the past. Yeah you're not the demo for "Dark Horse"... that doesn't mean it is terrible.

It's worth pointing out, it's not like the 60's and 70's yielded nothing but gems.

There are a lot of utterly forgettable acts in every era. I did my own digging into rock acts from those times and, believe me - there's a lot of garbage. You don't hear about all the shit from those days anymore because - get this - they were shit.
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You all are delusional, this happens with every generation in every genre of music. You will continue to read "x music genre was way better back in the day" for the rest of your lives. 10 years from now people will be saying "man, pop music was way better back in the 2010s" and 30 years ago you could've found just as many people saying "man pop music was way better in the 80s"

This cycle will continue on forever and will continue to boil down to people's personal biases toward their favorite eras of music/musical genres and range of nostalgia
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Lol
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https://qz.com/1035049/the-mozart-like-complexity-of-carly-rae-jepsens-biggest-hits/

Sloan: The idea that writing “frivolous” music doesn’t take a lot of artistry is misguided. Mozart’s opera buffa “Così fan tutte” has the most ludicrous and silly plot, but man is it complex. It took all of Mozart’s considerable compositional skill. The music being put out by Justin Bieber and Diplo is completely analogous.
We had a producer duo on our show called Grey, who produced the Hailee Steinfeld song “Starving.” They said they spent 60 hours just fine tuning the sound of the snare drum on one of their songs. That gives you an idea of the immense efforts of a song you digest in three minutes and 30 seconds like an amuse-bouche.

But, yeah, the Pop-Drop is a very recent and now wide-spread phenomenon.
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Is he a scientist?

Anyway, there are a number of factors why people claim that music was better 'back in the day';
- Nostalgia. Plain and simple. When a song is the soundtrack for emotional times in your life (like, say, your first relationship or graduating high school), you can't really be objective about it.
- Time. Over time, we accumulate a list of our favorite tracks, and forget about all the crap in between. If you are comparing 50 years of music to the last 10, there is going to be 5 times as many good songs and 5 times as many bad (roughly).
- Strong advertising. Every time a Greatest Hits compilation comes out, you see a commercial telling you how 'this music defines the era' or 'the greatest music of X generation'. Every reunion tour just feeds the same lines to you over and over. A premium is put on these old bands because we assume age and quantity equals quality.
- People like to bitch. I don't have to explain that.
Look at the crap like Cyndi Lauper. It was just as vapid and poppy, but we remember the good music from that era. It's the same in literally every era. Maybe I'm not the best guy to evaluate it, since I hate a lot of the old 'classic pop music' like The Beatles, but people have been making these same arguments as long as I've been alive.

Gamer99z posted...

DezCaughtIt posted...

What's the millennial whoop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MN23lFKfpck

Shit. I'll never be able to not hear that now.
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s0nicfan posted...

This is a really shitty example. Not only are they radically different genres, but there are plenty of examples like the Beyonce one during the exact same period.