Awful Modern Music

[Typhon]

It is obvious to me that most of the members here know a good deal more about music than I do.  Some of you are musicians, many of you know who is writing and producing the music rather than just knowing who's playing in the band, and so on. 

Well, for many years now I have felt that pop music has been constantly getting worse and worse.  At first I thought this may be because I was getting older, and I could not understand the newer music of a younger generation.  After all, my parents never understood why I liked Black Sabbath.  Or, perhaps it was because I am technically not a music lover.  Even though I own around 2000 cd's, 99% of them are classical and hard rock & roll.  Pretty much anything else I can't stand to listen to. 

But then I ran across the youtube lecture below titled The Truth Why Modern Music Is Awful.  In it the speaker not only exposes some of the new production techniques being used today to get people hooked on inferior songs, but actually presents psychological and scientific evidence to support what he is saying.  I must say I agree with everything that he says, but I am very interested in the reactions and opinions from everyone in The Community.  The video is about 20 minutes long.  Please watch, thanks. 

[Axefiend]

^^^ Definitely!

[Billy Underdog]

A quick comment before watching the video: One of the biggest hit-makers in Norway the last 20 years once said pop music is like hot dogs. If you actually knew how it's made, you'd never eat one again.

Will watch later when i haven't just gotten out of bed...

[JSTHECONQUEROR]

That was an interesting watch. Thanks!

[Billy Underdog]

No surprise there to me, but this should be mandatory knowledge. One thing i slightly disagree with, though; the "brainwashing" theory. Not saying that it doesn't happen, getting exposed to a song you don't really like until you're liking it. But the true aim of the pop industry is to get you "hooked" on the first listen and make you buy the song. If you're tired of it already on second listen doesn't matter, because then you've already bought it...
Luckily all of this aply less to people like us than the general public, but we're not imune. There's a Ghost-thread going on here, f.ex.
Anyone noticed i've been talking about Swedes and music? Max Martin is the worst human being ever to put two notes together.

The good thing about the internet in all of this is that you can by-pass the "risktaking" record companies and promoters, and with hard work you can get peoples attention yourself, with actual good music, not having to "trick" people into liking it. But it's hard to get noticed in a flooded market...

[BOGBLAST]

This guy is right on the money, pop music just sucks. I think this example kinda backs up what this guy is saying. I was a teenager in the 70's and I was like "Disco Sucks! Rock and Roll!" But if I hear a Disco tune today, I probably know most of the words. I think that falls into the overexposed category.

[Zzzptm]

Reminded me of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi63rXnuWbw

That's from 2007, so of course it's gotten worse as each generation is more and more effectively brainwashed.

This is why I finally put Disney and Nickelodeon channels on parent ban in my house. I was tired of my kids nagging me!

As for one or two guys writing all the hits, we can go back to Lieber and Stoller in the 50s or Goffin/King or Berry Gordy or Smokey Robinson... even Lennon/McCartney. There are people who can define a generation with their music, so the two guys mentioned here aren't a new thing.

But back to the brainwashing and lack of risk taking - that is a development over time. At first, it was all a matter of guessing right about what the kids would get into. As recording companies learned their lessons and licked their wounds, they got more scientific in their approach. Music had always been a corporate matter once it became a mass media that could be marketed through sheet music. What changed was the finesse employed by those corporations in reaching and retaining audiences. Keep it simple, direct, familiar, and crude. That keeps 'em coming back for the dopamine rush.

Kids really are reading less and less - writing less and less, as well. They are becoming more visually oriented and that goes with a drop in attention spans. I've watched it happen as an educator, and have had to take measures to expand those spans and to get the writing and reading to happen again for my students. Part of that was in having a real chaos of influences presented to them, to shock them out of a commercially-induced complacency.

But, once I broke the ground, they were ready to try out new stuff, good stuff... and *like* it. Stuff like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h-gEON65pA

Notice the complexity of the instrumentation, and I'm pretty sure it's not a casualty of the loudness wars... it does sound familiar, but that's because the artist wanted to have that retro feel to his composition. And, let's face it, we do want familiarity. It is desirable and comfortable.

That brings us to Classic Rock radio formats and Ian Gillan's excellent satire of them in Deep Purple's song, "MTV".

"...get used to this poop du jour
sure as hell they won't play anything new"

There are 1000 songs that rotate all the time on Classic Rock formats. Collect 'em all, put 'em on a playlist, hit shuffle, and you've got a commercial-free rock block weekend indistinguishable from what's on the radio. Yes, us old-timers are just as valid a target as the kids in terms of getting pre-cleared, riskless music that helps us to digest the commercial messages being played in between the songs. This is why, according to the radio, Black Sabbath has only done three songs and Deep Purple's done five. Aside from "Iron Man", "Paranoid", "Heaven and Hell", "Hush", "Highway Star", "Smoke on the Water", "Space Truckin", and "Woman From Tokyo", those bands don't have anything else on the radio. Grand Funk has done "Closer to Home", "We're an American Band", and "Bad Time." Maybe also "The Locomotion", if the station leans more towards Top 40 than album rock.

This is why I consider it important to always be exploring. I've been buying a lot of stoner/desert rock lately, but I still keep up on my funk, soul, Bollywood, and other styles. Keep the variety going and I'm ready for the good stuff.

[Typhon]

^^^^^^
At least Lennon/McCartney wrote the stuff they themselves were going to perform.

[Zzzptm]

^^^^^^
At least Lennon/McCartney wrote the stuff they themselves were going to perform.

True, they got to interpret their own work. But how many other people have made career advancement, if not entire careers, out of covering their songs?

A good pop song is a good pop song, and can send a band to the top of the charts. McCartney is the reason we know about Badfinger, for example.