I’ve been travelling in a car quite a bit these days. While playing music on the stereo, we typically choose one of two channels. The first one has all the modern songs – latest billboard hits and the like. The second channel is devoted to older songs. I’ve spend a fair amount of time listening to both and the conclusion I’ve reached is this: English music these days is utter crap. I thought I might be biased, so I visited the official billboard page and listened to the hit numbers with an open mind. Turns out I was right.
The first thing that strikes me is the beat. It seems every English song today is made for dancing in a disc. No slow music. No melody. Everything has a sort of heavy beat. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – not at all. But there’s no variety. No blues, and no slow dance songs.
My second complaint is the subject of the songs. Without exception, they’re either about love, dancing, partying, or rap. Again, nothing wrong with those songs. Heck, love songs pretty much dominated my growing up years. But again, what pisses me off is that there’s nothing new. Not so long ago, there were songs which dealt with everything ranging from general angst and meaning in life (What if God was one of us), to how the radio is being replaced by TV (Radio Ga Ga.) Songs celebrating the life of artists (Vincent) and Enya’s awesome “Only time” are a few more examples of music dealing with a wide variety of issues.
And why do all the singers look like models? It seems to me that out of a sample of people who really have a talent for singing, only a very few will also have the gorgeous looks and pristine figures that almost every singer male or female seems to have these days. When I see every single artist looking like they stepped out of a magazine, I have to wonder at what criteria is being used to select them
What happened to all the songs for you know…adults? Those not meant for lovestruck teenagers or for those not in a partying mood? It seems they’ve gone the way of the dodo. One can’t even say that disco themed songs are inherently better – just look at the success of Metallica, Pink Floyd etc. There’s a space for all this type of music, but I just don’t seem to see any of it on the radio channels playing the latest songs. For that sort of thing I have to go to the “oldies” channel!
One possible reason I can think of for this state of affairs is that “dancy” songs make more money. They can be played and licensed out in discs and they have a certain native appeal that doesn’t require any effort to appreciate. Lazy music in other words. It doesn’t make you think. Like junk food. No nourishment, but sort of satisfies a need to fill the void with something. And of course, good looking singers sell well on album covers and in concerts. In the old days, if you could sing, that was it. Bands like Abba and Simon and Garfunkel weren’t reputed for their looks. Of course, some artists were icons like Madonna, Elvis and the Beatles. But they were rare. Most of the time there was no correlation between singing talent and good looks.
So is it just me? Is my observation flawed? Perhaps there really are different songs coming out these days which have melody instead of a dance beat and which address issues other than just love, partying and rap. But if so, I don’t hear them being played anywhere and that’s sad :(
Dude, I did read what you’d written, it’s insulting for you to imply I didn’t. You wrote this:
“Music These Days Sucks Balls”
If you didn’t mean that, you shouldn’t have written it, it’s confusing to write one thing and then claim another.
You can tell I read it because I addressed issues that you raised about musicians who ‘just look pretty’. These very same complaints were being made 20 years ago, during the very times that use cite as being ages of ‘better music’. I know, ’cause I was there.
I also used quotes from what you wrote in discussion, so I’d clearly read it. If I misunderstood your position, well, if you’re going to slap a title like “Music these days sucks balls” on a post, people are naturally going to read it from the viewpoint that you are arguing modern music is bad, because that was your opening statement.
As for inductive reasoning not being valid logic, this is equivalent (at least in this case) to saying that an event has been seen to happen time and time and time again for well known reasons, but when it happens *this* time, the reasons are different, it must be ‘determined on its own merits’. For instance, a politician might say “all the previous candidates in my position lost because they ran an ineffective campaign. But I lost because there was a secret conspiracy against me”. It might be true, but it is an extraordinary claim, and requires extraordinary proof.
Incidentally, though Hume pointed out that we’ve got no grounds for trusting inductive logic, our entire scientific world view is constructed upon it. The charge on an electron is observed to have always been constant in the past, and is expected to stay constant in the future, and is believed to be constant across the universe. We have no real grounds for believing it will stay constant, but we expect it will (don’t be telling me that quark or string theory allows us to deduce the charge on an electron, it’s the other way around, we build the theories to fit the observed facts. If tomorrow the measured charge on an electron is different, we will throw those theories out and start cooking new ones).
Indeed, you are using induction yourself. You’ve listened to a radio station, that you’ve heard while in the car, and checked out a website ‘top 100’ list, and drawn conclusions about today’s music. Maybe you’re just listening to a bad radio station, maybe it’s just a bad week in music, right now? You are making observations and drawing conclusions from them.
As for there being no variety, listen to ‘Radiohead’, or ‘Coldplay’, then listen to ‘Rammstein’ or ‘The Prodigy’. You may not like them, but you have to admit they sound nothing alike.
Also, in measuring variety you compare music spanning almost twenty years (‘Radio Ga Ga’, 1984, to Enya in 2001) with music that’s in the billboard chart right in this instant. I can use this same argument (as you do with scientists elsewhere) to prove that we are in the end times and society is collapsing, because there’s nothing around to measure up to the past. Consider athletes, does the modern age have a boxer to measure up to Muhammad Ali? Does it have iceskaters of the standard of Torvill and Dean? Does it have weight-lifters comparable to Samson? Do we have writers comparable to Austen and Shakespeare and Chaucer? By drawing on the best of an extended period of time (which is just what ‘Oldies’ channels do) you can always produce a grab-bag of works or persons that’s better than what’s around today (provided you define ‘today’ narrowly enough).
There was a fair bit of variety in the music I posted links to, if variety is your real problem. The ‘Foo Fighters’ tracks had one slow and one fast/rocky piece. The ‘Muse’ tracks include one symphonic prog-rock piece in the style of ‘queen’, ‘Miss Dynamite’ is rap. The topics are fairly varied too, Muse’s “Take a bow” is about the current attacks by our own governments on the democratic institutions of our societies. Lilly Allen’s piece is about the emptiness of consumer/celebrity culture, Miss Dynamite’s is a critique of the way rap music portrays itself and the people associated with it, Kasabian’s “Where did all the love go?” is asking what happened to the revolutionary ‘make love not war’ movements of the 60s. The others are more ‘open’ in their meaning, some of them could be about almost anything.
And I’m no expert on modern music, being old myself. I’m sure a young person could give you some pointers to where the modern ‘music for adults’ is. But it tends not to be on daytime radio, and it never was.
Here’s some more links on the ‘not about parties and love’ tip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmfFmxJhtxU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_2PfPtf3no
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePg1tbia9Bg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp1fQ51YZMM
In reply to Colum Paget
I’m not trying to insult you at all. I appreciate the time you spend giving your opinion, and though discussions can sometimes get heated, there’s no ill will behind it all.
I said what I did, because I’ve mentioned in my post that I grew up on love songs. I also realize that love is probably the easiest subject to sing about and that because of this there will almost always be a preponderance of love songs in comparison with others.
It’s my contention that there are fewer famous songs these days which deal with other topics vis a vis some time back.
It’s valid to question inductive reasoning when circumstances change. So if I have reason to believe that the solar system has undergone a radical change, my questioning whether or not the sun will rise tomorrow is valid. If nothing has changed, then it’s silly to question inductive reasoning.
Indeed, your entire premise is that nothing has changed in the music industry/corporate world in the past few decades – or else you wouldn’t be equating the two time periods. I’m saying that things have changed. Corporations have become bigger than they used to be and it’s easier for them to not take risks with songs which people may not like. This is probably one reason why R-rated fantasy movies will probably never be seen again.
Finally, your assertion that music for adults was never popularized on radio is just plain wrong. There are many examples of such songs which were absolute hits when they came out.
Examples are The Sound of Silence, and Yesterday Once more (about old songs/memories). There are so many more examples of “adult” songs which took the world by storm and stayed at the top of the billboard charts that I’m having difficulty figuring out whether your assertion that there were none is actually serious or just a “feeling” which you have.
It’s not tough to figure out that slow songs which used to be on popular radio no longer feature. Songs these days are meant to be danced to. Try to play “Sound of Silence” in a disco and see the reaction!
About sports, I don’t know much about boxing, but in many sports, there currently are greats which we recognize when they’re very much in their prime. Examples in Tennis:Federer, Nadal, Sampras…In Golf we have Tiger Woods. In Basketball we had Jordan. In chess we had Kasparov, and even these days we have Anand and Magnus Carlson. I’m sure there are many more in sports I don’t know about. Come one, you’ve chosen a poor analogy to get your point across :)
#Its my contention that there are fewer famous songs these days
#which deal with other topics vis a vis some time back.
I thought it was that songs aren’t varied? It’s changed again?
Also, when do you mean by ‘some time back’? I don’t remember a time when the situation you’re describing existed. There have, throughout time, been a few famous songs about things other than the evergreen topic of love, but they’ve always been few. You manage to gather a lot of them by casting your net over a long period, if you are comparing like-for-like you should compare at most one year, against one modern year. Even then, you can be unfortunate in the choice of years.
#It’s valid to question inductive reasoning when circumstances change. So if I
#have reason to believe that the solar system has undergone a radical change
If you have a good reason, yes. But what is your reason? All your observations are things that have always been the case, the billboard 100 has always been full of pap, there’s never been a time when it wasn’t. The great songs were never all in the chart at the same time, one would appear, amidst all the meaningless pop. Abba is a case in point, Abba was meaningless pop, people love it, but it was meaningless pop. Michael Jackson was mostly meaningless pop. And it wasn’t varied, when disco was in, everything was disco.
# Indeed, your entire premise is that nothing has changed in the
# music industry/corporate world in the past few decades
No it isn’t, every thing always changes all the time. In my day cassettes were a big change, did cassettes make my dad right in saying that all the music of the 70’s and 80’s was garbage? No, it didn’t. But things had changed!
You can’t use the existence of change to justify any argument, you have to show there’s been relevant change. I’m not saying there hasn’t been change, but I am saying that there is a known cause for the phenomenon your are citing, and that this cause hasn’t changed. The fact that other thing may have changed doesn’t matter. You are claiming that we are seeing the same results as always, but that the causes are suddenly different
# or else you wouldnt be equating the two time periods.
well, you equate them too, otherwise you can’t do any comparisons.
#Im saying that things have changed.
I know.
# Corporations have become bigger than they used to be and it’s
# easier for them to not take risks with songs which people may not like.
Except they do, all the time, that’s why there’s so many CD’s in remainder bins. Bands that people thought would make it, but didn’t.
#This is probably one reason why R-rated fantasy movies will probably
# never be seen again.
Don’t know what these are, so i can’t say.
# There currently are greats which we recognize when they’re very
# much in their prime.
You say this, but at least two of the names you give are out of the past. Kasparov was from the 80’s, if you can include him in sports, then every single piece of music you named is from ‘these days’, not from the past. Similarly Michael Jordan is retired, he joined the Chicago Bulls the same year that ‘Radio Ga Ga’ came out. Sampras is retired too, he debuted in 1988!! These are all names from the past, you even use past tense for most of them!
#In Golf we have Tiger Woods.
This one I will give you, he is a modern great. That’s one.
#Anand and Magnus Carlson.
Who and who?
In tennis, you should have named the Williams sisters, I think they’re still active.
#Im sure there are many more in sports I dont know about.
No, if you don’t know about them, then they don’t exist. That’s what you’re doing with music, you’re saying that good music doesn’t exist because you don’t know about it.
#Come one, youve chosen a poor analogy to get your point across :)
No, I think it works rather well, as has just been shown.
But, at the end of the day I think I’m wasting my time. I had this argument with my Dad, he said exactly the same things you are now saying about the very music you now list as ‘greats’. He said radio Ga Ga was childish rubbish with baby noises for lyrics. He said Kate Bush was only a star because of her looks. He said all modern music was just for dancing to. I never convinced him, he didn’t want to be convinced. He liked Boney M, I never knew why, but everything else he thought was rubbish (including the Rolling Stones, even the Beatles, I think. He liked cowboy songs.)
Someone will have the same argument with those who come after us, they will point to all the great songs that there were in the early 2010’s, and say that the music of the 2030’s (if we still have music, and I assume we will) doesn’t measure up. They will say it’s because the market’s changed.
You wanted to know where the varied music was, I gave you some links, you can follow them up or not. You can carry on believing, as you seem to, that the modern age is lacking in great music, great scientists, and I’m sure later you’ll claim other great things are missing too. In doing this, you’ll be treading a groove laid down by every generation that went before, and they all though that ‘no, this time it’s for real, this time it’s different’.
The music is out there, the science is out there, its all out there and always has been. You can engage with it, or you can reject it and stay in the bubble of the past. It’s up to you.
In reply to Colum Paget
I’ve given you several examples of slow famous songs which were absolute hits in their day. You haven’t addressed even one of them till now.
As a final example, take “Stairway to heaven” widely voted as the greatest rock song of all time. Slow melancholy…and to quote Wikipedia “It was the most requested song on FM radio stations in the United States in the 1970s.”
That would never happen today.
But according to you, that doesn’t fit into your theory of great songs only being recognized 30 years later. I’ve given you other examples as well. Don’t ignore the evidence and keep making a claim that is proven wrong.
totally agree with u…i m still stuck on oldies!! I havent listened to even one song by lady gaga or beiber or green day or coldplay yet!! maybe i m being the frog in the well but well…i m sure i wont like such music.
In reply to Reema
In general I have a problem with any music that’s based on the personality of the person rather than the music behind it. All the great songs I love are great songs. The person who sings them is a distant second. Only a few exceptions to this rule exist like Madonna and Michael Jackson…and even they bombed out later on when their music quality began to deteriorate.
Totally agree with you on this subject.. Indeed, today’s music sucks..
The kind of music put forth by Lady Gag-me and her like are so obnoxious that it takes ‘music’ to an altogether different level. But, mind it Music, and Hollywood are very BIG mind control tools in the hands of the Elites who run the world from behind the scene. So you will get to see more crap in the name of music like there. The symbolism is heavy and you need a post grad. degree to discern what they are portraying through the music and movies of today. Vigilant Citizen does a great job of exposing these, apart from others.
I have to add, not only is making music not about looks, but in the 90’s there were many scandals involving “visually appealing” models lip-syncing real musician’s music (e.g Milli Vanilli, Black box, C+C Music Factory)
What we have today is the same Milli Vanilli, except there is no good background music for them to lip-sync (i.e. Britney Spears – it’s just talking, not even singing).
I say I want real artists like the REAL Milli Vanilli (Brad Howell, John Davis, Jodie Rocco, Linda Rocco and Charles Shaw), and Martha Walsh (the real singer of C+C music factory)
Cheers,
I AGREE 100%!! But there IS good music out there you just have to LOOK. Some examples: Sade, John Legend, Dido and my latest discovery: Jazz Liberatorz (sooo fucking good man you dont even understand!). Youtube them. These are some good songs by Jazz Liberators: The process, U do, Speak the Language, I am Hip Hop, When the Clock Ticks, Vacation. The incorporate Jazz and Hip Hop…the sound is amazing!
Most of the music advertised anywhere completely sucks balls, end of story, its not even a debate i mean if you actually think about itm c’mon you’ve got to be retarded or have shitty taste to like any of it. really.
hey dont give me all this old people stuff im 13 years old and i think the music these days is CRAP. it might be surprising but i listen to a lot of music from the 60s-80s . all i listen to is classic rock and the oldies stations
In reply to Danny
:)
i hope rock music comes back. the best music now adays is indie rock as most studios arent hirinng rock bands so rock is like a under ground thing now
Stop listening to the radio and start listening to indie music.
E.g. Arcade Fire, Florence and the Machine, The Black Keys…I could go on and on. If you want any specific recommendations for songs let me know.
Good music still exists…it’s just not on the radio anymore.