is music getting crappier?

[jarrod]

so i'm listening to the local rock station tonight. so far we've had slipknot (not bad) black sabbath (a personal favorite of mine) as well as some lighter stuff that's not bad, & some listenable but unmemorable music that is always floating through the airwaves.

but along the way i've been subjected to nickleback, hinder, buckcherry, some other band that sounds just like buckcherry, & several bands that sound like ac/dc but aren't. what the hell is going on? is this what everyone goes through as they drift into their 30's? or is a lot of new music just garbage?

it's not just hard rock & metal either. i don't get emo. i don't get why it's cool to weigh 120lbs, wear skin tight black jeans & whine in a fake punk rock accent. so-called country music sounds like 80's rock with a fake drawl. & hip hop...well, with a few exceptions, it just doesn't have as much to say as it used to. yes, i understand you have an affinity for sexual intercourse & hold the police in low regard. do you have anything to say that ice cube didn't say better than you 10 years ago? isn't that how it works? if you don't play instruments or sing, you have to at least say something of interest.

anyway, thanks for listening. sabbath rules.

jf

 

[mook jong man]

I could not agree with you more , they all sound the same to me . And the skinny jeans thing , how uncomfortable they must be , just today at the shopping centre I saw a young bloke wearing them and I said to the wife how do you sit down in them things.

I'd be speaking in a soprano voice( As in high pitched , not mafia ) if I tried to wear them . I like the old hip hop like Grand master flash , Africa Bambaata and a few others that I can't remember .

They could tell a story in their songs , about the struggle of living in a ghetto and telling teenagers to keep on the straight and narrow but these new ones are hopeless , and like you said they have no message except for downgrading women and the law

.And why is it that you can't make a video clip with out being surrounded by 30 women in bikinis , is that a ploy to distract us from their crappy voices .

 

[theletch1]

I heard my grandfather have the same conversation with my mother and my father had the same conversation with me and I've had the same conversation with my daughter. It a matter of taste and what you were raised on. 20 years from now I'm sure my kids will be lamenting the "good ole days" when groups like Buck Cherry and Britney Spears were actually "playing music, by God and not this crappy noise". Same with the argument that the kids from each successive generation are more violent, more truant and so forth. It's all relative.

 

[jarrod]

I heard my grandfather have the same conversation with my mother and my father had the same conversation with me and I've had the same conversation with my daughter. It a matter of taste and what you were raised on. 20 years from now I'm sure my kids will be lamenting the "good ole days" when groups like Buck Cherry and Britney Spears were actually "playing music, by God and not this crappy noise". Same with the argument that the kids from each successive generation are more violent, more truant and so forth. It's all relative.

that's what i was afraid of

 

[Brian R. VanCise]

Not if you ask my kid's. They cannot believe how bad the music of the 90's, 80's (my favorite), 70's, 60's, etc. is. If you were to say hey guy's when was the best music made. They would say, "of course right now everything else is pathetic."

 

[MA-Caver]

You guys are just getting older. Music started sounding bad to me during the late 80's and early 90's and have progressively been getting worse. Now I'm nearing 50 and I don't dare listen to anything of today's music.

I've grown very disappointed at the loss of black talent since the advent of RAP and hip-hop... Loved the old Motown sound and the way that black talent would put any and every white artist to shame whenever they actually SANG into the microphone and not just yell,scream, spit, say HO!! YO!! And kill the police! ...

Sigh...

Yeah, " it's not too loud... you're just too old" as the saying goes.

 

[Andy Moynihan]

"I don't know what's become of the younger generation".

--Socrates

 

[MA-Caver]

"I don't know what's become of the younger generation".

--Socrates

(deadpans) "talking 'bout my generation"

 

[JadecloudAlchemist]

I see young people wear tight jeans all I can think about is how painful it looks.

I never understood how people could listen to music in their cars with the bass so high it makes the car tremble.

 

[Sukerkin]

I do agree that it's a generational phenomenon but I also will strongly maintain that there is a general degeneration of the talent required not only to make music but also to be considered a star.

I am amazed that even Rock, the previously strong bastion of muscianship (predicated upon it's blues roots I reckon) has succumbed to the rot. I cannot name one guitar player that has come along since the '80's who I regard as having much talent, let alone one whose playing I can recognise.

There has been a small resurgence of 'music making' (as opposed to dance 'music') groups but the modern, overproduced, medium steals it's edge (which gets further dulled by use of 'lossee' data formats for MP3 etc).

 

[exile]

There's another side to it too. I grew up in the 1960s, graduated HS in 1964—that era—and yet, going against the prevailing idea that you always like best what you were first exposed to, my own sense of the popular music of that time is that most of it was awful. Yes, there was a lot of good stuff, but there was an awful lot more of the kind of thing that makes me cringe. For every Del Shannon or the Kinks, there were a dozen or more airhead drug bands and sappy boy/girl sob-song-meisters out there pushing their own brand of electric kitsch. Has anyone ever heard anything performed by 'Oliver' (just the one name)? And the 1970s were just the same... and then disco...

I'd suspect that the quality-to-crap ratio is probably roughly comparable.

 

[Sukerkin]

I'd suspect that the quality-to-crap ratio is probably roughly comparable.

That's an interesting point - I'd qualify it a smidgen by saying that whilst the quality-to-crap ratio in the talent pool is probably about the same, an awful lot more of the 'crap' gets released as if it were 'quality' these days. The 'image machine' produces a lot of Emperors New Clothes acts to my mind.

 

[elder999]

so i'm listening to the local rock station tonight. so far we've had slipknot (not bad) black sabbath (a personal favorite of mine) as well as some lighter stuff that's not bad, & some listenable but unmemorable music that is always floating through the airwaves.

Dude, you do know that Slipknot sucks, right-like, they're supposed to? :lol:

. what the hell is going on? is this what everyone goes through as they drift into their 30's? or is a lot of new music just garbage?

Little of both-you're older, like some have said, and your "ear" is programmed, AND, as Exile wisely pointed out, the crap to gold ratio has always been there. (And yeah, I remember Oliver, and the goddammed Bay City Rollers, too!:barf: :lol

it's not just hard rock & metal either. i don't get emo. i don't get why it's cool to weigh 120lbs, wear skin tight black jeans & whine in a fake punk rock accent.

I'm with you there,

Emo boy Haiku, #22

She's gone, taking the sun
sky cries purple tears of pain
Shut up, you damn wuss.

so-called country music sounds like 80's rock with a fake drawl.

& hip hop...well, with a few exceptions, it just doesn't have as much to say as it used to. yes, i understand you have an affinity for sexual intercourse & hold the police in low regard. do you have anything to say that ice cube didn't say better than you 10 years ago? isn't that how it works? if you don't play instruments or sing, you have to at least say something of interest.

Here's hoping you never have to spend your days in a place where people democratically rotate their music-subjected to a day's worth (as in 12 hours) of fake drawl country, or wussy emo, or really, really bad rap.
I'm very thankful for my own office, now, where I have to do is turn it down so that people who come in can be heard-or turn it up, so they know it's time to leave....:lol:

anyway, thanks for listening. sabbath rules.

jf

What do you think I'm turning up? :lol:

 

[elder999]

double post...sorry.

 

[exile]

That's an interesting point - I'd qualify it a smidgen by saying that whilst the quality-to-crap ratio in the talent pool is probably about the same, an awful lot more of the 'crap' gets released as if it were 'quality' these days. The 'image machine' produces a lot of Emperors New Clothes acts to my mind.

I wonder if that has to do with the greater availability of production technology. The digital revolution has its downsides, both in music and in publishing. It's way easier to get information of all kinds out there, and the 'vetting' process goes by the wayside more and more as it gets cheaper to shove product out there. We're already looking at the dawning of the age when music is just a stream of bytes, and ancient technologies like CDs and CD-players are going to be seen only in museums... a far cry from the days when studio recording costs meant you couldn't afford to produce anything obviously third-rate.

Emo boy Haiku, #22

She's gone, taking the sun
sky cries purple tears of pain
Shut up, you damn wuss.

I love it!! :rofl:

 

[Brian R. VanCise]

Wow you guy's sound old.

Okay here is a little flo rida for eveyone!

Gona get low, low, low, low, low.....

 

[Brian R. VanCise]

You see you guy's just need to have some young kid's and then
you can be hip and old all at the same time. :rofl:

 

[elder999]

You see you guy's just need to have some young kid's and then
you can be hip and old all at the same time. :rofl:

My kids are grown-don't need any younguns besides future grandkids, thanks.

Went to watch the boy and some of his students read poetry last night, and was forced to show how "hip and old" I was by doing some of my own....(got him started way back when...I raised a poet! Not bad.....:lol

 

[Brian R. VanCise]

My kids are grown-don't need any younguns besides future grandkids, thanks.

Went to watch the boy and some of his students read poetry last night, and was forced to show how "hip and old" I was by doing some of my own....(got him started way back when...I raised a poet! Not bad.....:lol

Now that is cool!

 

[grydth]

You see you guy's just need to have some young kid's and then
you can be hip and old all at the same time. :rofl:

No, I can be old and older.....

Mylie Cyrus is such an improvement over the Moody Blues - with which I offended my parents.....

I tell my daughters that Mylie was cloned from Hillary Duff and they get all upset. There may be hope, though. When I play older stuff, both girls enjoy it.

Jarrod - the line about music which is ' listenable but unmemorable' is a classic.