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The TRUTH Why Modern Music Is Awful

I only got 3 minutes in beforehand becoming so annoyed I hit stop. I’ll be back later to compare Cilla Black with Kendrick Lamar, Frank Ifield with The Aphex Twin, Englebert Humperdink with Radiohead etc etc etc.

With all forms of music the crap gets forgotten, the good stuff remains. There was just as much vacuous shite in the 50s, 60s and 70s as there is today. And just as much good stuff!
 
DonQuixote99 said:
The top of the chart has gotten worse, I'll argue.
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I’m not even convinced I’d go that far. The highly selective mists of time have revised history as all manner of ‘light music’ blandness or novelty records regularly hit the top spot in the UK at least, and did so through the ‘70s too.
 
As Tony says, there’s always been good stuff and there’s always been rubbish. Up until fairly recently album charts were (slightly) more of a guide to decent music being bought*

*obviously until Il Divo were ‘assembled’.
 
Seeker_UK said:
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I suspect that may be true for some people for whom music is but a passing interest, but I’d expect almost everyone on a music/audio forum such as this to have far deeper, broader and more widely researched taste. Age gives one the time to explore other genres in depth. As I get older I have less time for pop and far more for jazz, classical etc, but I’m in no doubt there is a lot of truly great stuff lurking on the fringes, which is where it always existed. The mainstream has always been pretty horrible!
 
I have changed job in the last six weeks and no longer have music from the radio available at work.

This is a fantastic relief for me. People put the radio on some pop channel or another and have no idea of the emotional distress this causes to someone who really cannot listen to the same piece twice in a day, be it from JS Bach or Justin Bieber!

I discovered classical music at the age of eight. Pop music has always pained me.

ATB from George
 
I actually prefer pop or for that matter any music that grows on me after repeated listens. OP's video probably has a few truths in it, but slagging off Britney really annoyed me....for me she wrote it all too.

There is so much good and varied pop out there now, probably more than ever as to make that guys theory irrelevant.
 
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Popular music? As dictated and governed by various Svengalis over the years.

Phil Spector, Mickie Most , Stock Aitken and Waterman , Simon bloody Cowell etc.

Aimed at the dim populous to make lots of money. Nothing else.
 
There is a case for 1966, the year I turned 14, being the greatest year ever in pop music. Here's a Guardian feature that strokes such bias (I do admit to some bias): https://www.theguardian.com/music/2...-dylan-blonde-on-blonde-beach-boys-pet-sounds

But to be honest, I was more a late bloomer, and my pop heart is stuck in 1968. Here's the USA top 10 for that year (from Billboard top 100 singles):
1 "Hey Jude" The Beatles
2 "Love is Blue" Paul Mauriat
3 "Honey" Bobby Goldsboro
4 "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" Otis Redding
5 "People Got to Be Free" The Rascals
6 "Sunshine of Your Love" Cream
7 "This Guy's in Love With You" Herb Alpert
8 "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" Hugo Montenegro
9 "Mrs. Robinson" Simon & Garfunkel
10 "Tighten Up" Archie Bell & the Drells

Some I like more than others, but there's some real excellence there, and only one true popdrek item, imho. I'd be interested to see if any thinks a similar list from the past 10 years is close to this standard. Fact is, most years it's 90% crap, not 10%....
 
I was 10 years old in 68. The weird thing is, I could actually hum the tune of all of those songs in that list (in a never mind the buzzcocks style)

Subliminal permeation from the radio maybe? I've no idea how.

Ask me to do that from any top 10 list from the mid 80's onwards and I wouldn't have a clue.
 
Tony L said:
...but I’m in no doubt there is a lot of truly great stuff lurking on the fringes, which is where it always existed.
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There's lots of good stuff out there - just a cursory run through Soundcloud starts to show you how many talented folks are out there making music.

The problem is, with the Interwebs, there's way too much stuff to find / enjoy.
 
Op a sort of a bit of a sweeping statement, really. We pick and choose the good stuff from any era. Last couple of years for me have included Christine and the Queens, Caravan Palace, St Vincent etc.

About 10 years ago the 80’s was getting a right slagging off by the press. Now it’s a golden era. Go figure.
 
I do feel the pull to look back fondly on stuff I heard in my teens though - I’m in my sixties now so the late 1960s would have been ‘my time’, and as an example I love the late Beatles albums but wonder how much of this love is due to my recognition of their music and how much to the age I was at the time. I suspect I’ll never know.
A friend, who’s in his fifties, recently said to me “be honest though; the best music is from the ‘seventies” which kind of supports the theory in the op’s video. Said friend likes music but not to the extent that I do, and as far as I know has only ever attended two concerts, so he’s more like the average person than I.
I guess it should be remembered, though, that we on pfm aren’t average, so the video could be very truthful indeed for many folk out there even if not so much for those here.

Mick
 
By focussing on pop/chart music you can justify your prejudice against some eras. However, there is plenty of good music from every era if you're open to it - sometimes it's pop and sometimes not.

I like melody, rhythm and structure. I imagine each song in a guitar-and-vocal style. Would it be laid bare as repetitive with a mediocre melody and pedestrian rhythm? Most music, some well-regarded, I'd say yes! Clever rock or blues styling doesn't impress me mostly, it's so often used to cover up pedestrian songs.

An album like Regina by Becca Stevens (2017) stands on the shoulders of giants - this is what all musicians of all eras have done - but I reckon these songs would still be quite complex and beautiful in terms of melody, rhythm and structure even broken down to basic guitar-and-vocals. This album cracks my top ten of all time!

On the 2018 pop front I'd say For You performed by Liam Payne and Rita Ora also passes the same test - when I try to break it down it still has to have parts with different paces and cadences. Clever. (A LOT of seemingly banal music is really very good - synths and modern styling can sometimes hide the light under a bushel.)

It's all opinion but hopefully I've expressed mine in less than a 20 minute vlog and without invoking science!
 
 
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