IMO we shouldn't worship complexity as well. You can loose the sense of musicality on both. That was pretty much the downfall of prog rock on late 70's. A lot of my favorite songs have only one chord alongside a lot of jazz records.

 

So he prefers diatonic harmony and is not keen on modal interchange. A man of simple tastes.

 

You are right here. I don't like Beato. His snobism, his stupid superior faces when he listens to what he deems a "complex" progression or jazz chord and his musical "superiority". He talks about finding unique and complex progressions and the music he likes has the same repetitive and tried and true harmonic progressions. I mean, the guy knows his stuff. But this character of superior judmental music connoisseur is irritating. It might have given him likes and subscriptions, but it is obnoxious.

I also agree that if he made a series analysing songs in full (the shape of the melody, the relation between note and chord, the harmonic progression in the different sections of the song, the bridge and solo, the harmony in the voices, the variations in the chords or ad libs, etc) he would have a more useful channel and something unique these days. Youtube is full of old men ranting about "new" mucic or jazz "cats" looking down on new music. Beato is becoming just another one of these guys.

 

This great piece of music below is not the problem, the problem is you if you can't dig it, dig it.

Old fogie Rick sets himself up as an expert and his ignorant rambles are lapped up by his army of aged disciples like lap dogs, as proof of their dogged tired old opinion.

It works like this, if you can't grasp this track, then your opinion is just that an opinion, it has no worth, because you are unable to give a objective opinion.

Er, ridiculous to belive the aesthetic of music is subjective, as it's easily proven otherwise.

It's called the Generation Gap und Heil Beato is their glorious righteous leader.

Even if this track is way too much for you, if you are a, er, producer? like Rick, you perhaps? you should be at least be able to appreciate the great production, if not try Olivia Rodrigues her brill songs are easier on the ear and the productions are top notch too.

Rick needs to hear my latest EP, that'll confuse 'im, D&B with counterpoint, a full blown orchestra on it innit.

Basically, i can cut it, Rick can't, so Rick, 'Don't criticise what you can't understand... Cos the times they are a changin'....

 

Last edited: Apr 19, 2026 at 8:03 AM

Oops. forgot to mention, didn't bother watching it, 'eard it all many many times before, from Old 'Uns, er, did I miss anything interesting?

 

Just because something is complex, creative and wonderful, doesn't mean it sounds good. Mass listeners have always preferred "simple and to the point".

IMHO videos like Beato's only succeed at proving that what he's done all his life doesn't actually matter much. Which for sure is difficult to accept and internalize. Fortunately the world doesn't care about whose ego it crushes underfoot next as it stomps onward.

 

The internet today:

90% of the music is rubbish
90% of the videos are superfluous
90% of the information is incomplete and/or copied

In short, if they deleted 90% of the internet, we'd finally have some clarity. All this junk is clogging up the connections!

 

It's really not and its a pale imitation of what UK Drill was when it was first imported from Chicago. Central Cee and other borderline industry plants like him are like the late stage capitalism equivalent of the culturual musical zeitgeist. he's what enters the equation when majors get their mitts on the material. he's not representative of the music itself or it's intent. he's the Disney mascot that comes in to market it to kids on TikTok and Instacrap.

Compare that to the old 410, Harlem Spartans, Zone 2, 67 mixtapes. there's no comparison. if you like watered down slosh then you do you, bro, but don't claim like you are "hip"to the culture by liking the same shit the 13 year olds are twerking and wining to on socials, pmsl. there's even better commercial spawns of that culture that you could sight that are not a few millions away from wearing metaphorical mouse ears like Backroad Gee, PS Hitsquad. pick any of em.

 

Hi @thejohndoe, the right to bad taste!!! Everyone has the right to listen to crap music, eat bad food, and watch any crap on TV.

 

Hmm, you're putting words in my mouth, didn't say i was hip, but thanks for thinking it.

Insults is arguing and is actually just an admission of defeat.

Anyhoo, you sir are playing that dumb futile beato game of thinking your taste in music is better than others, it isn't, some commercial stuff is great, some underground stuff is shite. Period. End of. Discerning which is which is crucial to a hit songwriter.



Pulse wave dear boy, we don't get to choose great Art, history decides that, Pink Floyd, Dylan, Prince, Picasso etc are all amongst the greatest, not Kylie, Robson and Green etc etc, you und your like-minded ilk cannot see the utter arrogance of your pointless statement above.

It's folly to label folk who make great hook laden hits as crap, when you can't even write that so-called crap yourself, or can you?

I speak generally, yet folk here, you sir, seem to take my comments personally, ask yourself why eh?

 

I haven't read your comments, nor have I replied to them.

 

Rick has done PLENTY of wonderful videos analysing songs in forensic detail.

I'm sorry, but there is just a general decline of music quality over the last twenty years compared to the 60s-90s which is just so blindingly obvious you'd have to be in a state of serious denial not to notice it.

Where have the bands gone? A single producer working on his own on a PC is never going to able to compete with a band of maybe six talented musicians, each knowing their own instrument inside out, able to contribute to the songwriting, or just add a solo or flourish.

I mean, it's not just music. Where are the classic movies these days? Look at what wins Oscars compared to 30, 40 years ago. Just general decline in popular mainstream culture, happens so slowly that it's almost imperceptible.

 

Let's comment on another video from so-called experts and waste valuable time on nothing...! Most critics make a living by ruining other people's reputations. Just form your own opinion; why do you need so-called experts? Welcome to the age of lies, distortions, and untruths...! Sometimes it's best to just switch off.

 

I've been listening to some of the songs in the charts these days and thinking "That's been written by AI", "That chorus is AI", "That's an AI bridge". Something has changed over the last couple of years. People don't seem to be picking up on this. AI-written (or enhanced) songs are creeping in. They're technically impressive, but unnaturally bland and inhuman. Some big songs in there.

 

Last edited: Apr 19, 2026 at 3:14 PM

No circle jerk of patting yourself on the back with 'If people like it then it is good' will change the fact that the songs in the above mentioned video are all categorically vapid, clumsily executed, lazy and creatively devoid. Mainstream wise we are in a creative slump. Eventually AI slop will make this shite way better, pushing (through boredom of said slop) the true learned creatives becoming more mainstream, if only because it will be something actually different. One can hope. But yeah - total drivel. Sounds to snobby for you? Well, part of our role as creatives is to be just that..!

 

Guys, I think there’s a misunderstanding here. Many people end up taking it personally, because when we have a musical preference, we feel like it’s being attacked by some of his comments. But look: in the videos where Rick analyzes the trends, he doesn’t limit himself to harmonic progression. He also looks at groove, production, bass lines, synthesizers, overall mixing. In other words, it’s not a direct attack on every aspect of musical production, nor is it a purely snobbish posture.

The main focus of his criticism lies in the phraseological, structural, motivic, and harmonic aspects of the songs (that’s the central point!). My comments also concentrate on this: the reduced emphasis on harmonic elaboration in today’s musical discourse, especially in what dominates the top trends. So, saying he’s "totally snobbish" doesn’t match reality. Rick does recognize positive points in the trends. Moreover, he often adopts a perspective somewhat similar (although with less analytical rigor, since the tone is more casual) to historical musicology. Even though he’s not a musicologist, but rather a former producer with some analytical expertises, he engages in a critical exercise that is common in musical studies. This type of approach is legitimate, even if one disagrees with the conclusions.

In the end, rejecting this kind of reading is also a personal choice. But just as academia cannot impose a repertoire simply because it is statistically more interesting or complex, we also cannot ignore that consumer society has favored music with less structural and harmonic elaboration. If in the past this type of construction had significant presence in the mainstream, today it is less frequent. From a historical perspective, comparative and statistical analyses tend to reveal this shift, regardless of individual preferences or isolated examples. In the field of analysis, what prevails is not personal taste, but the observation of collective tendencies. And often, when the analyst puts a magnifying glass on this, it bothers, 'cos reality appears raw and unembellished, with no room for mystification.

This 4-minute opening scene from Idiocracy (2006) is already 20 years old and it’s still one of the sharpest cultural criticisms ever made in comedy form. Exaggeration? Obviously. But when I watch it today, I can’t help thinking: "They weren’t predicting the future... they were straight-up dropping spoilers!"
And then I look around and realize it’s getting harder to simply call this an exaggeration...

 

Last edited: Apr 19, 2026 at 3:33 PM

Here you go, referring to what I said earlier, No, 1 song on global iTunes is AI-generated.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/conorm...-and-several-other-countries-is-ai-generated/

 

The issue is that the upper and lower bounds of the simplicity/complexity scale are cultural. The ideal degree of complexity is an ever shifting, arbitrary point somewhere - anywhere - on that scale, tied to broader cultural movements, issues and backgrounds, such as generation, politics, country ...

Anyone chasing 'perfect complexity' will, by the time they reach 40, realise that their ideal is likely wedged between the previous and next generations', making it mostly irrelevant to anyone of any other generation (except for the retro "too cool for modern stuff" kids one finds in every generation).

There's this meme:



Is this the prog rock elite looking at the pop music simpletons, looking all superior? Or the free jazzers looking at the prog rock elite? Or the 19th century classical musicians looking at the free jazzers? Or the Bachians looking at 19th century classical musicians?

Repeat ad infinitum. There is no end and no beginning. Except for plucking away at goat sinews. That might just be the lower bound. Maybe. Or maybe clanking stones is the lower bound.

I once "listened" to a piece the author called "challenging" (= highly complex). To me, it just sounded like mental illness manifest. But maybe he was right? Everything is subjective. Everything is always changing.

Chasing ideals that aren't fixed/objective is ... very difficult.

 

Last edited: Apr 19, 2026 at 5:52 PM