this is a tricky issue to me, i held this "belief" about popular music for a long time so that I could be stuck up attitude, but the thing is tens of millions of listeners "vote" to make what the most popular songs and artists are ( really the only democracy that exists to speak of.)
what i see now is that there is NOTHING wrong with pop music, it is the listeners that want a specific thing, those characteristics you describe that you hate about pop, that is what the vast majority of non musician listeners want. a mom and wife driving in to work in the car in the morning trying to forget how shitty her life is how poor they are .trying to forget that she seen her lifes goals pass by how she had to settle for less than she grew up wishing for in a husband a house a life. the most popular songs are exactly that because they gave the listeners all the things the listeners demand in music for the car ride into work on the radio in the morning for females from the age of 25 to 45 in the lower to middle class bracket. females demand what popular music is and turns out to be , they buy the records drag their boyfriends or husbands to the shows , they choose exactly what they want top 40 to be. ( the rest of music that NOT pop is for night time clubs and bars with about 20 percent the fan base of popular music as defined by women.
the way i see it what point is there whining and complaining about what the vast majority of the population demands of popular music? if you want to care for the underground music go for it, god knows that is the domain i lived in my whole life. it is only recently i care and appreciate popular music that i am willing to see it for what it is good and bad.

 

Last edited: Sep 6, 2017

I am often quite surprised when I see musicians wishing that the ordinary listener (massacred by everyday life and conditioned by the mass media) develops highly specialized listening levels.

As far as I understand, there has always been and always will be good and bad music (whether popular or classical/art music). What I question is the projection that has been given to trash, presently and this is the big problem of the mass media: producers do not want to take risks and prefer to invest in reheated hits that sell instantaneously, not over a year or ten, twenty years.

By the way, the beauty of popular music is that there is music for everything: protest, feast, worship of the devil, admire the sunset, make babies and so on.

I leave here a quote from Michael Campbell's book MUSIC2 (2014):

"In their ability to improvise, skilled musicians in Corelli’s time were more like today’s rock and jazz musicians than like many of today’s classically trained musicians".

 

Yeah, absolutely. Put The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, The Doors, Elvis... or Depeche Mode into the same bucket with Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Justin Bieber and other modern music "geniuses", right. /sarc

 

SineWave, arent you a bit too old to judge on how great katy perry is? ;)


We should be a bit more neutral on that stuff.

Music is just a reflection of mankind.

It tells us something about the people and the time they live in.

 

If one looks at the merit of an "artist" through a lens of objectivity, then I will, without the slightest hesitation and the surefire knowledge that without a doubt, the age of the critic has absolutely nothing to do with the merit of their criticism.

 

I think what's most upsetting, and unsettling for these "good music experts". Is that these kids wont give one damn about your "golden age". Not one f*ck will be given about an Elvis, Beatles, Stones, Queen, Marvin Gaye, Coltraine, etc..etc.. Nor do they have to, or are entitled to give a f*ck. I kind of enjoy the thought of that. That this younger generation has flipped a proverbial middle finger to you pretentious, narcissistic, overweening attitude, towards something as subjective as music. It's a lesson in humility, that most of you old farts have way to much pride to take heed too.

 

the reality is ,age has nothing to do with musical taste. Assuming that the person has exposure to all the history of music they, would like all different things from different times. Most of the time people dont care about the music they never had a chance to know exists, because of generation gaps. Nobody cares enough to flip a middle finger .All you are talking is about young people preference for music styles genres throughout history. A big part of that is if they have been exposed to it, not being exposed to it is not flipping the bird.
ultimately a particular young person will like what they like , that is called preference or choice or opinion, that has nothing to do with flipping the bird and the storytelling you are using here.

the other side of it as you say "...to you pretentious, narcissistic, overweening attitude,.."
again in reality your talking about old people that have a preference for certain music you don't like. same situation as before yet reversed. there is nothing "pretentious, narcissistic, overweening attitude" about a older person having a preference for certain style genres, the reality is just what they like or dislike what they prefer or not what they enjoy or not.
your storytelling and accusations of whats happening in this situation is demonstrably false.
you are mistaken kind sir.

 

Last edited: Sep 7, 2017

“Bad taste
creates many more millionaires than good taste. It finally
boiled down to a matter of who got the most votes. In the
land of the moles a mole was king” -
Charles Bukowski

 

blabla lens of objectivity...

the remark on sinewaves age was just a joke and the true message comes after that.

besides that, i dont even know how old he is!

do you think taste is not about age?

partially it is!

because people have an affinity to music they grew up with.

did sinewave grew up with the beatles? probably yes. did he grow up with katy perry? no.

 

Last edited: Sep 7, 2017

Age has everything to do with musical taste in this day age. I know millennials who've heard Johnny Cash and John Coltrane. Yet would cut that shyt off in a heartbeat to listen to Tylor Swift and Bruno Mars. Pop culture, and music culture in general today, isn't the same as it was in the 70s, and 80s. For one pop culture today is a life, stemming from everything tv, radio to social media. You're assuming these kids haven't been exposed to what you call "great music." I'm a millennial, and I'm telling you, we've heard it all. It's just the vast majority don't like what you and past generations consider "great music."

 

They think millennials are ignorant to what they consider "good" music because they haven't been exposed to it. Naw they just don't like it.

 

I stopped watching after he said they ran the songs through an algorithm. The problem with algorithms is that they are created by people, and being created by people means they have bias by design. Since the person making the algo has to decide what is most important in the analysis, his/her preference takes top priority. I'm sure there's an algo out there that says the exact opposite.

 

It's all just a matter of what you expect from a song. You can't really expect much from a pop song beside the fact that it's easy to follow and it ends after 3,5 Minutes (if it wants to get some airplay that is).

That has been the same generations ago and will be the same in 20+ years. The only thing that constantly changes is how that product can be done.

Today's pop music is not worse than it was in the 60s. It's just easier to "generate".

 

I think that makes no sense what he tries to show us about compression. There a lot of producers out there which knows how to use compression the right way. AND Compression increases the sound of music and can make especially Drums and other kinds of things better... Otherwise, you have such a "sausage effect" on your mix if you do it like he says, it does not sound good because there is no dynamic range there.

 

Last edited: Sep 7, 2017

Why does anyone even care what other folk like, or not?

 

I find it very interesting to see which direction the discussion takes. From neutral facts presented in a video (loss of timbre, higher compression, simpler lyrics, aggressive marketing strategies, lower customer attention span, etc.) to very emotional believes that are in part far from reality. Why is it that people can be brainwashed so easily'? Wouldn't it be in the interest of every music lover, from 8 to 80, to have diversity in pop music? Yet, there's only uniformity. It amazes me.

 

Is there 'only uniformity'? I find that impossible to believe.

There was a lot of 'Seattle sound' in the 90s. A lot of synth-pop in the 80s. A lot of disco in the 70s. A lot of rock too. A lot of crooners in the 50s.

There is a far greater democracy in music nowadays with more avenues to obtain it and more people with the tools to make it. The preponderance and ubiquity of music perhaps makes it more difficult to find something one likes, but there is surely much more music, and much more varied stuff about than ever before. That's surely an objective fact. Whether one likes it, or not, is personal preference.

ETA - "pop music" is a category without a proper definition. Moreover, the more narrow and particular the definition, then, by definition, the more the contents of the category are going to be similar. By definition, things that are quite different cannot be included in the category. ergo - they are all the same.

So........the OP creates a narrow category/definition, then complains that the only possible contents of the category/definition all comply with the narrow category - "they're all the same".

 

Last edited: Sep 7, 2017

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2730791/Are-STUPID-Britons-people-IQ-decline.html

 

In the case of flipping the bird, ignorance is no excuse for bad manners, and it is to the great loss of the generation of who you proclaim to represent to not to give a fuck about a generation of artists and as well as the producers and engineers that helped create the very earth that the artists of today plant their new seed of creativity. There are plenty young artists today that aptly and boldly filter the world that they have inherited with fresh and exciting new sounds using our new shared technology, others that just go for the money and put out crap

I'm older than Moses. However, as an example totally dig Kendrick Lamar, FKA Twigs, and a host of other young artists my younger friends who are in their early 20's turn me on to. And for sure I didn't grow up with either of those two, the 60's and 70's being when I suckled on the musical breast to the likes of the Grateful Dead, Neil Young, Zappa and Led Zep, but after listening to and watching twenty seconds of Norf Norf I knew something special was handed to me, and literally, immediately upon hearing TKA Twigs my world was made golden. So no, taste is not about age, not if you have the ears to hear, the eyes to see and the willingness to be open to new ideas. The same is true about the music before my time. The classical composers, early jazz, doo-wop groups, The Blues, classic country music, all this has a place in my world and it would be silly to put down a whole era of musicians and composers or group us "old farts" into a ill conceived mono culture of closed mindedness, narcissistic and pretentious old fools. It's a false premise.

 

Awww, come on?




Insolence is progressive, no? At least it can be........it's a prerequisite for progress, but not sufficient in itself?

That Mail article quotes Richard Lynn!! FFS. Shameful. If the MAil can't get a better source they don't have a point.

ETA - The article says: "Psychologist Richard Lynn calculated the decline in humans’ genetic potential. He used data on average IQ test scores (illustrated) from around the world in 1950 and 2000 to discover that our collective intelligence has dropped by one IQ point."

One IQ point across 50 years? lol

From wiki

Try again. :D

 

Last edited: Sep 7, 2017