When we dislike modern music, are we forgetting the lessons history has taught us?

[Joyous Insurrection]

When I listen to music, I don't think about the melodical arrangements or lyrical themes, I just listen to the song and sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't.

Music is subjective, I don't think there are many people consciously decide whether to like a song or not.

People who do consciously decide whether to like a song or not don't. I mean if you go into something not wanting to like it, you probably won't, but besides that you can't really just "decide" to like or dislike a song because music usually works on a gut level. I agree with you on that, but people who do think about arrangements and themes and such are just trying to understand and evaluate why they like or dislike something.

I do think that there is some kind of objective value to art because I feel it. When I'm listening to something sometimes, I get vaguely spiritual feelings that some music is lasting and important. I think most people do. All this being said, I think what makes art good or bad is a bit beyond our understanding currently, and people should be allowed their opinions.

SIDENOTE: Wolfmother - not necessarily bad, but really, really derivative of Led Zeppelin. When your great talent is imitating a great talent very well, it means you will never truly be great in your own right, unless you change something.

 

[blankedboy]

Pop music will never ever be good but it will always be there to cater to stupid kids.

I like some older music, I like some more modern music.

But pop has always sucked.

Yeah, way to rule out an entire genre of music and make yourselves look like complete asshats :|

 

[blankedboy]

Post derped. :|

 

[Womplord]

I find that pop music sounds like crap, whenever it was made. I also hate the sound of autotune, and I don't like people singing about parties and stuff because it's absolutely meaningless. That doesn't mean I only like old music. I like some new music, like linkin park, coldplay and many others, I simply don't like POP music. Also, what are the chances the best music ever was made yesterday? Very slim. There are some good songs now (I thought the middle one was OK) but it's just the style that I wouldn't want to listen to all the time. I don't like ACDC either. It makes sense to have old gems in a music collection.

 

[Sandernista]

Pop music will never ever be good but it will always be there to cater to stupid kids.

I like some older music, I like some more modern music.

But pop has always sucked.

Yeah, way to rule out an entire genre of music and make yourselves look like complete asshats :|

I don't like pop. I just don't.

This makes me an asshat?

 

[the Dept of Science]

Pop music will never ever be good but it will always be there to cater to stupid kids.

I like some older music, I like some more modern music.

But pop has always sucked.

Yeah, way to rule out an entire genre of music and make yourselves look like complete asshats :|

I don't like pop. I just don't.

This makes me an asshat?

Saying that a genre so diverse to be pretty much undefinable, featuring countless acts and even countless-er songs contains nothing that you could gleam enjoyment from?

Musically I can be pretty much as pretentious as it gets without being a writer for Pitchfork, but the best pop is just as good as the best of any other genre.
It may be possible to "just not like pop" if pop was a single distinctive sound. Especially considering you say "pop has ALWAYS sucked" you are talking about pretty much every genre that has ever existed at one time or another, with perhaps the exception classical and experimental. Folk, country, rock, rap, RnB, soul, metal, punk, indie.
Considering then that it is nothing necessarily to do with the SOUND of "pop", you must be referring to "what is popular". In which case you are very much an asshat.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Pop music will never ever be good but it will always be there to cater to stupid kids.

I like some older music, I like some more modern music.

But pop has always sucked.

Yeah, way to rule out an entire genre of music and make yourselves look like complete asshats :|

I don't like pop. I just don't.

This makes me an asshat?

Saying that a genre so diverse to be pretty much undefinable, featuring countless acts and even countless-er songs contains nothing that you could gleam enjoyment from?

Musically I can be pretty much as pretentious as it gets without being a writer for Pitchfork, but the best pop is just as good as the best of any other genre.
It may be possible to "just not like pop" if pop was a single distinctive sound. Especially considering you say "pop has ALWAYS sucked" you are talking about pretty much every genre that has ever existed at one time or another, with perhaps the exception classical and experimental. Folk, country, rock, rap, RnB, soul, metal, punk, indie.
Considering then that it is nothing necessarily to do with the SOUND of "pop", you must be referring to "what is popular". In which case you are very much an asshat.

Pop has had a definite sound since the 80's. It should be taken for granted at this point that when people talk about pop, they're talking about bubblegum pop of the sort done by Madonna, Brittany Spears, and Katy Perry.

Captcha: you've rapper

Apparently, I have my own rapper somewhere. Can I get him to chime in here?

 

[gjkdioepppp]

If you like the way a song sounds, listen to it.
There will be music you'll find shitty from every era, but theres a good chance there will be music you'll love from every era.
If you don't like music cos' it's from an era, be it the present or the past, then you're just close minded.

 

[lacktheknack]

It's kinda fun listening to the "so bad it's bad" music that Youtube makes popular.

BrokeNCYDE is so bad it's amazing.

Friday has gleams of talent in it, I'd like to hear a second single by Rebecca Black sans autotune.

Jenna Rose, despite me trashing her in the past, is a good songwriter. Her single "OMG", I've realized, is actually well-written. VERY well-written (maybe not the lyrics). I'm surprised and pleased that a twelve-year-old was able to write it (I'm under the impression that Jenna wrote it herself).

Millionaires is the same as above. The OPs example "Party Like A Millionaire" is utterly fantastic, except the lyrics which make my blood boil. Seriously, make an exact recording where they sing "wah wah wah wah wah" instead of "I don't give a fuck/gonna dance like a slut", and I'd buy it.

If anything, I'm kind of glad that YouTube is bringing so much attention to these people. (And if BonsaiK reads this, yes. I just agreed that the Millionaires are fantastic, lyrics aside.)

 

[Sandernista]

Pop music will never ever be good but it will always be there to cater to stupid kids.

I like some older music, I like some more modern music.

But pop has always sucked.

Yeah, way to rule out an entire genre of music and make yourselves look like complete asshats :|

I don't like pop. I just don't.

This makes me an asshat?

Saying that a genre so diverse to be pretty much undefinable, featuring countless acts and even countless-er songs contains nothing that you could gleam enjoyment from?

Musically I can be pretty much as pretentious as it gets without being a writer for Pitchfork, but the best pop is just as good as the best of any other genre.
It may be possible to "just not like pop" if pop was a single distinctive sound. Especially considering you say "pop has ALWAYS sucked" you are talking about pretty much every genre that has ever existed at one time or another, with perhaps the exception classical and experimental. Folk, country, rock, rap, RnB, soul, metal, punk, indie.
Considering then that it is nothing necessarily to do with the SOUND of "pop", you must be referring to "what is popular". In which case you are very much an asshat.

I have never liked what is now considered pop.

Or, to clarify, I have not heard a single song that is currently defined as pop that I have liked.

For discounting my opinion, you are an asshat.

 

[Joyous Insurrection]

Pop has had a definite sound since the 80's.

No, it hasn't. The only consistent aspects of pop are melodicism and hooks. "Casual listenability" more or less. Sometimes danceability. Besides that it just means popular.

It should be taken for granted at this point that when people talk about pop, they're talking about bubblegum pop of the sort done by Madonna, Brittany Spears, and Katy Perry.

When people talk about pop and that's what they mean, they're wrong. I mean they're right in a very vague sense. If someone just said that casually in passing whatever, I would let it go, but if this is going to be an in depth discussion on music and pop music in particular, let's get our shit straight.

 

[blankedboy]

Pop music will never ever be good but it will always be there to cater to stupid kids.

I like some older music, I like some more modern music.

But pop has always sucked.

Yeah, way to rule out an entire genre of music and make yourselves look like complete asshats :|

I don't like pop. I just don't.

This makes me an asshat?

"I don't like pop" is a completely different statement from "Pop has always sucked". :/

 

[the Dept of Science]

Millionaires is the same as above. The OPs example "Party Like A Millionaire" is utterly fantastic, except the lyrics which make my blood boil. Seriously, make an exact recording where they sing "wah wah wah wah wah" instead of "I don't give a fuck/gonna dance like a slut", and I'd buy it.

If anything, I'm kind of glad that YouTube is bringing so much attention to these people. (And if BonsaiK reads this, yes. I just agreed that the Millionaires are fantastic, lyrics aside.)

But its more the lyrical aspect that I'm curious about. You admit that they can write catchy songs, but it sounds like you are put off by the amoral and vacuous lyrics.
Considering the setting that these songs are intended for being played in, I don't think you can really hold them being vacuous against them. If you are in a club/at a party, you don't really want to sit there thinking about the deep meanings behind the lyrics, you just want someone describing what you are doing/wanting to do right now.
The moral aspect of the lyrics is what seems to put most people off. These are young people who are being very explicit about their enjoyment of sex and drugs. Are we not falling for the same thing as the people in the 50s that complained about Elvis' hips?

I guess time will tell. Something tells me that it is unlikely that the Millionaires will be the next Elvis, Velvet Underground or AC/DC. However, to write them off for singing about doing coke and being promiscuous would be put me right in the category of all previous "fogies".

 

[Periodic]

Pop music has never been trend setting. Criticizing modern pop music is not the same thing as criticizing modern music in general.

 

[WanderingFool]

I operate under a "feeling" for the music. Good music has a sort of uphoric effect with me, Bad music is like having electric wires attached to my nuts... not pleasant. Lots of rock songs, metal, classical, and other types can give me this good vibe.

But if it doesnt give me that good vibe, its shit, end of story*.







[sub]*NOTE: That is purely opinion based... [/sub]

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Pop has had a definite sound since the 80's.

No, it hasn't. The only consistent aspects of pop are melodicism and hooks. "Casual listenability" more or less. Sometimes danceability. Besides that it just means popular.

It should be taken for granted at this point that when people talk about pop, they're talking about bubblegum pop of the sort done by Madonna, Brittany Spears, and Katy Perry.

When people talk about pop and that's what they mean, they're wrong. I mean they're right in a very vague sense. If someone just said that casually in passing whatever, I would let it go, but if this is going to be an in depth discussion on music and pop music in particular, let's get our shit straight.

It's been the right definition for the last 30 years. It's time for you to face the fact that the definition has changed since the 60s.

 

[SquidVicious]

The fact of the matter is that we've cherry picked every good song from the last 50 years or so and have forgotten the rest. It's not that music was "better" back in the '60's and '70's, there was just as much crap that surrounded and overshadowed the good stuff.

Let's look at 1969 releases:

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin
The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground & Nico
MC5 - Kick Out the Jams
Leanard Cohen - Songs From A Room
The Who - Tommy
Deep Purple - Deep Purple
The Stooges - The Stooges
The Beatles - Abbey Road
Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin II

And plenty more.

Now out of all of these hugely influential albums to be released in '69, many of which still get appraised to this very day, what do you think the best selling LP of 1969 was?

If you said Abbey Road you'd be wrong, it was actually a "best of" album by some Australian folk group called The Seekers. http://www.sixtiescity.com/charts/69chart.htm#bestalb69

Yet do any of us know who The Seekers are or care who they are? I'm sure there are some, but the fact of the matter is that over decades we chose who to keep and immortalize, while forgetting the rest. If you think for one minute that Ke$ha is going to be remembered 10 or even 20 years from now, then you have very low standards of the human race. I'm sure a few fans will cling on, but she will be spat out by the music industry and left to waste away in the memory of time.

Don't believe me? We're already doing it with the '90's. I use to be a moderator on a pretty popular music forum and last year we had a large influx of new members who were born in the mid to late '90's. They thought of themselves as '90's kids and loved every underground album that came out in that decade and were constantly going on about how they wished they could have lived through those times to experience the music first hand. Many of the older members (myself included) who grew up in the '90's kept on trying to convince them that not every high school student in the '90's listened to bands like Slint, Primus, or Faith No More. In fact, none of us could really recall connecting with many of the big name albums at that time like "Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magic" or "Nevermind" (although I think that was more due to embarrassment and the unwillingness to admit we were angsty grunge teenagers), but these new members just could not get around this. We tried to explain that the popular bands of the time were Boyz 2 Men, Whitney Houston, Kris Kross, Garth Brooks, and Shania Twain. How many of these groups are remembered fondly today? Whitney Houston is mostly known for being a coke whore, Kris Kross are remembered for dressing like idiots, Garth Brooks has some following still, but mostly he's known his fans being the "average Americans" that would make Peter Griffin blush. We've cherry picked what we want to remember and left the rest to rot. In a decade or two kids will be talking about how much music sucks in the year 2030 while the music of 2010 and 2011 was where it's at.

Bottom line is that comparing the new music of today to the music of yesterday is unfair because we've carefully selected what we want to remember.

 

[lacktheknack]

Millionaires is the same as above. The OPs example "Party Like A Millionaire" is utterly fantastic, except the lyrics which make my blood boil. Seriously, make an exact recording where they sing "wah wah wah wah wah" instead of "I don't give a fuck/gonna dance like a slut", and I'd buy it.

If anything, I'm kind of glad that YouTube is bringing so much attention to these people. (And if BonsaiK reads this, yes. I just agreed that the Millionaires are fantastic, lyrics aside.)

But its more the lyrical aspect that I'm curious about. You admit that they can write catchy songs, but it sounds like you are put off by the amoral and vacuous lyrics.
Considering the setting that these songs are intended for being played in, I don't think you can really hold them being vacuous against them. If you are in a club/at a party, you don't really want to sit there thinking about the deep meanings behind the lyrics, you just want someone describing what you are doing/wanting to do right now.
The moral aspect of the lyrics is what seems to put most people off. These are young people who are being very explicit about their enjoyment of sex and drugs. Are we not falling for the same thing as the people in the 50s that complained about Elvis' hips?

I guess time will tell. Something tells me that it is unlikely that the Millionaires will be the next Elvis, Velvet Underground or AC/DC. However, to write them off for singing about doing coke and being promiscuous would be put me right in the category of all previous "fogies".

Now you see, I'm a fogey and proud of it. I don't even go clubbing. I'm saying that their tunes would be great as a mood lift or a car dance, because I'm old-fashioned that way.

 

[Sandernista]

Pop music will never ever be good but it will always be there to cater to stupid kids.

I like some older music, I like some more modern music.

But pop has always sucked.

Yeah, way to rule out an entire genre of music and make yourselves look like complete asshats :|

I don't like pop. I just don't.

This makes me an asshat?

"I don't like pop" is a completely different statement from "Pop has always sucked". :/

Let me clarify.

I don't like pop, so in my opinion pop has always sucked.

For me.

 

[Bedewyr]

This whole thread is about opinions, so you're being pretty silly by attacking me. As for bland punk inspired bands, try Green Day, Fallout Boy, My Chemical Romance, and basically the entirety of both Pop Punk and Emo music. Even Screamo and Hardcore are nothing but punk mixed with metal. They're all descendants of punk in some form or fashion, and they all share the common ancestor of grunge.

Except Green Day had a lot of much better earlier music. Only with the release of Dookie could you see them being cleaned up, pressed and prepped for the mainstream.

Along comes Waiting and everyone only likes Minority and the Album is widely held as shit (though it's one of my favourites.) Then you have the experimental and fairly sellout American Idiot and now the complete 100% sellout, mainstream, garbage, pop punk/emo, 21st Century Breakdown.

You said that they need to know how to play their instruments and hav th basics then cite Green Day as one of these bland, punk inspired bands lumped in with the rest of the refuse but, they clearly do know how to play their instruments and have that foundation. Anyone who has tried to learn their songs knows that.

Just because Nirvana gave way to the grunge scene (which gave us such great bands as Smashing Pumpkins, Garbage, Alice in Chains, etc, etc) and Punk (which actually pre-dated Grunge anyways...) essentially killed off Hair Metal and Glam Rock (which you stated to be genres you enjoy) is not a reason to state that everything that came out of it was utter trash. It's clearly not as they both also gave rise to the Alternative Scene which gave us many many more new, interesting, and great bands.

Add to the fact that you say Grunge and Punk were systematically created to destroy those is laughable. The Punk movement was alive in the 70's a full decade BEFORE Hair Metal even rose to its heights in the 80's. Sure Grunge made Hair Metal and Glam Rock less popular but, Punk? Give me a break. You sound like a Conspiracy Theorist.