Music Today: What happened? (Short Rant)

Its nothing to do with getting old, the music industry is in shambles an has been for some years now. Terrible music is terrible music no matter what decade comes into question.
 
R and B used to mean Rhythm and Blues ,not T and A,i love metal,rock,blues and classical,can't stand the in thing,never got into Rap.
Music of black origin used to mean Blues,gospel,then it became the forerunner to rock n roll,now it's about,drugs,guns,ho's and money and how many songs you can rip off and swear over.
My music collection still contains stuff i heard from my parents,Queen,Meatloaf,Yes,the stuff i found on my own in my younger days,Adam and the Ants,Madness,and then the stuff that shaped who i am musically,GUNS AND ROSES,OZZY etc

There are only 2 rock channels on tv and all the rest is pop and (c)rap and some of the new rock is pop mixed with shouty voices and (c)rap

Age gets us all ,but at 41 i KNOW im RIGHT...........LOL
 
I was just thinking this recently. I was out in my backyard and some neighbors girls, who were probably 8-10 years old, had a song cranked that had a catchy tune. But as soon as I started hearing the lyrics, I was like, WTF are they listening to? The song was talking about suicide and other stuff. I was interested to find the song, so I googled some of the lyrics and found it -'I Must Be Emo' by Hollywood Undead. I was amazed that the parents were letting them listen to this song at 8-10 years of age.

some of the lyrics - "Stop my breathing and slit my throat", "They say they already have a *****, they don't need another one", "When I get depressed I cut my wrists in every direction", "Hearing songs about getting dumped give me an erection"

I don't know, but maybe I'm just old.

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I can not understand how people try and justify the state of most music today with "You people are getting old" That is a load of crap. At what age is hearing about cutting wrists ok?.
 
My view is that the state of the music is a symptom of the present generation where kids want everything handed to them and where they dont keep score at sports so that nobody is a looser and everybody wins for participating. There is a difference between looping a 4 bars music loop constantly for 3 minutes and adding non-sense lyric to it vs. composing a true musical piece that is melodic with an awesome guitar solo....

I just watched this year's induction ceremony to the R&R Hall of Fame yesterday (was re-aires) and these are great deserving musicians... Even Axel although he refused to show up. =)
 
Orange_Blend said:
:lol Milli Vanilli actually perfectly illustrates that it's not a "today" thing. They were 20 years ago...

Since the late 50's image has been a big driving force in the music industry. It's just a fact of life. It's more apparent in some eras than others but it's always there.

As for what happened to the music? We got old(er).
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Goes with what I was saying though - it was when the video portion of music came into being. If it was 10 years prior, it wouldn't have mattered at all if the guys doing the actual singing weren't attractive because short of a concert, you'd never see them.

Most likely, a guy like Steven Tyler wouldn't be in music if he started up in the last 10ish years.

You also didn't get acts who's voices are as heavily manipulated digitally as they are today. I've heard stuff on the radio and was just stunned and thinking I could record pretty much anyone's voices and process it enough to get the exact same thing. It started in the early 90's, that you had to be good looking in order to land a gig and it progressively degenerated to the point of you just have to look good to get a deal. If you can't sing, it's not a problem we can fix it in post. There may have been acts in the 60's, 70's, and 80's signed for their looks, but they had to have some musical talent. Perhaps the most obvious example would be the Monkees who were created for the TV show, but I their actual voices were used in the music. They were bothered by the fact they were outed as not actually able to learn to play their instruments so they learned how to do it. Don't think you'll see that happen in today's music. As long as they can lip sync on stage or flick all the right switches on the 10-20M of sound boards on a concert to make a bad voice sound good the person doing the 'singing' will just keep cashing the checks. Plus, i'm sure the studio's have an iron clad contract to keep them from quitting or outing what's going on.

Rap came on to the scene when I was of the age that it was 'today's hot thing' - i never was into it. Never liked it. It's not an age thing. There is music of today I do like, just not very much. Perhaps i'm just hearing the wrong stuff, but as someone else said, the stuff labeled 'pop' just seems to have no musical ability behind it. Taking someone who can't sing and using 10's of thousands of dollars of computer equipment to make the voice sound good isn't music. It's computer science. Drum tracks should be played on drums, not as computer tracks, etc.

Elvis may have been an attractive and supremely easy to market in his day because of it, but you can't deny he had actual musical talent. Dancing IS NOT a musical talent, but it almost seems to be a prerequisite if you want to be in pop music today.
 
cboath said:
Goes with what I was saying though - it was when the video portion of music came into being. If it was 10 years prior, it wouldn't have mattered at all if the guys doing the actual singing weren't attractive because short of a concert, you'd never see them.
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Fair enough, but now we're calling "music today" the last 70 years...

cboath said:
Perhaps the most obvious example would be the Monkees who were created for the TV show, but I their actual voices were used in the music. They were bothered by the fact they were outed as not actually able to learn to play their instruments so they learned how to do it.
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:lol Yes their actual voices were used but they're an example of a completely manufactured look and sound, regardless if they learned how to play instruments eventually or not. Backstreet boys used their own voices and didn't pretend to play anything. I hate their music but in that regard they have more integrity as a group than the Monkees did.

cboath said:
Rap came on to the scene when I was of the age that it was 'today's hot thing' - i never was into it. Never liked it. It's not an age thing.
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Me too, never was into it. But that's a genre, not "music today".

cboath said:
Elvis may have been an attractive and supremely easy to market in his day because of it, but you can't deny he had actual musical talent. Dancing IS NOT a musical talent, but it almost seems to be a prerequisite if you want to be in pop music today.
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I certainly can't deny he had talent! But there is PLENTY of genuine talent today, even if I don't like it. Adele, Beyonce, even Bieber (and I hate Bieber but he IS talented). Like everything you have to wade through the *****. My grandmother tried to tell me that movies were so much better in the 40's and 50's. The reason she thinks that is she only remembers the good stuff, memory has a way of filtering out all the garbage and picking out the gems. She said this in the 80's lamenting the films of that decade, you know, like Indy, Ghostbusters, Star Wars, BTTF, Star Trek, and most of the other much loved franchises here.

Yes, I generally don't like the "music of today" and digital manipulation bugs me, but there was a time when artists considered microphones cheating. Just listen to what you like.
 
I'm rapidly coming up on a mildly curmudgeonly 40, and I hear stuff on the local college station at least once a month that makes me go buy new music. I still love the 70s and 80s rock I grew up on, but there's plenty of great new stuff out there too. I can guarantee that you won't hear any of it on your corporate cookie-cutter Cumulus or Clear Channel World Domination Network radio stations, though.

These days it seems one is much better off listening to Pandora or one of the other internet-based music services, with the ability to tailor "stations" to your preference, and also to use their suggestions to find new bands/songs in similar genres you might not know about.

Oh, and get off my lawn.
 
Rick Hanson said:
I'm rapidly coming up on a mildly curmudgeonly 40, and I hear stuff on the local college station at least once a month that makes me go buy new music. I still love the 70s and 80s rock I grew up on, but there's plenty of great new stuff out there too. I can guarantee that you won't hear any of it on your corporate cookie-cutter Cumulus or Clear Channel World Domination Network radio stations, though.

These days it seems one is much better off listening to Pandora or one of the other internet-based music services, with the ability to tailor "stations" to your preference, and also to use their suggestions to find new bands/songs in similar genres you might not know about.

Oh, and get off my lawn.
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Exactly. There are plenty of good, current artists out there. Stop listening to commercial radio if you want to find them. I'd be more than happy to start naming things I think everyone should listen to.
 
dbuck said:
It's an age thing.
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In my opinion, this simple statement sums it up nicely. Let me explain.

Yes, at the age of 50 I believe I'm too old for most of the "popular" music that has been created in the last 10 years or so. That's because most of the bands creating that music are young enough to be my children. Yes, there's a generation gap but, more to the point, I'm no longer in the demographic the music industry has decided to produce this music for. I don't have the mindset of today's "25 and under" crowd; how could I? They are growing up in a different era with different experinces than I had at that age. So I realize "modern" music isn't being made for me, and hasn't been for several years now.

Of course, I can only speak for myself. Certainly there are people my age who have an appreciation for all types of music from all eras; I know two or three of them. And I have an appreciation for a lot of music that was written before I was born. But 99.9% of what was created after, say, the late 90s I have no interest in, and I'm fine with that. Let the "kids" have their music just as we did, I'm fine listening to "the oldies".
 
People don't listen to lyrics, period. Remember in the 80's when even kids were running around with "Frankie says Relax" t-shirts because people didn't get the song? I was too young to know what it meant, other than hearing the song on MTV. I was watching a VH1 thing recently about best songs ever or something and they explained it (hadn't heard it for a looong time) and I was like "WTF? Kids were wearing those shirts!" :lol

Don't get me started on Kesha, who sounds like she's out of tune...
 
I appreciate hip-hop, some rock, a very small amount of country.
I do pay attention to the lyrics and alot of times the same ideas are being recycled by the same artist! As long as it sounds good I'm happy.
Hearing crappy lyrics give's me something to laugh at and dance around like a fool in the car.
 
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