There is something very, very wrong with today’s music

[Keith_W]

Another reason why modern music sucks: melody is dead.

 

[Gringoaudio1]

 

[KellenVancouver]

Through the decades I've tended to embrace the changes in music, while still liking a good share of the oldies. I could name dozens of groups today I think are fantastic. But let's not wear rosy glasses here. As much as I love some of the old stuff there was plenty of crap music in the past. More than plenty. Imagine if you had to live through this song being played over the radio incessantly, during a time when radio was the go-to for music. Absolute torture.

 

[IPunchCholla]

The thing about music is that it is an art (duh). One that all human cultures seem compelled to create. Give people plastic buckets and a bit of time and likely as not they will come up with something aurally interesting. Whether that tickles my fancy, doesn’t make the sound good or bad. Give artists ”rules” they have to follow and eventually, some creative person will find a way to break those rules in interesting and compelling ways, even though, by the “rules”, the music is bad. For visual reference the impressionists, cubists, Duchamp, etc.

And yes there will always be a ton of “bad” music relative to the music I enjoy, but if I am honest with myself, even most of the music I don’t like, isn’t bad objectively*. It’s just that I don’t enjoy it. Which is fine. What bothers me on this thread is the dismissal of entire genres of music as bad without explicitly showing what the evaluators are and showing that those evaluators are somehow inherently true. It bothers me, because it often seems like a way of simply reinforcing one’s own biases by dismissing traditions that don’t fit the form. In other words, many of the accusations of being bad are directed against Rap, Hip hop, and its descendants (trance, much EDM, most of Pop these days etc.), music associated with marginalized groups.

I don’t like much Rap. It probably makes up less than 1% of my library. But I do recognize there is a ton of good rap out there, it just isn’t my thing, and the history of it (like the history of Jazz) is fascinating. But if we are hoping to talk about good music on a science site, it might be interesting to try and come up with some definition of good and bad that don’t simply reflect the biases of one particular cultural tradition. Is it possible to make up rules that would apply equally to human non-language sound generation from all traditions. Anything else is just ”old person yells at clouds”, which is fun to do, less fun to listen to.

*I don’t have any idea how to define bad music, objectively.

 

[MajorMajorMajorMajor]

There’s lots of good new music being made. It just doesn’t get played on the radio.

Examples?

 

[Gringoaudio1]

Examples?

Look at my post three posts back. And the following four lists. My most played in 2022. May not be for you. I’ve been listening to music since my first Beatles album in 1967. People used to come to my parties just for the music they had never heard playing on my party mix on the reel to reel. Wide tastes and aware of a lot of what is out there.

 

[Gringoaudio1]

 

[Gringoaudio1]

 

[Gringoaudio1]

 

[Gringoaudio1]

 

[Gringoaudio1]

 

[DonR]

Look at my post three posts back. And the following four lists. My most played in 2022. May not be for you. I’ve been listening to music since my first Beatles album in 1967. People used to come to my parties just for the music they had never heard playing on my party mix on the reel to reel. Wide tastes and aware of a lot of what is out there.

So do you feel it's more a case of music isn't necessarily worse but what is made mainstream has become worse? or is it we tend to look back with a filter?

 

[Gringoaudio1]

Yes the former. I believe that the music business has become even more cynical and music is more of a commodity than it ever was. And kids listen to shit and then make more shit to aspire to the top ten. Oops I’m sounding like the grumpy old men I’ve been harsh on!
I mean Crosby Stills Nash And Young used to be mainstream. That kind of quality on the radio is ancient history. Gad I really am a fogey. Hahaha! Rick Beato has some good perspective on it in his awesome YouTube channel.

 

[Doodski]

Yes the former. I believe that the music business has become even more cynical and music is more of a commodity than it ever was. And kids listen to shit and then make more shit to aspire to the top ten. Oops I’m sounding like the grumpy old men I’ve been harsh on!
I mean Crosby Stills Nash And Young used to be mainstream. That kind of quality on the radio is ancient history. Gad I really am a fogey. Hahaha! Rick Beato has some good perspective on it in his awesome YouTube channel.

I think this is a ebb and flow of art as song and music. I just don't listen to it. /the new stuff. Nobody knows where we will be in 50 years.

 

[DonR]

Yes the former. I believe that the music business has become even more cynical and music is more of a commodity than it ever was. And kids listen to shit and then make more shit to aspire to the top ten. Oops I’m sounding like the grumpy old men I’ve been harsh on!
I mean Crosby Stills Nash And Young used to be mainstream. That kind of quality on the radio is ancient history. Gad I really am a fogey. Hahaha! Rick Beato has some good perspective on it in his awesome YouTube channel.

Yes, I posted his video earlier. We also used to listen to music on proper home stereos rather than soundbars and wireless earbuds.

 

[Gringoaudio1]

Sorry all those lists had the song that was playing at the time on Spotify at the bottom of the screenshot. ‘Just like Heaven’ by The Cure. I should have cropped those screenshots.

 

[BinkieHuckerback]

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. Every generation thinks that their music is the best. Tiresome!

 

[Gringoaudio1]

I don’t. I am open to all the new music of the day. I do think that mainstream music is shit and has been for decades. While artists toil in obscurity mining the depths of human experience and emotion pop stars go for the shallow effects and fame.

 

[BinkieHuckerback]

I reckon the Beatles and the Rolling Stones weren't adverse to the 'shallow effects and fame' back in the day. I think that some people say that their music expressed 'human experience and emotion'. No doubt some critics thought their music was 'shit' (though maybe more politely expressed at the time).

 

[krabapple]

My interest is more for 'classical' music than pop/rock, and every BBC Prom season here I despair at the new compositions being performed, sometimes premiered, at each year's proms. Why do most modern compositions sound like someone throwing a piano down the stairs? It's all Pink-Plonk, Crash, Screech, Bang. No melody or tune one can whistle or hum. Nothing remotely memorable except for its awfulness. It's not even a recent phenomenon, it goes back at least 50 years, but the lack of melody, the lack of a tune, seems to characterise contemporary 'classical' music. It's as if dynamics (as in crash-bang) and dissonance have taken over from creating a harmonious sound.

I can hum along to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, even modern composers like Walton and Elgar, but spare me mid-late 20th Century onwards.

S.

If you think Walton and Elgar represent 'modern' your tastes are quite conservative.