Today's "music"

[Canadave]

Dont worry..I had the same problems back in the 'day' with David Bowie. My friends liked him for his 'strangeness' and being different..I thought he was, and still is, an awful singer...but millions love the dude, so what do I know?

Rob

David Bowie's one of my all-time favourite artists. It's too bad he doesn't appeal to you.

Anyway, I find that a lot of the best music these days comes from indie bands. The Arcade Fire, for instance, have made some incredible music:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEZockGkEyY&feature=related[/yt]

The Decemberists are another whose work I enjoy:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK3Ce9md96g[/yt]

Oh, and for anyone who thinks that rock died after the 70s, I invite you to check out The Tragically Hip and Sam Roberts:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_RSJ6xuHbE[/yt]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71EnaOs-Xdk[/yt]

My appreciation of most new music ended around 1991.

Great to see a fellow BNL fan. They've been at or near the top of my favourite bands list for years.

 

[RobertScorpio]

^^ I did China Girl...I hope that helps...

Rob

 

[A beaker full of death]

All pop (alternative, whatever) music since the early 90s sounds the same to me. Just a lot of whining and some intermittent screaming. I blame Cobain.

 

[RobertScorpio]

Manilow's original Copacabanna was about this lady, Lola, who was a lush in the 1970s, dreaming of the days when she was a hot dancer in the swanky clubs back in the 1940s..."But that was 30 years ago" he sings....now, it would be nearly 70 years ago..

Rob

 

[Drunk Superman]

All pop (alternative, whatever) music since the early 90s sounds the same to me. Just a lot of whining and some intermittent screaming. I blame Cobain.

The more things change...

 

[Daneel]

Earlier in the thread, some people were saying that there's some good new music out there, but you won't hear it on the radio. Maybe this is why I can't really think of any contemporary music I'm that into: pretty much everything I listen to is on the radio.

I find I generally stick with stations that play older(ish) stuff -- basically anything pre-21st century. In fact, I just found one that plays songs exclusively from the 60s to the 80s... good stuff.

The irony of all this is that I was actually born in the 80s. I never really liked any of the music that was popular with my age group -- rap, hip-hop, alt-rock, emo-rock, grunge, heavy metal... very little of it appealed to me. So my musical tastes have always tended to be a couple of decades out of date. Geez, between that and my love of Trek, it's no wonder I was so massively unpopular in high school.

 

[Ryan]

For some modern "great" groups might I suggest MUSE, Coldplay or The White Stripes?

I'll give you Muse, The White Stripes broke out way back in 2001, and, really, Coldplay? I'm not going to pretend they're bad or anything but they don't have a whole lot of substance.

There were definitely good bands that carved a niche for themselves but there wasn't ever a cohesive sound and a major breakout group dominating it. In the preceding decades we had metal, NWBHM, thrash, glam, grunge, and nu-metal. Maybe the closest we got in the last 10 years is experimental.

I don't know if this is because downloading has made the record industry far less likely to invest in a sound that isn't established or if it's because of the Clear Channel-ization of radio but it's bleak.

 

[Pingfah]

^ Huh? Are you saying that the White Stripes are not modern because they broke out 9 years ago?

Besides, Muse's big breakout album was in 2001 as well, although it wasn't so big in the US, but they've been massive in Europe and Australia for at least as long as The White Stripes. I saw them in 1998 around the time their first EP came out.

 

[FordSVT]

Cold Play had a brilliant first album, but subsequently have become very boring to me. Kind of a one trick pony IMO.

 

[john titor]

Todays music is shit, there are a few exceptions but generally its totally utterly shit. Stupid rnb crap, skinny jeans indie bullshit, lame teeny bopper metal, screamo or whatever you call it, it all sucks.

 

[Mistral]

Todays music is shit, there are a few exceptions but generally its totally utterly shit. Stupid rnb crap, skinny jeans indie bullshit, lame teeny bopper metal, screamo or whatever you call it, it all sucks.

So nice to hear from the educated half of our panel.

I heard similar comments 20 years ago and I'm sure contemporaries of my own parents were saying similar stuff in the 70s. the bottom line on that "point" is-there's always been piles of crap and mediocrity in pop music. Hindsight highlights the gems and the works of wonder but when the music was current the listener had to wade thru the garbage to get to it. As an 80s teen, if I NEVER hear "Abracadabra" by Steve Miller again I'll still go to my grave loathing it. Its taken 20 years to learn to tolerate Men At Work. But the 80s gave us Tears For Fears, Simple Minds and The Eurythmics too. You take the good with the bad-and there is usually plenty of both in any era.

 

[Geckothan]

The year is 1972 and Jethro Tull have just released their latest effort, Thick as a Brick. It consists of a single song spanning 2 whole LP sides. The musical content is creative, technically challenging, well executed and bursting with artistic excellence. It even hits #1 on the Billboard 200, we're talking about a FORTY MINUTE SONG here. This isn't rare, throughout the 70s, at least until some businessman realised that he could tap into the angst of the working class and exploit it for profit with the invention of punk, all sorts of imaginative music was seeing massive commercial success.

Fast forward 38 years and what sort of crap are we seeing at the top of the charts? Lady GaGa, generic rap/dance, American Idol/X-Factor winners and crappy indie (on major labels, how independent of them). For the most part, this stuff has been manufactured purely to make money, isn't of any real artistic merit and usually isn't even written by the performer, who essentially functions as a trained monkey.

This isn't to say that good music isn't being made nowadays, but it's proof that popular music has gone downhill at the very least. While it's true that back in "the day", older generations used to make the same complaints that we do about today's popular music, the fact is that much of the popular music from the 60s and 70s is timeless, still sounds fresh today, and will continue to be remembered and revered for generations to come (as I've already said in a previous post). On the other hand, most of the popular music of the last decade has already been forgotten. The stuff coming out is so throwaway, derivative and easy to produce that new acts pop up every month, top the charts and subsequently disappear. For the most part, only already well-established acts survived the decade.

 

[zakkrusz]

Personally, I've never been one to make rash and utterly foolish generalizations, and I know them when I see them, so I have to call BS on this issue. I'm a rock and metal guy, mostly anyway, born on the 80's. (Though I listen to a little of everything really.) Nothing whatsoever has changed, there's plenty of good music out there that I listen to, plenty of good stuff that was made before I was born, and plenty of good music made now.

 

[john titor]

Todays music is shit, there are a few exceptions but generally its totally utterly shit. Stupid rnb crap, skinny jeans indie bullshit, lame teeny bopper metal, screamo or whatever you call it, it all sucks.

So nice to hear from the educated half of our panel.

I heard similar comments 20 years ago and I'm sure contemporaries of my own parents were saying similar stuff in the 70s. the bottom line on that "point" is-there's always been piles of crap and mediocrity in pop music. Hindsight highlights the gems and the works of wonder but when the music was current the listener had to wade thru the garbage to get to it. As an 80s teen, if I NEVER hear "Abracadabra" by Steve Miller again I'll still go to my grave loathing it. Its taken 20 years to learn to tolerate Men At Work. But the 80s gave us Tears For Fears, Simple Minds and The Eurythmics too. You take the good with the bad-and there is usually plenty of both in any era.

No, history follows a wave function and right now were in a trough for music, its not a dc offset. This is the worst period ever. This is a trough. We don't have artists coming up like Supergrass, Radiohead, Nirvana, NIN, Alice in Chains, RATM, Suede, The Pixies, Beck of Limp Bizkit anymore. All we have now is Lady Gaga and indie rock for wimps sung in faux mockney accents. Theres one word for it, bullshit.

 

[Bad Bishop]

There are very few record labels today. How does this impact the quality of music?

 

[Lookingglassman]

I am an 80's guy. The 90's, for me, was a decade of "whiny losers" A bunch of rich, young losers singing whiny songs about how terrible their life is or how the world is so wrong. WHO CARES!! You are worth a bazillion dollars so you aint got problems. Give me Motley Crue singing about having "Nothing but a good time" anyday.

 

[Drunk Superman]

I am an 80's guy. The 90's, for me, was a decade of "whiny losers" A bunch of rich, young losers singing whiny songs about how terrible their life is or how the world is so wrong. WHO CARES!! You are worth a bazillion dollars so you aint got problems. Give me Motley Crue singing about having "Nothing but a good time" anyday.

The worst part of the 80s music scene, Motley Crue and their ilk.

 

[PlainSimpleJoel]

Besides, Muse's big breakout album was in 2001 as well, although it wasn't so big in the US, but they've been massive in Europe and Australia for at least as long as The White Stripes. I saw them in 1998 around the time their first EP came out.

I remember buying Showbiz album sometime in 1999. Been a fan of Muse since then.

Cold Play had a brilliant first album, but subsequently have become very boring to me. Kind of a one trick pony IMO.

I always like a "Rush a blood to the head" more than their first album.

There is plenty of good music out there? How many people here know of Mumford & Sons or Karnivool? Both of these bands I listened to a lot over the last 12 months. I'm lucky that here in Australia we have a radio station called Triple J, who play lots of good alternative music.

 

[Scotty]

No, history follows a wave function and right now were in a trough for music, its not a dc offset. This is the worst period ever. This is a trough. We don't have artists coming up like Supergrass, Radiohead, Nirvana, NIN, Alice in Chains, RATM, Suede, The Pixies, Beck of Limp Bizkit anymore. All we have now is Lady Gaga and indie rock for wimps sung in faux mockney accents. Theres one word for it, bullshit.

I'm not really sure about that wave effect. What I do know that music like most forms of art is subject to fashion. Rock just isn't in these days, something I for one don't really have a problem with. I am seeing or rather hearing a lot of jazz and seventies inspired music, which seems to be the latest fashion.

Still, it's all a matter of taste and opinion. I didn't care for any of the bands you mentioned there John titor. You don't seem to care for indie music. Doesn't mean that today's music is bullshit. Perhaps you just have to get with the times and try something new.

 

[Crash]

Facts are facts, basically. Rock really began having troubles in the late '90s with the continued rise of mega-tours that began to dip into what was marginally the independent scene (It's hard to call labels like Victory or Drive-Thru -- amongst many others -- independent given their relationships with major labels). This ended up with stuff liked Warped Tour -- on the punk side -- dominating the summer tour schedule. What you had was a bunch of bigger bands who ended up on those mega-tours instead of putting together club tours and taking those newer or smaller bands out on the road with them. The result: we witnessed a rash of venue closures in the late '90s and early '00s that closed off options to a lot of smaller bands.

I'd argue the internet hasn't been kind to rock music, either. There was an initial boom where a lot of independent labels and bands were noticed, but hot on their heels has been a huge amount of unfiltered crap that most people interested in music have to deal with. It used to be that you could trust independent labels to act as a filter for crap, but with the ease of self-promotion and self-recording those indies have been somewhat shelved. Unless you know a label's general trends and something about what you're looking for to even find them online you're pretty much lost in the wilderness of self-promoting, non-label self-starters who, in all likelihood, suck.

But, hey, there have been a number of good records this past decade. You just need to know where to look more than ever these days.

Edit: Oh, and here's my nominee for possibly the worst thing ever to touch American culture. If you last more than ten seconds I'll be impressed.