Music nowadays is shit: Discuss. (2 Viewers)

[washingcattle]

... though having said all that, perhaps I am the sort of person washingcattle is railing against. In the last few years I'm no longer interested in depressing shit - I have of course watched Raging Bull, read Ana Karenina etc, but that was when I was younger. I gave up on Breaking Bad, for example, cos it was bringing me down. Maybe it's a phase I'l get over eventually, who knows

Let's be clear I'm not railing against you, it's fine for you to not want to deal with certain types of work.

And honestly fair play to you for admitting it, some folks secretly feel the way you do and say they love things like Breaking Bad when secretly they just want to watch X Factor or their Friends box set (I'm not accusing you of loving either of those). All of that is fine.

If you were the head of a record label or a "curator" of an internet site it would be a huge problem, unfortunately it seems many folks in those positions share that attitude.

Music, perhaps isn't shit so much as it is safe. And yes I will admit to railing against that wholeheartedly.

 

[Lili Marlene]

aside from the hipsters who proudly announce that they don't own a television.

I don't own a television. It's great.

 

[Kermit McDermott]

I have two TV's and I would love to be a hipster...but I love TV too much to get rid of them.

 

[washingcattle]

I haven't got a TV either. I don't think that's particularly hipster rather more a financial decision, it's about £120 for the TV plus £145 a year for the licence plus whatever it costs a month for a decent channel package because frankly BBC C4 and ITV wouldn't be worth the hassle especially since you can watch most of their shows online and skip the ads.

Plus TV becomes unwatchable once you've been away from it for a while. Not being able to skip/block adverts seems so archaic.

I watched Kick Ass on TV when I was home over christmas and it took 2 and a half hours to do so. Fuck that. I'm a busy man.

 

[Diumraid]

Ahem!
Modern record making seems to be all about making a sensational sound rather than actually being 'musical' as such. Melody lines are often mindlessly repetitive or full-on tuneless and harmonic interest is thin on the ground. All the singers seem to be drawing from a horrendously tiny pool of styles - and it's as bad or worse on a local level. Particularly for female singers - ding-dong!, who is it? It's Stina Nordenstam - she wants her voice back, and give her Bjork's while you're at it!

 

[Lili Marlene]

"Modern record making" is a category encompassing all albums....

do you like zero modern music?

 

[Diumraid]

"Modern record making" is a category encompassing all albums....

do you like zero modern music?

I guess a lot of what can possibly be done is being done somewhere and I'm sure I'll love it when I eventually get to hear it. I'm talking mostly about the 'race to the top' that the charts has sometimes been.

On the non-chart side of things I got a good listen to Goat doing a live set today and I can't shake the disappointment. Sounds like a dream when described - sounds like a lot of hokey, arm-chancer arse in reality. Biggest letdown since the Master Musicians of Bukkake. Most of what I like that's being made now is very much plugged into an older way of doing things, mostly by older people.

 

[Lili Marlene]

I'm going to listen to that Goat album again actually, and see if I can figure out why thumped thought it was ok to wear masks and talk about magic and not be mercilessly mocked.


There was a great article in the New Yorker a while back about modern hit makers and their lab way of making hits. It's nothing everyone didn't already know but it was still bizarre to hear them talking about it; having a topline person, a harmony person, a lyrics person, a 'vibe' person and so on... all working to create pop songs.

oh, and they're all total assholes with terrible taste in music.

 

[Space]

I've been really impressed with this album.

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[egg_]

Plus TV becomes unwatchable once you've been away from it for a while.

Totally. It's far less boring to do nothing at all

 

[egg_]

There was a great article in the New Yorker a while back about modern hit makers and their lab way of making hits. It's nothing everyone didn't already know but it was still bizarre to hear them talking about it; having a topline person, a harmony person, a lyrics person, a 'vibe' person and so on... all working to create pop songs.

I was talking to John-out-of-stoat there a while ago about that article, and describing the way the top-line writer came in and just kind of dicked around with ideas off the top of her head, over the top of the music that the beats guys had already done. He said "sure isn't that how everyone writes songs - dicks around until they find one bit that sounds good, then dicks around trying to make up the next bit".

And it is. The only difference with the pop world is people specialise in different bits.

 

[Diumraid]

I was talking to John-out-of-stoat there a while ago about that article, and describing the way the top-line writer came in and just kind of dicked around with ideas off the top of her head, over the top of the music that the beats guys had already done. He said "sure isn't that how everyone writes songs - dicks around until they find one bit that sounds good, then dicks around trying to make up the next bit".

And it is. The only difference with the pop world is people specialise in different bits.

Beg very much to differ. The engineer types of this world conceive of what they want to do and then set about doing it - it either succeeds or fails on whether or not it ends up being exactly what they wanted. very different to musical fishing.

 

[Lili Marlene]

I wonder... there is an argument that could be made that music is bad these days because there is no money in it. The talented people who want to do something creative aren't dumb and know they need to chase the money. So maybe people who in the 60's and 70's might have gone into music, these days go into, say, writing for tv shows.

It would be an idea that 'musical talent' isn't a calling but more a choice. So now that there's no money in it the only people left are the people who like music too much and can't see the wood for the trees when it comes to writing music. So we end up with self indulgent nonsense that means nothing to anyone bar the author or overly weak, cynical attempts at writing pop songs that the author(s) has/have no faith in.

I guess once Netflix destroys all the tv channels and the money is gone there as well we'll find out what happens to decent tv shows.



Just thinking out loud here, this all might be very obvious to everyone else.

 

[Space]

I'd say replace tv shows with advertising/corporate graphic design and you may have a strong point.

 

[egg_]

Beg very much to differ. The engineer types of this world conceive of what they want to do and then set about doing it - it either succeeds or fails on whether or not it ends up being exactly what they wanted

Well ... that article @Lili Marlene mentioned describes Stargate or one of those pop writing teams in action, and how they're doing it sounds very like how I do it. The results are quite different, obviously, but the process seems very similar

Anyway, I guess the a lot of the arguments on this thread are based on the idea that music nowadays is shit. I really don't think it is. I've got as much out of some of the new music of the last 3 years as I've got out of any music ever

 

[Shorty]

Any opinions on this article?

The Trouble with Contemporary Music Criticism | Article | Tiny Mix Tapes | Page 1

I think there's some interesting ideas in the main part but felt there were some argumentative leaps made in the final three concluding parts.

Some intersting stuff around the democratisation of production but not consumption. I've also heard other ideas elsewhere on technological changes in the consumption of music but less so in it's production, wondering how the two combine.

It also didn't link into wider yet related social issues, but I guess that's not what the article was trying to be.

 

[ann post]

TLDR

 

[ann post]

Anyone else watch the grammys?

 

[hugh]

Any opinions on this article?

The Trouble with Contemporary Music Criticism | Article | Tiny Mix Tapes | Page 1

Thanks for posting that. I felt much the same about Retromania i.e. his whole thesis is based on this modernist idea of "shock of the new"/continual progress/this new thing supplants that old thing etc.

 

[therealjohnny]

I'm going to listen to that Goat album again actually, and see if I can figure out why thumped thought it was ok to wear masks and talk about magic and not be mercilessly mocked.

I need to know more about this 'goat' you speak of