crikey! - pop music just SUCKS!!

[jnorman]

damn - i know i am old now, but i grew up on the beatles, pink floyd, Yes, jethro tull, led zep, zz top, the eagles, joni mitchell, james taylor, CSNY, and kept up with pop music all the way through hair metal quite enjoying all the incredible guitar work from groups like def leppard, van halen, and steve vai. then all of a sudden, pop music went through a catharsis with the advent of nirvana, and there was no decent music left to be found amost anywhere. musical skills went out the window. prodcution values went to hell as everybody became their own recording engineer, etc. and now - i cant even turn on the f***ing radio anymore.

 

black eyed peas? jeebus, what repetitive tripe. bow-wow - ha ha ha! the fact that they had to bring back mariah carey to the pop scene speaks volumes by itself. avril levine makes me want to puke with her insipid crap. i am sick of even rob thomas, though he is pretty good. rap can hardly be called music at all - it was midly interesting for a while, but like everything else, has degenerated (if that was even possible) into total drivel and ever more elementary and banal content. where are the artists like those i grew up on? where is the originality, the skill, the EFFORT to do something of meaning or creativity??? this pathetic current crop of "musicains" doesnt seem to have any concept of poetry or philosophy or musicianship - i just dont f**ing get it at all...

[Phil O'Keefe]

i grew up on the beatles, pink floyd, Yes, jethro tull, led zep, zz top, the eagles, joni mitchell, james taylor, CSNY, and kept up with pop music all the way through hair metal quite enjoying all the incredible guitar work from groups like def leppard, van halen, and steve vai. then all of a sudden, pop music went through a catharsis with the advent of nirvana, and there was no decent music left to be found amost anywhere. musical skills went out the window. prodcution values went to hell as everybody became their own recording engineer, etc. and now - i cant even turn on the f***ing radio anymore.

 

If you haven't already, you sir, need to check out Fountains Of Wayne.

[juineaux]

well everyone likes different styles of music....and it looks like you might be showing your age(no problem there, but pop music isn't really intended for you, unfortunately). And the bands you mentioned from the 60's & 70's were great, but you forgot about all of the awful bands that were also popular at the time.

 

And I shared your opinion of rap music for a long time, thinking it was not "really music", but I've fallen in love with some of it lately.....relizing that some of it is very original and well written(excellent lyrics, good hook, beat, production). Now(whenever I'm not buying folk CDs), I'll pick up a hip-hop CD over any modern rock CD. Mabey you just miss the guitar playing....I dunno. Look beyond the radio dial and you might find some really good current music.

[blue2blue]

I share your disdain for the big pop machine, but I still manage to find stuff that's worth listening to. Lots of outsider stuff, some 'underground' stuff that's truly innovative instead of just provocative for its own sake, and even pop stuff that's, well, pop stuff.

 

Me, I like BEP, at least for a big pop band. A couple of their tracks are truly great. Shut Up is a magical little slice of hip hop art, an update of the old 'dialog' duets from the 60s. [(ome of my favorite blues, soul, and country tunes are man-woman dialog songs... I dunno, give me Marvin and Tammy or George and Tammy [different Tammy's of course]... )

 

There's interesting stuff out there... but, yeah, mostly you ain't gonna hear it on the radio or TV.

[Duck King]

You could always check out my sig.

[Anderton]

There's good stuff out there. It's just hard to find - the "noise-to-signal" ratio is very high these days.

[blackpig]

99% of popular music is, and has always been, utter {censored}e. Anyone who likes to eulogise the halcyon days of the fifties should be made listen to "Short Shorts" by the Royal Teens.

There has always been great music too - but you won't find much on modern radio. Keep an ear open for djs that play what used to be known as "alternative" music. It's there that we'll find the likes of the Fountains Of Wayne or They Might Be Giants - even though they've now become more mainstream.

[Base]

The Birth of Britpop

 

Wasn't sure whether to use this to start a new thread, but as in coincides with the period you say began the end of any decent music, I'll post it here instead. I've only started listening to a few of the Britpop albums in the last few year, I never realised that they were supposed to be anti-UK rock and grunge. At the time I was quite happy listening to Nirvana. Interesting tho, as Nirvana and grunge were anti-corporate rock, no wonder it was all so depressing if all of it was inspired because the artists were pissed off listening to something else

 

What everyone else said tho, look around, there's still decent stuff out there, it's just very rarely in the charts...

[Ryst]

jnorman,

 

The issue here is that you are complaining about a form of media who doesn't care about you or what you want to hear anyway. They care about their advertisers. Why would you want to support a type of media that gives nothing back to the listener but more advertising of things to buy that you don't need? The music is played to keep you tuned in until the next advertisement. You definitely need to go other places to find good music.

[Mr. Botch]

Pop music hasn't degraded. Radio has. Why do you think overpriced iPods are selling the way they do?

[Jon Doe]

[rant]

 

Pop = teh big sUx - strictly Madison Ave concept. Invent a pop trend and control it's icons. You can't use real musicians because you can't manage the creative process.

 

Pop is the McDonald's of music. No substance, just marketing and availability...

 

Get off the beaten path and find the "other" stations on the dial and you will find there a LOTS of good bands out there. It's just that the major labels won't promote them because their cut would be so much less. They want to promote bands that they can totally control.

 

The major labels are managed by non-musicians. Bean counters that only care about profit margins. Art is irrelevant.

 

[/rant]

[Gabriel E.]

 

Originally posted by jnorman damn - i know i am old now, but i grew up on the beatles, pink floyd, Yes, jethro tull, led zep, zz top, the eagles, joni mitchell, james taylor, CSNY, and kept up with pop music all the way through hair metal quite enjoying all the incredible guitar work from groups like def leppard, van halen, and steve vai. then all of a sudden, pop music went through a catharsis with the advent of nirvana, and there was no decent music left to be found amost anywhere. musical skills went out the window. prodcution values went to hell as everybody became their own recording engineer, etc. and now - i cant even turn on the f***ing radio anymore. black eyed peas? jeebus, what repetitive tripe. bow-wow - ha ha ha! the fact that they had to bring back mariah carey to the pop scene speaks volumes by itself. avril levine makes me want to puke with her insipid crap. i am sick of even rob thomas, though he is pretty good. rap can hardly be called music at all - it was midly interesting for a while, but like everything else, has degenerated (if that was even possible) into total drivel and ever more elementary and banal content. where are the artists like those i grew up on? where is the originality, the skill, the EFFORT to do something of meaning or creativity??? this pathetic current crop of "musicains" doesnt seem to have any concept of poetry or philosophy or musicianship - i just dont f**ing get it at all...

 

 

While I agree with your opinion about current acts you listed, I can't say that things were that much better back in the 70s or 80s (other than music videos weren't as important and pitch correction technology did not exist).

 

Sorry, but the Eagles, Yes, and Tull all put out a lot of dreck. As did most of the hair bands of the 80s. I thought Def Leppard sucked 20 years ago and I still do. If "Pour Some Sugar on Me" isn't insipid, I don't know what is. Who cares if the guitar playing was good? The songs certainly weren't.

 

The 70s was the era of disco and AOR. Boney M? Ugh!Foreigner? Ick! Is Avril Lavigne (the pich correction Queen!) any more formulaic than Boston?

 

People tend to view the past through rose colored glasses. They forget about all the {censored}ty one hit wonders and bubblegum acts that shared the charts wth Zep and the Beatles.

[felix]

So what are you looking for? New Classic Rock? I thought that was Nirvana.

 

Just because the current Top 40 chart doesn't represent my favorite kind of music (in my case, early 80's New Wave) doesn't mean it sucks.

 

And the Black Eyed Peas - repetitive? Take another listen to your Rock records - I hear plenty of repetition in those tunes too.

 

Coldplay, John Mayer, No Doubt/Gwen Stefani, Keane, Gavin DeGraw, the Killers, Maroon 5, these are all pop artists whose songs I have enjoyed recently (with or without guitar solos).