Why do the majority of new songs SUCK these days?

[blue2blue]

[...] 99% of what you [hear] on the radio [sounds] like the other 1% that was on the radio [...]

That says it all.

[NeverTheMachine]

In short, I think the songwriters are too obsessed with coming up with hooks and choruses that are "catchy" and forget about the other parts of the song that are necessary to transition to get there.

That's more for the pop music world also, where the songwriters and the performers are not the same people. Therefore there's no real connection to the song.

In the rock world, it's very much the same thing, but there is a lot of good stuff out there as well.

Simply, rock music just peaked in the 90s.

[blue2blue]

You might get some argument on the era during which it peaked.

 

 

 

In the early 90s, me and some musician pals started a somewhat whimsical association called the Non-Rock Alliance.*

 

Our first 'collective' show used the headline: Rock is dead. Join the NRA.

 

Certainly, nothing much I've seen or heard since then has made me question that life-check eval on rock. For most of the last two decades, I've felt like guitar rock had joined the ranks of blues, country, bluegrass, folk, trad jazz, swing jazz, etc, as a classic form. Classic in the sense that the genre has gone full circle (and then some), with the consumption and recombination of what has gone before replacing, for the most part, stylistic and conceptual innovation.

 

 

*One of the guys still uses the Non-Rock Alliance banner on his stuff.

[Stackabones]

In this thread, I think we've managed to find all of the answers while never answering the question.

[eeglug]

Another aspect that's killing the quality of music everywhere is the lack of interest pop/rock musicians have in music outside of the genres they work in. I remember when I was 'coming of age' reggae and African influences were working their way a good number of hits of the day. Before that you still had more direct blues, jazz and country influences keeping things interesting.

I feel that a lot of music made today is the result of lots of inbreeding where everybody is just using the same models over and over again. Not only that: they are only taking certain aspects of their predecessors and removing things that added color and interest. Lots of bands have done this sort of thing when aping Led Zeppelin - they take the riffage and heaviness and leave out the actual blues. What really hurts is that they stop there and add nothing else of substance.

[Alex_DeLarge]

great bands since 88' till now:

Tool
Radiohead
RHCP
Blind Melon (Awesome band)
Mars Volta
Staind

[Stackabones]

great bands since 88' till now: Tool Radiohead RHCP Blind Melon (Awesome band) Mars Volta Staind

 

 

The Frames/The Swell Season

The New Bohemians

Old 97s

 

etc

[blue2blue]

great bands since 88' till now: Tool Radiohead RHCP Blind Melon (Awesome band) Mars Volta Staind

 

There have certainly been good bands, whether or not there's been much forward momentum across the rock spectrum.

 

I didn't much care for them at first, but I've come to rather like Radiohead. And while I'm not always in the mood for the kind of workout that TMV can give you, I definitely appreciate the restless intelligence at work in their aggressively postmodern prog rock and some of their stuff really grabs me.

 

 

Another favorite of mine from the 90s (and this decade, too), not mentioned, is Modest Mouse. Again, it's more recombinant or even retro -- my one liner for them would be Pere Ubu meets Buffalo Springfield -- but I think, at times, they've had a great feel for the kind of quirky outsider hooks that get me singing along.

 

 

PS... RHCP started in the early 80s. I was a fan. Then. They gained an almost instant buzz and I saw them a couple times before their first album came out. I lost interest when they became a pop band, but, at the start, they were a furious funk band and Tony was a great front man. As long as he was rapping. In fact, I think I'm gonna put on the George Clinton album, Freaky Styley, right now... [Oops, couldn't do it. Their old albums are purchase only on Rhapsody. New ones aren't. I guess they know where the demand is. Too bad for me. I've got it on vinyl, but that's down in the garage.)

[easilyspooked]

i have a question, with an example.

what do we think of the Jonas Brothers?

That's some manufactured art right there if ever there was, completely transparent pseudorock. However, my problem isn't its lack of substance, it's the actual music. I sought it out, knowing that it was a vaguely big deal last year, and was amazed by what i heard, it doesn't sound like good pop music to me, the beats are a bit stilted, the singing has a peculiar Meter to it that i find odd and unpleasant (of note, i also find that Taylor Swift sings with the same odd meter), to me, it doesn't sound like traditional pop rock, it sounds like a leap forward, and makes me feel old.

[YOUTUBE][/YOUTUBE]

[blue2blue]

I liked the video mash-up better than the music. But, despite the slickness of the video work, I still didn't get much out of it. But now, at least, I can say that I've heard the Jonas Brothers. It wasn't high up on my list and, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, little was delivered. But I've heard them and I can move on. Nothing to see there.

 

I didn't notice the Taylor Swift cadence connection but I will say that, just judging on the minute or two I saw of this video, I'd say they're heads and shoulders above Swift in singing talent and skill, studio tricks notwithstanding -- at least the vocal retuning on the Jonas Brothers is not anywhere as hideously obvious as the wan and thinly talented Ms. Swift.

[AluminumNeck]

To much focus on the sound of the song and not enough on the song. that and people have sort attention spans.

[willow2012]

This is something I posted on another forum...just had to copy and paste here!!

(note..these are my opinions and nothing anyone can say will change them. I don

[Lee Knight]

Well...

Not that I'm a member of the Jonas fan club or anything. But John Fields, their producer, I'm a big fan of his. I hear this as well constructed music that's not meant for me. It is very whittled down to its essentials (you know, those young minds can only handle so much at once) but at the same time... it has a lot of nice craft in the cadence of the vocal line.

But that's just me and my whack sensibilities. I'm prone to grab ideas in the most unlikely and embarrassing places.

[Oswlek]

Well... Not that I'm a member of the Jonas fan club or anything. But John Fields, their producer, I'm a big fan of his. I hear this as well constructed music that's not meant for me. It is very whittled down to its essentials (you know, those young minds can only handle so much at once) but at the same time... it has a lot of nice craft in the cadence of the vocal line. But that's just me and my whack sensibilities. I'm prone to grab ideas in the most unlikely and embarrassing places.

We finally diverge, Lee.

I can't listen to this without wanting to smash whatever medium it happens to be coming out of. :arg:

[blue2blue]

Kinda makes you sorry you can't burn a big pile of mp3's in the middle of a baseball stadium, huh?

[Lee Knight]

We finally diverge, Lee. I can't listen to this without wanting to smash whatever medium it happens to be coming out of. :arg:

 

 

 

Understood. Like I said, it depends on what we mean by "listening". I'll gladly give a pass and hear a clever twist of rhythm on the vocal line. This is no doubt Field's doing and not the Bros.

 

By believe me, I understand. I scanned this in Barnes and Noble to hear some of John Field's latest production and I got a headache in a minute. No joke. No headache going in, headache when I took the phones off in the store.

 

We don't disagree.

[blue2blue]

 

This is something I posted on another forum...just had to copy and paste here!!   (note..these are my opinions and nothing anyone can say will change them. I don

[Badtux]

You kids, get off my lawn!

Fixed .

Hip-hop is the (1960's era) Rolling Stones of today, all swagger and strutting. Not my thing, but I've listened to a little of the best of it (the stuff that's gotten good reviews as being more than just "yo, I'm a bad-a**"), and I can't say it's bad, just different. As for the Jonas Brothers, manufactured acts of that sort have been around forever. What I heard when I clicked on the link was not anything earth-shattering, but to say it "sucked" is probably an overstatement. "Competent tween-pop" was my basic conclusion, not anything that anybody over age 16 would want to listen to, but (shrug). And it was certainly modern pop to my ears. The vocals cadence might not be a straight 4/4 on-the-beat cadence, but that actually makes it more interesting.

Lee Knight makes an interesting observation: "It is very whittled down to its essentials." That is something I've noticed about a lot of rock/pop since the early 90's. There's been a lot of experimentation with just how minimalist you can go and still have what is essential. Some of that, I suppose, started with the four-trackers of the 80's who were minimalist by necessity because you didn't have any choice with a Tascam 244. But a lot of the stuff I have on rotation from the past two decades is whittled down to its essentials by choice, not necessity. There's a few artists in particular that I listen to some of their work obsessively, because they stripped things down so far both instrumentally and lyrically that it shouldn't work, yet it does. Why? If I could figure that out, I'd bottle it and make millions .

[easilyspooked]

rap isn't music?

in a thread dedicated to debating the fine line between Product Based Art on the radio and Love Based Art created by musicians?

you aren't listening to rap my friend, you're listening to the radio.

rock n roll and rap share a simmillar ancestry, use the same beats and modes, and, at their finest, bely the universal human experiences of love, pain, brotherhood, and mischief.

 

and i'll actually cede the Jonas Brothers point, i've listened to it a couple of more times and i'm coming to understand it, not like it, but see its value as pop music.

 

edit: not to defend my former workplace, but "producer" in radio is a legitimate title. it means "commercial producer," it's a very different skillset from music production, but a valuable and fun one, which i happen to poses and use for fun and profit.

[willow2012]

I said..."I don't consider it music". What the rest of the world call's music, is up to the them.

As mentioned...I don't listen to the radio..haven't in over 30 years, but one can not avoid hearing and observing on the streets.

Yea, I'm not one to sugar-coat my feelings.

[eeglug]

 

As mentioned...I don't listen to the radio..haven't in over 30 years, but one can not avoid hearing and observing on the streets.

 

 

I work with mostly 20-something folks and none of them listen to the radio either. We have a communal music system so I get to hear what they like. I can tell you that most of what they like is not what I hear "out on the streets". I don't always agree with their tastes but there is depth and sensitivity in their choices. As I type this, a coworker just put on some Tom Waits to listen to.

[blue2blue]

I said..."I don't consider it music". What the rest of the world call's music, is up to the them. As mentioned...I don't listen to the radio..haven't in over 30 years, but one can not avoid hearing and observing on the streets. Yea, I'm not the one to sugar-coat my feelings.

Sugar coating has its place in this life, but I appreciate someone who isn't afraid to have a strong point of view.

 

FWIW, I'm not crazy about gamelan.

 

(Seriously... I was in a project band for a while with a guy who was studying ethnomusicology and ended up going to Indonesia and SW Asia to study gamelan [i think he did his master's thesis on it] and I've heard my share of it... still, it does fulfill all the structural requirements of the standard definition of music, just like rap and hip hop. Big world. )

 

 

PS... I stopped listening to commercial radio in the mid-80s, myself. College radio kept me alive much of that time; we had a great jazz station and, for many years, a really good eclectic/postmodern station from local colleges.

 

But in the last decade or so, the internet really came alive as a musical conduit. One of the best entertainment bargains ever, from my perspective, is my Rhapsody subscription. I can find almost all of my old favorites and, when someone tells me about something I ought to check out, whether for good music or just laughs, I can usually find it right off on Rhapsody. (And, unlike other subscription streaming services I've used, it has a pretty good classical selection.)

[Lee Knight]

Sugar coating has its place in this life, but I appreciate someone who isn't afraid to have a strong point of view. FWIW, I'm not crazy about gamalan.

I hate Steel Drum music! Especially when they start playing contemporary songs on them. There! I said it! And keep your umbrella out my drink, yo.

[blue2blue]

I work with mostly 20-something folks and none of them listen to the radio either. We have a communal music system so I get to hear what they like. I can tell you that most of what they like is not what I hear "out on the streets". I don't always agree with their tastes but there is depth and sensitivity in their choices. As I type this, a coworker just put on some Tom Waits to listen to.

He was just playing you, old man!

 

[blue2blue]

 

I hate Steel Drum music! Especially when they start playing contemporary songs on them. There! I said it! And keep your umbrella out my drink, yo.

 

 

I used to like steel drum... even bought an album of it...

 

But I was hanging out for a while with some guys from the Carribean (mostly the VI and Jamaica) and they all played the pans -- although they were all much more into reggae. But you go where the money is. And steel drum bands -- for reasons known only to the corporate muses -- are apparently big for corporate events and such. So they'd put on those frilly, satin 'calypso shirts' and drag their pans down to whatever Hyatt or whatever and make their money so they could keep on playing reggae on the side...

 

Someplace along the way, I just really ran out of whatever it takes to listen to "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" done on steel drums. (A big crowd-please, I was told.)