Why Music Sucks
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You are currently reading a thread in /mu/ - Music
You are currently reading a thread in /mu/ - Music
I've been thinking lately and I'm wonder it there's an actual scientific reason why popular (or new music in general) music has been getting exponentially worse in the last two decades.
Could it be that we are running out of possible good melodies to write? I know that in theory there could a number of possible melodies created so huge that it's practically infinite, but are we running out of 'good' melodies that could be potentially written?
http://mic.com/articles/107896/scientists-finally-prove-why-pop-music-all-sounds-the-same#.7PY3hyQ5V
It's getting worse because the lowest common denominator is getting worse.
Pop music makes music that appeals to as many people as possible. When the people change their values, the music changes with those values. Current pop music is reflective of those values.
Stop listening to music for melody, listen for textures
>>62511096
it's because you don't participate in the context you stupid autist.
>>62511096
You're a reactionary moron if you actually believe pop music is any worse now than it has been in the past.
>>62511128
There you go.
>>62511163
Will do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQLliTaC-Wg&index=3&list=RDLml98eHcQu4
>lewronggeneration intensifies
Beatles was just a boy band
Music peaked centuries ago, kid. The decline of music is directly correlated with the decline in true Christians.
*Trills on harpsichord*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI-JTx4BJKU
>>62511294
Muslims and Tengri have better music than Christians
People who think modern music sucks only ever listen to top 40 or what P4K gives BNM.
>pop music is le bad meme
>le degeneracy generation meme
>>62511172
>don't participate in the context
what context?
>>62511547
If someone from 100 years ago saw this post, they'd kill themselves
>>62511484
>le edgy heretic
>>62511532
Hopefully they can hear if over their screams of anguish in Hell.
I think that popular music in general is always pretty bad. There are certain albums, artists, and songs that are decent or good and get remembered, but overall it it pretty shit. I think its easy to say pop music was better longer ago mostly because the shitty pop from the past doesn't last the test of time as well.
I've been thinking about this lately. How around 2007 onwards a lot of mainstream pop is so bad it actually pains me to listen to it. That hardly happens with other music, that is phyisically unpleasant to be exposed to. I think this guy has it right >>62511128 so much pop today has this disgusting social media appeal to it, as if it was passed through by an instagram filter. Just seeing the fucking trendy haircuts and clothes of all these people is so painful...
However some days agoI heard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix5z1bRz4Sc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmnjL26OBcY for the first time since they had been released, and I enjoyed both to an extent. So I do wonder if there's a time-passing element to it, as I do enjoy even the worst of the most disgusting early-mid 2000s pop like Pussycat Dolls or Fergie etc. But then again both songs linked above are fairly distant with the pop sound we have nowadays (kind of on the verge of the last days with your local channel not displaying the latest memes, and your mom not using facebook) so there's that too.
>>62511653
>Just seeing the fucking trendy haircuts and clothes of all these people is so painful...
Have you seen some of the bands to come out of the 80s and 90s.
>This is le worst generation :^)
You faggots realize people back then were saying the same thing, right?
Pop music isn't better or worse than it used to be
>>62511096
>Could it be that we are running out of possible good melodies to write?
No, statistically it would take far more time than the existence of the universe for this to happen
That being said it's been shown that over the past 30 years pop music has becoming more homogenized, so that's likely why you feel this way OP
I think it's because music with minimal elements is in vogue. It's hard to make compelling minimal music, but the industry pushes it for convenience and style.
>>62511096
It's the same it has always been only reason you think music was better in the past was because all the shit that was out then gets whitewashed while the good stuff is still around.
>>62511914
I'd have to say the opposite, pop music is artificial. Have you ever seen how many writers these "artists" have? The person is a brand, the only thing they contribute is a voice, the rest is designed by someone else. Pop music is like, American football. The players don't make any decisions, the only thing they contribute is their physique and physical ability, while the game is really played by coaches and tacticians. However, we still wear the jerseys and admire the personal actions of the players.
Not all music is made with love, not all music has meaning. However I'd like to think shit music inspires talented people to make things even better. Yin yang.
>>62512015
It has been this way for a long time though, Elvis never wrote any of his songs
Nostalgiafags still love him though
>>62511706
Yeah, of course, I listen to a lot a lot a lot of music, pop mostly. Love the 80s particualrly, and I actually dig 80s fashion. Todays mainstream stuff has this glittery, polished, clean, HD, perfect pretty voice, selfie-influenced feeling to it. All those dumbfucks trying to pull off an undercut are fucking sickening.
I like a lot of pop made today by the way, it's just the 20.000.000 views on YouTube kind of radio pop that I'm talking about.
>>62512123
I'm saying that the 80s and 90s are the same in that they were using trendy fashions and haircuts to help sell their music. Nothing is different except that you just for some reason don't like the trendy fashion today. Which I don't know if that's what you're saying or not but you seem to be saying it's somehow different today.
>>62512232
Yeah there's too a reach with my personal aesthetics and dislike for social media and such. I do dislike 70s pop and fashion come to think about it, and was just was lucky that the 3 following decades were good.
>>62512123
A lot of 80s pop was written by 3 dudes man
https://www.discogs.com/artist/20942-Stock-Aitken-Waterman
Pop music is pop music. It hasn't changed you are just growing up.
>>62512556
You're right. Pop music never changes, Bing Crosby is exactly like Future.
there is no real rebellion anymore, its nothing but an unending hell of top 40 pop rap thanks to poptmism.
no variety, just kanye and taylor swift for eternity.
poptamism was the sweet embrace of mediocrity.
>>62511128
Expanding on this, we live in an age where the average person is exposed to much, much more information on a daily basis than they ever have in history. This has directly contributed to a huge decrease in the average person's attention span, thus the heavily marketed pop music has to be even more easily processed for people to listen to it.
observer bias
>>62511653
>so much pop today has this disgusting social media appeal to it, as if it was passed through by an instagram filter. Just seeing the fucking trendy haircuts and clothes of all these people is so painful...
>>62512123
>Todays mainstream stuff has this glittery, polished, clean, HD, perfect pretty voice, selfie-influenced feeling to it. All those dumbfucks trying to pull off an undercut are fucking sickening.
this is how i felt, but i didnt know how to put it into words
I would rather listen to any of justin biebers new singles than essentially any of the pop produced in the 50s/60s/70s/80s
also
>exponentially
obviously you're entire paragraph is cancer, OP, but i really don't think you know what this word means
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD0x7ho_IYc
>epiikk :DDD
>leddit xd
>>62513640
You should have just said "I arbitrarily hate certain aesthetics so it's bad that people are using them as marketing today despite it having happened the same way in the past 6 decades".
>>62514568
its not just about aesthetics though. with the rise of social media came ego inflation which is why you have tons of self obsessed youtubers and mediocre-to-average singers getting way more attention than they should
>>62511593
This is the truth. Top 40 pop music has always been fucking garbage, it's just that the bland shit gets forgotten whereas the good music lives on through the years. In 1969 the number one song was fucking Sugar Sugar by The Archies
>>62515847
Yeah, that song was number 1 because everyone was one acid
And either way, it's a nice novelty song.
>>62515847
The Archies and the Monkees are underrated. They had fine writing teams working for major labels cranking out hit after hit. plus teen appeal.
there have already been several seismic shifts in the culture and thus also in songwriting style
the concept of "standards" - well-written songs literally any artist could do no wrong covering - was the basis of so many great singers and jazz geniuses that creating nothing but new songs wasn't as important as treating older material in a new way with your personality
then the 60's happened, and suddenly kids saw writing credits of someone other than the person singing it as inauthentic and manipulative. they wanted their own generation to speak to them, with their own words. and that's never really went away.
unfortunately, it puts the onus on up-and-comers to be great out of the gate, instead of gradually honing their craft. even newly-canonized Scott Walker got his start this way.
modern pop has so much to do with "production" - a word I don't understand even though I know what it means when applied to George Martin, Brian Eno, Steve Albini et al. Max Martin and Shellback really don't make music I care about, though I get why it sells like it does. I usually make the distinction here between art and commerce and ignore what doesn't turn me on.
I pin no hopes on anyone newly popular, simply because there's been nothing for me to hold onto for a decade. I've been having too much fun tracing the roots of where all this stuff came from anyway.
there are no rules that say just because the world is right there in front of you, because the internet, that you must "keep up" with anything you don't like and never did. we can pick periods, styles, nations, and stick with them with a freedom as never before in our history. there is no mainstream - just stuff we like. don't like it? find what you actually like and listen to that instead.
>>62511760
Try using your ears and eyes.
>>62511194
>>62511760
>Taylor Swift and Justin Beiber are the same as Hall & Oates and Madonna :^)
>>62517332
Literally, yes. If not better.
Actually, better.
>>62517386
Put down the crack pipe.
>>62513087
There were always poptimists you dumbfuck, they just have a name now.
pop music was always bad because whatever is popular is meant to be a product that's easy for the masses to consume.
it's to make money, it's not art, it's a product that they can sell and the easiest way to do that is to produce something mediocre that's easy to consume.
