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[brianjones]

I came home today and listened to Burial's "Untrue" for the millionth time. No album from 30 years ago could put me in such a dark place. There is definitely more variety in music today, and because of that I think that it's a better time for music. Music is always evolving.

no offense but you strike me as someone who is young and listens to mostly modern indie music. not that there's anything wrong with that, that's cool, but how much of music from 30 years ago have you really explored?

 

[Stencil]

This entire argument is like asking someone, "Was photography more visually appealing in the past than it is now?"

Or, it's a matter of taste.

No one can qualitatively say that yes, music was indeed better in the past.


Because this is a matter of opinion, I'll say no, music was not "better" in the past, music is not "worse" in present.

I hate Justin Bieber as much as the next person, but you know who else I hate? Bruce Springsteen. There will always be good music, and there will always be bad music, and those musics will always exist, depending on your tastes.

 

[jamesinclair]

That Cracked article is very disingenuous. He's trying to make points based off a singles chart, when just about all the good artists back then were album oriented. He also writes, "'Fortunate Son' got no higher than No. 14 on the charts." Well, okay. Please point out the last time an anti-war song got up to #14 in the charts? How about top-100?

Where is the love? by the black eyed peas.

#8

welp I hear all this on basically z100 when I'm driving my 19 year old sister and her pals around... makes me wanna drive 140mph into a river or off a cliff...

haven't heard a good song on the radio since 2007 ish ?

it's not music it's just samey sounding jingles and vocals to brainwash young people into a false sense of security...

Protip: Radio is made up of multiple stations, playing different kinds of music.

If you dont want to listen to katy perry, then put on a station that does not play katy perry.

 

[Gaylord Sweetwood]

For me personally, I think music in general was better then as opposed to now. The comment that was made about popular music being better before I think is spot on; compared to the trash I have to hear on the Dance stations today.

Looking back as a child I was mostly immersed with 80s synth pop and early 90s alternative so that may explain my affinity for 80s music.

When it comes to what I listen to today (Electronic Music) I would echo the same sentiments above that "It's not made like it used to be." By and large Electronic Music of various genres is dumb-downed from its "hey day." The Techno of today for example is no comparison to that from the late 80s and early 90s. There are of course exceptions, but speaking in generality this is the case. New sub-genres will emerge that are often offshoots of other ones that don't really add anything interesting as a whole.

I will say though, one style of music that I think that has emerged from a rooted genre to make positive strides would be the European angle of Metal. That's one genre that I see being better than the old Metal.

 

[Wray]

Yes it most absolutely was.

There was garbage back then too, but there was much much more quality stuff too. I couldn't put together a top 10 list from this decade if I tried. But seriously, be objective. How many classic songs from this/last decade (2000's) will be remembered 30-40 years from now and be all time classics?

I still have hope and don't think that music "had it's day". I think we just had a really shitty decade. I still think another band can and will come out soon and usher in a whole new era of awesome like the Beatles, Zep, Nirvana, etc from past decades.

 

[ThanksVision]

no offense but you strike me as someone who is young and listens to mostly modern indie music. not that there's anything wrong with that, that's cool, but how much of music from 30 years ago have you really explored?

You're on the money. I'm still exploring! I shouldn't have made such an ignorant comment. The thing is, I never really know where to start when listening to music from way back when. You seem really well versed in older music, any suggestions?

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

Yes it most absolutely was.

There was garbage back then too, but there was much much more quality stuff too. I couldn't put together a top 10 list from this decade if I tried. But seriously, be objective. How many classic songs from this/last decade (2000's) will be remembered 30-40 years from now and be all time classics?

I still have hope and don't think that music "had it's day". I think we just had a really shitty decade. I still think another band can and will come out soon and usher in a whole new era of awesome like the Beatles, Zep, Nirvana, etc from past decades.

Kelis - Fool Me Once
Maroon 5 - This Love
Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Girl
Outkast - Hey Yah!
Kanye West - Gold Digger
Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
Amy Winehouse - Rehab
Justin Timberlake - Señorita
Beyonce - Bootylicious
Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood
Ting Tings - That's Not My Name
Daft Punk - One More Time
Superman Lovers - Starlight
MGMT - Kids
Radiohead - 15 Step
Lady Gaga - Paparazzi
Stereophonics - Dakota
Starsailor - Four to the Floor
Eminem - Lose Yourself
Usher - Confessions
Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out

All good songs released in the last decade or so. You get so blinded by hatred of Justin Beiber that you ignore or conveniently forget that a lot of good music came out in the last decade.

 

[Get'sMad]

I think one major reason people assume music isn't as "good" today because there isn't as much consensus of what's supposed to be "good" today. They're are so many outlets today where you can read about/hear/dl music that makes it much easier to embrace or dismiss something quickly. In the past when most people actually bought music so you likely bought it based off a newspaper/magazine review or based off a recommendation of/heard at a friends. So over the years certain bands, albums, etc. were just ingrained into pop. culture as classic w/out question. The internet has made it where everything is the "GREATEST THING EVER" initially followed immediately by a bunch of backlash.

There is good stuff and bad stuff from all eras....though I gotta admit I probably like stuff pre '00s overall better.

 

[SatelliteOfLove]

I've just never heard A person use AC/DC as representative of anything. In fact, there's the go-to good band for stupid, mindless rock music that anyone could do and that has no innovation or context whatsoever (Nickleback being the go-to bad one).

Also, don't drop the elitist card on me when you put Bach and Zappa that close to each other in an evaluation.

Because they are.

Don't forget David Bowie's Berlin era. ;D Low and Heroes, especially! Also variety is a given. People have access to almost all the old music and the new stuff...So while I think it's much harder to find good music from today I'm glad I live in this day and age.

Those albums are kinda made by those tracks, in some wierd way. Bowie/Lilywhite/Eno/Lanois/etc of that era were on fucking fire; I call it "Pop thats not a four-letter-word".

I kinda agree about the third point, but I fear that there's less of an incentive to as the internet ages. Kinda like "we could vacation on Lake Superior this summer" could be huge to a family from say the 40s when reliable roads to there and the mobility and affordability of the automobile of the era made it possible for the average family whereas now the "now we can" phase is long gone.

Choice kinda paralyzes, and people have their own tastes at their fingertips 24/7.

 

[jambo]

Kelis - Fool Me Once
Maroon 5 - This Love
Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Girl
Outkast - Hey Yah!
Kanye West - Gold Digger
Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
Amy Winehouse - Rehab
Justin Timberlake - Señorita
Beyonce - Bootylicious
Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood
Ting Tings - That's Not My Name
Daft Punk - One More Time
Superman Lovers - Starlight
MGMT - Kids
Radiohead - 15 Step
Lady Gaga - Paparazzi
Stereophonics - Dakota
Starsailor - Four to the Floor
Eminem - Lose Yourself
Usher - Confessions
Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out

All good songs released in the last decade or so. You get so blinded by hatred of Justin Beiber that you ignore or conveniently forget that a lot of good music came out in the last decade.

Classic song list?

Hahahahahaha

 

[Koodo]

Everything is argued to have been better in the past.

I don't live with rose tinted glasses. Every era has its own special gems.


Perhaps you could argue this with Rock N Roll since that fell out of the mainstream eye (therefore, the amount of Rock today might not be as large as it was before). What happened there?

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

Classic song list?

Hahahahahaha

That's what jaded music snobs said about the 80s. Even if the genres or sound aren't to your liking, these are good songs.

Give it ten or fifteen years and you'll find a bunch of kids nostalgic for this kind of stuff, making the same complaints as all of you.

 

[googoomuck22]

Classic song list?

Hahahahahaha

my thoughts exactly, if these are what pass as classic songs then music truly has changed for the worse.

but yeah like others have said this is a highly subjective issue and so in the end it just boils down to what sort of music you're into. for me the 50's and early 60's are when pop reached perfection

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

That whole attitude toward today's music isn't due to the songs being good or bad. It's because they're not the songs that served as the soundtrack to your teenage years. Because it's not your music, the music you were conditioned to like by the environment you grew up in, it's crap.

 

[googoomuck22]

That whole attitude toward today's music isn't due to the songs being good or bad. It's because they're not the songs that served as the soundtrack to your teenage years. Because it's not your music, the music you were conditioned to like by the environment you grew up in, it's crap.

i'm not sure i get what you're saying here

 

[big_z]

there's bad music from all time periods. however todays music is more bad than good but thats mainly because the industry shifted from finding talent to finding someone they can market. this leads to over production and tons of autotune to make up for the lack of talent but the music itself tends to follow simple formulas that are known to be catchy. also why so many older hit songs are sampled. mainstream music is no longer an expression it's a science.

 

[Esch]

Nothing nostalgic about Superman. But ok.

Man of Tomorrow, bitches.

Very nostalgic. Hasn't been really relevant to the children of today since I was a kid in in the 90s, and all the movie and game efforts have been almost universally panned.

That whole attitude toward today's music isn't due to the songs being good or bad. It's because they're not the songs that served as the soundtrack to your teenage years. Because it's not your music, the music you were conditioned to like by the environment you grew up in, it's crap.

a lot of those songs were really popular when I was a teenager and nobody gives a shit about them anymore.

 

[HiResDes]

There is an abundance of quality new music, it's just that people seem scared to expose themselves to new genres and artists for some reason or another. Over the past year I've found out about so many new artists and even a couple of new genres by visiting the "What are you listening" threads mostly just by paying attention to the posts of the people that I thought had really good taste.

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

i'm not sure i get what you're saying here

Your tastes and preferences in terms of music etc. are more-or-less set in stone by the time you hit 25. Because music keeps on changing, you'll be left behind eventually (which is why many of our parents are musically stuck in the 70s and 80s).

Also, when you were a teenager, you weren't judging music on its merits anyway. You might have thought you were, but you weren't. You just accepted wholesale the music of the social group you wanted to belong to and developed a taste for it, as many people do for beer. Now that you're grown up and the music of today doesn't gel with your social identity, you reject it.

a lot of those songs were really popular when I was a teenager and nobody gives a shit about them anymore.

Just you wait until the "Classic Hits" stations start playing music from the 00s (in about ten years' time) and you'll complain about them being played on loop. No fashion is more reviled than the fashion from the previous cycle. Kings of Leon will one day be considered a classic band.

 

[HiResDes]

Your tastes and preferences in terms of music etc. are more-or-less set in stone by the time you hit 25. Because music keeps on changing, you'll be left behind eventually (which is why many of our parents are musically stuck in the 70s and 80s).

Also, when you were a teenager, you weren't judging music on its merits anyway. You might have thought you were, but you weren't. You just accepted wholesale the music of the social group you wanted to belong to and developed a taste for it, as many people do for beer. Now that you're grown up and the music of today doesn't gel with your social identity, you reject it.

That's bullshit and is only true for close-minded individuals. My music tastes change almost on a yearly basis.

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

That's bullshit and is only true for close-minded individuals. My music tastes change almost on a yearly basis.

The majority of people work this way. You need to make a conscious effort in order to keep in touch with new music after a certain age. People's lives, jobs and relationships get in the way of them doing so and that's the inevitable result.

Although I'm sure you're a unique, special snowflake who doesn't conform to basic human psychology.

 

[thespot84]

Good music died when heroin went out of style.

Spoiler

Honestly though, I think that for the most part music has evolved, and a lot of current music is great, and there's as much filth as there was decades ago. I think what makes a band/musician GREAT is when they take their sound and evolve with it, as opposed to being stuck in a genre. SEE: Beatles, Zeppelin, Miles Davis, Bowie etc...

 

[googoomuck22]

That's bullshit and is only true for close-minded individuals. My music tastes change almost on a yearly basis.

agreed, my taste in music isn't defined by the the people i hang around with, in fact having musical tastes in common with others is a bonus but not a necessity. of course there are those who introduce you to different types and genres of music but i would like to think that most music fans don't constrain themselves to a particular genre just because it's what their peers listen to. conversely i don't shy away from particular genres for fear of being ridiculed by certain people and groups.

also,

Kings of Leon will one day be considered a classic band.

this is not a good thing

 

[OpinionatedCyborg]

The majority of people work this way. You need to make a conscious effort in order to keep in touch with new music after a certain age. People's lives, jobs and relationships get in the way of them doing so and that's the inevitable result.

Although I'm sure you're a unique, special snowflake who doesn't conform to basic human psychology.

Keeping in touch with new music is incredible easy. Turn on the radio. My parents are probably more in tune (lolz) with today's popular music than I am because they listen to the radio frequently while I do not. They're exposed to all the new trends in pop, R&B, hip hop, etc. as a result. Most adults 50+ I know are the same -- listen to the radio at work, at home, etc. I'm actually a bit embarassed to admit that I barely know who Bieber, Perry, and other young pop stars are because I can't actively avoid the radio nowadays.

That said, my tastes are constany evolving and will continue to do so until I am dead. Why? Because music is everywhere. You act like it requires effort to broaden ones horizons. I guess if going to a club, performing music oneself, making friends with people who listen to different music, occasionally finding interesting music in movies, etc. is "effort," you are correct. To me, that stuff is everyday life. Finding new music isn't a job. It just happens.

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

agreed, my taste in music isn't defined by the the people i hang around with, in fact having musical tastes in common with others is a bonus but not a necessity. of course there are those who introduce you to different types and genres of music but i would like to think that most music fans don't constrain themselves to a particular genre just because it's what their peers listen to. conversely i don't shy away from particular genres for fear of being ridiculed by certain people and groups.

I totally believe you.

also,

this is not a good thing

Eh. People once said this about The Beatles and Motley Crue. You can't please everyone, especially if they were born in the wrong decade.

 

[Get'sMad]

The majority of people work this way. You need to make a conscious effort in order to keep in touch with new music after a certain age. People's lives, jobs and relationships get in the way of them doing so and that's the inevitable result.

this is actually pretty spot on.

 

[Cow Mengde]

I know music and songs in cartoons aren't as good as the 80s and 90s, but beyond that, I have no idea.

 

[jett]

The music of today is truly ass.

 

[legend166]

If you turned the radio on in the early 60s, you'd hear the same songs by The Temptations, The Supremes, The Crystals etc. with the gaps filled in with songs by dozens of imitators (including one group called The Cookies) on loop. Their sound wasn't all that distinguishable from one to the other if you were unfamiliar with the groups themselves or teen culture back then.

What's popular is by definition what's in demand and the radio only plays what's popular right now.


To be fair, I do think "Kokomo" is a decent song. I put that bit in as a bit of a joke since I don't think there are that many popular bands whose entire output I openly despise (apart from Creed or The Vengaboys).

Indeed, I even like a bit of ABBA. Waterloo and Fernando are incredible songs, though some of their others, like say "Knowing Me, Knowing You" or "Ring Ring" are incredibly annoying. I put The Beach Boys in as an example of largely annoying bubblegum teen pop from that era.

So the only Beach Boys song you like is probably the worst song they've ever done? Twenty years out of their prime? And had nothing to do with Brian Wilson?

What is wrong with you?

 

[Complex Shadow]

The music of today is truly ass.

looks like someone hasn't heard THE MINI POP KIDS

Spoiler

their on there 7th cd according the ad that keeps repeating on the tv. that means someone actually bought this crap.

 

[evil solrac v3.0]

Kelis - Fool Me Once
Maroon 5 - This Love
Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Girl
Outkast - Hey Yah!
Kanye West - Gold Digger
Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
Amy Winehouse - Rehab
Justin Timberlake - Señorita
Beyonce - Bootylicious
Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood
Ting Tings - That's Not My Name
Daft Punk - One More Time
Superman Lovers - Starlight
MGMT - Kids
Radiohead - 15 Step
Lady Gaga - Paparazzi
Stereophonics - Dakota
Starsailor - Four to the Floor
Eminem - Lose Yourself
Usher - Confessions
Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out

All good songs released in the last decade or so. You get so blinded by hatred of Justin Beiber that you ignore or conveniently forget that a lot of good music came out in the last decade.

yipes man,.....

 

[evil solrac v3.0]

That's bullshit and is only true for close-minded individuals. My music tastes change almost on a yearly basis.

on a yearly basis!? assert yourself and decide what you like!

 

[brianjones]

Kings of Leon will one day be considered a classic band.

i know theyre relatively recent but dont you have to at least have a classic album to be considered a classic band? or at least a string of classic singles?

sex on fire? i'm not seeing it.

 

[Fuzzery]

Nobody has got shit on Bach

 

[_Bro]

I know music and songs in cartoons aren't as good as the 80s and 90s, but beyond that, I have no idea.

How
do
you
say
wrong?

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

yipes man,.....

He was asking for a list of potential classics. I gave him one.

I personally despise the song "California Dreaming" by the Mamas and the Papas, but I can't deny that it was a classic.

 

[legend166]

Kelis - Fool Me Once
Maroon 5 - This Love
Jet - Are You Gonna Be My Girl
Outkast - Hey Yah!
Kanye West - Gold Digger
Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
Amy Winehouse - Rehab
Justin Timberlake - Señorita
Beyonce - Bootylicious
Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood
Ting Tings - That's Not My Name
Daft Punk - One More Time
Superman Lovers - Starlight
MGMT - Kids
Radiohead - 15 Step
Lady Gaga - Paparazzi
Stereophonics - Dakota
Starsailor - Four to the Floor
Eminem - Lose Yourself
Usher - Confessions
Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out

All good songs released in the last decade or so. You get so blinded by hatred of Justin Beiber that you ignore or conveniently forget that a lot of good music came out in the last decade.

That's your list of songs that will be remembered? Man, I like you squirrel, but this thread has been a doozy for you. First your complete and utter ignorance of the Beach Boys, now this.

You've even listed a song from one of my top 3 bands (Radiohead), and I completely disagree. 15 Step?

Jet? No one's going to remember 'Are You Gonna Be My Girl' because they'll just go listen to the clearly superior songs that it was derived from. I can't even remember half those songs you listed. Is Kelis the milkshake girl? The majority of the songs you listed were forgotten 6 months after release, let alone for the next 15 years.

There's a difference between remembering songs for nostalgic reasons, and songs that stand the test of time because of their intrinsic value as pieces of music. Those songs you listed will be remembered in the sense that they'll show up on a VH1 show in 2025 with horrible z-list celebrities reminiscing. They are they equivalent of something like 99 Luftballoons or a Nik Kershaw song. It's nostalgia.

I didn't listen to the Beatles because I was nostalgic for them. They'd been broken up for 18 years by the time I was born. Half the band was dead by the time I started listening to them.

I don't think music as a whole today is worse than 'back then'. The sheer breadth of music today is astonishing and the variety craps all over what you'd get years ago.

But as far as mainstream, popular music, I have no doubt in my mind it has regressed dramatically. People who like to point out crappy artists from the 60s/70s and say "See, mainstream music hasn't changed at all!" are missing the point. But The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, Springsteen, were great bands making great albums and they were incredibly popular.

The top 20 best selling albums of the 70s:

http://www.superseventies.com/100bestsellingalbums.html

1. Pink Floyd- The Wall (23 Million Sales)
2. Led Zeppelin- Led Zeppelin IV (aka ZOSO) (22 Million Sales)
3. Fleetwood Mac- Rumours (19 Million Sales)
4. Boston- Boston (17 Million Sales)
5. Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack- Saturday Night Fever: The Original Movie Sound Track (15 Million Sales)
6. The Eagles- Hotel California (15 Million Sales)
7. Led Zeppelin- Physical Graffiti (15 Million Sales)
8. Pink Floyd- Dark Side of the Moon (15 Million Sales)
9. Meat Loaf- Bat Out of Hell (14 Million Sales)
10. Led Zeppelin- Houses of the Holy (11 Million Sales)
11. Van Halen- Van Halen (10 Million Sales)
12. Billy Joel- The Stranger (10 Million Sales)
13. Carole King- Tapestry (10 Million Sales)
14. Stevie Wonder- Songs in the Key of Life (9 Million Sales)
15. Grease Soundtrack- Grease (Original 1978 Motion Picture Soundtrack) (8 Million Sales)
16. Aerosmith- Toys in the Attic (8 Million Sales)
17. Simon & Garfunkel- Bridge over Troubled Water (8 Million Sales)
18. The Eagles- The Long Run (7 Million Sales)
19. Michael Jackson- Off the Wall (Spec) (7 Million Sales)
20. Billy Joel- 52nd Street (7 Million Sales)

The top 10 best selling albums of the 2000s:

http://www.billboard.com/news/best-...rts-decade-end/billboard-200-albums?year=2009



The prosecution rests, your honour.

 

[blame space]

music sucks yall

 

[HiResDes]

The majority of people work this way. You need to make a conscious effort in order to keep in touch with new music after a certain age. People's lives, jobs and relationships get in the way of them doing so and that's the inevitable result.

Although I'm sure you're a unique, special snowflake who doesn't conform to basic human psychology.

If you've seen my posts in any music thread you'd know I'm actually fucking insane. lol

 

[Sol..]

yipes man,.....

in all fairness, given the state of hip hop at that time. Hey Yah! was pretty special. I thought it was going to change the genre for a bit there. Maybe it did....in all honesty i can't tell anymore.

 

[ErasureAcer]

The top 10 best selling albums of the 2000s:

http://www.billboard.com/news/best-...rts-decade-end/billboard-200-albums?year=2009



The prosecution rests, your honour.

Wow, that's a pretty pathetic list. Enya is the only thing worth listening to there.

 

[lunarworks]

The top 10 best selling albums of the 2000s:

http://www.billboard.com/news/best-...rts-decade-end/billboard-200-albums?year=2009



The prosecution rests, your honour.

The best selling albums of the '00s?

You mean the decade when people stopped buying albums?

I motion to have this evidence dismissed as flawed.

 

[ToxicAdam]

Hey guys, everything was more awesome when I was 18.

 

[legend166]

The best selling albums of the '00s?

You mean the decade when people stopped buying albums?

I motion to have this evidence dismissed as flawed.

But my argument was 'Mainstream music of today << Mainstream music of yesteryear'. The size of the 'mainstream' of today has shrunk because there are so many other avenues to discover new music. Mainstream music has been whittled away so much that record companies have had to manufacture performers to strict guidelines based on what they can sell, because people aren't buying as much. The fact that less people buy albums now doesn't change what I'm trying to say. In fact, it enforces it.

Either way, I could get the 90s list. Or the 2000s singles list. It wouldn't change much.

 

[Fugu]

This is an unclear question, so I've decided to break it up into two separate questions that I believe that the OP's question is attempting to address.

If the question is if today's popular music has in some way gotten worse (or somehow less compositionally significant) than it has been, in, say, the past century, I would argue that it most definitely has. Popular music is no longer responsible for breaking stylistic ground; any innovation seen in pop music comes largely only after it has been tested and developed by bands in a smaller scene. This has always been true to some degree but the blowing up of the alternative scene in the nineties and the subsequent explosion of music distribution by the internet has made it all the more obvious and embarrassing that the musicians making the most money are responsible for such a small percentage of the innovation. Does that make the music bad? Certainly not, because taste is subjective; if people enjoy hearing the same few changes contextualized in the same way over and over again, then there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But this is entirely not comparable to the stylistic influences that the Beatles had on their contemporaries. Or Black Sabbath. Or Duke Ellington.
The mainstream bears such an incredibly small influence on musical development that, even though it's not easily quantifiable (except through harmonic analysis), it's definitely palpable. There's no evidence of musical development; we've had eight years of phoned-in synth sounds, identical drum beats (sampling is partially to blame for this), rearrangements of the I, IV, V and vi chords (or i IV III VI for the minor key; won't even talk about modulation, any kind of tonicization, or use of modes), tempos inside the 90-130 range, and excruciatingly simple 4 beats (even 6 and 3 are disappearing from contemporary music).

If the question is that music being composed to day has gotten worse compared to the music composed prior, than absolutely not. The development of the internet has allowed for an absolutely unprecedented explosion of sounds available to influence inspired artists to a degree only analogous to the explosion caused by the advent of recorded music near the turn of the century. There are artists now making more styles of music than ever before and pushing any and every definition. There's still a nearly infinite ground to cover, but there are so many acts exploring new territory that any argument stating that musicians as a whole are not, at the very least, pushing as much ground as they have at any point in the past century would be thin and difficult to substantiate. It is really just the pop musicians that have gotten less progressive.

Your tastes and preferences in terms of music etc. are more-or-less set in stone by the time you hit 25.

What? This isn't true at all; it is simply that popular music takes giant u-turns so it is unlikely that someone who enjoyed the musical characteristics of one decade's popular music will enjoy the music of the next decade. If you've got any evidence to present to the contrary, I'd like to hear it, not just because I think it doesn't exist but because the vast majority of my study time is dedicated to music theory and if there was a study that revealed that humans interpret harmony in such a temporal manner then that would be good to know.

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

That's your list of songs that will be remembered? Man, I like you squirrel, but this thread has been a doozy for you. First your complete and utter ignorance of the Beach Boys, now this.

You've even listed a song from one of my top 3 bands (Radiohead), and I completely disagree. 15 Step?

Jet? No one's going to remember 'Are You Gonna Be My Girl' because they'll just go listen to the clearly superior songs that it was derived from. I can't even remember half those songs you listed. Is Kelis the milkshake girl? The majority of the songs you listed were forgotten 6 months after release, let alone for the next 15 years.

There's a difference between remembering songs for nostalgic reasons, and songs that stand the test of time because of their intrinsic value as pieces of music. Those songs you listed will be remembered in the sense that they'll show up on a VH1 show in 2025 with horrible z-list celebrities reminiscing. They are they equivalent of something like 99 Luftballoons or a Nik Kershaw song. It's nostalgia.

I didn't listen to the Beatles because I was nostalgic for them. They'd been broken up for 18 years by the time I was born. Half the band was dead by the time I started listening to them.

I don't think music as a whole today is worse than 'back then'. The sheer breadth of music today is astonishing and the variety craps all over what you'd get years ago.

But as far as mainstream, popular music, I have no doubt in my mind it has regressed dramatically. People who like to point out crappy artists from the 60s/70s and say "See, mainstream music hasn't changed at all!" are missing the point. But The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, Springsteen, were great bands making great albums and they were incredibly popular.

I listed songs that normal people will remember. Nothing more, nothing less. If you think they're crap, that's fine, but in twenty years' time, over-the-hill double-divorcees will hear them and go "Oh hey! I remember making out with Katie Dunham to this song! That takes me back. Damn she was hot. Whatever happened to her anyway?"

They'll be playing "Single Ladies" with the Beyonce moves at lame 50th birthday parties in the year 5040. Mark my words.

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

What? This isn't true at all; it is simply that popular music takes giant u-turns so it is unlikely that someone who enjoyed the musical characteristics of one decade's popular music will enjoy the music of the next decade. If you've got any evidence to present to the contrary, I'd like to hear it, not just because I think it doesn't exist but because the vast majority of my study time is dedicated to music theory and if there was a study that revealed that humans interpret harmony in such a temporal manner then that would be good to know.

http://brenthugh.com/musiciq/theory.html

 

[brianjones]

I didn't listen to the Beatles because I was nostalgic for them. They'd been broken up for 18 years by the time I was born. Half the band was dead by the time I started listening to them.

the nostalgia factor is indeed misguided i think.

i listen to more, better music from the 90s now than i did in the 90s. i wish i had better taste in the 90s

 

[ATF487]

music sucks yall

nah man it's GREAT

 

[Fugu]

http://brenthugh.com/musiciq/theory.html

I've read this before. This article substantiates the notion that people generally define what they like at a young age but not that people restrict their listening to what they found in those ages, as you originally suggested in the post that I quoted.