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[Fusebox]

1. Lots of crap used to be really popular
2. There's plenty of great music out today

The difference to me, though, is that 'popular' and 'great' intersected more often than they do now. I submit these two examples:

1. Beatles. They freaking took over the world, and are remembered today as geniuses.
2. Led Zeppelin. While not reaching the height of the Beatles, they were still ubiquitous. My mom has given input on this before, and from what she's told me every teenage and college girl wanted Robert Plant back in the day, and the band was incredibly popular.

Where are the counter-examples from the present-day?

Well put. The last decent counter example I could think of would be Arcade Fires Suburbs, that had surpsingly good success on the charts, but is definitely more the exception than the rule.

 

[Kusagari]

I think another thing people look past is how mainstream radio nowadays is so built and focused on the ringtone market. That limits a lot of artists from even sniffing the charts.

Vampire Weekend, Arcade Fire, Radiohead, etc all still have gotten #1 albums in the current era. Indie rock bands have been doing better and better in chart placement recently.

 

[thcsquad]

Forgot about Elton John, who should arguably be #2 on my list behind the Beatles. The guy who gave us Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding, The King Must Die, and the entire Tumbleweed Connection album is the #1 best-selling male solo artist, and #3 overall.

 

[DieNgamers]

Now that I think about it, the fact that we have music like Katy Perry, Black Eyed Peas or 30 Seconds To Mars being bought by millions makes any other decade win by default.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjz5H1ZrOuc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uixa1ap36vA
Holy shit!
Also it seems like the guitar as an instrument of individual expression is basically dead in the mainstream right now. Of course there doesn't always have to be guitar in music...just an observation.

 

[Jedeye Sniv]

Now that I think about it, the fact that we have music like Katy Perry, Black Eyed Peas or 30 Seconds To Mars being bought by millions makes any other decade win by default.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjz5H1ZrOuc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uixa1ap36vA
Holy shit!
Also it seems like the guitar as an instrument of individual expression is basically dead in the mainstream right now. Of course there doesn't always have to be guitar in music...just an observation.

Abba proves that you are wrong. Pop has always been mostly disposable and crappy.

I think the key to modern mainstream is that record companies are marketing towards 14 year old girls and at the same time these children are being trained by TV to find overt masculinity unappealing. So you get people like Beiber being insanely popular whereas 30-40 years ago it was Marc Bolan or Robert Plant. Yeah, they were pretty femine men as well to an extent, but they never let you forget they had a dick between their legs.

By the same point, a guitar weilded properly in a rock band is a pretty masculine instrument. We're just in a time right now where the mainstream don't find that attractive because thet's not what they've been conditioned to like. Fill tween shows up with burly bearded men rocking flying vees and you'll most likely get a resurgence in kids liking rock music. But of course that will never happen.

But outside of the mainstream guitar music is just as vital as it's ever been, and even more than that it's being supplimented by an ever growing array of electronic equipment and being used in styles that never even existed 10 years ago.

This thread is like people complaining that movies suck these days because the only films they've heard of are Transformers 1 and 2. Open your ears a bit people FFS.

 

[shintoki]

This is fantastic.

It was mentioned in the crack article. It's like judging modern literature now, with the Dollar Romance Novels you find at a story, cherry picked against classic literature. When truth is, Much of that same classical literature was produced along side Dollar Romance novels too.

 

[GhaleonQ]

This topic just verifies that people really need to study some art history. The 1970s' equivalent of Justin Bieber is Robert Plant? The "Beethoven-Mozart era" (the former started composing non-juvenilia after the latter had died)? What?

Some people are writing smart things, even if I disagree, but let's at least spend 5 minutes on Wikipedia, people.

The difference to me, though, is that 'popular' and 'great' intersected more often than they do now.

Where are the counter-examples from the present-day?

Obviously, you can't have both. They're 2 distinct models designed to do 2 different things. The dichotomy exists in any industry, but in an artistic industry, it's especially lopsided. I can see how someone could argue that, "A couple of excellent musicians become rich and beloved and get big-budget autonomy," is better than, "Many excellent artists survive on artists' wages and get small-budget autonomy," but since artists' work lasts forever, the latter seems wholly preferable.

 

[2San]

For the most part, the eras are the same. These points made throughout the thread are true:

1. Lots of crap used to be really popular
2. There's plenty of great music out today

The difference to me, though, is that 'popular' and 'great' intersected more often than they do now. I submit these two examples:

1. Beatles. They freaking took over the world, and are remembered today as geniuses.
2. Led Zeppelin. While not reaching the height of the Beatles, they were still ubiquitous. My mom has given input on this before, and from what she's told me every teenage and college girl wanted Robert Plant back in the day, and the band was incredibly popular.

Wanted to post something, but this sums up my feelings perfectly. Ludovico Einaudi is a pretty popular pianist/composer I'd dare say his stuff is pretty great.

 

[Jakeh111]

I have an issue with the mastering of albums more than the actual music, compressing the shit out of everything just to get an overall louder album is not what I want. Its all about dynamics!

 

[Yasae]

I suppose you could make the argument that popular music these days is really, really bad compared to how it was in the past. However, there's great stuff coming out these days, you just need to know where to look.

Now that would make sense.

But music in general, as a whole? No, there are still amazing works being created.

 

[Crag Dweller]

The 1970s' equivalent of Justin Bieber is Donny Osmond, not Robert Plant.

 

[Yasae]

I have an issue with the mastering of albums more than the actual music, compressing the shit out of everything just to get an overall louder album is not what I want. Its all about dynamics!

Yeah but who cares about quality? It's not about quality. The artists I worked with could hardly tell the difference between water and wine... So what about the listener?

The same guy who mastered Californication by RHCP - widely regarded as one of the worst mastering jobs out there - also did work on the soundtrack for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which is one of the best mastering jobs out there. Vlado Meller.

Obviously this means that he's a complete hack, or there are many factors beyond his control. It's a little from column A and a lot of column B.

EDIT: If you want to hear awful mastering for a soundtrack, listen to The Dark Knight. Man I love the music, but that's a terrible mastering job.

 

[Always-honest]

No, there is still great music. You'll have to look hard though.

But the advantage back then was that the field of oppotunities was wide open. More room for creativity.

The babyboomers had it easy. Always.

 

[Truant]

No, there is still great music. You'll have to look hard though.

But the advantage back then was that the field of oppotunities was wide open. More room for creativity.

The babyboomers had it easy. Always.

Stupidest thing I've ever read in OT.

 

[Fugu]

No, there is still great music. You'll have to look hard though.

But the advantage back then was that the field of oppotunities was wide open. More room for creativity.

The babyboomers had it easy. Always.

How is it not exponentially more wide open now? The internet has allowed the definition of what people might listen to to expand to such a ridiculously large degree that you can now do virtually anything with sounds and call it music. During the rockabilly/early rock period the narrow instrumentation meant that you had to have a specific ear for a specific sound because you were in direct competition with people producing a similar sound with a similar instrument. This had actually been true for a very long time before that but the instrumentation and harmonic lexicon had never been as narrow as it was during that period.

 

[NEOPARADIGM]

The idea music "used to be better" implies somehow that the old music is gone. I'd argue that music gets perpetually and necessarily better over time simply because the catalog keeps growing. Unless you're some avid concert-goer, "music" as a whole is as good as its ever been, and is continually added to.

 

[ViperVisor]

The Grammys embrace pop (and so should you)

pop music -- that oft-dismissed, singles-dominated landscape of big beats and even bigger personalities -- is not only worthy of notice, but praise.

 

[djtiesto]

And no, the way music changes isn't discontinous. I never argued that and your reading that into my post is disingenuous. There's no exact moment in time you can point to and say "Disco died here". Rather, Disco faded into a niche and eventually became something else entirely and Disco fans were left out in the cold slowly over the course of a few years.

A fan of Disco would find that songs with Disco elements were being played less on the radio and in those that had these elements, the Disco was less prominent. It would eventually get to the point where the listener would try an All Disco All The Time radio station, find they liked it better and switch to it full time. On that station, they'd be less exposed to current popular music (obviously they'd hear it through happenstance but they wouldn't find themselves listening to it avidly) and so they'd end up out of touch with it.

All this stuff is simple, intuitive stuff. I've explained it time and again and it's going to take a lot more than a "NO U RONG" to change one iota of it.

Actually...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night

Nope, so much more variety nowadays, Electronic Music alone makes music today more interesting than 40/50 years ago.

Electronic music has been around for a while actually:

Musique Concrete, the oldest "genre" on Ishkur's (now extremely obsolete) Guide to Electronic Music.

Switched On Bach from Walter/Wendy Carlos (who you know from of course A Clockwork Orange and Tron)

Pink Floyd classic from 1973

And of course this, the Theremin, the first electronic instrument ever.

 

[viciouskillersquirrel]

Actually...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night



Electronic music has been around for a while actually:

Musique Concrete, the oldest "genre" on Ishkur's (now extremely obsolete) Guide to Electronic Music.

Switched On Bach from Walter/Wendy Carlos (who you know from of course A Clockwork Orange and Tron)

Pink Floyd classic from 1973

And of course this, the Theremin, the first electronic instrument ever.

Notice where I said "Eventually became something else?" Yeah.