Fun Stuff > BAND
Signs of the apocalypse...
Tergon:
I gotta agree with Khar on this one. The state of music today is utter shit.
R&B songs are multiplying like weeping sores on a leper, and every month another Britney Spears clone pops up with a song that sounds exactly like every other song these freaking teeny-boppers have come up with. Rap is getting downright common, which is just scary. And there's a frighteningly high number of boy-bands, the members of whom are no older than 16, singing about sex.
What's more, nobody's being inventive or innovative any more. Nearly every song played on the radio is actually a cover, or new lyrics imposed over old music (Jessica Simpson must DIE for what she did to The Story of Jack & Dianne). They're not even subtle about the fact that their music is a direct rip-off of other's works. Covers used to be about re-tweaking an old classic while paying homage to the original tune. Nowadays covers rape the old song. With a broomstick. That is on FIRE.
If I turn on the radio, I now have difficulty distinguishing one song from the next. Because they ALL FUCKING SOUND THE SAME. It's horrifying. What happened to bands that actually had a sound that you could recognise? If I can't tell your band from twenty others, why the hell would I want to buy your CD specifically?
However, for a real sign of the Apocalypse, I give you the moment when the music of the last 5 years jumped the shark.
It was in 2002, courtesy of the vile hellspawned freak that is Brandy. The song in question was What About Us.
The lyrics do not rhyme. The voices are so synthesised you can hardly tell who's singing it. There is no actual music played, just a vague beatbox of noises that sound like a trumpet having an epileptic fit. In no way whatsoever does this song display even the tiniest bit of musical talent.
Yet this song was considered a "hit" on the charts and influenced a large number of future R&B and Pop songs.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Brandy: the moment when God turned his face from the musical world. Ever since that day, the music scene has been getting (somehow) worse, and the result is the utter lack of talent we see today.
...wow, that's probably my first real musical rant. Today I begin my journey as an indie nerd.
...crap.
Garcin:
--- Quote from: KharBevNor ---I fucking hate it. I just want to have some fucking fun, but everything is too shit. Awful little NME reading shitbags are having fun. Stomach-churning emo cuntbags are rocking out with their fucking scene. I've got fucking nothing.
--- End quote ---
<3 Stomach-churning emo cuntbags
So then, as I read your post with a sympathetic eye, I realize that it's not the state of modern music that's fucked, but instead the state of modern music that you enjoy.
Sucks to be you I guess. I've heard similar complaints from aficianados of jazz and classical music (it's a running joke in classical circles that the age of a classical music is at an end because this has been said by classical music lovers and periodicals basically every year for the last 150 years), but happily, although I enjoy those genres, I don't enjoy them enough to lament their (probably imaginary) decline.
I guess your only solace is that, should your tastes ever change, you have a healthy and vibrant world of post-rock/indie/adult contemporary to look forward to. But I expect that you will impale yourself on one of your ample collection of rusty broadswords before you allow this to happen. Shame.
In response to Tergon's post above me, I note that the "decline of modern music" has been a constant theme pretty much as long as there has been "modern music". It is a cliche that every generation laments the music decline betrayed by the subsequent generation's tastes.
Tergon refers to television, radio, and top 20 music as if this were representative of this amorphous concept of "music" in a meaningful way. They are not. Logically, these media merely present the music most pleasing to the lowest common denominator. To look at the music available through these media and qualify "modern music" on that basis is a splendid absurdity. It's like judging world-wide soil purity based on soil in the Chernobyl situs, or judging American living standards based on Detroit. As Jeph so cleverly pointed out by implication in one of his recent indietits comics, there is absolutely no reason for a music fan to be engaged in these media to the extent that they even penetrate his or her consciousness.
The age of the internet is the age of the microculture, and what happens inside of your microculture -- that sub-sub-sub-genre that happens to be incredibly pleasing to you -- is for all intents and purposes your ultimate and final index of the health of modern music. Your judgments about the quality of what other people happen to enjoy are irrelevant both to them (given that they won't agree with you or else they wouldn't listen to it) and for you (given that, with an iPod in your pocket, you never really have to listen to that shit). In sum, if you don't like the shit they play on tv, stop watching the fucking television.
Tergon:
--- Quote from: Moiche ---In response to Tergon's post above me, I note that the "decline of modern music" has been a constant theme pretty much as long as there has been "modern music". It is a cliche that every generation laments the music decline betrayed by the subsequent generation's tastes.
Tergon refers to television, radio, and top 20 music as if this were representative of this amorphous concept of "music" in a meaningful way. They are not. Logically, these media merely present the music most pleasing to the lowest common denominator. To look at the music available through these media and qualify "modern music" on that basis is a splendid absurdity. It's like judging world-wide soil purity based on soil in the Chernobyl situs, or judging American living standards based on Detroit. As Jeph so cleverly pointed out by implication in one of his recent indietits comics, there is absolutely no reason for a music fan to be engaged in these media to the extent that they even penetrate his or her consciousness.
The age of the internet is the age of the microculture, and what happens inside of your microculture -- that sub-sub-sub-genre that happens to be incredibly pleasing to you -- is for all intents and purposes your ultimate and final index of the health of modern music. Your judgments about the quality of what other people happen to enjoy are irrelevant both to them (given that they won't agree with you or else they wouldn't listen to it) and for you (given that, with an iPod in your pocket, you never really have to listen to that shit). In sum, if you don't like the shit they play on tv, stop watching the fucking television.
--- End quote ---
Fair points. All I can really say in my defence is that a) I don't own an ipod, and b) it's not so easy to get music information where I live. Prior to finding a few forums like this one, which actually gives information on music I like, the only real mediums I had for finding new music were the radio and music charts. As we both pointed out, both those mediums are filled with music that... uh, that I don't like very much. And my post count for the forums here indicates how long I've had these kinds of areas to garner new musical pleasures from.
That said, it still confuses me how these songs get so popular in the first place. Last I checked, the top 20 charts were done on opinion polls of what people thought was good music. How, then, can 17 of these songs be identical R&B tunes? I *know* I'm not that exceptional. I can *not* be the only person who thinks this. I don't know a single person who thinks Fifty Cent is good. Yet this is the kind of music that you can't avoid hearing on the radio? The mind boggles.
Garcin:
Tergon, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Tergon:
Aaw, I am feelin' the lurve.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version