How to Talk to Your Children About Their Shitty Taste... - Music

meccalecca
Voice of Reason

Gender: Male
Location: The Land of Enchantment

sp4cetiger wrote:

Again, I do think there's a lot of good pop music out there. I respect artists like Lady Gaga and Adele and enjoy some of the hits. I also completely disagree with the article's sentiments about complexity of instrumentation, grammar, etc. However, "dad rockers" (excuse the slur) who complain about the quality of modern pop music may still have a point.

Video killed the radio star.

It's clear that MTV was a disruptive force in the quality of popular music. The video era brought out more superficial tendencies towards music. Looks and production value became more important. Also, the early years of the video era were dominated by Rod Stewart simply because he had a load of videos and MTV didn't really have all that many videos to choose from at the time.

Since that time, a lot of pop music has been dominated by the need to be over the top, and outdo what came before. But not in the way of songwriting. Outfits have to be more outrageous, videos need to be more ambitious, and the more big name guest appearances on a track, the better.

There will alwways be good pop and bad pop in every era, but i think this era is truly oversaturated with overstylized polished turds.
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Listmeister

Gender: Male
Location: Ohio

Couple things:

1. Languages change. Right now, we are in a period of rapid change in English. Spelling is changing. Grammar is changing. This is no bad thing. In the middle ages, language enforcers bemoaned the fact that kids weren't speaking standard Latin anymore. The result was, Latin was frozen, and people soon stopped speaking it. What they spoke turned into Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, etc. We are in danger of doing the same thing to English if we don't lighten up about things like verb-dropping.

2. Things he said about "back in my day we had real musicians" have been said by every generation about artists that later became critical darlings. Ricky Nelson, the 50's analog to Miley, is now considered an innovative early rocker. Aerosmith was considered to be pretty generic (in the worst sense of the word) back during their first decade. (note: "generic" is an early 80's word that basically means that there's nothing special about them. Is generic still a thing people say? I haven't heard it in awhile.)

In 1955 (July 9, to be precise) Rock and Roll started taking over the music charts. It took about 15 years for all the implications to be worked out, but by 1970 all the forms had pretty much been invented. In the 80's rap added a new element to the music, which took another 20 years for its implications to be worked out. However, even in 1966, the peak of the aforementioned innovation, people were complaining about "the music today, nothing like the good stuff we had when we were kids", and to be fair to those complainers, there was a lot of crap on the airways even in 1966. Don't believe me? Sit down and listen to EVERY top ten song from that year (or top 5, or top 40).

The crap gets forgotten, and our memory of the music of 1966 is that it was awesome (really groovy, they would have said. Awesome was not invented until 1986.). By 2033, the worst music of 2013 will be forgotten. Dadrockers of 2033 will say "back in 2013 we had real music, not like we have now in 2033. Turn off that crap and let me play for you some Demi Lovato. Now this is what real music sounds like."

Guest

Listmeister wrote:

In the middle ages, language enforcers bemoaned the fact that kids weren't speaking standard Latin anymore. The result was, Latin was frozen, and people soon stopped speaking it. What they spoke turned into Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, etc. We are in danger of doing the same thing to English . . .

WUT Yo oN bout DooD?

sp4cetiger

Listmeister wrote:

However, even in 1966, the peak of the aforementioned innovation, people were complaining about "the music today, nothing like the good stuff we had when we were kids",

That's selling it a bit short, don't you think? In the mid-60s, the generation gap was *huge*. That was the whole baby boomer, summer-of-love, rock-is-rebellious era. I'm sure old folks were complaining even more back then than they do now. But just because older folks complain doesn't mean that they have a point.

Quote:

and to be fair to those complainers, there was a lot of crap on the airways even in 1966. Don't believe me? Sit down and listen to EVERY top ten song from that year (or top 5, or top 40).

Of course there will be bad pop music in every era, but I doubt anyone would debate that. Let's see what BEA thinks about the artists that were topping the charts in 1966. Here's a list of the number one songs from that year:

1966 Number 1 songs

Here are the top-ranked artists (according to BEA) that made it onto that list:

The Beatles (1)
The Rolling Stones (6)
The Beach Boys (14)
Simon and Garfunkel (75)
Frank Sinatra (237)

Keep in mind that this is still an era when the album wasn't the dominant form for disseminating rock/pop music, so artists like the Supremes may be underrated by BEA.

Now let's step ahead in time by decade.

1976 Number 1 songs

Elton John (108)
Paul Simon (110)
Rod Stewart (355)
Chicago (501)
Bee Gees (548)

1986 Number 1 songs

Genesis (56)
Prince (61)
Peter Gabriel (147)
Madonna (153)
Boston (199)

1996 Number 1 songs

Dr. Dre (218)
2Pac (281)
Mariah Carey (825)
Boyz II Men (2227)
Bone Thugs n' Harmony (2543)

I won't go any further than that since there hasn't been enough time to properly rate artists from the 2000s. Also, in fairness to the 90s (my generation), there weren't a lot of number 1 songs in 1996, so there were fewer bands to choose from. Also, hip-hop is systematically underrated on BEA (my opinion), so that hurt the '90s as well.

Even so, 1966 stands out pretty clearly above the rest. Keep in mind that was almost 50 years ago, so it's only the oldest folks that would have a generational bias towards that era. Also, to reiterate what I was saying to Swedenman, this is only a reflection of the most popular music and should not be used to infer anything about the entire musical landscape in a given era.

Make of that what you will. Were the baby boomers somehow responsible? Record companies? Did MTV play a role? I dunno, but I think there's something there beyond generational and genre bias.

Listmeister

Gender: Male
Location: Ohio

sp4cetiger wrote:

this is only a reflection of the most popular music and should not be used to infer anything about the entire musical landscape in a given era.

I would argue that looking at the most popular music (songs AND albums) is a very good way to get a map of the musical landscape of an era. "Most popular" is what most people liked, by definition, that's what "most popular" means. Is there a lot more detail? Of course. Is there a lot of stuff going on under the surface that the map doesn't even touch? Certainly. But a list of the top songs and top albums will show you the mountain peaks and the valleys that define the outlines of the landscape.

sp4cetiger

Listmeister wrote:

I would argue that looking at the most popular music (songs AND albums) is a very good way to get a map of the musical landscape of an era. "Most popular" is what most people liked, by definition, that's what "most popular" means. Is there a lot more detail? Of course. Is there a lot of stuff going on under the surface that the map doesn't even touch? Certainly. But a list of the top songs and top albums will show you the mountain peaks and the valleys that define the outlines of the landscape.

Were the Velvet Underground therefore just a detail? The post-punk movement? Did hip-hop not matter until the 90s? I don't agree that the "most popular" really constitutes a peak in anything other than record sales. It's certainly not the best music by any definition that I'm willing to accept.

Listmeister

Gender: Male
Location: Ohio

sp4cetiger wrote:

Were the Velvet Underground therefore just a detail? The post-punk movement? Did hip-hop not matter until the 90s? I don't agree that the "most popular" really constitutes a peak in anything other than record sales. It's certainly not the best music by any definition that I'm willing to accept.

1. Yes. The Velvet Underground was just a detail. They are the answer to a trivia question: What album cover did Andy Warhol paint?

EXCEPT: Some of their albums are fairly highly rated on this site. That pushes them onto the map. Popularity on this site also counts.

2. Post-punk and hip-hop did not matter until they mattered. Then they mattered. Fortunately, mattering is retroactive. There are currents of music right now that neither you nor I are familiar with or have any exposure to. Right now, they don't matter to us. But, these currents will either wither and die, or get stronger. If they get stronger, then they will matter, and the music being made today that we are missing will still be there.

3. I didn't say "best" (did I? I don't think I did.). A peak in record sales means more people have bought the record. More people have bought the record means more people listened to the record. That has a direct bearing on the musical landscape.

4. We're talking about a map here. My map is going to be different from your map, obviously, but there will probably be some points of similarity. (Later Beatles, for instance). A more accurate map would be a sum total of everybody's maps, and the criterion for measuring and comparing them is popularity.

sp4cetiger

Listmeister wrote:

1. Yes. The Velvet Underground was just a detail. They are the answer to a trivia question: What album cover did Andy Warhol paint?

If that's all the relevance you think VU have to the history of music, I don't see much point in an extended argument, since we're clearly from different galaxies. If the Billboard charts are all that matter to you right now, that's fine, but I'm planning on looking elsewhere. Razz

Listmeister

Gender: Male
Location: Ohio

Listmeister wrote:

EXCEPT: Some of their albums are fairly highly rated on this site. That pushes them onto the map. Popularity on this site also counts.

I stand by my except. 'And Nico' is ranked number 12 on BEA, and makes a lot of critics' lists. That's a pretty significant feature of the album landscape, and one that I ignore at my peril. Billboard does not have the only charts that I follow, but neither can I disregard them because they measure what the largest number of people are listening to.

FWIW, I think this site has more useful album charts because Billboard's album charts measure sales, which until the internet, meant people buying music they hadn't heard yet but wanted to, and was more a reflection of the popularity of the artist.

Guest

Lists don't matter one iota when trying to establish the worth of an album. They can often make great reference points, and are helpful in allowing us to establish which albums are most popular, most acclaimed, most loved, but they can never help us establish which albums are better, or greater, or more important. Lists are of interest to many people, including most of us on this site given that we continue to make them on a regular basis, but beyond cataloguing our personal preferences, or quantifying aspects of the music (if indeed record sales or chronology can be considered aspects of the music) that have no bearing on the quality of said music, they offer us very little. They won't tell you which albums are the best, or the most worthwhile; that is something you must decide on your own.