Generic Music

[Cymro2011]

[meccalecca]

[Guest]

I think when people use the term generic they mostly mean "ripoff & insincere". A song is generic when it's supposedly exists to be like something else because that something else sold a lot (or gained critical acclaim) and this very fact makes that song or the work of that band insincere. You can never put your finger on some band and objectively say they are insincere but when you feel it for yourself it's hard to change that feeling although it's also hard to prove sth like that. But sometimes there are evidences that may not be definitive but give you suspicions. Meccalecca said sth about Mumford & Sons. Well I find it hard to believe that civil war or dust bowl can be of so much interest for a British guy to make him write songs about it or after becoming popular in the States try to make hard rock songs with mandolin and banjo to satisfy the need of concert-goers for hard-rocking songs.

[Cymro2011]

[meccalecca]

[Romanelli]

Love the music you love, and don't let anyone tell you that you should be thinking otherwise. Why should we care how bands are labeled? Why should we care if there are a bunch of bands that sound alike out there? We can't control who gets a record deal, or who gets radio play, or who gets to be famous. To think we can will only make our heads explode. Regardless of who is famous and who is not, there is great music out there, and people like us will find it. Let the world turn and do what it will do. Don't worry about this "generic" thing...it can't be controlled. It CAN put weird things into your head and possibly make you dislike things you would have otherwise liked a whole lot.

Love your music.
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May we all get to heaven
'Fore the devil knows we're dead...

[EyeKanFly]

My only problem with music sounding "generic" or "insincere" is when a band tries to duplicate the success of a previous album. Green Day is a big example of this I think. 21st Century Breakdown and Uno!, Dos!, Tre! all seemed to ride off of American Idiot, and while the song quality isn't much different, the fact that they were all so safe and non-unique just seemed lame. Sometimes this is just when a band is past their prime, like Red Hot Chili Peppers' I'm With You.

Another type of insincere is when a band tries too hard to make something different, and it doesn't come out as epic as intended. I know others feel differently, but Amok is like this for me.
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51 Washington, D.C. albums!

[Bork]

Didn't think generic would be such a difficult term, but when you look at it from different angles I guess it can be.

Generic is a cuss-word when it comes to music and rightfully so. What it really means is easy to see by looking at the Nashville country scene (and, I am guessing, the pop scene but I am not as familiar with that one). Everyone who comes to Nashville wants to be a musician, and I am pretty sure they have all set out to do their own thing, play their own music, be true to their own selves. The problem is that there are other people who decide what actually gets recorded and played on the radio. These people, while most certainly knowledgable about music, are not primarily interested in the quality of a particular song or album. They are (and are paid to be) interested in how much money it can generate. These people may be allowed to fail now and then and may be awarded for doing something extraordinary now and then, but when push comes to shove they are rewarded and heralded for what they can turn around consistently. So, to be able to deliver quarter after quarter to make the shareholders and their accountants happy they stick to what works. They put out song after song and album after album that follow a certain formula because that formula appears to on average sell more records. That is why 90% of what comes out of Nashville is generic uninteresting fluff. Every now and then that very formula will produce a fantastic song. So far it has never produced a fantastic album and most likely never will.

Also, as the world is not black and white but very very grey, Nashville is not only that formula. There are shades of how much control the musician's themselves have over their music and shades of how much those decision makers stick to making money over music. It would be tempting to claim that the more control the musician's have the more interesting the music will be, but that is not necessarily the case. Some of the best music put on record is a result of producers reeling unruly musicians in.

Which brings us to second point and the issue the OP appear to have:

There most certainly APPEAR to be music snobism pretty much everywhere you look, not least so on this website. At first glance this attitude is annoying. It appears (very very much on this site) that being unpopular is in and by itself a guarantee of quality. It is as if there is a general attitude about the average music listener as being a blind sheep that listens to whatever smell-goods are put in front of his or her nose, and the more I manage to distance myself from that sheep the "better" my taste is. That attitude leads to ridiculous apparent consensuses, such as Radiohead being the best (or maybe second best, haven't checked lately) band ever to walk the planet, or Velvet Underground being the prime of the '60s. Certain popular bands are safe to like. The Beatles of course. Stevie Wonder, Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, possibly Elton John. In most cases though, liking something popular opens up to ridicule. Liking something obscure and/or complicated makes it impossible to question your tastes as there is always the sorry-this-is-too-complicated-for-you defense.

Mind you, I tried to draw your attention to the word appear at the beginning. I doubt that people around this website, and other forums that talk about music in a more intelligent way than clicking the "like" button on The Facebook, are insincere about their musical preferences. I rather believe there is a positive correlation between wanting to expand your musical horizons, finding the path less travelled if you will, and talking about music. So rather than having people with low self-esteem and using their superior knowledge about music to feel better about themselves by ridiculing the dumb masses, we have a group of people who are genuinely interested in what they listen to and a tendency to value creativity and originality over simple, unreflected enjoyability. The end result, of course, is an overall chart that for the general public is not quite as useful as the more balanced approach of, say, Rolling Stone magazine. But for the kind that frequent this establishment, the kind that spend a ridiculous amount of time listening to, rating, and talking about music, it is still useful as long as you bear in mind the limitations that come with it.

And in the end, noone but you gives a shit what music you personally like or dislike.

[JMan]