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I have to agree most of the music nowadays is crap! Too many singers/bands gettin' manufactured by money.
On a side note, has anyone ever heard of Lily Allen? I seen her on S N L the other night and was blown away! What are your thoughts of the Brit singer?
But to actually write a song called "American Idiot". What trash.
heh
That happens to be one of my favorite songs on the album.
I like Lucinda Williams, too. Saw her a couple years ago.
Richard Thompson is someone else I like quite a bit.
The Killers are okay. Kinda 80's sounding.
BTW, vasinger
What's "too mainstream"? Too popular? Too much liked by everyone else? Not exclusive/cutting edge enough?
I dont like any popular music that has come out in the past 30 years really. And Im only 27!
I think that the music now is really so bad. While I am a country and western music fan, country music is trash now. Nashville doesnt mean anything anymore.
Rock music is even worse. There's no Rock Band I appreciate , except perhaps The Killers.
And I dont even hear any genuine Pop music anymore.
I wish we could go back to the 50s and early 60s when they had great Rock n' Roll and Pop music and Country Music meant something.
Now its all just meaningless fodder.
I feel the same as you and I'm considerably older than 27. Personally, I think it is all crap if it was recorded after the mid 70's, save for a few bright spots here and there.
Lots of interesting discussion going on here...
There's so many forms of entertainment, music and electronic media to grab public attention that most of today's musicians are playing to a "niche" audience. They are competing against hundreds of channels of TV, satellite radio, video games, worldwide internet, billions of cell phones, IPODs that play MP3 (probably copied from someone else), text messaging, music videos and so on. Not all, but a lot of contemporary musicians are influenced by all this other stuff going on and most don't seem to be able to put together music that stands above all the other electronic distractions.
There are some great new musicians coming along, but for them to be considered "classic" might take a little more time. Trouble is technology has taken over and removed a lot of the real "style" that used to go into music.
Bear with me, I'll try to explain. Now don't forget that 30 or so years ago, you could count the number of TV channels on one hand, there were one or two newspapers in town and one or two dozen radio stations on the dial. 30 or so weekly magazines and a bunch of monthly mags too. That sums up the "mass media" of that era.
I heard a great radio program last year that interviewed a band leader who worked and recorded with Frank Sinatra for over 20 years. He described the difference between the way that Sinatra recorded hit songs versus the way that nearly all other popular music has been recorded for the past 30+ years. Sinatra used to schedule recording sessions with a band that had played with him for many years. When recording, the entire band was present with Frank at one sound studio. Each band member received the sheet music for four or five different songs a week or two earlier, and would know their part real well before the session started. They were all pros, the best of the best.
The band leader would get the group together and talk through the different parts of the song and how it was all supposed feel and come together. After a short warm up, Frank would join them and everything would be ready to record. It was not unusual for the first recording cut of a song to be the only cut, and the one that was used on the record!! Sinatra was of the belief that he and his band were so motivated and excited about the way the song came together on their first go around, that is when they were at their best. And then they would repeat that process for three or four more songs, and making the first cut on each song as the version that would be recorded on vinyl!! His band had a name for this style of recording, First Cut Frank. I would have loved to sit on the sidelines to see that happen.
This is such a stark and stunning contrast to the way music is "created" today. I say "created" because music is no longer recorded by a group of musicians working together in a studio. Dozens of different individual "tracks" are recorded and electronically mixed and tweeked to achieve the desired sound, or whatever. Sometimes the studio records 10, 20 or 30 different cuts of each track to get the precise sound they want to record. So that's what we get today, a bunch precisely manufactured sounds.
What we are in short supply of today is music with spirit, emotion and style that is written and played from the heart and soul instead of cranked out from the digital recording mixer. There was a reason they called Frank Sinatra "Chairman of the Board", so rest in peace old friend.
I think mainstream music is just as good as music was in the past. I just think it's sort of human nature to romanticize things from our youth. While the industry has changed greatly due to music videos, glossy magazines and such, I think that as a whole, there are just as many talented singers, songwriters and musicians nowadays as there have always been, including those in th mainstream, but it's just that the mainstream due to technological advances and the changing industry and culture, is shared with a lot more "media-created" entertainer types. I do think however that people are oftentimes too quick to lump anything they hear on a pop radio station as crap just by virtue of it being popular and almost therefore inherently uncool.
I do think however that people are oftentimes too quick to lump anything they hear on a pop radio station as crap just by virtue of it being popular and almost therefore inherently uncool.
Exactly. See my remarks about Pitchfork Review above. I enjoy reading *some* music criticism but I tend to shy away from pretentious tastemakers.
Opera used to be considered music for the masses, novels used to be considered a waste of time for serious readers.
recycled, thanks for sharing. Those recording live days were something, huh.
I still have a turntable and I still spin vinyl. I still remember the very first day I played the Grateful Dead's American Beauty. I was 15 years old and it was a revelation. Then there was Electric Ladyland. Those were the days, too.
However, as much as I revere those heady days of Hendrix, I am not giving up on today's music. I love a whole lot of today's music. Good stuff is out there.
So much of it is loud and irritating noise, not music. And heavily influenced by the idiot, no talent rappers. I agree, even C&W is crap as well anymore.
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Yep, I agree!
