Good music. Why does music in the 21st century have to suck so bad? It’s not that much different than what we had in the 20th century, the quality just steadily decreased instead of increased. It’s all divas screaming, really boring rap, or just dull, art-less rock.
Today, even young people are discovering that the Classic Rock era had very cool music. It would have been like my generation discovering the music of the pre-war 30s.
I like music from the decade before my birth and swing became big at one point and many folk discover there is a lot of classical music they like. I get what your saying but like there is a lot of historical crap pop to which is kinda always around.
Cool, I have a degree in Music History, and you are 100% correct, there is a LOT of bad historical music. Luckily, we don’t have to deal with it much, because most of it has been filtered out over time.
There’s a loose rule in all Art, that 95% of art is mostly mediocre. Only about 5% is worthy, and only about 1% is truly good, or great. When youre in the midst of it, most of what you are hearing is junk, and you have to be the filter, and it can be exhausting.
But if you go back to the old stuff, it’s basically been curated by critics and fans over the decades, and mostly the best stuff has survived, so it’s easier to find great, satisfying music.
And if you’re ambitious, you can sort through the debris, and find the odd forgotten classic rock gem, like Shoes:
I wonder about that in the modern age though. I mean there has to be a factor of how easy it is to copy and store. So likely a lot was lost before performance recording capability. In the car I mostly listen to npr but when I don’t care for whats on I will just sorta jump between stations and there is a thing now for stations to kinda take a time period but they don’t seem to be very discriminatory about it. On the other hand now that we can call up any song we want likely you will see the cream come up to the top on what gets asked for a lot. I have one particular gripe though because my fav band tull had this album crafting they did where the position of songs, especially the first and last, were real important. They have these special editions they kinda just tacked songs on them and it ruins the flow. Its impossible, at least with amazon, to get the device to do the original vs the special edition that it defaults to.
Yeah, one of the cool things about the Classic Rock era was how real artists would program their albums for flow. The Beatles were really the first to do that, and they completely changed music industry sales from a single format to an album format, which was far more profitable for both artists, and record companies, which only encouraged more people to become musicians, and record companies to make more albums.
So, yeah, when you get some special edition, and they start inserting alternate or demo or live versions INTO the original program, it totally fucks up the artist’s intentions.
Luckily most of the time, they give us a nicely remastered version of the original on a disc alone, and all the other stuff on a separate disc.
But that’s only if you use CDs, which more and more people are going back to, fortunately. I never left, I still have my original CD collection, about 5000 of them. Don’t get excited I was in the music biz for years, a LOT of them were free, but still good. Got a killer discount, too, basically manufacturing cost, so about $3 a CD, back in the 90s. I would buy the entire catalogue of a band like Led Zeppelin, or Prince, or Talking Heads, or the Eagles, etc.
As for music from before recordings, I don’t even like to think about it. Many of the great composers, like Bach, or Mozart, or Beethoven were known to be astonishing virtuoso keyboard players, who could improvise incredibly complex music on the spot. At a concert, the guest of honor, usually some local VIP, would supply a tune, and they would play it on the piano, and then build an entire work out of thin air in front of the audience. Can you imagine hearing a recording of that?
If you’re talking about modern pop, I completely agree. But there’s so much amazing music coming out every year, way better than anything before it imo. My guess is if you really do want to find great new music, then you’re not exploring enough. Or maybe you’re happy with what you already know.
A lot of the problem is that most men grow up listening to rap, and women grow up listening to divas, and if they don’t listen to those genres, then they listen to country. So many young musicians are growing up listening to mediocre quality music, and they tend to slip into genres that are somewhat less competitive, artistically, like Rap or Country.
That leaves fewer musicians to carry on the Classic Rock tradition. Besides, what’s the point? The fact is, the Classic Rock era turned out the best popular music of all time. That sound like a wild statement on its face, but it really is true. What band emerging now seems like it could be the next Beatles, or Rolling Stones, or Led Zeppelin, or Pink Floyd? I can’t think of a band that threatened to have that kind of influence since Nirvana.
There have been a few worthy artists, like Adele, and a few truly great singers, like Ariana Grande, but there are no other superstar Rock artists whose talents are undeniable, like Michael Jackson, or Prince.
Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Adele, and Ariana Grande are about all I can think of, and that is over about 30 years. Compare that with the 60s or 70s, or even the 80s, when artists were establishing MASSIVE careers that would last decades, on a monthly basis. At the end of the year, you were listening to a dozen classic albums by bands you hadn’t heard of a year ago, and another dozen classic albums by your favorite bands. GREAT music was just pouring out, and it became popular not because of an enormous marketing campaign, but because the music was great, and the word spread. Hardly any of Pink Floyd’s music was ever on the radio, and yet they established a career and a catalogue that sells to this day. Taylor Swift seems huge, but back in the day, she would have been outsold by a dozen other artists.
So why even bother re-inventing the wheel? There is already about 50 years of AMAZING music that young people today have never heard. I always get downvoted when I say this, but they are from people who don’t know what they are missing, and think today’s music is perfectly acceptable.
The music of the 60s and 70s inspired my to pursue a life and career in music. Today’s music would not have inspired me at all.
I know a lot of people who would completely agree with you, so maybe there was something special about the 60s, 70 & 80s. Many artists today even list those classics as their inspiration. But it depends on taste too. I personally think the conventional rock genre is worn out. So if you’re only into that then maybe it isn’t worth exploring further.
I also agree that most artists today only seem to hit a couple of great albums at most before they fade. I think there’s more to greatness than popularity, but yeah there’s not many artists producing amazing music consistently for decades. There’s a few, but fans also seem to move on quickly as well now.
But I do think the talent and great music is absolutely there. It just might not be in the form you want.
Rock was very controversial when it first started right? Thinking Elvis. And I’d say that’s opened the doors to a huge variety of new genres. To the point where the concept of genre can’t even categorise what we have today. Artists have so much more creative freedom now imo.
And I expect there’s way more active musicians today as well, so people’s attention is spread across so many different artists and styles.
I can’t speak for conventional rock, a lot of what I listen to is considered alternative/indie rock, and I don’t know how to measure greatness, but the music I’m hearing today is for me, much more artistically and emotionally impactful than anything I’ve heard before.
There is very good 21st century music, which wouldn’t have come had it not been for 20th century music.
Thinking igorrr, emergence of gqom (that’s very pop for gqom), post rock emerged in the 20th and has a reminiscence of tripped out 70s rock bands, but bands like thee silver mount zion are also very early 21st century.
It’s also not surprising we are hitting a barrier after electroacoustic music sort of enlarged the field a lot, the last major innovations were sunths, electronic soundFX and DAWs and these are all 20th century changes. The 20th century saw more innovation than the previous centuries. Fusion of styles, while older, has given interesting merges in the 21st century as well.
But the 20th century will be hard to surpass, pretty much as by the end of the 19th century classical music was running circles.
Good music. Why does music in the 21st century have to suck so bad? It’s not that much different than what we had in the 20th century, the quality just steadily decreased instead of increased. It’s all divas screaming, really boring rap, or just dull, art-less rock.
Today, even young people are discovering that the Classic Rock era had very cool music. It would have been like my generation discovering the music of the pre-war 30s.
I like music from the decade before my birth and swing became big at one point and many folk discover there is a lot of classical music they like. I get what your saying but like there is a lot of historical crap pop to which is kinda always around.
Cool, I have a degree in Music History, and you are 100% correct, there is a LOT of bad historical music. Luckily, we don’t have to deal with it much, because most of it has been filtered out over time.
There’s a loose rule in all Art, that 95% of art is mostly mediocre. Only about 5% is worthy, and only about 1% is truly good, or great. When youre in the midst of it, most of what you are hearing is junk, and you have to be the filter, and it can be exhausting.
But if you go back to the old stuff, it’s basically been curated by critics and fans over the decades, and mostly the best stuff has survived, so it’s easier to find great, satisfying music.
And if you’re ambitious, you can sort through the debris, and find the odd forgotten classic rock gem, like Shoes:
Too Late
Tomorrow Night
Or Yaz:
Only You
Or Bread:
Diary
I wonder about that in the modern age though. I mean there has to be a factor of how easy it is to copy and store. So likely a lot was lost before performance recording capability. In the car I mostly listen to npr but when I don’t care for whats on I will just sorta jump between stations and there is a thing now for stations to kinda take a time period but they don’t seem to be very discriminatory about it. On the other hand now that we can call up any song we want likely you will see the cream come up to the top on what gets asked for a lot. I have one particular gripe though because my fav band tull had this album crafting they did where the position of songs, especially the first and last, were real important. They have these special editions they kinda just tacked songs on them and it ruins the flow. Its impossible, at least with amazon, to get the device to do the original vs the special edition that it defaults to.
Yeah, one of the cool things about the Classic Rock era was how real artists would program their albums for flow. The Beatles were really the first to do that, and they completely changed music industry sales from a single format to an album format, which was far more profitable for both artists, and record companies, which only encouraged more people to become musicians, and record companies to make more albums.
So, yeah, when you get some special edition, and they start inserting alternate or demo or live versions INTO the original program, it totally fucks up the artist’s intentions.
Luckily most of the time, they give us a nicely remastered version of the original on a disc alone, and all the other stuff on a separate disc.
But that’s only if you use CDs, which more and more people are going back to, fortunately. I never left, I still have my original CD collection, about 5000 of them. Don’t get excited I was in the music biz for years, a LOT of them were free, but still good. Got a killer discount, too, basically manufacturing cost, so about $3 a CD, back in the 90s. I would buy the entire catalogue of a band like Led Zeppelin, or Prince, or Talking Heads, or the Eagles, etc.
As for music from before recordings, I don’t even like to think about it. Many of the great composers, like Bach, or Mozart, or Beethoven were known to be astonishing virtuoso keyboard players, who could improvise incredibly complex music on the spot. At a concert, the guest of honor, usually some local VIP, would supply a tune, and they would play it on the piano, and then build an entire work out of thin air in front of the audience. Can you imagine hearing a recording of that?
If you’re talking about modern pop, I completely agree. But there’s so much amazing music coming out every year, way better than anything before it imo. My guess is if you really do want to find great new music, then you’re not exploring enough. Or maybe you’re happy with what you already know.
I am talking about Modern Pop, and Rock.
A lot of the problem is that most men grow up listening to rap, and women grow up listening to divas, and if they don’t listen to those genres, then they listen to country. So many young musicians are growing up listening to mediocre quality music, and they tend to slip into genres that are somewhat less competitive, artistically, like Rap or Country.
That leaves fewer musicians to carry on the Classic Rock tradition. Besides, what’s the point? The fact is, the Classic Rock era turned out the best popular music of all time. That sound like a wild statement on its face, but it really is true. What band emerging now seems like it could be the next Beatles, or Rolling Stones, or Led Zeppelin, or Pink Floyd? I can’t think of a band that threatened to have that kind of influence since Nirvana.
There have been a few worthy artists, like Adele, and a few truly great singers, like Ariana Grande, but there are no other superstar Rock artists whose talents are undeniable, like Michael Jackson, or Prince.
Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Adele, and Ariana Grande are about all I can think of, and that is over about 30 years. Compare that with the 60s or 70s, or even the 80s, when artists were establishing MASSIVE careers that would last decades, on a monthly basis. At the end of the year, you were listening to a dozen classic albums by bands you hadn’t heard of a year ago, and another dozen classic albums by your favorite bands. GREAT music was just pouring out, and it became popular not because of an enormous marketing campaign, but because the music was great, and the word spread. Hardly any of Pink Floyd’s music was ever on the radio, and yet they established a career and a catalogue that sells to this day. Taylor Swift seems huge, but back in the day, she would have been outsold by a dozen other artists.
So why even bother re-inventing the wheel? There is already about 50 years of AMAZING music that young people today have never heard. I always get downvoted when I say this, but they are from people who don’t know what they are missing, and think today’s music is perfectly acceptable.
The music of the 60s and 70s inspired my to pursue a life and career in music. Today’s music would not have inspired me at all.
I know a lot of people who would completely agree with you, so maybe there was something special about the 60s, 70 & 80s. Many artists today even list those classics as their inspiration. But it depends on taste too. I personally think the conventional rock genre is worn out. So if you’re only into that then maybe it isn’t worth exploring further.
I also agree that most artists today only seem to hit a couple of great albums at most before they fade. I think there’s more to greatness than popularity, but yeah there’s not many artists producing amazing music consistently for decades. There’s a few, but fans also seem to move on quickly as well now.
But I do think the talent and great music is absolutely there. It just might not be in the form you want.
Rock was very controversial when it first started right? Thinking Elvis. And I’d say that’s opened the doors to a huge variety of new genres. To the point where the concept of genre can’t even categorise what we have today. Artists have so much more creative freedom now imo.
And I expect there’s way more active musicians today as well, so people’s attention is spread across so many different artists and styles.
I can’t speak for conventional rock, a lot of what I listen to is considered alternative/indie rock, and I don’t know how to measure greatness, but the music I’m hearing today is for me, much more artistically and emotionally impactful than anything I’ve heard before.
There is very good 21st century music, which wouldn’t have come had it not been for 20th century music.
Thinking igorrr, emergence of gqom (that’s very pop for gqom), post rock emerged in the 20th and has a reminiscence of tripped out 70s rock bands, but bands like thee silver mount zion are also very early 21st century.
It’s also not surprising we are hitting a barrier after electroacoustic music sort of enlarged the field a lot, the last major innovations were sunths, electronic soundFX and DAWs and these are all 20th century changes. The 20th century saw more innovation than the previous centuries. Fusion of styles, while older, has given interesting merges in the 21st century as well.
But the 20th century will be hard to surpass, pretty much as by the end of the 19th century classical music was running circles.