Modern music - trash?

I found this interesting, it is exactly how I feel, and everything I've discovered. I just haven't kept data. I'm not great at explaining things, but this pretty much explains how I feel.

This is the truth, it isn't false.

Majority of the modern music pool is shit.

I just wonder how y'all feel. Like just watch the video.

Doesn't mean the songs can't be enjoyed by people..they just don't compare to music that took way more time, skill, and effort to make.

 

I enjoy some modern music. I genuinely enjoy anything that I can move to.

I wouldn't necessarily say it sucks it more so is very different via the time and the way the industry and consumption of music has changed over the years.

Now a'days it's cheaper both time and money wise just to have a ghostwriter/dj to produce sometimes decent sounding music.

I'm not the type to complain however because I usually enjoy all types of music.

 

I like some modern music such as Lo Moon, Mumford & Sons, Linkin Park, etc. Yeah some the mainstream music rn is shit but tbh I just like whatever sounds good to my ears.

 

Honestly as a music guy myself I gotta agree with this. A lot of modern music is garbage, granted the few that I find really enjoyable I listen to. That's why my music is always all over the place. And as an artist as well its hard to try and avoid these simple things that they do like the Millennial Whoop and everything else mentioned due to the fact of just wanting to make it and blow up to where are faces are known worldwide.

 

I'm not going to sit there and argue to you why my likes are better than your likes. We all have different tastes and I can truly respect that.

I listen to a lot of modern music myself, all mostly rap, including the infamous "mumble rap".

Different generations have different standards, and back then, music was different. People mostly followed that trend back then and focus on bettering that music during that generation.

Now that the generations have passed, the music has also changed in response.

This music in of itself is what these newer generations like.

I absolutely agree that they are not great works of music. They don't have a lot of those key elements that are included in other grand pieces of work like other generations had.

There is no reason to compare them for mechanics because there is no competition when it comes to older music, but the music of itself is pretty good I guess if you're into it.

It's a good point. Cheers.

 

that's just like, your opinion man.

 

Modern music is like a rocket science today, if it hits the other does it, like how electronic dance music and trashy nightcore became popular.

I am main jazz listener who went to all sub jazz genres like retrowave and vaporwave all of the song mostly used in this genre are actual songs from 80's (maybe for experimental purpose) and hey it's good to listen for them.

 

Thank you, @Mr. Disco . I saw that video off on the side the other day, but didn't watch it. Fantastic.

But it's not though lmao. Like he said, it IS science.

The video said it better than I could but if I had to put it in my own words: quite literally, music is just getting dumb. In fact, it's not music anymore. Music is an artistic expression, this stuff is just "exciting noise", the end goal being to whip people up and keep them hooked on it. In turn, regardless of whether it was the original intention of the artist, it's a money making machine, like so many other things today. Bands used to write and sing meaningful stuff that inspired generations, and there was both good and bad. Sure, they were paid for their work, but that wasn't the original motive. Now, the goal is to keep people "hooked" in order to make them come back for more of the exact same stuff, and make a pile of money for the producers and unscrupulous artists. It is literally like a drug addiction.

It says a lot about our society that has made this such a success. and it's not just "music". yikes.

 

lol i didn't know we were being serious


until 100% of the world and nature are all in agreement that music is bad, it's still an opinion

 

its always serious here. wtf r u on

its not all music, just this music. and its science, so the plebs can follow along

 

I disagree with a lot on this video, almost all of it. The argument of "modern music is shit compared to the old days" has been an argument forever. Since the dawn of music this argument has carried on for all the way to the present.
On this video this guy backs up his point with statistics and science behind music but I don't really see how this helps him. He talks about some studies and points in his video:

One of them is the complexity of music has decreased over the years. In reality this makes sense, music back then did not have drum machines or programs on computers to make music. Even if they did they were more expensive and not as accessible as they are now. In the digital age, making music has become more and more easier and cheaper. This is the same for back then too. When classical music was being made, symphonies and large orchestral peices were mainly held for the elite, instruments were incredibly expensive and composers worked for high class people. So compared to the classical age and the 1960s, you could also make the argument that music has become cheaper and easier to make between those years also.

On the same point he is basically making the point that musical complexity = how good the music is. There are many music peices that are incredibly complex but also really awful to listen to. A great example of this is Captain Beefheart's album Trout Mask Replica. The album has complex instruments and a lot of instrumentation, it has influenced a ton of music at the time and still today. I personally though hate the album and think it is mixed awfully and sounds unpleasant. On the flip side there is a lot of repetitive and simplistic music to come out that is very critically acclaimed and praised.

He also makes the argument like he did the music with the lyrics also. He says that lyrical complexity has dropped from before. Again lyrical complexity does not equal good music. You can have big words and incredible detail in lyrics but if it doesn't sound well, is cliched, doesn't make sense or is boring it doesn't matter how complex lyrically you are. There are incredibly simplistic songs lyrically today which have been praised. Hell, Childish Gambino's song This is America is lyrically simplistic but has gotten the media by storm by how complex it is. This is America is good lyrically because of the message and how he presented it. Gambino could have easily made a complex rap song with deep verses but he didn't have to, he didn't need to, the simplistic lyrics is what makes the song so special and so talked about compared to other rap songs talking about the problems with America. Would Gambino's song This is America be any more special, more talked about, if it was lyrically complex and deep than if it was simple and catchy?

Lastly, he talks about hooks and the music making process. What I have to say with this and just like any other consumable product is that these pop stars are just making music that appeals to their audience just like bands like the Beatles were doing. Music executives were all funding the next music trend to make the next Beatles, to make the next big rock band. Just like today music executives are signing the next big trap artist, the next big pop star.

In the end, music back then had their fairshare of bad popular music just like today. Music today is more accessable and bigger consumed peice of art than ever before. Music today isn't any worse than ages back. Music is just harder to find. There is a bigger sea of artists out there than before and people with the mindset of "modern music is bad" are just not looking for the music they want to listen to outside the top 100.

Edit: Sorry if this is a jumbled mess I just typed my thoughts out in this post. If I fully fleshed it out it would be a full 10 page essay.

 

As a known music guy myself, I can agree on one side that music produced between the 80s and late 90s per se have mostly more artistical value than most modern music. But thats just looking at a demographic. In that era there were also shit artists producing shit music, only they werent prevalent or popular like now. I can find just as much artistical value in Queen as I can in Brockhampton. Just as much in Nirvana as I can in J.Cole. Etc. Good Music is Good Music, period. Sadly we're stuck with good ol Pump for now.

 

Spoiler: Song

Would you consider this modern music?

 

Generalizing modern music as shit l o l

 

I think some of y’all are forgetting no one is saying all of music today is shit. Just a lot of it

 

The video boils down to clickbait about le wrong generation. The one study used is misinterpreted here, in addition to not really being a strong study either. The actual arguments he makes are very weak and hypocritical at points. I'm not a fan of mainstream pop music, but this video is pretty awful. Completely disagree that music is dying.

Also, now all my recommended videos are a bunch of garbage clickbait videos.

 

Big wall of text incoming. Readers beware.

There are many truths in this video, especially about the loudness war and the record companies - which are both proven by facts (and are quite sad). The rest of the claims are obviously in the grey area - and I'm not going to dive into these because there is no right answer to this, nor do I believe I know it. Instead, I'll share my own point of view on this.

The guy in the video mentions the Beatle's album as an absolute landmark masterpiece. I only listened to it once or twice in my life, so I decided to test this claim and listened to the whole album again shortly after watching the video. My findings? This "masterpiece" didn't impress me at all. To me, it's pretty generic and not very interesting - the same feeling I get from most of the "modern music" in question. So... what's going on here? I thought we said "old" music is better? How are they comparable in my mind?

This is where I think the mistake is. The usage of the term "modern" is incorrect. Trying to categorize the quality of music by the time it was made is doing injustice to the problem at hand. All generations have good and bad music - the 70s, 80 and 90s each had just as much bad music as this decade. So why is this generation's music considered trash, while the previous is considered golden?

It has to do with a few things, but I think one of the biggest factors is, in fact, a lot wider than just the music. It sometimes that surrounds a lot of today's art and creativity outlets.

The question of old vs. new is common in many of these areas. Take a look at this video that covers the same question on the subject of visual arts:

The claim is almost the same - new art sucks, old art is wonderous. And indeed, a lot of the modern examples brought up there are pretty terrible.
However... the same generation has also produced the following examples:

Spoiler

(Just some random examples that caught my eye in a 5 minutes searching through DeviantArt)

Can you say genuinely say any of these are bad? No. Not your taste? Very possible. But bad? Absolutely not. You can see and feel the skill and the effort put into each of these, even if you don't personally find them too interesting.
Yet these examples will not be found in museums or in the mainstream media today. And this is where my point is.

The quality of art, music and other forms of art has not diminished or declined throughout the years. Even today, you can find brilliant, skillful, high-quality examples for each of these subjects.
The problem is not the quality - it is the exposure.

Finding the examples above took me a dive into a website dedicated to such creations and a bit of scanning between many other pieces. The names behind each of these creations are completely anonymous to me and probably to most of you. These are not the artists or creations celebrated by the critics, the publishers and the opinion-shapers of our day and age.
The same can be said for music. I'm sure each of you has a "hidden gem" - a favorite modern musician/band, barely known or regarded, that create wonderful music that you just absolutely love. Here's my personal example:

Spoiler

Once again, this may not be your taste at all. And that's perfectly understandable. But can anyone genuinely say that this "rubbish"?

Will you see your hidden gems on the front page of media sites, reaching tens of millions of views on YouTube, or touring live before hundreds of thousands of fans like the big pop artists of today? Most likely not.

My point, as you can understand, is simple: it's not the art that is bad. It is the so-called "popular" art that is. In this day and age, the competition is not of who is the most skilled or talented; it is of who shouts the loudest - who can be the most vulgar, shocking, and unusual. Skill and talent are no longer a factor - there are too many of those today. And if you can't attract the audience with your skills, you have to attract them with something else. And what's more likely to catch the stray eye than a vulgar painting made with cow dung and porn screenshots, or a music video with five barely-covered ladies dancing sensually? When it's these things that matter, the quality of what you're actually trying to bring to the table doesn't matter anymore. As long as you present it well and loudly enough, people will come to see it. This is why today's popular music is seemingly low in effort and originality - it doesn't matter as long as the performer is hot or vulgar enough, and why today's popular art is either complete non-sense or absolutely barbaric - it's so bad you can't miss it. Of course, there are some exceptions and cases where truly talented artists soar. But they are rare and are like a drop in the sea.

We live in an age where the majority of people let others direct their attention instead of choosing on their own. It sounds apocalyptic, but in my eyes, it's the ultimate and worrying truth. We are led by the noise instead of trying filter it out and find the signal. And that's a shame because there's so much more to discover once you leave the known grounds. Unlike the very pessimistic image you might be getting from my claims, I don't think we're lost or that this is beyond repair. All it requires is merely a mental switch and a daring peek into what you don't see every day or is presented to you by the popular sources. If anything, with today's technology, the internet, and countless services that allow each and everyone to bring their creation out to the world to see, finding those "hidden gems" is easier than ever - as long as you dare to try and look for them.

P.S.
About what I mentioned at the very start - I do believe this also has a lot to do with the planned steering of said markets by the bigger corporations: record companies, movie studios, big museums and public media organizations. All this is doing them a great service and gives them a very nice profit, so this is a behavior they actively promote. However, this is where things get "political", so I prefer to leave this out of the discussion.

 

I thought this was a thread we could post our trashy current music
The server crashed with no staff on, so I thought I'd spend time on the forums sharing music

 

UPDATE: If you haven't watched the video @Opalium embedded, make sure you do it! Better words than mine there.

Nice to see someone made a well rounded argument, thanks. You bring up some interesting points.

I think first it is important to understand that if you don't agree, you don't agree, and you're welcome to continue that way (for now ). But I believe we need to face this objectively, in terms of what is set in stone right and wrong, good and bad, true and false, concepts very few people even want to hear about anymore, unfortunately. We all have our own subjective opinions, but we the way to better society is to view our own relative opinions in terms of what is right and wrong, something clearly that is not popular at this time.

Now, we ARE talking about something that is largely entertainment, so it's not like it's strictly life and death, but music also is a cultural piece, and types of music really leave a defining mark in history on the generations that were involved in it. I would suspect that in 200 years, people will look back and see this clusterfudge and think "what were those lunatics thinking". And I would be embarrassed to have Justin Bieber, Childish Gambino, or any of the other clowns as a defining mark of my time on earth.

Now, your first assertion is somewhat dubious. Music never started at it's peak; it more than likely was some rocks and sticks being hit together, while half naked homo sapiens danced around a fire. So, for the vast majority of the existence of mankind, we have been on an upward trend, in most all things, and particularly music. From each century to the next, the talent, complexity, and overall meaningfulness of music increased, peaking in the Renaissance. From that point forward, the highly refined classical music became somewhat less dominant, with folk music being more and more the music of the everyday man (as opposed to the classical, the genre of which the medieval man was most exposed to, in a time and society that was religious through and through). We see this from the 1700-1950s, going through its many evolutions (folk, jazz, bluegrass, etc.), until we hit the 50-60s and what is known as rock was born, which the spun off into its own countless sub genres. And from there onward is covered by the video.

The point to be taken away is that we are no longer moving upward or forward, but are currently on a downward or backward trend. The majority of "hits" today sound worryingly as though we have made a full circle back to caveman clattering. And whether you like the sound of a particular "hit" or not aside, this should worry you. We can't afford to move backward. If the music is getting "dumber" which is proven to be the case, that's moving backwards, and it should worry us all.

The complexity matters. Why would you hail something getting dumber, simpler (not in a good way)? It's like hailing someone slowly getting progressively retarded without raising your hand and saying, "Maybe we should help him..." You mention Donald Glover's song, "This Is America." Aside from being a blatant falsity and a new low for our society, which I won't delve into here, it is literally caveman music, Glover the caveman dancing about the fire. The only thing the video was missing was the bonfire. And while you subjectively may appreciate the sound Glover was creating, it is objectively backwards. And that isn't just my opinion, that's fact. As stated in the video @Opalium shared, music should uplift, inspire, and deepen. This crap does none of those. It incites division, hatred, and despair.

Are there things of a regressive nature of which everyone one of us at some time thinks, "ooh that's cool"? Of course, but then, we, hopefully, realize, that the curiosity of something isn't worth the long term negative effects of taking part in it, and we move FORWARD by forsaking having anything to do with it for the greater good. That's the kind of progress we need.

Is the rock music that we hail as good vs today's shit less sophisticated, and therefore "dumber" than the folk music of our great great grandparents? OF COURSE. But, for the first few decades of its existence, it held on to the traits that made it a meaningful art form, setting it aside from the majority of music today. It is important to emphasize that this is not always true: there is some good music today, just as there was some terrible shit in the age of Lynyrd Skynyrd. But the big difference now, as @Opalium pointed out is that, back then, the good stuff was brought to the foreground more often, whereas the opposite is true today.

As human beings, we need to always be striving to move forward, to better ourselves, to create today something better than what our parents were able to do yesterday. In the realm of popular music, and so many other things today, for the most part, the exact opposite is being done. It's 2+2: if the music is getting dumber, its not getting better, so we are not moving forward.

On the subject of what we personally "like" vs what is objectively "right": obviously, I can't force you to agree with what I am saying. But I can encourage you to make good choices. An example of my own: I enjoyed a lot the time in my life, not so far back, where I would stay up most the night playing Gmod. But, even though I thought it was "fun" for awhile, I knew it was not the right thing to do, and it was a destructive influence in my life. So I quit. I would venture to say that a similar course of action in regards to what you put into your ears might be beneficial to you.