The Lets talk about awful music of today thread

Seriously, I don't think there has ever been a worse time of mainstream music. I mean in the early 00's there were some hits that were legitimately good. The last few years have been pretty horrific though. I often tune into MTV playlist to see what new songs are out that are popular and that sort of thing. Not one single good song. No good licks, no good musical value of any kind. Generic, awful production. Apparently the rest of the mainstream rap/r&b world was unaware of the vocoder until recently (even though Tupac used it over a decade ago, and tastefully).   

Here is a thread where you can rag on that trash that is top 40. I'm talking last 4-5 years here. If you don't know whats going on I advise you to turn on MTV, or check out samples on itunes or whatever because even a small taste is enough. There are people making big bucks when they can't even hold a note. Its ticks me off. There are people that are supposedly "good" at rapping on the radio. I have yet to see evidence (I am a fan of hip-hop as some of you know, I'm not beating on the genre just the everday gener-o crap.)

I think the two things that bother me most when I hear one of these modern pop songs is 1. the vocal production because the singer obviously can't sing at all and has a ton of pitch correction and compression on his/her voice. and 2. the ridiculously bad choice of beats (and rhymes for that matter) in any rap/r&b song as of recent. They're all the same beat. They don't even have a push behind them. Its the combination of the wimpiest fake snare/snap/click/clap and wimpiest fake bass drum.

Then there's songs like "Cyclone" which not only features awful rapping, a terrible and used-to-death hook, but it sounds identical to previous hits like "Low". Maybe they're the same artist I don't know. I just hear it and laugh at how bad that **** is.

Share your thoughts!!!

I don't listen to any post-1989 music, thankfully. Keeps out all the foolishness of today, plus all the dire 1990s goofiness too.

What is dished out on radio is utter garbage and only getting worse by the day. Humans by in large are so very manipulatable. Tell them what to listen to and they will. Just listen to the crap bouncing out of most cars today as they pass by.............

                                    

Sacred 22 wrote: What is dished out on radio is utter garbage and only getting worse by the day. Humans by in large are so very manipulatable. Tell them what to listen to and they will. Just listen to the crap bouncing out of most cars today as they pass by.............   Yup, the masters of the music industry these days are nothing more than big fat pant loads following an agenda put forth by their masters. I won't go any further.

yeah, ears have so much damn influence over what we listen to!  People are so very manipulatable, listening to what their ears tell them they like.  Gawd.

At 39, and without any teenage kids, I can only guess what gets a teenagers attention in music these days. When I was a teenager I liked heavy metal and prog rock, and yep, Stonie, I never saw the sun. I just stayed in my room, playing my Iron Maiden records backwards hoping Satan would give me some tips on how to pick up girls. He didn't..

With regard to mainstream music, people look for an estblished and successful formula to latch on to. People like simple music because it's easy to remember, sing along and dance to. The rhyming scheme of most lyrics is not dissimilar to the nursery rhymes we hear as children, and I think people connect unwittingly to this too. It's a comfort zone thing.

So, yes if you're looking for something that breaks with musical convention, you're not going to like chart music. As you get older the chart music of the day sounds much worse than the chart music of your own youth. In my experience, anyway. It sounds more simple, less melodic, less emotional. Some of this may be down to simply getting older and not 'understanding' what modern pop music culture is about, but the fact is, you could take any number of chart hits from the 80's and easily demonstrate how they are more 'musical' than most of what gets in to the charts these days. Even the 'boy bands' of the day; Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, ABC etc actually composed their own music and played their instruments. They were actual musicians as opposed to a bunch of groomed boy men sitting on a row of stools re-hashing other peoples smoochy love ballads to an audience of desperate housewives and their teenage daughters. They are the soundtrack of the hen night, the Kareoke bar. The special guests on the prime time chat show. Puppets of record company businessmen. Then there is the plethora of identical sounding R'n'B singers and rap artists... I dont pay that much attention to what goes on musically these days. I've not watched MTV since the early 90's, and my only exposure to mainstream music is being forced to listen to commercial radio all day at work. So I only really get to hear about 10 songs repeated over and over again. I'm sorry, I know there are probably Nickelback fans here, but if I hear that f     ing 'Rock Star' song again, I'll blow my head gasket..

I feel like the mainstream has hit a state of major stagnation this past couple years. I was just a kid in the late 80s/early 90s, but the current state of music reminds me of what I've heard about that era: music was becoming stagnant, the top hits were the same-o, same-o, and then Nirvana came. I'm sure I won't like what comes next, but it seems the industry is waiting for the next Nirvana.

It seems the state of mainstream rap today is much like hair metal: excessive, pointless, and all to similar to every other song of the genre. I don't see too much of a difference between a hair metal video and a rap video these days, the latter just makes use of modern technology.


Edited by Kestrel - June 20 2008 at 02:56

Dick Heath wrote: We have a bad problem getting worse: 1. As long as there are mass audience for TV's  X Factor, Pop Idol, Fame Academy  or any other identical "talent show" which has Simon Cowell in particular as a judge.  Did you hear his Desert Island Discs choice - IMHO dire for a so-called musical pundit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/desertislanddiscs_20060813.shtml. 2. As long  the music radio stations increasing rely on  music stored for a hard drive limiting variety, rather than taking from a CD or even LP,  there is an executive  and obviously biassed choice (aka playlists a, b and c) to what gets played (and increasingly I feel the record industry can really manipulate this).     And I don't believe it, there is a half decent web article on the subject:   http://entertainment.uk.msn.com/music/features/article.aspx?cp-documentid=6770782

That article hits the nail, I think..

I;d being saying this for the last five years, re; 'Indie bands':

"And while exception-that-proves-the-rule, Girls Aloud, are left to carry the flickering torch for what we remember as pop, the rest of the music industry, in reaction to the transparency of the reality TV process, delivers us a host of uninspired, identikit, but most definitely 'real' groups, playing in what's become paradoxically known as the 'indie' style, elevated to a status above and beyond anything their dismal output deserves, merely for what they represent"

I really like "The Pretender", used to dig "Toxicity" when it came, and sometimes there's a neat proggy song every now and then like from Tool, but I share the same sentiment expressed here for most of the rest of the radio music of now.

Edited by Zitro - June 20 2008 at 09:32

This is all I have to say about mainstream radio in the late 00's:

If a song like "Crank Dat" could be number 1 for 6+ weeks (something like that) than I don't have a lot of hope...well, for the radio at least. On the billboard 200, I am seeing improvements. I just saw Snakes and Arrows from Rush go to number three last year, and R.E.M.'s new album went to number two this year. In Rainbows also went number one. Magic from Bruce Springsteen also went number one.

Even hip hop on the billboard 200 has been showing some improvement. Kanye West's "Graduation" went number one, as did "American Gangster" from Jay-Z. Wu-Tang Clan's new album also charted high (25th, I think).

To sum it up, the music on the radio is imploding on itself, but some of the albums on the higher area of the billboard 200 are pretty good. Plus, it's cool to see Rush being in the top five on the charts again...