The Arrogant Proggie

IGNEO1991 wrote:   The voclas in pop music may seem 'better' because 90% of the vocals in pop music are artificial. They use hard disk technology to correct the pitch of the vocal or make it sound a certain way.  So vocals in pop music are not necessarily naturally 'better'.

There is nothing to say that prog singers do not correct mistakes made in recording.  It is however not very unreasonable to say that many pop singers over the years have been technically very capable.  I promise you somebody like Christina Aguilera will riff Christina Booth out of the park and crush her with open high notes. Whether that is 'important' is beside the question for you are focusing here on the technical side of singing and technically, Aguilera absolutely is better than Booth and that would normally be the case in a pop-prog opposition.  George Michael for instance  is an excellent singer technically.  Michael Jackson was great too, it is certainly not easy to sound gritty at the top of your range ( refer the song Bad).    

IGNEO1991 wrote: Even if this is not the case, where there is a sense of aptitude in pop music vocals, the vocals sound too generic, the same basically from so called 'artist' to 'artist'. People want to hear something familiar and generic. This is why pop music prevails and prog music remains, still, withtin a limited audience because prog music is deemed today in the mainstream as something a bit 'weird' and unfamiliar, despite prog's great aptitude for melody and composition. So pop music is more accessible, familiar, easily disgestible and catchier.   I may sound a bit of an 'Arrogant Proggie' in what i have just said, but i am being a realist. These are my opinions. I remain a bit of a prog snob, not because i am pretentious, but because pop music seems very much like a popular commodity, which is heavily manufactured, artificial and unnatural. If music is described as 'art', then pop music does not fit that mold, progressive music however does so and thus is more inspiring and attractive to me.

This is highly debatable and perhaps a case of focusing on some great/favourite artists at the convenient exclusion of the mediocre pile beneath.  I don't find above mentioned Christina Booth any more focused on song craft and individuality than a typical pop singer and I do find much of her stylistic licks to be derived from pop vocals, if anything.  Joanna Newsom has had more commercial success than Magenta (Booth's band), if I may hazard a guess, but she is loaded with way more quirk and adventure than Booth.  Tori Amos and Kate Bush may have been included in PA for their progressive approach to music, but they are better known to the world as pop/art rock artists and they certainly have a lot more individuality than many prog vocalists that did not make much of an impression on me.  A case could be made that in the present day, there is more scope for individuality for a musician making prog rather than pop (or commercial music in general), but that too depends entirely on the musician.  I find Shadow Gallery and Riverside's last albums generic and by the numbers and Everything Everything's debut fresh and invigorating. 

sealchan wrote:   1.  Quality of vocals: better singers in pop

Ehh, it depends what you mean by better. I think that often the music is just better produced (good mics at best, autotune at worst) so the vocals sound better. But producers always sacrifice the organic rawness of a prog album in doing this.

Sure, Beyonce is a better singer than Peter Hammill, but Beyonce's singing doesn't capture the mad passion of Hammill. I think one of the technically worst singers in prog is Robert Wyatt-- he's got an awful tone to his voice and probably wouldn't make it past the first round of American Idol. But there's a sort of distinct whimsical Britishness to his singing that not only makes up for that lack of chops, but gives him a sort of indefinable quality that no pop singer that I no of can match.

And it is worth noting that the sort of pop music you are referring to is still the slim minority that honors musicianship on some level. Drake, Rihanna, Miley Cyrus, Kesha have nothing over prog as far as virtuosity goes, end of story.

Well, I think that prog rock music is more creative and the majorities of prog musicians are much better than the majority of all pop musicians. Nobody can deny this fact since it's true but people can love wathever music they want.

There're arrogant rappers, rockers, metalheads,....humans :D
Never generalise

rogerthat wrote: The_Jester wrote: Well, I think that prog rock music is more creative and the majorities of prog musicians are much better than the majority of all pop musicians. Nobody can deny this fact since it's true but people can love wathever music they want. Pop MUSICIANS, especially those hired gun types, tend to be really good and in the current scene, certainly as good as prog musicians.

It all depends on what style of music gets your rocks off the most, and how important it is for you to state your case to others. Arrogance rears it's ugly head in all steadfast opinions, but to me the "snobs" of prog find their opinion superior because the overall intelligence of prog is considered higher(ie more challenging) than your average top 40 hit. This, of course, doesn't make the music better, but enables those who "get it" to feel somewhat enlightened. Disliking something and looking down upon those like it are drastically different. Someone who loves King Crimson is more apt to loathe Nickelback than vice versa. Whereas a Nickelback fan probably couldn't care less about time changes and progression, and likely hasn't even heard of King Crimson. That being said, I'll take INXS over Marillion or Opeth any day. However, in my internet experience, PA is easily the least arrogant forum I frequent. Might be an age thing, or a broad spectrum thing, who knows. When it comes to art, an open mind is a rewarding tool, but not a necessity.

What is better than other things is completely perceptual. The reasoning behind your identification of what's "best" is also (hopefully) your opinion. There's not rhyme or reason to WHY we like things more than other things but we obviously do. Being rude towards someone else's tastes is wrong; however, being respectful and just saying "I don't care for that" is acceptable on most parts of the internet and in the real world.

progrules wrote: My experience is that prog spoils you. If I listen to pop music (just a few times last 20 years !) I get bored to death. And realize what pop music lovers are missing if they never heard of prog. So I only partly agree that it's subjective. Prog IS superior to (almost all) pop music. But I do agree with the singer aspect. Pop groups have usually far better vocalists than progbands. So be it.

That's because most prog vocalists are not professionally trained vocalists, but musicians or songwriters who just do vocals (because there nobody else around who can do it )

On the contrary, most pop music is a product created by producer, and he can hire the best vocalists for the particular song

For example: Massive Attack (pop group which I like) have no vocalist "in a band" at all - it's actually duo of producers/songwriters/arrangers who hire different vocalists for recording or live sessions

As soon as anyone here says "prog IS objectively better than pop because...." I can no longer take them seriously.

I know some people are arrogant enough to believe that "it's all subjective" is some myth that the Jews keep propagating to keep all us mindless slaves under their control but yeah. You can't even prove that prog is better objectively in terms of skill.

^ one thing to remember about those Renaissance painters - the work you see in the museums is not entirely by their own hand - they had teams of acolytes, apprentices and underlings working for them on each painting. They are in effect the producers of the work, but not the actual craftsmen that made them.