Why Is Modern Pop Music So Terrible?

[Weaver]

No, you're not just an old fogey, here's a summation of various research which shows that modern pop music has objectively become less complex, more dynamically compressed and less diverse:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVME_l4IwII

Yes Chris, this is the video I was talking about at Telford....

[Dizzyfugu]

Totally agree. Major labels seem to be less and less risk-friendly, and any mainstream pop really sounds interchangeable. The last innovation was IMHO grunge, and this was not really a musical but rather a cultural thing. I do not want to sound like living in yesterday, but every now and then when I hear music from the Eighties and earlier, I am amazed how ambitious, creative, sometimes even provocative or even cheeky people were.

Well, we obviously get what we deserve, and the age of algorithms* will certainly not improve the situation. I rather fear that the artistic levels will drop further, with ever more levelling self-citations and streamlined sounds and arrangements.

Sad outlook.



*In a professional context I recently took part in a presentation of a communication agency that developed a value system which assigns emotional attributes to music, and other things like brands, too. The result is a profile of bipolar attributes, making them operational and measurable. This system mounts into an algorithm that can match those profiles - and in the end you get robust recommendations for e. g. background music in TV spots that convey the brand's image. Or, on the other side, you get hints which melodies, sounds or arrangements to use when you create music for advertising purposes.
Gone are the days when there were light-hearted things like "Like ice in the sunshine" or Kate Yanai's "Summer dreaming" for Bacardi. Now you are able to construct these things from scratch, or browse music catalogues for a brand image match. Scary, and somewhat sad.

[NARSES2]

Yes Chris, this is the video I was talking about at Telford....

Right 

[loupgarou]

Very interesting video. Much appreciated seeing the technical reason for what I was instinctively thinking.
I AM an old fogey, and proud of it.  and never listen to music more "modern" than the seventies!

[scooter]

Its all digitized to within a hertz of its life.  That's why I listen to non-mainstream artists, like Imelda May, Caro Emerald, the Brian Setzer Orchestra, along with classic metal and rock and roll bands, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, etc.  I do also happen to enjoy Epica's style of "symphonic metal".

And when I do listen to the Swing-era bands, give me an analog to digital transfer.  It sounds somehow warmer than a fully digitized recording.

[PR19_Kit]

See my second postscript. 

[jcf]

"Pop" music has generally sucked since before WWI. 

[zenrat]

I generally don't listen to new music because there is still so much good old music that I haven't heard yet.
Occasionally something will force its way through to what passes as my conscious mind, or Mrs z will say listen to this, or i'll check out someone at a festival because I have a gap before the next load of old fogies I want to see.
But even then the new music tends to be an old style like Blues or Ska or Psychedelic Space Rock.

[Weaver]

*In a professional context I recently took part in a presentation of a communication agency that developed a value system which assigns emotional attributes to music, and other things like brands, too. The result is a profile of bipolar attributes, making them operational and measurable. This system mounts into an algorithm that can match those profiles - and in the end you get robust recommendations for e. g. background music in TV spots that convey the brand's image. Or, on the other side, you get hints which melodies, sounds or arrangements to use when you create music for advertising purposes.
Gone are the days when there were light-hearted things like "Like ice in the sunshine" or Kate Yanai's "Summer dreaming" for Bacardi. Now you are able to construct these things from scratch, or browse music catalogues for a brand image match. Scary, and somewhat sad.

That's another factor in the changes that have happened in the music biz itself. The old model was that A&R men would act like talent scouts, going and listening to loads of live performances to find acts worth giving a contract to. Most of those acts would fail, but enough would succeed to cover them and make a profit for the record company. Then demo tapes became a thing, and the measure of wannabe's success became more dependent on how well they could get their demo tape produced and brought to the attention of the A&R depts.

Then all the big record companies (and many of the small ones) became owned by huge corporations, and technology made sophisticated analytics possible. Accountants, not music people, ruled the roost and they did what they always do: they looked to maximise profit and minimise loss. "If it's possible to analyse what makes a successful recording artist," they asked, "why don't we just manufacture them instead of going looking for them? That way we don't have to take the losses from all the acts that don't make it, and we can guarantee profits from the ones that do?" Of course this was a huge kick in the teeth to genuinely original and talented artists, but "so what?" thought the accountants. There are so many good-looking, starry-eyed teenage singers and dancers falling over themselves to be 'moulded' into a marketable 'product' that the supply of new raw material for the behind-the-scenes gurus to work on will never dry up.

The advent of social media and music streaming has also lead to original talent stopping even trying to get an 'old fashioned' music contract too. Why make the inevitable, unsavory compromises with The Suits (particularly if you're a women who wants to actually sing and play, not dance around the stage in your underwear), when you can make a high-quality recording on your PC, sell it through i-Tunes and Spotify, and market it on Youtube and Facebook?

[Spey_Phantom]

some songs are quite OK, depends on the artist.
but i hate dubstep, thats not even music but the sound of a robot getting raped 

[Old Wombat]

It's the same trend as has been happening to the movie industry for at least as long.


I'm not going to go into the rant that has just been raging through my skull but the whole thing boils down to greed, & (despite what Ayn Rand or Gordon Gekko (who was really just misquoting Rand) may say, think or write) blind, unthinking, ravenous greed IS NOT GOOD!


Not for anything or, in the long run, anyone.


For clarity, I am, at heart, a capitalist ... an egalitarian capitalist.

[Hobbes]

Its all digitized to within a hertz of its life.  That's why I listen to non-mainstream artists, like Imelda May, Caro Emerald, the Brian Setzer Orchestra, along with classic metal and rock and roll bands, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, etc.  I do also happen to enjoy Epica's style of "symphonic metal".

And when I do listen to the Swing-era bands, give me an analog to digital transfer.  It sounds somehow warmer than a fully digitized recording.

That's not what 'digitized' means, though. To digitize is nothing more than an analog-digital conversion.

What you're referring to is postprocessing. Or rather, excessive postprocessing: compression to reduce dynamic range, Auto-tune to adjust each sung note to be on-key (no more false notes, but depending on the settings used can make the voice sound artificial), agressive sound effects on every channel, etc.

[Weaver]

There's a current fashion to use vocoders on EVERYTHING which is why so may vocals sound like Pinky and Perky these days....

[Nick]

And this explains why LIVE performances of songs sound so much better. You get the full sense of what the performer is feeling at the time and how far they are willing to go, not what some machine decides.

For example I like Rag'n'Bone Man. Nice deep vocals, interesting lyrics, tunes etc. Not bad on CD etc. When he did a live version on Radio 4 of Skin I had to stop the car and listen, it was that powerful.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2WmGplswpDm13Srz1kKvY5x/ragnbone-man-shook-our-socks-off

[NARSES2]

I have to admit I don't understand 9/10ths of this (I'm an old Motown, Ska and Reggae man) but having heard Rag and Bone Man live I know what Nick means