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12 EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTING FACTS ABOUT POPULAR MUSIC
This article is really, really stupid.
Half of them (such as "Creed has sold more records in the US than Jimi Hendrix" or "Ke$ha's 'TIk-Tok' sold more copies than ANY Beatles single") are dependent on you, the viewer, ignoring the fact that the population has increased since the 1960s. Then there's the fact that some of the shocking facts are either based on a pittance of a sales difference (Shania Twain's Falling Into You sold a whole ~2 million~ more than Nevermind and a whole 0 million more than Born in the USA) or outright lies (if you consider Legends to be a Bob Marley album, since it sold more than Billy Ray Cyrus will ever sell). Then there's the whole WAH WHY ISN'T EVERY GODDAMNED BAND IN THE WORLD STAGNATING AND CHURNING OUT NOTHING BUT CLASSIC ROCK, ALSO I DON'T KNOW WHAT "POP" MUSIC IS AND CAN'T UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF SUBJECTIVITY.
The stupidest part, however, is that its entire premise is "old music > new music," and yet it whines that Barbra Streisand has sold more albums than Pearl Jam despite entering the music business far before Pearl Jam ever did.
Also, Justin Bieber isn't that bad
Comments
Seen a million of these, will see a million more.
OOC, how many potshots at rap music?
Only one, and it's just that "Low" has sold as many copies as "Hey Jude."
Though I'm surprised there's no mention of Kanye West / Lil Wayne.
Looking at at the related articles, footer and header for that site have convinced me that it is a Thing That Should Not Be.
Due to my extremely oddball tastes in music I tend to just ignore all the "wahhh all new music sucks" trends.
As for rap/hip-hop music...eh, it's easier on the ears for me than some of the heavier kinds of metal out there. Bonus points if the lyrics are actually pretty good and it's not stereotypical "bitches and whores" gangsta rap.
Thing That Should Not Be.
The orchestral version of that song owns.
Bonus points if the lyrics are actually pretty good and it's not stereotypical "bitches and whores" gangsta rap.
There's this rapper called Immortal Technique, I'll think you'll love him
> Hey Jude
It's not even that great of a song. There are far better Beatles songs, including While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Eleanor Rigby, Yellow Submarine, and Let It Be.
Yeah, those are three of the greatest songs ever.
(Shoulda gone with the Abbey Road Medley)
So is this kind of like the music equivalent of wikigroaning? Maybe that comparison is a little weird, but I feel like both ideas sort of fit into the same category of evaluating people's tastes based on a single measure (i.e., sales in the first case and words on a Wikipedia article in the second).
Basically, I think that how people view the significance of a song, band, or genre of music probably cannot best be measured solely in albums or singles sold since stuff like influence on other artists and cultural impact also play a role.
That being said, even if some song or artist is deemed more significant than another by those measures, that obviously does not mean that enjoying new music or pop music is somehow wrong or that you necessarily have to agree with the people making those judgments.
My personal beef with U.S. pop music is that it contains too few authentic (as in the music theory term) cadences--i.e. cadences going from V to I. And it contains too much of the "pop-punk progression", i.e. I V vi IV over and over again, which I feel doesn't lend itself easily to emotional momentum, but rather frequently makes the music just stall.
Oh, also, it could do with more tuneful melodies.
How much one likes Immortal Technique is directly proportional to how much you agree with what he says.
I think KRS-One is better (though much older) on the Political Rap front. Also all of Imtech's assorted associates are just awful (special mention must be made of Diabolik)
> Thing That Should Not Be.
Considering their reference for the Beatles I'd say they're more of a Thing That Should Not Let it Be.
Totally this.
And I generally don't mind rap that much. I like it's rhythmic tightness and use of harmonic ostinatos. I usually try not to hear the lyrics.
I think the reverence for classic rock, jazz and classical music (depending on the particular circle of music elitists) ultimately has less to do with genre and more to do with context. If you look at classic rock (largely 60s and 70s), it comes from a time of massive social upheaval and the first major steps in the empowerment of groups in a sate of social power minority. It was also highly experimental and versatile, allowing a great diversity of music to flourish around a single marketable concept. Obviously, there are awful, boring classic rock songs, but there's certainly been a shift in what reaches the ears of the majority consumer base.
Today, a great deal of the best music has to be sought out by oneself rather than sought out by record labels, which is probably what gave rise to indie music elitism in the first place. Some excellent musicians and bands get deals today, but no major label wants to distribute music by a band that writes stuff like Stairway To Heaven. A few years back, during that final Zep concert, I was flicking through a random store magazine, and it was kind of amusing to see Led Zeppelin records advertised beside Random Female Pop Singer's music. It was just so bizarrely out of place, and illustrates really well how industry and art are at odds. And I suppose that's the essential issue; in the 30+ years since classic rock's heyday, the music business became the music industry, with attitudes towards talent, distribution and marketability changing.
I don't think music as a whole has gotten worse at all, but the music industry probably has. When you want a big seller, and you want to play it as safe as possible, you need to hit the lowest common denominator. That means three minute songs, easy on the ears, currently trendy and attached to an attractive image. In many ways, the music industry parallels the current state of the games industry, which is essentially based on the same business tenets. Both make a shitload of money; both hurt themselves artistically while forcing a significant amount of talent underground. Both consider risk poisonous.
... I guess that makes classic rock comparable to the golden age of PC gaming?
(R.I.P 1997 - 2004)
...after reading that I suddenly want to listen to Uriah Heep's Demons & Wizards again...
But yeah, hell even looking at the nineties I'd have a hard time seeing radios now playing something like Smells Like Teen Spirit, Civil War, or Guerilla Radio.
The best time for music is always 10-20 years ago.
I'm sorry for being "that guy" here, but I can't take arguments about how music's gone downhill seriously. I just can't. Because people have been making them since popular music was a thing.
People have been saying that since the music industry was a thing, too.
It's less that it's untrue, and more that if it is true, it was never not true.
It was never not true, but it's becoming more and more true.
I disagree.
NO U
I think it was Jimmy Page who said he witnessed the "music business" become the "music industry". It might seem like splitting hairs, but I'm sure the implication is pretty clear. For instance, the music industry has been riding on rap music for about twenty years now -- not even necessarily different styles of rap, just the stereotypical tough-life-gangsta variety. When classic rock was really a thing, the music industry itself was going through the final stages of establishment. It really started with blues, jazz and rock music in the 40s and 50s, so the popular rock of the 60s and 70s was an opportunity for the business to spread its wings a bit and use its collective experience to deliver something different and to a wider audience. So you had the original generation of American recording artists working with a new generation of British musical talent, who took that American music and brought a particular kind of sombreness to it, tempered by lesser technical limiations.
The 80s pretty much changed everything, as far as my knowledge goes. Previous generations were struggling, and music reflected that. The American blues of the 40s and 50s spoke of an entire disenfranchised race, much like the more serious-minded rap of today, and the rock of the 60s and 70s was born from a predominantly young, white, male base of musicians who were in the midst of various social revolutions based on putting their own social privilege to rest. For a while, the world was moving in the right direction.
The generation of the 80s had all their battles won for them by others, though. To be a teenager or young adult during this time period was to be free to revel in excess, and you see that in music, art and fashion. This is the time period when progressive rock epics pretty much died, which is kind of sad because they almost uniquely represent a kind of (temporarily) popular music that did precisely what it wanted when it wanted. The 80s give us a lot of great underground stuff (thrash and death metal as a whole, the birth of rap, ect.), but the mainstream begins sucking pretty hard. While there were a few good hair metal bands, the movement was largely a perversion of the successes of classic rock and early heavy metal, like if a whole genre of music was KISS but worse.
(KISS is an average band at best.)
The last honest movement within the industry was probably grunge, which was essentially where punk rock and doom metal met. Since the mid nineties, the music industry has been more and more obviously dominated by fabricated personalities, with the real musicians relegated to studio recording roles. I think that's kind of unfair -- when the genius pianists, singers, guitarists, drummers and what-have-you do everything behind the scenes with none of the recognition. I believe one particular group of studio musicians were actually responsible for most hair metal recordings, although I can't verify that right now. Isn't that kind of sad, though? We go from talented groups of young people doing their own thing and then, during the 80s, the band members aren't skilled enough to do their own studio recordings. And the ones who are skilled enough are kept in the background and went uncredited by the public.
And this isn't even after the death of classic rock or anything, or at least not the complete death. This is happening in the midst of an era that many people remember fondly, or are nostalgic about even if they never experienced it. It was an indicator of what the music industry would become, and its increasingly obvious movement towards synthetic musicians and artificial personalities. I almost can't blame the indie scene for its hilarious pretension.
Almost.
>KISS is an average band at best
Kiss got me through middle school you shut your stupid face.
More seriously, as much as I love Kiss I think they were a sign of things to come. The difference is while Kiss was very good at reading trends while still keeping an identity, the industry as a whole was not.
> implying KISS wasn't just stealing Iron Maiden's credit for getting you through middle school
This post makes too much sense to ignore.
I actually didn't know about Maiden until I was in high school. I mean let's not compare mortals to gods here. Iron Maiden are pure vibrational joy walking the earth, but beforehand Iron Maiden-flavored bubble gum was what I had.
*sigh*
Yeah...sure.
I'll be honest, this kind of stuff just sort of annoys me for a couple reasons (taking as an assumed fact that modern pop music has no merit at all, assuming that there is a meaningful distinction between "indie" and "mainstream" anymore, that these discussions tend to completely ignore any kind of music that isn't rock, and that it's a fundamentally rockist argument to name a few), so I'm just gonna like, bow out, if that's cool with you guys. I don't really wanna argue about this very much.
Good vibrations.
Is ustinction some sort of new kind of extinction?
I am reminded of extirpation.