craigb

"Best Answer"

craigb

What, me worry?

bapu

michaelhanson
Talent no longer seems to be a measurement of whether or not the person can actually write their own tune, then play an actual instrument while singing the song without auto tune.

I'll get me coat.

You are too hard on yourself. You play a mean Am.


On a side note, singing Lead and playing Bass, I have found to be quite challenging. I'm amazed by the guys that can do that.

Since I'd have to actually listen to some modern pop music to have an opinion here, instead I'll share my opinions on Instabooker or whatever social media platform pop fans share their opinions on today.
 
Is it nap time yet?

Everything is becoming blander and more homogenized with globalization. Look at cars. When I look back on footage of the 60's to the 80's, cars had so much more charm and character. Many of them were intensely cool looking. And when I saw footage from the US growing up in the UK, I always loved how the cars were so much different to the cars in Europe. They had America written all over them. Sometime in the late 80's/early 90's, cars began taking on this kind of bland, nondescript look. Soap bar shapes replaced the more angular lines of yesteryear, and the generic SUV look took off. Now all traffic looks the same to me. And you probably wouldn't see much different on the roads of New York as you would in London or Paris. 
 
The fact is that most people have very bland, uninteresting tastes, and the market was bound to end up here eventually. Why bother going to the effort of writing and producing interesting, artistic music when you can just snap a bunch of generic sounds together and have a generic singer do that generic American Idol style warbling over the top? Why write a melody when you can simply give the singer a nursery rhyme tune and have them embellish it with sickly ornamentation? Why write interesting musical parts and look for talented musicians to play them when 99% of people don't give a damn? Just bung in a few obvious notes in the right key, and as long it's a sound that people recognize as pop they'll sing right along. 
 
The sad thing is that society does not value music as an intellectual art form in the same way it views things like literature. Imagine if, at the age of 40, you told someone that your all time favorite book was The Little Hungry Caterpillar. People would look at you askew and wonder why you hadn't developed a more adult taste in fiction. But apparently it's quite acceptable for someone's musical taste to freeze at the age of 10 and never develop any further. Some of the crap I hear on the radio now really is the melodic equivalent of a child's nursery rhyme, and yet I frequently meet grown adults who listen to it out of choice. If you suggest to them that perhaps it's time to develop a more mature taste in music, you get the usual "who are you to say your music is better than mine, it's all subjective." 

drewfx1
Is it Snapchat time yet?

Fifth Harmony is hundo p GOAT!!

bitflipper
I've observed the same phenomenon with my friends' kids and grandkids, many of whom echo Homer Simpson's famous observation that
"Everyone knows rock attained perfection in 1974. It's a scientific fact."
 

That's weird; I've always assumed that the mid-80's was when rock truly matured (I'm not sure that we can assign a year): Synchronicity by the Police, Joshua Tree by U2, So by Peter Gabriel, and Thriller by Michael Jackson, No Jacket Required by Phil Collins, 1999 by Prince, Little Creatures by Talking Heads, and Jump by Van Halen (and others I'm forgetting for the moment). It's always seemed to me that a certain non-formulaic maturity in songwriting came about in the 80's enhanced by production techniques and the musical use of synthesizers which was heretofore unknown in rock.
 
I'd hate to contradict an authority like Homer Simpson, however.

sharke
Everything is becoming blander and more homogenized with globalization. Look at cars. When I look back on footage of the 60's to the 80's, cars had so much more charm and character. Many of them were intensely cool looking. And when I saw footage from the US growing up in the UK, I always loved how the cars were so much different to the cars in Europe. They had America written all over them. Sometime in the late 80's/early 90's, cars began taking on this kind of bland, nondescript look. Soap bar shapes replaced the more angular lines of yesteryear, and the generic SUV look took off. Now all traffic looks the same to me. And you probably wouldn't see much different on the roads of New York as you would in London or Paris. 
 
The fact is that most people have very bland, uninteresting tastes, and the market was bound to end up here eventually. Why bother going to the effort of writing and producing interesting, artistic music when you can just snap a bunch of generic sounds together and have a generic singer do that generic American Idol style warbling over the top? Why write a melody when you can simply give the singer a nursery rhyme tune and have them embellish it with sickly ornamentation? Why write interesting musical parts and look for talented musicians to play them when 99% of people don't give a damn? Just bung in a few obvious notes in the right key, and as long it's a sound that people recognize as pop they'll sing right along. 
 
The sad thing is that society does not value music as an intellectual art form in the same way it views things like literature. Imagine if, at the age of 40, you told someone that your all time favorite book was The Little Hungry Caterpillar. People would look at you askew and wonder why you hadn't developed a more adult taste in fiction. But apparently it's quite acceptable for someone's musical taste to freeze at the age of 10 and never develop any further. Some of the crap I hear on the radio now really is the melodic equivalent of a child's nursery rhyme, and yet I frequently meet grown adults who listen to it out of choice. If you suggest to them that perhaps it's time to develop a more mature taste in music, you get the usual "who are you to say your music is better than mine, it's all subjective." 

Nice observation!
 
We should have some fun and make some pop songs.  A good band name would be "Generic" (or "Generic-X").  All we need are a handful of nonsensical but rhyming expletive lyrics, a beat loop, vocal correction and some T&A to dance on the video and adorn the album cover (with some bling, the fake band members should be pictured on the back cover and all should be "selfies").  We won't feel proud, but we'd make a quick million bucks... 

michaelhanson
It seems like music turned a corner for the worst when it was no longer about the music; when it became more about which Disney Star we could turn into the next Pop Star and how the beat would work with dance moves.

Talent no longer seems to be a measurement of whether or not the person can actually write their own tune, then play an actual instrument while singing the song without auto tune.

 
Miles Davis said something like, "Eighty percent of everything is crap".
 
He used a stronger word than "crap", however. If memory serves, he said that in an interview in Downbeat in the mid-70's. Of the remaining 20%, he said about 15% was "good" and the remaining 5% was excellent. This still sounds about right, though I'm not sure he'd say even 5% is excellent anymore.