Does Contemporary Music Suck?

General music discussion.
Flex
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Re: Does Contemporary Music Suck?

Post by Flex »

i think i just dislike how influential trap music has been on pop music. That's basically when I hopped off the pop and rap trolleys.
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Marky Dread
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Re: Does Contemporary Music Suck?

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Dr. Medulla wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 5:07pm
Marky Dread wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 4:55pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 3:36pm
Marky Dread wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 3:25pm
Kory wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 3:15pm


Whatever fits the boomer's narrative, I suppose
I was coming at it with the view of Kate Bush getting so high in the chart with "Running Up That Hill" on the back of Stranger Things. An old song has now in my mind become contemporary. Should we just date everything and put it in a box marked yesterday. Or is there so much more to it.

Isn't contemporary music still just popular music. Or should we view older stuff as being traditional. If so new music is never going to be new.
It is an interesting question as to how to define contemporary. There is a time element to it, but what's the cut-off where something is contemporary one day and passé the next day? Are some genres contemporary and others not, even if released the same day? I get the sense it's a style question related in some way to a zeitgeist, but as we've talked about before, if music and culture more broadly is really fucking fractured, is there such a thing as a zeitgeist. Contemporary is actually a lot slippier an idea than I first thought. There's a kind of pornography aspect to it—I know it when I see/hear it. But actually pinning a definition to it all is tough.
I agree and feel the same. If a new act bring out a track in a contemporary style that contains a 35-40 year old sample that offers a familiarity is it still contemporary?
An additional thought: I wonder if audience enters into it. That is, is what is considered contemporary that which the 18–24 crowd is into? Young people drive trends and fads, so whatever gol-dang goofy thing the kids are into is what is contemporary. So 80s music redefined as 80s retro could be contemporary for as long as the kids are tiktoking it.
It has to be that. Take an old song cover it with a new twist and it's contemporary. I'm not sure the age of the artist is as relevant as the age of it's target audience.
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Dr. Medulla
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Re: Does Contemporary Music Suck?

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One additional, additional thought re. audience (read: young people) as driving contemporary, pieces like the one that started this thread end up not blaming the music industry (even if they aim to), but rather the tastes of those dumb kids. Which adults have been doing for a long, long time.
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Re: Does Contemporary Music Suck?

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Dr. Medulla wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 5:23pm
One additional, additional thought re. audience (read: young people) as driving contemporary, pieces like the one that started this thread end up not blaming the music industry (even if they aim to), but rather the tastes of those dumb kids. Which adults have been doing for a long, long time.
That's true. But I also think that it's the fleeting thing until the next thing. This is a market that has no longevity for a fan who nails his colours to the mast of a single band. These are not kids in it for the long haul. An audience who won't be frequenting a board like this 45 years from now.
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Re: Does Contemporary Music Suck?

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Marky Dread wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 6:09pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 5:23pm
One additional, additional thought re. audience (read: young people) as driving contemporary, pieces like the one that started this thread end up not blaming the music industry (even if they aim to), but rather the tastes of those dumb kids. Which adults have been doing for a long, long time.
That's true. But I also think that it's the fleeting thing until the next thing. This is a market that has no longevity for a fan who nails his colours to the mast of a single band. These are not kids in it for the long haul. An audience who won't be frequenting a board like this 45 years from now.
Right. Most people treat music as background noise or the soundtrack for socializing. Something like permanence or heavy argument just isn't the desire for an overwhelming number of people. Which is to say, we're the weirdos, not them.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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Re: Does Contemporary Music Suck?

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Dr. Medulla wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 6:15pm
Marky Dread wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 6:09pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 5:23pm
One additional, additional thought re. audience (read: young people) as driving contemporary, pieces like the one that started this thread end up not blaming the music industry (even if they aim to), but rather the tastes of those dumb kids. Which adults have been doing for a long, long time.
That's true. But I also think that it's the fleeting thing until the next thing. This is a market that has no longevity for a fan who nails his colours to the mast of a single band. These are not kids in it for the long haul. An audience who won't be frequenting a board like this 45 years from now.
Right. Most people treat music as background noise or the soundtrack for socializing. Something like permanence or heavy argument just isn't the desire for an overwhelming number of people. Which is to say, we're the weirdos, not them.
As Joe Strummer once famously said "I vote for the weirdo". :approve:
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Forces have been looting
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Re: Does Contemporary Music Suck?

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Marky Dread wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 6:28pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 6:15pm
Marky Dread wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 6:09pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 5:23pm
One additional, additional thought re. audience (read: young people) as driving contemporary, pieces like the one that started this thread end up not blaming the music industry (even if they aim to), but rather the tastes of those dumb kids. Which adults have been doing for a long, long time.
That's true. But I also think that it's the fleeting thing until the next thing. This is a market that has no longevity for a fan who nails his colours to the mast of a single band. These are not kids in it for the long haul. An audience who won't be frequenting a board like this 45 years from now.
Right. Most people treat music as background noise or the soundtrack for socializing. Something like permanence or heavy argument just isn't the desire for an overwhelming number of people. Which is to say, we're the weirdos, not them.
As Joe Strummer once famously said "I vote for the weirdo". :approve:
Image
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft

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Re: Does Contemporary Music Suck?

Post by Marky Dread »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 6:33pm
Marky Dread wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 6:28pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 6:15pm
Marky Dread wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 6:09pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 5:23pm
One additional, additional thought re. audience (read: young people) as driving contemporary, pieces like the one that started this thread end up not blaming the music industry (even if they aim to), but rather the tastes of those dumb kids. Which adults have been doing for a long, long time.
That's true. But I also think that it's the fleeting thing until the next thing. This is a market that has no longevity for a fan who nails his colours to the mast of a single band. These are not kids in it for the long haul. An audience who won't be frequenting a board like this 45 years from now.
Right. Most people treat music as background noise or the soundtrack for socializing. Something like permanence or heavy argument just isn't the desire for an overwhelming number of people. Which is to say, we're the weirdos, not them.
As Joe Strummer once famously said "I vote for the weirdo". :approve:
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😎
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Forces have been looting
My humanity
Curfews have been curbing
The end of liberty


We're the flowers in the dustbin...
No fuchsias for you.

"Without the common people you're nothing"

Nos Sumus Una Familia

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Re: Does Contemporary Music Suck?

Post by revbob »

Dr. Medulla wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 6:15pm
Marky Dread wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 6:09pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 5:23pm
One additional, additional thought re. audience (read: young people) as driving contemporary, pieces like the one that started this thread end up not blaming the music industry (even if they aim to), but rather the tastes of those dumb kids. Which adults have been doing for a long, long time.
That's true. But I also think that it's the fleeting thing until the next thing. This is a market that has no longevity for a fan who nails his colours to the mast of a single band. These are not kids in it for the long haul. An audience who won't be frequenting a board like this 45 years from now.
Right. Most people treat music as background noise or the soundtrack for socializing. Something like permanence or heavy argument just isn't the desire for an overwhelming number of people. Which is to say, we're the weirdos, not them.
Yes or like I often say there's passive listening and active listening and most people I think are passive listeners.

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Re: Does Contemporary Music Suck?

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revbob wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 8:17pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 6:15pm
Marky Dread wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 6:09pm
Dr. Medulla wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 5:23pm
One additional, additional thought re. audience (read: young people) as driving contemporary, pieces like the one that started this thread end up not blaming the music industry (even if they aim to), but rather the tastes of those dumb kids. Which adults have been doing for a long, long time.
That's true. But I also think that it's the fleeting thing until the next thing. This is a market that has no longevity for a fan who nails his colours to the mast of a single band. These are not kids in it for the long haul. An audience who won't be frequenting a board like this 45 years from now.
Right. Most people treat music as background noise or the soundtrack for socializing. Something like permanence or heavy argument just isn't the desire for an overwhelming number of people. Which is to say, we're the weirdos, not them.
Yes or like I often say there's passive listening and active listening and most people I think are passive listeners.
But what about the passive aggressive listeners. :shifty:
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Forces have been looting
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We're the flowers in the dustbin...
No fuchsias for you.

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Re: Does Contemporary Music Suck?

Post by gkbill »

Hello,

I really like this song and thought it might fit in here somewhere - if nothing else as a break. Do you remember...when you were our age?


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Re: Does Contemporary Music Suck?

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matedog wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 12:49am
I think you are doing that selective history thing we’ve been discussing, implying that pop music used to be less soulless.
I shouldn't have used the "1960s vs. today" framing as I think it obscured my actual point. I wasn't suggesting that music was more or less soulful or soulless in any particular time frame. The two pop stars I mentioned happen to be contemporary artists but you could just as easily swap them out for Tiffany and Debbie Gibson if we were talking '80s, or the boy bands of the late '90s, or whomever. I didn't bring up Motown because it's from the '60s, but because it was the first example I could think of off the top of my head of creating music in an assembly line fashion whose recordings were characterized by stellar songwriting, stellar musicianship and stellar singing. There are probably more recent examples, but I can't think of any at the moment.
Marky Dread wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 5:23am
You could level that same thing with Elvis but I would never call his music soulless. I don't think having song writers for you is the problem. But the throwaway nature of some of those songs being written.
I specifically wasn't criticizing pop stars for not writing their own songs. I was saying that when I hear mainstream pop music that's terrible (again, irrespective of era), it's a bit perplexing to me that an army of experienced songwriters and elite session musicians couldn't do better. I think you're correct, though, that the disposable nature of that kind of songwriting is probably the issue.
Dr. Medulla wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 6:46am
Right—that's what I meant about the present being a mixed bag and the past being filtered. It's ironic, too, to cite Motown when Gordy applied an assembly line approach to music construction, eliminating so much of the individual musician as a meaningful creator. The idea of "playing on" a record really comes to fruition—as in, playing just small parts of a song—and then it was assembled later on by someone else. Not for nothing did Motown artists bristle against that control as they gained confidence and experience. We love the Motown classics, but we should be aghast at how it was all done.
I'm certainly aghast at the exploitation of the artists that went on, but setting that part of the equation aside for the moment, my core question was basically: how much should we care about the process by which music is made? We often think of four or five people in a band hammering it out in a garage as being more pure than a team of writers, producers and hired-gun musicians creating music, but does it really matter one way or another if the end result is still good music?



EDIT: And re: the Taylor Swift thing, she popped into my head because of an anecdote from a friend of mine: after he and his band played a show at a bar in Nashville, he was having a conversation with a local who mentioned that he was a songwriter. As the conversation progressed (and more drinks were consumed), the guy specified that he was a writer for Taylor Swift and talked about some of the workaday realities of the gig—basically, there was a lyricist (him, IIRC) partnered together with a guy who came up with the melodies and their work day consisted of churning out as many songs ideas as possible to be demoed and submitted to TS. It's possible the guy was lying, but it seems more likely that he was just someone blowing off steam about his job to someone he knew would be simpatico than the possibility that he's someone who constructs false but incredibly detailed scenarios about working for Taylor Swift—including some very specific ones about her particular pop star primadonna idiosyncrasies—to convince random strangers at a bar whom he'll never see again (yeah, I know, there certainly are people weird enough to do that). My friend also said the guy's tone certainly wasn't anything resembling braggadocious, in fact he seemed slightly embarrassed and described the nature of the job as "depressing." So, yeah, take all of that with however much of a grain of salt as you see fit.

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Re: Does Contemporary Music Suck?

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Marky Dread wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 5:23am
You could level that same thing with Elvis but I would never call his music soulless. I don't think having song writers for you is the problem. But the throwaway nature of some of those songs being written.
I specifically wasn't criticizing pop stars for not writing their own songs. I was saying that when I hear mainstream pop music that's terrible (again, irrespective of era), it's a bit perplexing to me that an army of experienced songwriters and elite session musicians couldn't do better. I think you're correct, though, that the disposable nature of that kind of songwriting is probably the issue.
A pay cheque was most likely to have been those guys only thought. You know it's just another days work and another days pay. Do this for now until something better comes along. Some of those guys would've most definitely hated what was being produced others may not of cared less.
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Forces have been looting
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No fuchsias for you.

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Re: Does Contemporary Music Suck?

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Howard Beale wrote:
09 Aug 2022, 2:59am
I'm certainly aghast at the exploitation of the artists that went on, but setting that part of the equation aside for the moment, my core question was basically: how much should we care about the process by which music is made? We often think of four or five people in a band hammering it out in a garage as being more pure than a team of writers, producers and hired-gun musicians creating music, but does it really matter one way or another if the end result is still good music?
That's the audience/hedonism angle, and it's certainly legit. My chief reservation about that is it's a bit of a dead end for discussion. If the audience thinks it's good and enjoys it, where do you go from there? Why the audience likes it and the implications of that, but that's pretty much it. More in-depth analysis of audiences is always tough. But the other question is that caring about how music gets made ends up being, fundamentally, a labour question, about the autonomy of labour, to creative in an unalienated manner with others and the final work. That's a key concern for punk. Dischord was established under those principles.
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Re: Does Contemporary Music Suck?

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Marky Dread wrote:
09 Aug 2022, 3:51am
Marky Dread wrote:
08 Aug 2022, 5:23am
You could level that same thing with Elvis but I would never call his music soulless. I don't think having song writers for you is the problem. But the throwaway nature of some of those songs being written.
I specifically wasn't criticizing pop stars for not writing their own songs. I was saying that when I hear mainstream pop music that's terrible (again, irrespective of era), it's a bit perplexing to me that an army of experienced songwriters and elite session musicians couldn't do better. I think you're correct, though, that the disposable nature of that kind of songwriting is probably the issue.
A pay cheque was most likely to have been those guys only thought. You know it's just another days work and another days pay. Do this for now until something better comes along. Some of those guys would've most definitely hated what was being produced others may not of cared less.
I agree with you, but I think that's half the equation—the other being pressure from the record label to deliver a song that fits into their hit-making formula, which I'd imagine leads to a lot of strangulation of creativity.
Dr. Medulla wrote:
09 Aug 2022, 6:38am
Howard Beale wrote:
09 Aug 2022, 2:59am
I'm certainly aghast at the exploitation of the artists that went on, but setting that part of the equation aside for the moment, my core question was basically: how much should we care about the process by which music is made? We often think of four or five people in a band hammering it out in a garage as being more pure than a team of writers, producers and hired-gun musicians creating music, but does it really matter one way or another if the end result is still good music?
That's the audience/hedonism angle, and it's certainly legit. My chief reservation about that is it's a bit of a dead end for discussion. If the audience thinks it's good and enjoys it, where do you go from there? Why the audience likes it and the implications of that, but that's pretty much it. More in-depth analysis of audiences is always tough. But the other question is that caring about how music gets made ends up being, fundamentally, a labour question, about the autonomy of labour, to creative in an unalienated manner with others and the final work. That's a key concern for punk. Dischord was established under those principles.
Definitely—that element is probably too intertwined to be able to separate it from any discussion of music created through the Motown/mainstream pop method.

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