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Posted: |
Aug 20, 2013 - 8:44 AM
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By: |
Ado
(Member)
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I can barely listen to pop music now. My wife listens to Kelly Clarkson. I cannot stand her. I mean, winner of American Idol, okay, she has a whiskey voice that is not bad. But really, how many boring songs and albums do we really need that drone on about lost love and getting back at them. I mean it is just so darned negative and it has all been covered before in songs for several decades now. I mean nothing new, just better production values.
Every time I hear it, those so banal predictable lyrics, the boring tunes, I just sigh in total boredom. It happens with other pop music too. I used to like Maroon Five, like the first album, I hear it now, it sounds too canned and intentionally engineered to be ear candy. So I was driving and listening to 'the latest hit from Maroon Five' on the radio and I was noticing that Adam Levine sings higher keyed than most girls. I listened to the canned riffs and the repeating chorus line, noticing how the vocals are looped with backing vocals, then pasted with layers off snyths.
I realized I really cannot enjoy it, and it is total crap.
This is why I love film scores.
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Posted: |
Aug 20, 2013 - 10:20 AM
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By: |
Ado
(Member)
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Pop music like scores do not allow for innovation, creativity, or a distinctive style anymore. (with a few rare exceptions) A lot of today's singers cannot sing or play instruments. They are auto-tuned. Even singers that can sing and have beautiful voices are ruined in auto-tune post production hell. The fats cats want guaranteed bucks, and the only way to achieve that goal in their minds is to copy the last success story. Total ditto head mentality. Corporate greed has killed the arts.
Totally agree, just as an example so Kelly Clarkson, or maybe even Justin Beiber has a great voice, we will start with that, whether I like her or not aside), you hear her voice stand alone mere seconds in each song, mostly it is backed and backed and layered. So what is the point of getting these "new talents" if I cannot even hear them being so 'talented'. You are right on the same riffs, the same chord structures being used ad-nauseam, the same lyric structures, the ascending syrupy upbeats often applied with string swells. I suppose this might all of started with David Foster and his like, and American Idol. Nothing has damaged simple pop more than these guys, it has become more than ever a giant machine; insert attractive boy or girl at top of machine, push button, out comes forgettable "hit album". I know pop music has always been a little shallow, but now it does not really matter if the singer is really a singer anymore.
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I recently purchased my first media player (a refurbished Samsung Galaxy) and have spent some time feeding music into it. I put a bunch of film scores into the mix, including the wonderful rerecording of Copland's OF MICE AND MEN and OUR TOWN -- and I decided to take a chance and load in some new pop/rock from Amazon -- reading reviews, etc., to identify stuff that sounded promising. So far I've actually liked a bunch of the quirkier stuff that I picked a great deal:
Passenger: All the Little Lights
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros: Up from Below
Small Black: Limits of Desire
Modern Vampires of the City: Vampire Weekend
Also a few more mainstream pop albums perhaps not so new are OK:
Noah and the Whale: 3 albums--First Days of Spring, Last Night on Earth, and Heart of Nowhere (I find that this band's stuff is great ear candy for my daily NYC commuting -- I find myself humming their songs all day at work)
Rumer: Boys Don't Cry (well actually this is sort of deadly dull -- her voice is honey-toned but she seems incapable of showing any real emotion in her singing -- only dulcet tonalities which gets boring real fast!)
Jonsi: Go (again pleasant and catchy ear candy for the commute)
Mika: The Origin of Love (incredibly catchy stuff -- probably more than ear candy but still great for the subway commute)
The Acqua Velvets: Guitar Noir (kind of kitschy but adorable stuff)
Darren Hayes: Secret Codes and Battleships (Hayes is a pop genius and I love this latest effort)
And some old classics that I find enduring:
TRex: Electric Warrior and The Slider
McGuinness Flint: Happy Birthday Ruthy Baby and their 1st album
Ella Fitzgerald: Fifty Great Show Tunes
(I also loaded in a mega folder of about 25 Main Titles composed by Elmer Bernstein which is a hoot).
Almost all of the newer stuff reminds me of older stuff (I am 60 years old so this is hardly surprising). But I was actually surprised that I could connect to some of the new artists.
I agree that the silken production values of much modern pop gives everything a sameness that I find dispiriting. The first group listed above, for whatever reasons, seem a bit more raw and sincere to my ears. Less like Velveta cheese if you know what I mean.
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Posted: |
Aug 21, 2013 - 9:08 AM
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By: |
Solium
(Member)
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Somehow I feel we all are denying ourselves of some truth here and of course as always it leads to the old attack against the new, which is getting so boring, the thread title seem to be talking about why a certain type of music , say in the last 80 or so years some of us like better then the top 40 pop music or top 40 album charts etc and in comes somebody who starts in about the modern sound in a negative matter and all.As I have said many times before, did you hear even 300 film scores this year against 300 from 1971, so how can you make a honest opinion or critical opinion on something.I think the reason why some of you don't get why some of us love film music over other music is because we are not talking about per say good music[which is just an opinion anyway] but the wonderful vibes a certain types of music brings forth. The greatest drummer in the world or the greatest metal band in the world is not going to give me and others that vibe that melodic film music can give period.It is like comparing apples to oranges, You people just don't seem to know what people like me are talking about here.
I really disagree with this, and it just fluffs off how uncreative, unoriginal and fake music is today. While art is subjective, it is a fact that music today is bankrupt if you take an honest look at it.
Can anyone with an honest ear really compare today's auto-tuned fakery to singers like Doris Day or Karen Carpenter? Rock bands from the 60's and 70's were diverse and presented their own sound and style. Did Chicago sound anything like ELO? Did ELO sound anything like the Beetles? (It's not to say there weren't some copying going on) But hell even a "fake" band like the Monkees were real!
Remember the up roar when fans found out Milli Vanilli were fake? Back then ppl cared about the integrity of the music. Today ppl don't seem to care if their favorite singer's can sing- most lip sinc at their concerts or on television because they can't really pull off the vocal range presented on their CD's. It's all smoke and mirrors. This sadly demonstrates the art has devolved and sadly those that listen to this stuff don't seem to care or appreciate skill, talent or personal style.
I suppose at the end of the day you can say society has changed it expectations, they don't care if music all sounds the same. Perhaps they want it to sound all to familiar. And they don't care if it's fake as long as they like what they hear. But I don't think that attitude is good for the arts or for society as a whole.
Richness of art comes from the uniqueness of ones skills, and personal perceptions in life. We are kinda devolving back to the cave man days, ancient Egypt, or early Japan where art was about conformity and sameness, not an expression of individualism or talent.
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