I'm Not Old, Your Music Does Suck.

[Notuern]

the entirely awful shit (black) and the really good stuff (white) is the only thing that you will remember. thats how memory usually works. the gray mass from between is usually the part that gets forgotten, but the amount of shitty music has stayed the same since the dawning of time.

For example if we look at the 1987 "hot 100" from billboard.com, honestly I don't even know more than maybe 20 of the songs on the list: http://www.cylist.com/List/400300148/


edit: 15. not 20.

The ones that I confess that I know:

4. I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me) - Whitney Houston
7. Here I Go Again - Whitesnake
10. Livin' On A Prayer - Bon Jovi
11. La Bamba - Los Lobos
15. With Or Without You - U2
23. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - U2
40. Land Of Confusion - Genesis
44. Touch Me (I Want Your Body) - Samantha Fox
49. Hip To Be Square - Huey Lewis & The News
56. Carrie - Europe
58. La Isla Bonita - Madonna
59. Bad - Michael Jackson
67. Stand By Me - Ben E. King (I gotta admit that this song is actually REALLY good, and cheesy too)
74. Wanted Dead Or Alive - Bon Jovi
98. (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party) - Beastie Boys

I mean, these were number 3 and 6 on the list... I've NEVER heard of them before:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc8wmLul3uw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGtf9QfITQw

And honestly, I've heard the Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now and Walk like an Egyptian before and when I listened to them I was like "Oh, that song!" and same goes most likely for many other songs too, but who really knows any other song from the Bangles other than Eternal Flame?

In that list i would say that i knew about 90 of those songs. o,0
But then again, i am extremely diverse in my taste of music, and i actually listen to that stuff(Just as i listen to classical music, blues, rock, metal and whatev's.).

I would say at about 1995 the quality of music declined rapidly.
I mean, back before 1995 most popular bands still had good songs, even pop.
Honestly, listen to Paula Abdul for instance, you might not like the music and you might think its completely over the top and ridiculous, but then start to analyse how many instruments that are layer on top of each other doing different things to make that amazingly large wall of sound.
Today they just slam on a kick, a bassline, a bad melody hook and some really bad autotuned vocals and thats about it really.

Then if we go back to the 60's/70's we have incredibly sloppy recordings of REALLY good music.

Sure you can still find good bands and talented musicians, but honestly, 99% of the musicians at my age(20's) are fucking horrible, and if you look at the guys at 40+ they tend to be incredibly driven in their playing.
And yeah, i know: "Thats only because the bad ones quit playing music."
NO, its just not true.. back then you had to be good, now days you just have to look good, have the right attitude and know the right people.

 

[SocialNumb]

I don't know but I love the 80's - 60's and some 50's. 80's industrial kicked ass and so did a bunch of the "synth pop" stuff imo. I can't even listen to the radio anymore and haven't in a long time. All shit!

 

[MarcusGHedwig]

Agreed on ~1995 being the turning point for a massive decline!

 

[Sloan]

CLOSED FRONTIER: Is Rock Over?
http://www.viceland.com/int/v17n8/htdocs/closed-frontier-487.php?page=1

 

[GarethSE]

I'm really dissapointed in all of you for not commenting on the transcendant glory of the Bootsy bass solo I posted.

 

[GarethSE]

CLOSED FRONTIER: Is Rock Over?
http://www.viceland.com/int/v17n8/htdocs/closed-frontier-487.php?page=1

I really want to give the guy who wrote this a fucking slap.

 

[TheDriller]

^ slaps are fun but it might be more useful to provide a coherent counter-argument instead

 

[kvoid]

Valid points and shit analogies IMHO in that article. Guitar Hero is already dead. Video games are in a worse rut than rock n' roll. American entertainment industry is, again in my opinion, in a massive disconnect with it's home market and even more obviously so with the rest of the world. I may be mistaking the forest for the trees but I see it as a wholesale decay of innovative cultural output on the west's behalf, and the east is still largely concerned with creating basic necessities or in other cases wealth.

I've been listening to the indie charts lately and there's lots of great stuff there (sorry I've been really disillusioned with Metal lately, not that I do not like it anymore, I just think it is on it's last breath too), but damn me i I can't trace the lineage of every song on there to five or six bands from two or three decades ago. All that psych-folk, indie, electroclash, the resurrection of every obscure subgenre that never garnered the respect it deserved cause something else came 'round and crushed it (shoegaze I'm thinking of you here, and post-punk and synthpop to a degree as well) is I feel a good indicator. Everything has really been done, there's always a place for a great song though, but I feel the shit they write these days is rubbish too. I might not be the poster child for a "normal" human being in that I can't really relate to happy, sappy or any kind of love songs, or any chestbeating moneyflashing dickwaving primitivism (it does amuse me to a degree in like "would you look at that retard and the morons paying money for puke"). The likelihood of something like "Strange Fruit" popping up from any of today's sheltered, overfed, misguided dipshits is highly unlikely. Fuck I'd be happy with someone doing the Black Flag. Music has to be about something. Even if it's Satan, or worse, D&D and shit. It cannot be about Friday. Or your hipster clothes and record collection, your car, your rims, your grill, other possessions. And there are far more important things in life than your "significant other" too.

 

[TravisW]

I think the main problem with rock, and this has been the problem for the past couple decades, is that it's constantly folding back in on itself. When you think about the hugely influential bands of the first 20 years of the Rock and Roll era, part of the reason that it was so great was because everybody was re-folding new influences back into the mix. Since then, everything has split apart in different ways, then gotten re-folded back together, but without significant new musical content to make it very different. There are exceptions, of course, but very few that actually make it to mainstream public consciousness.

 

[GarethSE]

The idea that rock music has no-where left to go is ultimately stupid as fuck. If you're bored of what's on the surface, dig deeper, simple as that.

 

[26]

I think the main problem with rock, and this has been the problem for the past couple decades, is that it's constantly folding back in on itself. When you think about the hugely influential bands of the first 20 years of the Rock and Roll era, part of the reason that it was so great was because everybody was re-folding new influences back into the mix. Since then, everything has split apart in different ways, then gotten re-folded back together, but without significant new musical content to make it very different. There are exceptions, of course, but very few that actually make it to mainstream public consciousness.

that really makes sense. good post.

and to add a personal view on the dilemma:
too much pretending, but (almost) nobody who's meaning it.