Posted on 12/09/2022 7:11:05 AM PST by ConservativeInPA
In recent years, the use of key changes in music has decreased significantly, leading to monotonous and predictable sound. This lack of tonal variation has made many popular songs uninteresting and unengaging. In this video we explore how the disappearance of key changes has contributed to the current state of music.
On a separate but related note, if I were Czar, I would ban autotune post haste.
I agree. There is some good music still being made, but you have to go outside the “mainstream.”
The tune had been haunting London for weeks past. It was one of countless similar songs published for the benefit of the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department. The words of these songs were composed without any human intervention whatever on an instrument known as a versificator. But the woman sang so tunefully as to turn the dreadful rubbish into an almost pleasant sound.
Traditionally, if an adjective and a noun worked together to form a distinct concept, you would hyphenate them. Thus, people spoke of base-ball long before baseball became a word. Alternately, you could use a slightly more French grammatical approach and say “changes of key.”
“I’m stuck in the past when it comes to music despite trying something new. I occasionally force myself to listen to the top 50’s playlists on Spotify and all I find is redundant crap. My music journey now focus primarily on finding what I had missed when growing up, often taking tangents of the previously and forever unpopular but extremely good music that the music biz never deemed appropriate for mass consumption.”
I’m the same. One way I’ve found new-to-me music is by exploring the top 40 charts of the UK. While there is a lot of overlap there are actually quite a few hits there that did not chart here, or charted very low such that they didn’t get airplay.
I also did a deep dive into regional/local acts of the 60’s plus/minus a few years from my part of the country. Even 10 years ago you could find those singles for reasonable price. Now that’s a huge market for people with our same interest and Ebay prices have skyrocketed.
Also, genres aren't what they used to be. "Rock" today sounds like "pop" from yesterday, and most "metal" today sound like trash (except for Mesuggah). Most instrumental, guitar driven rock today (no lyrics = no stupidity) is more dense and technical than yesterday, but is more powerful and brutal...and beautiful.
I go to Bandcamp to find new music. What the labels want me to think is good, sucks bigly. Bandcamp has a searchable front end where you can find quality, unsigned new music in whatever genre you want. In some way, it's a nod to what Zappa said in 1988:
Q: Do you think that's a reason why guitar is becoming less of a prominent instrument in pop today? Do you think other people are experiencing what you're experiencing?
FZ: Well, pop music is not the end of the world. There's a whole substructure of what they call pop music which is heavy metal, in which the guitar rules. And that's never going to change. That's a style that's probably going to be with us until hell freezes over, to use a rock and roll term. But if you're talking about Whitney Houston, that other kind of pop music, they try to keep those blasphemous elements out of it. There's nothing AOR or MOR about a fuzz-tone guitar. They try to make the orchestration on those songs as neutral and comfortable as possible. And I think the listening public is, to a certain extent, deceived by what is broadcast. Because what is broadcast is not necessarily an accurate indication of what people are writing or recording. Now, what usually goes on the radio is the most banal product that every record company can manage to put together. In the United States, radio truly is a cultural embarrassment. The only creative radio you can listen to is what they call shock radio, where people are talking and making things up. There's a little spark of creativity there. But most of the music that's broadcast is harmful to your mental health.
Be a rebel...reject ugly radio and Sony, and embrace individualism and capitalism. Buy music direct from unsigned artists. Go to a club and see kidz playing their guts out for gas and beer money. It'll renew your faith in the future.
Modern “dance music” is little more than a 120bpm drone with emphasis on bass and sun harmonic frequencies. Throw in hateful and vulgar language and you have a modern pop song. Music was better when it was produced by old white guys in suits in smokey back rooms. Now that young hip people are producing music it completely sucks.
Send an invoice to your local PBS station—demanding reparations for their endless slanders against white people.
I have done much of the same thing, making deep dives into music that may not have topped the charts, but was very good.
I’ve been a huge fan of TTB since before it was TTB, when it was The Derek Trucks Band and Susan Tedeschi touring separately. Saw them both a couple times back then.
A buddy of mine in the Northeast declares they’re a top 5 act currently touring. I can’t disagree.
TTB was the only show we didn’t take our ticket refunds from, when Covid hit. And we had a good chunk of cash in refunds. Rolled TTB over for two years, finally saw that show at The Fox in Atlanta last Summer. Had darn good seats, and they were great as usual.
I do miss hearing Mike Mattison’s vocals from the TDTB days. He’s still with TTB, but he gets like one song a show. But you sort of get moved down the pecking order when the band leader marries a lead vocalist and they merge touring operations. And I like Susan’s vocals quite well, I describe her as Bonnie Raitt minus 15 or 20 years. Bonnie has a better voice, Susan wails better, they’re both great.
There’s a funny story the pianist Arthur Rubinstein told about the time he met some Spanish royalty on a tour of that country. He was introduced to the then-current monarch, King Alfonso XIII. Rubinstein said the man was completely tone-deaf, and kept an aide by his side to “elbow him whenever the Spanish national anthem was being played.”
Lately I been enjoying Volfpeck and their spinoffs ie. Fearless Flyers, Cory Wong. Billy Strings is awesome! JRAD and some other Jam Bands also go well for me.
On thing that disappoints me with modern pop music is the lack of any guitar solos or any instrument solos at all.
“There’s AMAZING music being made today.”
Absolutely! Looking at my top songs in Spotify for 2022, I find these artists:
Jake Xerxes Fussell
Phil Cook
River Whyless
Aoife O’Donovan
Pieta Brown
Lindsay Lou
Jack Rose
Eilen Jewell
Feist
Tift Merrit
Elephant Revival
Chuck Prophet
Dori Freeman
Lord Huron
Rhiannon Guidons
Kacy & Clayton
I didn’t check the year of the songs I like, but probably 90% are in the past 20 years, 75% in the past 10 years, and 20% in 2022.
See my #21, which I wrote before reading your post and tagline.
We’re on the same page in the hymnal.
Karen Carpenter had an incredible voice - both tone and how she communicated the soul of the music/lyrics.
Richard was equally adept at arranging, too.
Short story...
When recording the love ballad “Goodbye to Love” they brought in a local guitarist to play the break and outro solos. At first he played an easy “Carpenters” style but Richard encouraged him to play with a more raw edge....which he did. It became one of the first love ballads with a “power solo”.
I have both their 2-CD “Gold” album and the HiRez 24-bit “Singles” - they both are still played frequently at home and in my car. The 24-bit HiRez has excellent mastering & sound quality, too!!!
They same seems to be true of theater. Its a post-modern wasteland.
There’s a correlation of the devolution of education and the devolution of today’s music.
Rap/HipHop sounds like animals in the jungle with racist lyrics accompanied by a computer bass program. It is NOT “music”.
My son is only interested in “Dad rock.” Looking back at this music with a sense of historical perspective, I’m pretty horrified to realize that no popular music act was allowed to do anything without first establishing their perversion bona fides... or at least allow their music to be used to promote perversion.
Taken in isolation, Duran Duran’s first hit music video or U2’s or Nirvanna’s first album covers seemed reasonably likely to be innocent at the time. As an adult, I’m rather sickened at the pleasure Duran Duran takes playing with little boys IN THAILAND. Why does “Boy” feature an adequately cropped but nonetheless unclothed child? Why did Nirvana have to angle the photo to make sure the baby’s penis was visible?
My all-time favorite band is Pink Floyd. They had the incredible luxury of spending years experimenting with sounds and melodies and actually publishing those experiments as modestly successful albums before everything came together with “Dark Side of the Moon.” But they never would have had that freedom without “Arnold Layne,” a single-only release about a man who stole underwear and then modeling it in his mirror. The guy who wrote that, Syd Barrett, lasted only one album before he went completely bonkers, but his mental breakdown provided inspiration for an embarrassingly large portion of Pink Floyd’s greatest works, like “The Wall” and “Wish You Were Here.”
Why did ALL 1980s heavy metal bands have to dress like queers?
What’s up with the use of “Daddy” in sexual songs in monster-selling albums like Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA or Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors.
Why did the Police have to sing about falling in love with a whore to get attention?
David Byrne and Rick Ocasek are actually straight, and talented songwriters, but what record company executive said, “No, no, no... the guy who sounds like a flaming homosexual should be the lead singer.” Come on, you may not prefer its slow-ballad, synth-pad sound, but can anyone listen to “Drive” and insist that Ocasek is the better singer?
Have you seen the videos with his son, Dylan? A musical prodigy in the making.
Yeah. We were pampered in the 60s and 70s. Back before the labels figured out the “code” on how to make a hit. Before they understood rock and roll enough to keep the gate, and they would just publish stuff and push stuff to the radio and we’d get Yes, and Bowie and all kinds of not really mainstream music on the mainstream because they didn’t know any better. Then in the 80s they found the code and shut the door. “Woh, is that adventurous? Outside the norm? Something we don’t know for sure will be a hit? Forget it then, no radio for you.” But it all still exists, probably more so than ever before because there are so many ways to publish and distribute that the gatekeepers don’t even know exist, much less how to control.
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