Posted on 03/22/2014 2:13:41 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Tony Bennett doesn’t have much patience for most modern music. The legendary singer, 87, told the BBC Radio 4’s Today program that most modern songs lack a “lasting quality.”
“The songs that are written today, most of them are terrible,” he said. “It’s a very bad period, musically, throughout the world for popular music.”
He added that today’s music industry leaders are more concerned with making money than making quality music.
“The corporations took it over and they want to make so much money and they don’t care whether the public likes it or not,” he said. “They think the public is ignorant, so their attitude is, ‘Don’t give them anything intelligent, because it won’t sell.’”
He also criticized what he sees as the music industry’s bias toward younger listeners.
“Today, record companies are failing because they are putting their accent just on the young, and I think that’s rather silly,” he said.
Bennett is a huge fan of one young pop icon, however; he’s collaborating with Lady Gaga on a new jazz album, Cheek to Cheek.
“She’s one of the best singers I ever heard,” Bennett told Parade.com in 2012. “She also plays great piano and dances very well. She’s an all-around great performer…I’ve met so many people in show business over the years and I’m very impressed with her. She’s one of the great talents coming up. She’s going to always surprise everybody with her artistry.”
Watch Bennett and Lady Gaga perform “The Lady Is a Tramp”:
Good song to sing... after a war.
I listen to Christian or oldies - some country, though country is more pop these days.
There's nothing like refuting your own argument before you're done making it.
That’s racist, Tony!
How do you make money on music no one likes?
People buy music they don’t like?
I don’t.
I agree. What’s worse is they can go though the whole Idol (or X Factor) competition without ever having to demonstrate they can write a song. Meanwhile the judges go on and on about being an “artist”. Artists write their own music! Singers that sing only other people’s music are technicians, not artists. They should have at least one week where the contestants have to sing an original song.
Hey Bennet!
Stick to music...you're a political retard.
James Darren - Come Fly With Me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQuLWY5tde0
Lady Gaga can sing beautifully and play great piano.
Few people have seen/heard her do so.
She does the trash act to make bucketloads of money.
There are woman starving in every city in the USA who sing beautifully and play great piano.
People say they like high quality music but they don’t support it.
Americans today don't like music....they like taped noise.....and that's what it is.
The kids love it filling their addled headphoned brains at malls and while doing homework....and adults and old grannies abide it like zombied, vacant-eyed sheep as the loud-speakered din knifes through the aisles, assaulting our ears, like it or not. when shopping at our Publix, Pier One and other local tone-deaf stores.
Leni
He’s an Obama lover
A lot of the most popular music sounds like what we used to call a “Fade-Out”, or the way a recording sounds like in it’s last 10 seconds. For many, the whole piece is in that fashion, with one or two hooks and a refrain sung over and over, interrupted for a short jolt of the same music mow played at fives times the speed and three times louder than before. Lady Gaga does have a voice, but relies so heavily on the clowning or the burlesque with heavy overlays of ambiguious sexuality, that her natural talent is far overwhelmed by blatantly artificial excess.
Most songs written in any era are terrible, we just think decades past were better because we’ve conveniently forgotten the bad songs. But check out the top 100 list from any year and you’ll find a lot of patheticness, mostly near the top.
Got some of her stuff. Try some Madeleine Peyroux too.
Gaga has great talent and knows how to target her audience...which is making her mega bucks. That's what it's all about isn't it?
Ya think for an instant that Tony Bennet and all the others weren't in it for profit?
Gaga will eventually morph as her audience changes and will continue to be a hit..........
I agree with Bennett - modern lyrics are not poetry - the ‘melodies’ are repetitive pounding one-noters - and how can anyone consider ‘rap talking’ as music?
Raised by parents playing Vera Lynn and Bing Crosby on a gramophone - adored Elvis in my adolescence - tolerated the Beatles - enjoyed my children playing Foreigner, Billy Idol et al during the 80’s.
Now I and the offspring enjoy Classical, Country and our shared memories.
If Ed Ames hadn’t left the Ames Brothers, we’d all be living in a better world now.
Her audience base now is pretty much down to the fags, just like Madonna and Cher.
The democrat IDIOT did a DUET with Lady GAGGAG!! What a LOSER he has turned out to be.
Good point. Plus there’s the nostalgia factor. A lot of mediocre music from our youth holds appeal because we remember fondly the times we heard it.
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