Here's an interesting piece from CBC Radio 1. I'm glad someone pointed this out. I've noticed this for years. I recall pointing it out to a co-worker who thought I was nuts. I am vindicated.
I haven't been able to "unhear" it for many years. Farbeit from me to be a "turn that s*&^ down" old fart, but this junk is nearly unlistenable because it literally does all sound the same. Rock 'n roll is only four chords, but it's at least nuanced. This stuff is dreck.
__________________
"I've never trusted Klingons and I never will. I can never forgive them for the death of my boy."
Here's an interesting piece from CBC Radio 1. I'm glad someone pointed this out. I've noticed this for years. I recall pointing it out to a co-worker who thought I was nuts. I am vindicated.
I've heard singers vocalizing along with the music like that... pretty much forever. Now, whole sections of the song sounding like you didn't have time to finish the lyrics is a bit embarrassing I would think. But those examples in that link are all pretty much computer generated commercial bubblegum pop. They probably used up the max content allowed to be used in a single song or some such. Pretty sure the target audience isn't going to be too discerning.
If there a "millennial vocal tic" it's the robot voice autotune sound that makes every band using it sound exactly alike. You think you're hearing this band all over the radio but it's actually like 12 different bands!
Pop music has been crap for generations from Haley to bubble gum, Herman's Hermits and beyond but people have still managed to write good stuff while it was going on. Is music dead? Nah you just need to listen with a brain as always. Plus ça change, plus la même chose.
Pop music has been crap for generations from Haley to bubble gum, Herman's Hermits and beyond but people have still managed to write good stuff while it was going on. Is music dead? Nah you just need to listen with a brain as always. Plus ça change, plus la même chose.
There's pop music that is literally music so likable that it was discovered and became popular.
Then there's the POPularity contest that follows that. This gets awkward because those involved aren't focused on the art aspect of the original.
I do think the recent modern era where you can program and tune without the need for any actual musicians gives it the ultimate plastic feel now. You might have had the cheesiest of intentions with a pop song in the past but ended up with little interesting bits in it just because of having musicians involved recording it. Now you can finally remove all that completely.
Is Hey Jude considered modern BTW? Seems to be a bit of non-lyrical stuff towards the end there.
There's pop music that is literally music so likable that it was discovered and became popular.
Then there's the POPularity contest that follows that. This gets awkward because those involved aren't focused on the art aspect of the original.
I do think the recent modern era where you can program and tune without the need for any actual musicians gives it the ultimate plastic feel now. You might have had the cheesiest of intentions with a pop song in the past but ended up with little interesting bits in it just because of having musicians involved recording it. Now you can finally remove all that completely.
Is Hey Jude considered modern BTW? Seems to be a bit of non-lyrical stuff towards the end there.
I love a good pop song. ABBA has to be in my top 10. I also love 60s pop, including Herman's Hermits.
My point with this contemporary fad is the ad-nauseum reuse of that one interval. It feels very calculated. "Oh, this interval 'Oh-woh-Oh' equals a hit song." I'm probably simplifying things, but the spread of the fad is shocking.
I actually enjoyed Katy Perry's "California Girls" as a pop song (despite the blatant Beach Boys title). But when you can listen to top-40 radio and hear ostensibly the same song broken only by jock chat and ads, it's become a bit suspicious.
__________________
"I've never trusted Klingons and I never will. I can never forgive them for the death of my boy."
I love a good pop song. ABBA has to be in my top 10. I also love 60s pop, including Herman's Hermits.
Who all used well-worn hooks from the 60's and 70's, hooks that disgusted your parents.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kirk1701
My point with this contemporary fad is the ad-nauseum reuse of that one interval. It feels very calculated. "Oh, this interval 'Oh-woh-Oh' equals a hit song." I'm probably simplifying things, but the spread of the fad is shocking.
I love a good pop song. ABBA has to be in my top 10. I also love 60s pop, including Herman's Hermits.
Each to his own but I'm not sure how you could include Abba and Herman's Hermits in the same sentence! One was a band of highly talented professionals with a grip on quality songwriting genius and the other was a third rate beat group grafted onto a child actor with almost no vocal talent by the usual bunch of cynical manager/exploiters, the forerunners of people like Cowell today.
Somewhere in his series of lectures given at Harvard in 1973, Leonard Bernstein pointed out that the minor third down is by far the most common interval in children's songs and mocking rhymes across all cultures of the world. So, I'm not really surprised :-)
What's much worse is indeed the dehumanization of the human voice via autotune. That trend would be worth a doctor's thesis in social psychology, imo.
Let me be clear, I'm only critiquing music, not society. I'm making an artistic judgment. So I'm not saying, "Damn kids and their music." I'm only in my 30s. I'm the top end of the target market for this music.
I do realize that a simple, repeating interval occurs throughout many musical styles, East and West.
Somebody else took me to task for Herman's Hermits. If you re-read my post, I put ABBA and HHs on a scale. I choose my words carefully.
I'm not really lamenting anything as such. I'm simply pointing out an interesting pattern in contemporary music.
If I were to lament anything, it would be how far commerce has infiltrated art. They're placing a marketing campaign right in the tunes themselves. That's freaky.
__________________
"I've never trusted Klingons and I never will. I can never forgive them for the death of my boy."
These modern computer generated pop songs you're talking about...
You know how you might sort of sing along with the radio or even hum along when you don't know the words?
They find a "singer" based on attractiveness and stage presence. This person hasn't written any of the music or even lyrics. Those bits in the song? It's the singer kind of humming along with this new song they just heard.
That it comes out as the most common interval in children's songs and mocking rhymes is not surprising either.
PS. I'm not suggesting this is ALL modern music or some such either! Not surprising that the 'crank out garbage for cheap' POPularity contest followers are on board though. It's what they do.
The origins of that go back to around 2005, about a year before the kick drum ducking thing started happening.
In a sense it's kind of like blues, in that they're all just "re-writing" the same song. Maybe like crowd-sourced music development financed by sheeple. 20 years from now, if we're still on the planet, it will be a niche format like blues is looked at today.
The doused-in-SPX90 sounding reverb Def Leppard BV, combined with garbled-via Expensive Boutique Plugin Faux Vintage Harmonic Distortion, has made "modern music" for me not just unlistenable, but revolting. It's bad enough that it's mostly based on I IV V vi block chords (if there are any changes), monophonic chant "melody", but audio wise it's just audio rubble. Borderline pitched white and Gaussian noise.
It's sad, because it's the music of the American Empire falling, as intellect diminishes and civilization retreats back into savagery. Hyperbole, I know....
..........
It's sad, because it's the music of the American Empire falling, as intellect diminishes and civilization retreats back into savagery. Hyperbole, I know....
ah, but very well said and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I love good pop music. Theres still a ton of songs i heard in the 50s that still play in my head once in awhile.In the past couple years I've heard improvement in some of the stuff that's on top 40 radio.
Like, banjo in a pop song?
Mumford and sons.
And I dig the shit out a Bruno mars. And maybe soon Snarky Puppy will have a hit!
Edit..and my new fav..although not exactly superstars...St Paul and the Broken Bones...dam...but it'd be tuff up against...Hang on sloppy, .sugar sugar....and Yummy yummy yummy:-)
Except I *could dig and find thousands of equally similar songs going back decades because we've been rewriting the same songs across all genres for just as long. Try looking for how many people 'doo wopped' in the '50s LOL. That's OK, that is what music is, reinterpretation of life which is generally the same overall aka happy/suffering/jealous/political whathaveyou, it's human existence. Though I love and sometimes strive to be totally original, I do not hold it in some religiously high regard and of course 'better' is always relative to the listener.
*The only problem with proving this is 90% of the same type stuff from the past doesn't exist in a form that can easily be found and the stuff that survived outnumbers it exponentially. Now that multitrack recording affords most anyone to put out a 'record' and there are now 7 billion people on the planet, it doesn't actually need to degrade in order for there to be much more. Much of what I read in this thread, I heard my parents saying, and their parents.
For whatever reason, I was uniquely influenced by hearing my parents hate my music of the day - their exact words were that it was noise to them - because of that I have always tried to consider what I will do when I'm their age (now) and not to find myself reminiscing and living in the past and doing the exact same thing they did. Some of that I can't escape but much of it I can.
Fidelity wise, it's a bit of a cesspool right now and difficult to listen to at all but since the opening post wasn't about that, not much need in expounding on it.
__________________ Music is what feelings sound like.
Last edited by karbomusic; 09-09-2016 at 11:24 AM.
Mmv as usual but I've always found enough good music available to not even waste much time thinking about it.
QFT. Even before the internet, there was more good music available than I could listen to, and now with the internet, you can find anything you like. In fact, with Reaper, you can MAKE anything you like.
hey hey guys , coming from the 90´s and 2000´s i really think popmusic hasn´t been this easy to listen to in all those years than it is now ...
there were times where i would from the getgo shun away any pop bullshit , but now that major lazer like stuff and all teh experiments with melodys and sounds thats somehow found its way from electronic music into the mainstream is rather refreshing imho ..
also there came a few pop funk bands and bruno mars like popmnusic and all that .. compare it to backstreetboys and nsync formula and other bad music from the nintys please! ..
of course lady gaga and kate perry , thats really bad music but overall its rather deverse these days imho...
on the work we often listen to radio so i should know or its just a mental self-defense state XD
also there came a few pop funk bands and bruno mars like popmnusic and all that .. compare it to backstreetboys and nsync formula and other bad music from the nintys please! ..
of course lady gaga and kate perry , thats really bad music but overall its rather deverse these days imho...
Believe it or not, all this same stuff exists in various forms in music going back to the 30s and 40s (if not earlier), it's just that that was a hell of a long time ago and there aren't enough people alive from then to mention it.
I was exposed to it accidentally in the 90s where I had to listen to 30s/40s/50s music all day every day at work for two years. I started off hating it then I started noticing familiar stuff buried in there and eventually realized where all my fav 'original' rock stars got their stuff from.
__________________ Music is what feelings sound like.
If you check some Italian dance music from the 13th/14th century you'll find that same repeating phrase used quite a lot. You'll also hear it cropping up in even earlier vocal Church music.
It would be nice to think that modern pop music is looking so far back for ideas to steal but really it's just a fashion. It will have gone away again soon .
Except I *could dig and find thousands of equally similar songs going back decades because we've been rewriting the same songs across all genres for just as long. Try looking for how many people 'doo wopped' in the '50s LOL.
That's different than the Millenial Whoop, which is literally the same phrase. The only thing comparable would be your garden variety Chuck Berry Johnny Be Good riff in every song.
Hahaha,
Here is the original version of "Try a little tenderness" from Bing Crosby! 1933!
I always thought Otis redding wrote it and Three dog night covered it.
Its after the intro. BTW does anyone know what they used to call these "intros"?
and OT : i have heard all the trends discussed here, but the millenial is shit supreme...no contest even with da bluuz or doo wop or rock n roll
something about the combination of sterile computer loops, mastering brickwalled turds, autotune and mediocre (at best) talent as well as bottom of the barrel lyrical crap makes it instantly vomit inducing
something about the combination of sterile computer loops, mastering brickwalled turds, autotune and mediocre (at best) talent as well as bottom of the barrel lyrical crap makes it instantly vomit inducing
Take away any of the above and I'm shafted. Oh well, bass amp for sale....
Except I *could dig and find thousands of equally similar songs going back decades because we've been rewriting the same songs across all genres for just as long. Try looking for how many people 'doo wopped' in the '50s LOL. That's OK, that is what music is, reinterpretation of life which is generally the same overall aka happy/suffering/jealous/political whathaveyou, it's human existence. Though I love and sometimes strive to be totally original, I do not hold it in some religiously high regard and of course 'better' is always relative to the listener.
I think it's easier than you think. Patterns are what make music. This guy just "discovered" a minor 3rd. Woo! Next up, he'll discover that half the songs he's ever heard consist of the I the IV and the V, and the other half are...
This is just another old man shouting at the clouds and telling those damn kids to get off his lawn.
I never listen to modern pop music; it was crap even before this "whoop" started. That link is the first time I've heard music with that whoop, and I'm already tired of it.
Maybe by the 20s people will be interested in music that isn't utter $#%.