On the other hand, just because you are a bit older and don't get some of the new music, doesn't mean that a whole swathe of it doesn't actually suck. I mean seriously. Why would one generation have the monopoly on quality? We had lots of music, in my day, that really sucked, as much as we tried to pretend otherwise. There is music made today that also really sucks. In reality. Truly. Let's not forget that.

Agree totally. I have soooo much less time to find good music these days (as a teenager I had nothing else to do, of course). At least now we have great tools to find the good stuff: Spotify, Pandora, Rhapsody, Grooveshark, etc. Back in the day all we had was John Peel, Richard Blade (gag) or the guy at the record store that was too cool for anything listenable.

Remember, I'm not saying that today's music sucks. I'm just saying that I don't understand a lot of it.

There are still artists that blow me away, but they tend to be in certain gennres.

The one that I like that surprised me was Fun - "We Are Young". I heard that on the Chevy commercials and I had to find out what it was. Okay, the whole song isn't quite as good as the chorus (which is almost the whole song), but I still like it.

There have also been a few that were on commercials that I've heard going into Subway. OF course, I don't know how old they are, just that they're pretty catchy.

I feel like a curmudgeon sometimes, and I hate that. That's why I named this thread the way I did.

...I am...

What's to understand? You like it or you don't ... same as it ever was. Personally, I can't get enough "modern" music, but I still love 60's psychedelia, 70's dub, punk rock, hip hop, techno, etc ... it's all good imho.

I like a bit of dubsteps. And drums'n'basses too.

I thought castrates were out of fashion...

When I was a kid I was determined not to turn into an old fart and hate contemporary music when I got older. I think I adapted pretty well and through the decades never got to the point where I disliked the majority of music.

So far so good.

I had always thought that if I struggled to like music it would be because it was too loud, or more noise than music, or something like that.

Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that in the last decade or so I've grown to really dislike most music because it has become so bland, formulaic and stale...

Most music across decades can fit into that same spectrum. Chase the popular till everyone's had enough then find something else popular till everyones had enough of that.

Don't disagree with that but it's been extended longer this time round than ever.

Interesting article:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/y our-parents-are-right-modern-music-is-getting-louder-and-mor e-repetitive-6278364.html

ftfy

I am, now get off my lawn!

I think back to what I liked and think how surprised I am at what I liked (still like)

Other than the whole stigma of "fitting in" I really liked just about everything.

One music I'll never go into though is classical*. I don't hate it like rap or disco, but it bores me. People like think it's cerebral but to me it's just common pop with less interesting instruments

* Some sting ensembles are really quite interesting, but that doesn't mean they have to be labeled as "classical"

I love all music. I like Renee Olstead, Josh Groban, Metallica, Ke$ha, Justin Timberlake, DragonForce, Evanescence, Selena Gomez, Hans Zimmer, Edward Shearmur, Rascal Flatts, CunninLynguists, ICP, Beastie Boys, Chopin, Gustav Holst, Skrillex, Porter Robinson, DJ Tiesto, Hayley Westenra, Lacuna Coil, BT, Bond, Keane, Jordon Sparks, Kelly Clarkson.

There's good creative music in any genre I believe. You know what I don't like? Stuff that you can tell wasn't creatively produced, engineered, written, tracked, or performed.

Let's take a great subject for the whole "modern pop music is shit" debate. You don't get any more modern pop than Selena Gomez's "Love you like a love song".

1. She was a Disney star. That's reason enough to hate anything by her.
2. She's a typical "cutesy bubbly pop star" who wears flashy clothing and never takes bad pictures. I'm sure this makes more people envious.
3. She crossed over to music from a tremendously successful acting career. People love to hate these stars because they prove they can be good at two very different pretty f**king major things in life.
4. She essentially was an instant hit as soon as that song was on the radio. I mean damn that was quick. This puts her in a similar boat as Britney Spears (and people love to hate things that look like Britney).

But then there's the song. The song itself is first off one of the best mixed songs I have ever heard. The timbral balance, depth of each instrument and the way everything sits in the mix is actually kind of stunning. Listening to strings parts that would normally be a throw-away effort in any normal pop song mix (it's my opinion that very few producers know how to lay down a non-shitty strings track) is indicative that immense care was taken in the programming, phrasing and placement of each line. Even the quality of the instrumentation itself (which almost sounds as if it could have been recorded by a live section of players) could pass for a movie-caliber marcato strings passage. The recording and mix of the vocals is spot-on. Where other songs like typical Gym Class Heroes offerings present a intentionally hyped and overly saturated treble-end for vocal lines which serves as nothing more than a distraction, Selena's vocals are utterly natural and almost in a realm of very good modern jazz-pop quality in terms of how smoothly it sits in the mix. I'm never ever at one point left guessing what was said or recoiling at obtrusive sibilance or sharpness in the vocal tone. This in and of itself is something of a feat with a lot of music. Other instruments like the bass line are not only extremely catchy but also not annoying sounding or pushed to absurd levels just to "catch the listeners ear". I can't you how many songs I've heard where a bass-line was obviously intensified at the cost of becoming annoying and glaring because some dumbass engineer or whoever who had no idea what they were doing sitting in on the production was like "crank that bass up son!!"

Lastly, the actual structure of the song is extraordinarily well balanced in terms of sections. The breakdown at the bridge is a rather beautiful wash of pads carefully juxtaposed against the continued drive of the song carried by slightly cut back drums and a change up in low-frequency content. No instruments sound indistinct or out of place and the actual lyrics are extremely effective and ridiculously well performed and recorded. It took me one listen to recognize the sheer amount of exacting and well-calculated creative effort that went into the entire process of the song from start to finish. It is obvious that every stage of production was handled by someone who knew exactly what the f**k they were doing.

But very few people are going to listen like that. The first thing they hear is "a pop song" and then "a disney star singing it" and then "some electro bass" and they are like "oops, this is shit!" and turn it off.

Obviously it's easier to appreciate music if you know the difference between "effort" and "bullshit" and what that equates to in the actual production of a song. There are a lot of songs out there that rely on lame sounding and obviously poorly performed hooks or melodies or whatever that are sorry excuses for art or engineering that end up relying upon some clever line or "specific sound" that hipsters or some other specific counter-culture style group latches onto and says "this my friends, this is art".

No, actually it's a poorly performed, barely intelligible vocal line recorded by someone who obviously can't sing set against a backdrop of a crap breakbeat loop someone sliced up by someone who had a computer and some very basic uninspired bass or synth lines that someone else who doesn't even play keyboard could probably lay down (and did). That's what that is.

But a lot of people don't know what talent is either. They look at the end product and can't appreciate what might have gone into it so they focus on how different it sounds. That doesn't mean it's good but good luck telling that to people that like songs that require zero actual knowledge or talent to record or compose.
Last edited by rifftrax on Mon Mar 19, 2012 9:12 pm; edited 1 time in total

Warning! Warning! Curmudgeons detected in the vicinity!

I'm calling Bullshit. First off, in this day and age infinitely more timbres of instrumentation are not only possible but constantly employed. Consider granularizing, wave-shaping (new types of distortion), increasingly powerful synthesizers, and the massive wealth of sampled instruments. In the click of a button I can call up an oud, shakuhachi, pipe organ with any number of registers and pipe styles, electric pianos, prepared pianos and synthetic choirs. Then in a second click I can chorus and flange my new banjo/celesta combo instrument and a third click later I've applied the amplitude envelope of drum track to it. How much of that shit could you do 80 years ago? About zero.

And sameness of beats? Really? Jesus so we're ignoring things like dubstep, hip-hop, latin, experimental, and progressive rock then? Sure, 4 on the floor is really popular now but so was shitty endless noodling guitar solos of the 70's and 80's that went absolutely nowhere for minutes on end and made your brain turn off. Come'on. That's seriously shit research and shit journalism in my opinion. Grill those "researchers" what the f**k they know about actual music theory and I'm sure you'll get some real whoppers back.

Go back to the swing/big-band era of music and tell me you're not bored to effing tears within 10 minutes. How many baroque era classical pieces also sound exactly the same? (Hint, the answer is "almost all of them"). LOL. Ad naseum.