Why is modern music so awful

[DCrown]

Why is some modern pop music so awful ?

The same reason some pop music has always been aweful.

Next.

Not in the 80ies.
AC/DC
Paul Young
Eurythmics
Sade
Prince
Duran Duran
Madonna
Billy Idol
Tina Turner
Whitney Houston
Depeche Mode
Aerosmith
Franky goes to Hollywood
Dire Straits
Queen
Van Halen
U2
The Police
and hundreds more released great songs and albums during the 80s with completely different genres.
Even though my fav artist was Prince, I liked almost every release no matter what genre. I can't remember whether it was called modern pop back in the day, it was called music, I suppose

[WackyZoundz]

The charts of the 80s had a good balance. Composition/performance vs audio engineering, it was very harmonic.

[stoopicus]

Why is some modern pop music so awful ?

The same reason some pop music has always been aweful.

Next.

Not in the 80ies.
AC/DC
Paul Young
Eurythmics
Sade
Prince
Duran Duran
Madonna
Billy Idol
Tina Turner
Whitney Houston
Depeche Mode
Aerosmith
Franky goes to Hollywood
Dire Straits
Queen
Van Halen
U2
The Police
and hundreds more released great songs and albums during the 80s with completely different genres.
Even though my fav artist was Prince, I liked almost every release no matter what genre. I can't remember whether it was called modern pop back in the day, it was called music, I suppose

The charts of the ‘80s has tons and tons of absolutely awful pop too, in fact much worse than today’s pop. This list is a very rose colored glasses look back and I wouldn’t even classify it all as pop.

I was there, I remember it.

Don’t make me post proof



L’Trimm there is much more representative of a lot of ‘80s music than most of the list above. It’s just that no one remembers the bad pop, and in fact, I wouldn’t even say they were bad in comparison to pop.

[_leras]

Modern music is great.

You're out of touch.

[stoopicus]

Modern music is great.

You're out of touch.

100% - more good music is being made right now than at any point in history.

[holmer]

more good music is being made right now than at any point in history.

..hidden under more sh1tty music than at any point in history.

[stoopicus]

Yup

Or more accurately, in places that are different than the traditional AOR distribution channels of the past.

[WackyZoundz]

Don’t make me post proof

"Video not available"

[stoopicus]

Don’t make me post proof

"Video not available"

Because you need to click through to youtube for videos that disallow embedding. It’s there, click on the youtube link.

[WackyZoundz]

"Watch it on YouTube" wasn't available in Brave but it worked in Firefox. Weird.

That track is awful. But not worse than the typical Autotune mumble rap of today (which I hear almost everywhere I go). At least the vocals are more or less synchronized to the beat...

[stoopicus]

But that’s exactly the point. Bad pop today is simply “same as it ever was”. It never changes and is, if anything, improving over time - but thats a really low bar.

The ‘80s were no different. The ‘70s were even worse than the ‘80s too - nothing trumps “Muskrat Love” as terrible pop. Nothing. Not even T-Pain.

[vurt]

But that’s exactly the point. Bad pop today is simply “same as it ever was”. It never changes and is, if anything, improving over time - but thats a really low bar.

The ‘80s were no different. The ‘70s were even worse than the ‘80s too - nothing trumps “Muskrat Love” as terrible pop. Nothing. Not even T-Pain.

vanilla bloody ice.

[donkey tugger]

Every time I see this thread title I think of;

mlir.jpg

Do carry on with the complaining.

[stoopicus]

But that’s exactly the point. Bad pop today is simply “same as it ever was”. It never changes and is, if anything, improving over time - but thats a really low bar.

The ‘80s were no different. The ‘70s were even worse than the ‘80s too - nothing trumps “Muskrat Love” as terrible pop. Nothing. Not even T-Pain.

vanilla bloody ice.

That's a tough one but I'm still going with Muskrat Love here. Ice was a contender but not quite up to taking on the champ of bad pop.

[cron]

I keep meaning to look into the study he mentions. It gets referenced quite often in this type of content, and one of its conclusions - that timbral diversity in pop music has only ever trended downwards since a 1960s peak - always strikes me as sounding very obviously wrong (at the risk of embarrassing myself). The importance of making a synth or sampler puke in entertainingly varied ways seems to have trended upward since the 80s to me. The study was done in 2012 and that seems like an obvious peak point to me - pop was taking a ton of influence from dubstep at the time, and it felt like half of all pop tunes had a dubstep drop middle 8 that was pretty much just a rapid fire gallery of disparate timbral effects from note to note ( e.g. ) .

I mean sure the 60s had a lot of psychedelic production practices in pop, but it didn't have that.

Even the second hand references of this study mention that machine listening was involved, so I'd love to know what they were really measuring there. EQ curves? Counting the instruments and stopping at 'synthesiser'?..