Why is modern music so awful

[stoopicus]

Here we go again. The Top 40 is all music. Did someone mention “strawman”?

To be completely fair, the Top 40 has always sucked donkey

[Gamma-UT]

Here we go again. The Top 40 is all music. Did someone mention “strawman”?

To be completely fair, the Top 40 has always sucked donkey

No disagreement here. Though I went through the UK number ones recently and they didn’t seem to be too bad compared to the mid-70s with classics like Tie a Yellow Ribbon.

[Aloysius]

Oh no it didn't. Here's a little taste ...

Number one songs banned by Top of the Pops

"Je T'aime... Moi Non Plus" (1969): The iconic, sultry duet featuring sounds of passion, deemed too erotic for the show, despite its massive popularity.
"God Save the Queen" (Sex Pistols, 1977): A punk anthem released during the Queen's Silver Jubilee, its anti-establishment message led to an outright ban by the BBC.
"Firestarter" (The Prodigy, 1996): The aggressive electronic track was banned due to concerns about its association with arson and drug culture, though it was briefly played.

The sheer diversity in seventies music really amounted to a variety show ... particularly in the seventies. I would say it's partly why I like a lot of different styles.

Have you forgotten already that diversity is our strength?

[stoopicus]

Have you forgotten already that diversity is our strength?

(It was a joke, in reply to dragging out the broad generalization Top 40 strawman again)

[Aloysius]

I gave you a thumbs up.

Music really was better in the old days. I seem to remember that Relax by FGTH was another banned number 1.

The ban, intended to suppress the song, ironically propelled it to UK No. 1

[BONES]

Oh no it didn't. Here's a little taste ...

Number one songs banned by Top of the Pops

"Je T'aime... Moi Non Plus" (1969): The iconic, sultry duet featuring sounds of passion, deemed too erotic for the show, despite its massive popularity.
"God Save the Queen" (Sex Pistols, 1977): A punk anthem released during the Queen's Silver Jubilee, its anti-establishment message led to an outright ban by the BBC.
"Firestarter" (The Prodigy, 1996): The aggressive electronic track was banned due to concerns about its association with arson and drug culture, though it was briefly played.

The sheer diversity in seventies music really amounted to a variety show ... particularly in the seventies. I would say it's partly why I like a lot of different styles.

Have you forgotten already that diversity is our strength?

The other really strange ban was Pete Shelley's Homosapien, which was about as subtle as it is possible to get but, apparently, "homosapien" was too close to "homosexual" and any hint of support for alternative lifetyles was not to be tolerated by the BBC at the time. It did get some airplay but not a whole lot. The single got to no. 4 here in Australia.

[Aloysius]

(Sing If You’re) Glad to Be Gay - Tom Robinson Band was a bit of a hit as I remember.

Funny what the BBC would and wouldn't tolerate. Jimmy Savile for instance.

[stoopicus]

John Lydon has a lot of ups and downs but I will always respect him for calling out Saville directly, even at a time when it cost him to do so.

[BONES]

A mate of mine went to a book signing a few weeks ago, hung around until the end and got to spend an hour talking to John Lydon. Best day of his life, he reckons, and I think it would be right up there for me, too.

[stoopicus]

That would be amazing. In public appearances he's gone over the top iconoclast in a way that feels forced and looks like he feels like he has to to keep up appearances and it visibly rubs other punk artists the wrong way; it would be interesting to talk to him when he doesn't have to do that.

[jancivil]

Here we go again. The Top 40 is all music. Did someone mention “strawman”?

You just made one even stupider than the one that had me react. I've become rather weary of dumbfuckery stated as though... whatever it is you think you're doing. Here the look is someone that is jumping to conclusions as though reflecting on (or even really reading; you aren't engaging with) what was said is just an insurmountable problem for them at the moment. Grow up.

The video at the top of thread embarks on the stated premise "modern music is awful". Donno about you, but if I'm going to weigh in on a thread's idea, here the video making that case is linked to, I see what the idea is.
It's clear that a fair number of the posters in here are responding to the topic title and nothing more.
The arguments in the video strictly regard the most popular "modern" music. So any other definition has changed the subject, and doesn't follow. I wouldn't write a title as though the subject was so broad as 'modern music' meaning something so narrow, but that's what the subject is, the original author's title intact.

So, what did you do? I guess you want to diss me so you seize on "the top 40 of 1975" and create a strawman like it makes me look bad. But you don't so much seem to know what the topic even is.
If we're talking more broadly about "modern music" I wouldn't use Top 40 to demarcate anything, going in.
What's your f**king point? My "Top 40" there strawman's WHAT?
My statement is clearly responding to the notion that people that don't like the 'music today' - the context of which has not been inclusive of things outside common currency - or who would say 'it's not like in my day' - are, same as it ever was, like their parents reacting to what's more current than their time. This, what I responded to is perfectly clear.

If one wants to engage the point I was making, it's not hard to find 'Top 40 in 1975' and then see if very recent Top 40 has such variety. I could show what I found...
So once you have the facts, 'not like in my day' is pretty clearly not wrong.

The other part of someone's strawman dismissal of everyone that thinks differently than they do (I don't think I'd call that thought) is that 'you're just doing what your parents did' (or some previous generation did in dismissive reaction) meme.

The only time my father did that was one day in the car (I was 13) I had Honky Tonk Women on the radio and he likened it to C & W, turn it off. He wasn't wrong. A little later I was blasting Zappa Waka Jawaka and he was quite enthusiastic. We were both fans pretty equally of Blood Sweat and Tears' eponymous (2nd) album. Came out in Dec. '68. Google's first entry reads: rising to the top of the U.S. charts for a collective seven weeks and yielding three successive Top 5 singles. I grew up with what they called progressive jazz. A lot of it was made before my time. I was absorbed in it.

I was rejecting disposable trash pop in "1975" and I've remained myself all along. It's a fact that I could find pretty hip stuff on the radio then all the time and that's been systematically done away with. Do strawman that and make it me doing something else because you can't be arsed to be more scrupulous or together.

[stoopicus]

That's a lot of words, wasn't even tempted to read, but really no matter how bad people think today's pop is, nothing written in the last 20 years is remotely as bad as Muskrat Love (#1 in 1976) was. It's a damned love ballad for Furries.

[Gamma-UT]

Here we go again. The Top 40 is all music. Did someone mention “strawman”?

You just made one even stupider than the one that had me react. I've become rather weary of dumbfuckery stated as though...<blah blah>

You mentioned the Top 40, unprompted. I didn’t even mention “Top 40 of 1975” so I have no idea what your word salad is even driving at.

But it seems you’re going to keep going down that hole without realising that the economic composition of the two types of Top 40 then and today are themselves completely different. One was based on singles sales, which even then was not a good representation of even just popular western music as few acts with strong album sales did more than scratch its surface. And today it’s streaming, which has far stronger power-law effects.

[Artie Fichelle]

It is the wrong question, the right question would be: Why is mainstream music so bad?
You have the choice what to listen to, use it!

[Aloysius]

Even the non mainstream is bad. All the modern rock and blues and fusion I could have enjoyed have been destroyed by mastering. Why does every artist want to sound like Justine Bieber? Even the last Stones record had some good tracks but is unlistenable. The production was a bit terrible too.