whose singing voice do you love or hate?

[vurt]

what's next? "you're not going to enjoy metal and hip hop now, are you??"

[Bombadil]

Not meeee.

Re Bones: nostalgia plays a role, certainly. However there's science to back me up insofar that music has become far more homogenized over the last decades. Blame that on suits in A&R.
But there's no band out there that I know of that has great songwriting, singing, variation in material, production than what I prefer to listen to. I've been disappointed in popular music since the 80's, now. If I were to expand my musical tastes, there are quite a few bands from my favourite era that I never got into. I expect the musicianship and songwriting to more likely be better than anything out there now.
Show me a guitarist with the virtuousity and vision of Jeff Beck, Richie Blackmore, Zappa, Page, Gilmour, Hackett these days. They don't exist.

[vurt]

Not meeee.

Re Bones: nostalgia plays a role, certainly. However there's science to back me up insofar that music has become far more homogenized over the last decades. Blame that on suits in A&R.
But there's no band out there that I know of that has great songwriting, singing, variation in material, production than what I prefer to listen to. I've been disappointed in popular music since the 80's, now. If I were to expand my musical tastes, there are quite a few bands from my favourite era that I never got into. I expect the musicianship and songwriting to more likely be better than anything out there now.
Show me a guitarist with the virtuousity and vision of Jeff Beck, Richie Blackmore, Zappa, Page, Gilmour, Hackett these days. They don't exist.

check out spiritualized

[vurt]

i think we can all agree on this one...

https://youtu.be/BLkvtHwSyM4?si=1NFNZ64DkkAiYBJE

could possibly be the worst singer ive ever heard.

[Aloysius]

Rebecca Black

[osiris]

2011 called. They want you to know it's 2024.

[ghettosynth]

Not meeee.

Re Bones: nostalgia plays a role, certainly. However there's science to back me up insofar that music has become far more homogenized over the last decades. Blame that on suits in A&R.
But there's no band out there that I know of that has great songwriting, singing, variation in material, production than what I prefer to listen to. I've been disappointed in popular music since the 80's, now. If I were to expand my musical tastes, there are quite a few bands from my favourite era that I never got into. I expect the musicianship and songwriting to more likely be better than anything out there now.
Show me a guitarist with the virtuousity and vision of Jeff Beck, Richie Blackmore, Zappa, Page, Gilmour, Hackett these days. They don't exist.

I don't want to debate whether or not he's in the same category, you may feel that he doesn't belong, and personally, I make no secret of how much I dislike Zappa, but, Tin Henson of Polyphia is impressive. It's not my style, I don't really like a lot of it, but, I will listen to stuff like that at times because I'm impressed with the virtuosity. Not the song writing though, to be clear. In fact, that's one of the things that I hate about Zappa. On a side note, I like the sound of nylon electrics when plugged in. I was tempted by a cordoba stage, but passed for the moment.

Anyway, not my cup of tea, I don't seek this out, and I'm more of a fan of 70s stylings than this, but, I won't say that I don't like it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSBBEDAGOTc

[Bombadil]

I can. There's skill and virtuousity there, I agree, but it leaves me cold. I'd rather listen to a real classical fingerpicker. That seems just like 'see what I can do?'
Zappa, I have to include for his guitar playing. I don't like his ironic detachement in a lot of his lyrics.
I did have Fillmore East and Just Another Band from L.A. I lol'ed at them during a few acid trips. But his musicianship and guitar playing are really top level.

[donkey tugger]

If you're not feeling it when Marvin and Tammy sing this then you're dead inside.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJeuLdS3i6M

[Dirtgrain]

What I'm saying is that if you are truly moved by Smells Like Teen Spirit there is no way you are going to be into Shania Twain and Beyonce. It's just not possible. If you think you are, it's because none of it affects you the way good music affects me and for that I pity you.

Emphasis added--that's a weaselly, slimy kind of expression. What kind of man says things like that? Donald Trump types. Congratulations Bones.

And for reference, in a thread some time ago, Bones posted some of his favorite Australian punk bands, and they were god-awful, with singers unable to sing on key. But at least someone is passionate about them.

[BONES]

Re Bones: nostalgia plays a role, certainly. However there's science to back me up insofar that music has become far more homogenized over the last decades. Blame that on suits in A&R.

You're talking about the mainstream, you need to look harder. There is plenty of great new music in a massively diverse range of styles/genres. It might be buried a little deeper but it's there and it's surprisingly easy to find once you find something you like.

But there's no band out there that I know of that has great songwriting, singing, variation in material, production than what I prefer to listen to.

Whereas I would argue that the vast majority of that stuff has relatively poor production qualities. It is certainly a factor that puts me off. It's all good for the time but technology allows us to do so much better these days. That's my attraction to bands like Green Day and The Offspring - classic punk rock with modern production values. It's also why I think a lot of old bands who are still putting out records sound much better today than they did in the 80s.

I've been disappointed in popular music since the 80's, now.

Whereas, except for a brief period in the late 70s and early 80s, I've always been disappointed by popular music.

If I were to expand my musical tastes, there are quite a few bands from my favourite era that I never got into. I expect the musicianship and songwriting to more likely be better than anything out there now.

Why? I see no reason why it would be. That's simple bias on your part. That said, I have discovered some music from the 80s that I never knew existed, or never bothered to check out, that I really like. In fact, I'd say Opposition is probably now one of my favourite bands, even though it took me more than 30 years to discover them.

Show me a guitarist with the virtuousity and vision of Jeff Beck, Richie Blackmore, Zappa, Page, Gilmour, Hackett these days. They don't exist.

Play me a song featuring any of those artists that I actually like. They (probably) don't exist. The greatest musician who ever lived can't make a bad song sound good but there are plenty of bad musicians who manage to make great music.

I guess I'll just have to take your word for it as far as only one genre of music being impactful at a level where other genres have no affect.
If someone offered me a pill to experience that I wouldn't take it. Sounds boring. I much prefer wearing the producer hat and being affected by multiple genres.
Heads up, XTC and Psychedelic Furs aren't the same genre as Novakill.

Whose talking about a single genre? The music we make isn't Post Punk, yet that's what I mostly listen to. I like XTC and the Psychedelic Furs for the same reasons I like Dance or Die and Armageddon Dildos - they have energy and attitude. I could well imagine playing Dance or Die's Age of Control straight after XTC's Travels in Nihilon on a radio show or Armageddon Dildo's Too Far to Suicide after something from The Furs' last album. Hell, I'd play Icono Pop's I Love it straight after Killing Joke's Eighties and it would work. They'd all fit together perfectly. Genres shouldn't create boundaries, they are really just like tags in a patch browser - they can help you find what you're after a bit more easily, even though most of the time many different tags can apply to the same patch.

[Bombadil]

The 'mainstream' in my and my brother's eras was full of the greatest bands of all time. Everyone I knew growing up would always be in anticipation: „what are they going to do next?“ Evolution and pushing musical boundaries were the things that excited me. It was far easier to separate the wheat from the chaff, then, for any alert person who was passionate about music. I didn't like disco, punk music (though I understand the punk ethos, as I am a rebel, just not one who can tolerate stupid lyrics, screaming, and rage for very long). Not good for the ol' CNS. Or Arena Rock like Foreigner, Journey, Kansas. Tell me a good story, give me poetry set to inventive music. That's what I love.

[neverbefore]

Tell me a good story, give me poetry set to inventive music. That's what I love.

Is much harder now to be inventive / novel within popular music because of that huge history of which people like The Beatles were the early days. When you think of popular songs by old timer minimal artists like Kraftwerk or Laurie Anderson or even Trio with Da Da Da it is not that easy to go more minimal (than O Superman for example)

People with moreinterest in pop can no doubt come up with examples of dense and complex polyrhythmic and polymetric poppular music as well.

Basically music has been done spectrally from silence to noise, and structurally from drones to Chris Dench complexity

Depending how tightly or broadly you define 'inventive' everything may or may not have been invented

[neverbefore]

as an aside - I think Zappa was a very average guitarist - not that great technically and utterly lacking in variety and expression. What is it that people liked about his playing - even he said he was crap compared to the guitarists he employed

[nirm123]

It would be extremely silly to think that musicians today are less talented or inventive than any other period in the past as there are so many of them, some are great, some are terrible, some are brilliant and this hasn't changed. In the 60's there was a lot of terrible music as well which was forgotten shortly afterwards.

There is also still quality material in the mainstream, for example kendrick Lamar, one of the most brilliant and interesting artists of all time (Bowie's last album which was a masterpiece by itself was influenced by the brilliance of Lamar's 2015 "To pimp a butterfly" album) is also a very successful one, and of course there is a a huge amount of great music outside of the mainstream, just need to actively look for it which isn't too difficult today when you can just subscribe to a playlist which gets updated every week (I'm doing it with pitchfork for example in order to easily discover new music).

The other thread we had was about "how old is too old for rocknroll", well that's my definition: when you live in the past and fail to discover the current beauty around you just because it's new and not something you discovered in your formative years.

They say that one of the first cave writing ever discovered was "the past was better", people always thought like this, it's a natural thing that can easily happen but surrounding to it is losing the vitality of living here and now.

I'm not young anymore, pushing 50 and I also grew on the Beatles, the stones, the kinks, Neil Young and so on, but I have a rule in my downloaded albums in Spotify, 50% must be from the last 5 years and while maintaining this rule requires some work, it's extremely rewarding as not many things make me happier that to find other great artist I like just ad much I like 60's or 70's legends.

It's there for you to find, just need to keep a curios and an open mind.