STOP THE FALL OF MUSIC

i dont understand how people can enjoy decent music but not stray beyond bands they hear on the radio or Kerrang and MTV. there are just so many bands that appear to be just poor quality rip offs of something that came many years before (or as is more often the case now something that was popular last month gets endlessly replicated). i honestly think that popular music peeked in the mid 60's and it's pretty much been all downhill since then (obviously there are exceptions). anyway my point, if i did indeed have one, is that there is such a rich and interesting world of music that extends way back into the past and deep beneath beyond the thin layer of pond scum we call pop sitting atop this lake. music can be poetry it can be real art, i truly believe this but we must all continue to strive for individuality, what i mean kids is stop being into it just caus your friends are, wheres that gonna get you, your just gonna become another member of the pop-culture clone army and for what? for acceptance?

Discuss:

is the notion of musical taste evaporating?

where are these musical trends taking us?

if this continues how long before we descend into complete mediocrity?

In my School if you don't listen to Rap or Hip-Hop you're not liked.
And I think that is stupid, why should you have to listen to Popular Music JUST to have loads of Friends, It's better to be an Individual and listen to what you want In My Opinion.

Music now is full of Talentless people, I think it's a shame that to find Talented Musicicians you have to look yourself, or listen to older Bands, all it has become is people pretty much speaking fast and thats it, No one really plays Instruments anymore either, but that is what it has become, because thats what the majority think is Talent.

and besides rap we have one of the worst organizations since hitler tryed to control the world. DISNEY CHANNEL. yes they have been like the plauge spread bad music and talentless homos to people around the world.

okay first of all, i agree, alot of music sucks. but you are saying that only old music is good, and when people try to sound like the old bands theyre just rip offs, so what do you want?

Im not saying only old Music is good, but Good MainStream Music stopped at the end of 90's, There IS Good Bands, But Theres More BAD Bands Than Good, LOTS More.

@EMB,
and worst of all its polluting the minds of children and corrupting their future ability to gauge quality and validity in artistic outputs. (heavy sigh)

BOdomBeachTerror : We Want Innovation!! Not the Generic music is really popular these days!

And i Agree,Disney channel Is Washing everyone's Brains!

Tho,i would LOVE to know what will music sound like in 30 or 40 years,Back in the 60's i doubt hey had an idea That Trance Music Or Hip hop would Exist,so who Knows..

espcially with girl confidence. i mean everything like tht, everyone is like a rail and shows a figure and all tht i really couldnt care less wut i look like but they do.. and then u have stores like hollister and abercrombie tht stick models guy and girl, tht are rail thin and just stand there. so stupid...

im not saying that only old music is good I'm stating that POPULAR music is in a state of decline and due to peoples ignorance or lack of dedication to individuality many settle for what is mainstream rather than what is actually quality.
there is a current trend of something which is popular being identified as good this in itself is a cycle which can only have detrimental effects (the rise of mind numbing reality tv in which people gain fame without talent and maintain it simply because their faces and names are known)

i did not state that people who try to sound like the old bands are just rip offs, there is for example very little possibility for an individual to even learn an instrument without in some way (be it stylistically or technically) emulating the music that they enjoy. however simply playing like the band you like is not enough. if you resign yourself to a genre you should do so in the hope of bringing something constructive with you otherwise what is the point.

i want musicians who strive for individuality not a higher paycheck, i want music lovers to stop being seen as merely consumers. i want music which is created for people not systematically designed for target audiences
what do you want?

@harleyofdoom
That Is What Music SHOULD Be, Because Then The People Who Make It Love What They Do, And They Should, That Is True Musicianship.

But you must Remember...Music Is A Business...

But if you are good and individual you will be liked and Earn you're money Properly.

hmm... if approached as a business then i suppose you are right. in a sense however if music where a business and a business alone purely based on monetary returns and profit margins then it would cease to be art in the respect it could no longer carry validity when describing situations which supersede the constructs of 'the business world'. if looked at like this i could agree that much of modern gangster rap falls into this category.



yes in an ideal world this is true sadly we don't live in that world

I've never been peer pressured into anything so I don't know how strong that situation is for most people. I tend to rebel and persue my opinion no matter what.

About Disney though... the company itself are trying the maintain their fanbase, and have recently been aiming for the younger ages, therefore their music is bound to be foolish... Although... that recent film they've just made with that High School Musical girl in it... whatever it's called... their history is completely fcuked up and that just pissed me off... because they're supposed to be educational and they're teaching kids the completely wrong thing.

Music in general has reached a phase where the new song is "so last week" in no time and it's just like the fashon sense now-a-days... Human beings as a whole have so much more than they ever did, therefore are becoming bored/spoiled a lot easier. Perhaps it'll stay that way, but the companies won't last long (I hope) if it keeps up.

But then... these pop people are only the topping... there are many more fans for any other genre than there are for that stuff, it's just that they've taken over the main TVs.

Yes we have to make an effort to finding decent music, but don't you think that makes it more worth it?

in a nutshell, hell yes jazz hell yes

In my opinion, Popular music is like a shaken soda. You have to get past all the fizzy BS to find the good stuff.

but then you end up with sticky hands and a mess all over the place, is that really what you want?

now a days any one can be a musician but to have talent and pasion is completly different

OMG all of you calm down music is a subjective thing you can like one thing and someone else can like another, it doesn't make either of you wrong.

Jazz, I agree with you completely.

You know all I ever hear people listening to these days are people like The Jonas Brothers and dance & RNB (particularly a lot of 'Lady Gaga’ everywhere) and I don't see what the big fuss is about. But to be honest, I'm actually thankful for that. When I was 14 and sick to death of this sort of music, I actually started making the effort to look for new genres and artists I could get myself to listen to without feeling the urge to try and pull my eardrums out.

Once I liked punk rock like blink 182. But, I soon got sick of them because they were everywhere. Then, listening to country music was somehow a joke to me and my friends, we just naturally thought there would only be 'hillbilly' songs about drinking and pickup trucks (I know, I don’t know why I agreed with that theory either!) But then one day when I was worn sick enough of all these new musicians that were so easy to find that I couldn’t stand any longer, I listened to a country station one evening alone. I thought I may as well give it a try if I disliked the work of the more commonly known musicians so bad. And, I was surprised to find I actually liked what I heard. I started liking Country, Southern rock, Jazz and more recently these genres also drew me to Blues. If it wasn’t for that, I’d still probably be too shy to listen to things my friends made fun of although they’ve never even tried. But don’t get me wrong, I know when you listen to 80’s or even 90’s dance music it sounds much better, but I still don’t like those as much as the genres I listen to now. And it’s thanks to today’s common musicians that I find terrible that I bothered to explore different music.

I believe good music is still out there, and by that I mean music made by musicians with real passion to achieve true meaning and soul in their songs and talent. All that’s needed is people to stop listening to whatever they easily just stumble across without trying and explore.

Everyone has different tastes in music and thats a good thing. They are bands out there that I havent even heard, I love pop music nd rnb, but i also love to listen to the old hits from the 80s and 90s. And yeah heather i agree with you the first time i heard the jonas brothers i thought they werent so bad and i started to listen to them and i liked them, but they were everywhere so i just started to dislike them, but it still annoys me that every girl goes crazy over them when there is plenty of decent artists out there. You just have to look. And 'Jazz' i do agree with you but for e.g; miley cyrus (one of my idols), she's with disney but she only plays hannah montana on disney and yeah hannah montana has music albums but hannah is fiction (shes not real), however miley cyrus herself is starting to release more mature music of her own of what she believes in.

As a matter of fact, every style, every genre, if you are really doing it because you like it,and you do it good, you should earn at least a bit of respect, even if you make bubble gum pop or ultra complicated technical death metal, BUT, if someone does it only for the money, it doesn't earns any respect

a lot of music today is not that good it could be better but think there is a lot of new generes out there so maybe some good experimental bands will come out

yeah, theres like a big uprising of indie/folk music in my area, its pretty sweet

Yeah,and there is still bands like Radiohead keeping Decent Music going Mainstream, and some Indie Bands are pretty good actually.

Took the words from my mouth man! Well said.

Music is music... I also think it's (in my case) a damn good thing there are so many styles and melodies around now, because that gives me more things to dive into and study and learn from. And pretty much use their ignorance against them >:D

i heard this debate in 77
and in 82... revisited in 88
voiced loudly in 92
screamed in 98
passed around in laughed in 04
i heard this debate in 2009
then
i heard this debate in 77
and in 82... revisited in 88
voiced loudly in 92
screamed in 98
passed around in laughed in 04
i heard this debate in 2009
then
i heard this debate in 77
and in 82... revisited in 88
voiced loudly in 92
screamed in 98
passed around in laughed in 04
i heard this debate in 2009
then
i heard this debate in 77
and in 82... revisited in 88
voiced loudly in 92
screamed in 98
passed around in laughed in 04
i heard this debate in 2009
then

THE ONLY THING THAT CHANGES IS CHANGE.

couldn't agree more
+
like he said people have been saying this for ever and when you really look at the topping charts in the 60s a whole hell of a lot suck more then an crack**(sorry being derogatory, don't mean to upset). Hell it is well know people in the 70s thought they lived in the worst decade ever and nothing good was happening and music was dying(hell they had disco need i say more). can any one here prove them wrong? you bet cha. and whose to say the next velvet Underground isn't out right now, who only sold 1000 records but went on to be one of the most influential. or The Sonics, the Stooges, The monks, and on and on. people tend to remember the good and forget the back. For the 60s PAT BOONE(might be 50s i forget) case and point, case closed.

the only thing that worries me is EMB statement


but Emb if you think disney channel is the source of the evil you wrong you only have the tip of an ice burg(10% shows) look up, Clear channel, and how there Buying up all the radio stations if the haven't already, they have a very good majority. and how that, last just i read, only five major Record companies (excluding the independent, but I'm sorry there not making an impacted), but EMI was about to be bought by Sony i think so it very well might be four. Where about to head into a state(talking about the good old USA here. but seeing how USA influences the world who knows) with only one media voice and that if anything scares me. But as the fate of music i Bring you back to carl, "THE ONLY THING THAT CHANGES IS CHANGE." music is defiantly going to change, how we heard it, how we will get it, hell it is already happening. The face of music, and many other things, are going to drastically change, we are heading into a very interesting times another ______ revolution, like the agricultural and industrial before it. AS Sun Ra said we going into the Space age. without typing any more trust me music is about to get real "real" again. But back on the problems of today i think the problem is we are missing a loved by all "Idol" like Elvis, the beetles, Curt Cobain, who takes the "underworld" world and shows it to the public and the people see what they where miss. but remember What Cobain showed in the 90s was in more then full swing in the late 60s, and what Elvis showed in the 50s was rocking in the early 1900s (granted hillbilly's and blacks didn't always meet, it is a stretch i know, but I'm holding to it with the Banjo in my hands as my witness). So i close with, keep your eyes peeled and you ears out something is coming but no one has ever seen it before.


maybe it's the second coming who knows(2012 joke I'm sorry i had to)

I'm generally indifferent towards things I don't like. This goes for music, beer, and even people. I don't genuinely hate many things. Sure I don't like music that's on pop radio, but I don't feel that I need to berate people for listening to it. They like it, good for them. One thing I've seen mentioned here is the "so last week" mentality. There's a good chance I might freak out on you if you were to tell me to change a radio station because "this song is old." I see it all the time, and I try to ignore it, but I know many people who just listen to music because it's the hot thing. They just memorize the semi-retarded hook and bam, that song is playing nonstop for three days. That's something I genuinely hate... loathe... detest!

generally i veiw the popular music of today as quick, cheap, passionless beats which took 10 mins on a MIDI keyboard with someone trying to talk over it. I mean no disrespect towards MIDI whatsoever as i think it is a brilliant concept of music technology.

The fall of music has passed the line now, as soon as GH5 mentioned they were adding kurt cobain as a character to promote the game. Irony is a funny old thing. The main culprit? Money!

Yes. And by doing so it was like digging him up and spitting on whatever was left of him. Thats the exact thing he was against. His morals throw aside all for a quick buck.

What I'm about to say will probably seem quite controversial to those of you who believe that all humans are born with equal potential. But the fact is (in my view)that evolution is not a level playing field. I firmly believe that a great many people out there are still very much more tuned in to primitive rhythm's rather than the more complex artistic arrangements that make up the basis of what I, and perhaps some of you call 'good' music ( bags of room for subjectivity there before you all pull me up!).
If you can accept that theory, then you can start to see how the big record companies will put more money into (hyping) mediocrity rather than talent. Mediocrity can be bought much more cheaply than talent (they'll often sell their soul to the devil for little more than the cost of 15 mins of fame!), whereas talent expects to be rewarded for the effort that's been put in to hone that potential.
Now when you consider that all of those 'less evolved' people get more kicks from the performance of cheap, mediocre talent (of which there is more than you can shake a stick at), then you can see why 'good' music is relatively hard to find.
Just one of many opinions. I don't expect you all to agree.

Well Deefa, I've thought that a long while and never stumbled onto the cajone's to say it. To anyone really. But is makes very logical sense. And on that note, I think the record companies would definetly include a LOT of those "Less Evolved" because they push that instead of music thats actually "Good". Good as in not the synthetic remix or the number 1 that peaked last week. Which is what seems to always happen. And belive me, I know. My bus driver finds it necessary to listen to the Hot100 station EVERY DAY. And it's Lady Gaga, Lil' Wayne, and Jay-z EVERY DAY until the next mash-up comes along.

As Deefa said, just one of many opinions.

Ozz

@ Ozzfan.

If the bus driver you're talking about is the driver of your school bus, he might well be tuning in to the 'Hot 100' station just to keep the majority of you kids on-side! It's a trick I used to use myself a few years back when I was a school bus driver. For all you know, he might be dying a little inside every time he turns that volume knob up to number 11 (I know I did!).
The best way to find out who's evolved and who isn't is to check hands and see who's got thumbs and who hasn't. We're all OK 'cause we play guitars!

Haha. That made me laugh man. But the driver [yes the school bus driver] is a tad "Fruity" if you catch my drift. Most of the kids who ride are either country or metal and rock like myself.

Anyone like The Wurzels?

Well i g'ta bran' new combine 'arvester

OO ARR OO ARR!

I do! Their music makes me so happy :]