LiveScience Article “Pop Music All Sounds the Same Nowadays”
It’s because the modern DAW does everything for ya. And because SOME DECKHEADS (not thee and me, mind and nobody else is owning up) are taking large doses of the coke mountains being shovelled across the edjicated masses of Eu and US.
Has anyone analysed the genius lyrics of Kasabian? Popular only in Ibithza these days.
You get the piccy. “Yeh! Gonna blow ya whay!” (repeat ad infinitum).
THAT modern music all sounds the same. But the music people ACTUALLY listen (when they’re out and about and in their own homes) to doesn’t sound like that.
“Modern” music is actually just the pap they play to media execs who can’t do anything except play golf badly.
The equivalent of daytime TV for teenagers. It’s there to make them think that being a “teenager” is something special and not what every Joe has to deal with and then grow up.
Whoremoans eh? They really kick one up the jacksy. 
Remember teenagers were invented by fifty year old men who had something they wanted to sell to them.
But nobody REALLY undestands do they?!
Actually I’ve noticed that. They take the old songs and simplify them, then release louder “cover” Versions. As a matter of fact there are more “80s reloaded” versions sold today than original new songs.
And they cut a chord here and there, reduce the lyrics to no more than one line, simplify the drums to quarternote bassdrums, autotune the vocals, and voila, a “modern” piece.
I truly believe that, despite of my age being way beyond teenage, which may affect my judgement, but still:
There are definetely fewer original, meaningful, catchy inspired musical ideas out in the charts nowadays than there were during the 70s or 80s (that’s why most recycled material is taken from that period).
And:
The amount of simplification in today’s airplay music is horrendous.
What do we learn from that? That the listening situations have changed, so people don’t really actively “listen” to music anymore?
What do we learn from that? That the listening situations have changed, so people don’t really actively “listen” to music anymore?
You do what people did in the 60s and make your own “scenes”. Rather than listen to swinging music for garden parties which called itself “jazz” (remind anyone of “R 'n 'B” ?) and was written by chaps who called themselves Monty or Gilbert you’d find little dusty unhospitable blues and folk clubs where, among the rather mundane set of acts that did it for the love rather than the money, you’d quite often find just the jewel you were looking for.
It might have needed a polish and a make over but it was yours and you and a small cartel would look after it until it found a larger ledge to perch on.
Now any old dross insists on being our staple televisual feast it’s time to turn it off and go out and demand that your entertainment be live and tangible and preferably not taught how to play “jazz” by someone who thinks the deep south is St Ives in Cornwall.
Even Jimi Hendrix had to be hunted by his manager Chas Chandler who asked why he went to little dives to watch really undeveloped players and the answer was “You always get to see ONE original moment.”
And from my own recollections it was way much better when you could actually have a conversation about the music with the artist rather than having to read an interview in Hello!
Elvis has left the building and all we are left with is people who mumble for the time being until the next evolutionary wave which should be about… MMMMFFFF!
I always knew anyone who used Cubase was a genius. But mostly geniuses like the scoutmaster guy Spine Millington sent to Peter Sellers.
I think the study is more about what the music business has done to try to remain viable – make some money by repeating whatever worked before – than about modern music itself.
I also think the study is about some researchers trying to draw attention to themselves.
Although, I will admit, it is generally true that whatever music you heard in your teens is by far the greatest music ever made. Was true for my parents, for me, and for my children.
Last, if you suspect that your music doesn’t get appreciated because the audience has lost its sophistication, you can always get a listen from a somewhat sophisticated subset of the roughly 7 billion people walking the earth by putting your music up in the music lounge! That’s an improvement to 50 years ago, when you could only get your mom to listen to it!
Always finding the food you like is harder than just buying what the supermarket keeps in stock for you to buy on the grounds that “everybody likes it”.
Someone who has snuck under the radar is Philip Franz Jones. You either like him or you watch television.
Cubase user apparently. I’ll leave whoever wants to to dig or suggest any other artists out there who are off the wall. The spikier the better.
Cool that it has been scientifically proven, though I have to say that I am rather amazed that someone needed to start a research project to find this out. I mean, I don’t profess to be a computer or that I know more than others, but I think it has been fairly obvious.
Music is art, but has been made into a money milking machine, just like movies anymore, which BTW also have been made to follow premade and reusable templates (with notable exceptions, of course).
This is why “real” musicians (the truly talented, which are few and far in between) can make their results unique in various ways (and often with great success, naturally). Unfortunately, too many people are blinded by the commercial side of it, and simply sticks to the templates. Though some can make it work even in such an environment.
Well, this is not so much about “quality” as it is about complexity and lack of original ideas.
There must be a reason that for re-make reasons the old songs are simplified. It seems like the listening habits of “our days” are taken into account, and this makes me wonder, what these habits really are, or thought to be.