Why new music sucks.

jbj said:
You've pretty much summed up Katy Perry's whole career.

I need to keep abreast of modern stuff for the DJing but, truly there's maybe 3 or 4 songs years on year that I know DJs will still be playing in 10+ years time, the rest of it is disposable music by numbers. I watched a documentary a while ago about Max Martin and his crew who did the tunes for Britney Spears etc... and they literally worked out a formula for writing songs (it was a pretty interesting documentary btw if you can find it) and now we've got to a point where algorithms are being brought into music.

OK ABBA had a 'formula', Elvis had one but it's a far cry from the cynical way modern pop is written and produced in my opinion.
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Every single style of music can be reduced to a general enough formula of some kind. That's music theory. Generally it is good knowledge, but not actually useful in the paint by numbers sense. Because you end up creating something that doesn't quite work if you don't break some rules.

When I hear white guy blues jams.. it usually sounds more similar than playing Max Martin songs back to back.

I feel like if you only keep abreast of DJ music, it is not quite keeping abreast of the entirety of existing music, even pop music. Since not all pop music is made for weddings and corporate events and stuff like that. Often times that requires intentionally the worst cringe-y music. To say nothing of the rest of the output of modern music.
 
Bones McHorror said:
Every single style of music can be reduced to a general enough formula of some kind. That's music theory. Generally it is good knowledge, but not actually useful in the paint by numbers sense. Because you end up creating something that doesn't quite work if you don't break some rules.

When I hear white guy blues jams.. it usually sounds more similar than playing Max Martin songs back to back.

I feel like if you only keep abreast of DJ music, it is not quite keeping abreast of the entirety of existing music, even pop music. Since not all pop music is made for weddings and corporate events and stuff like that. Often times that requires intentionally the worst cringe-y music. To say nothing of the rest of the output of modern music.
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I totally get your first point but 'paint by numbers' is essentially what they were doing, and members of his team are still doing it. They called it musical maths or something like that and it basically went we did X in the verse so we'll now do Y in the chorus, next tune we'll do Y in the verse and X in the chorus and that means we'll have to do C in the middle 8. And so on. Don't get me wrong, they churned out some astounding pop music that still stands up to this day but it's led us to a point where most music in the chart is written by committee and created around hitting parameters of one sort or another (again, going back to algorithms) There's no artistry in that.

As for wedding music, I'm actually a pretty cool DJ if I do say so myself and tend to get booked because I'm expensive and bespoke so not just going to play all the usual cringey wedding stuff. I listen to a tonne of new and new-ish music on Spotify just about every day too, it's not all crap that's out there but the vast majority of modern pop IS crap - it's quite telling that Justin Bieber has put out some of the best pop music in the past couple of years...
 
How I long for the sixties when Leonard Nimoy released his landmark album

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jbj said:
I totally get your first point but 'paint by numbers' is essentially what they were doing, and members of his team are still doing it. They called it musical maths or something like that and it basically went we did X in the verse so we'll now do Y in the chorus, next tune we'll do Y in the verse and X in the chorus and that means we'll have to do C in the middle 8. And so on. Don't get me wrong, they churned out some astounding pop music that still stands up to this day but it's led us to a point where most music in the chart is written by committee and created around hitting parameters of one sort or another (again, going back to algorithms) There's no artistry in that.

As for wedding music, I'm actually a pretty cool DJ if I do say so myself and tend to get booked because I'm expensive and bespoke so not just going to play all the usual cringey wedding stuff. I listen to a tonne of new and new-ish music on Spotify just about every day too, it's not all crap that's out there but the vast majority of modern pop IS crap - it's quite telling that Justin Bieber has put out some of the best pop music in the past couple of years...
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Sam Philips wouldn’t record Johnny Cash if he refused to branch out from the gospel songs he wanted to do, because he didn’t think they’d sell.

Stax was successful because Estelle Axton payed attention to what the kids in the record store wanted to hear.

Music has always been a business. The algorithms may have gotten more technical but paying attention to what people want to hear is a pretty good way to make money.

Artistry is subjective.
 
jbj said:
I totally get your first point but 'paint by numbers' is essentially what they were doing, and members of his team are still doing it. They called it musical maths or something like that and it basically went we did X in the verse so we'll now do Y in the chorus, next tune we'll do Y in the verse and X in the chorus and that means we'll have to do C in the middle 8. And so on
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To me that seems like a pretty loose definition of 'math' or 'algorithm'. If there was an actual algorithm he would be out of a job. It would just be a computer program that would save the industry millions of dollars. I think it is quite natural to say if I do X in the verse I need to do Y in the chorus, too. That's not really weird or even paint by numbers but consistency.

Also, he generally does like 1 or 2 songs per album (for like 3-4 artists per year). And not the entire album. So an entire album does not usually have the Max Martin feel. He's not planning the entire thing start to finish like that. But maybe one or two singles for the album. Most pop albums bring in a lot of different producers so you have other collaborators for the other tracks. Hell, many singles today are released months or a year before the album release. So there is not the ability to micromanage the whole concept for it in one session.
 
I think being bitter and unaccepting of the next generation is all part of the process. Dont fight it. Even if the new good for nothing punks start playing real instruments live. (Most do).

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True non-conformity is choosing and doing what is best for the individual in question, not in unity with any generation, or group of any kind, or in opposition to whatever the disliked norm is.
 
I dont really think new music sucks. If I dont like anything new coming out, I figure it's probably me and not them.
 
"Old people think new music sucks". This is a generalization that fails to take into account the ever increasingly conservative nature of the music industry & their sausage factory of "new" music creation. They literally have formulas. It is not art, a creative language or artistry at all. It is cold and dead and heartless.

The only people I have consistently found that dislike all real new music, are pop music creators (apparently, otherwise they wouldn't be making the same old junk), & those who like two kinds of music- Country and Western. D-I-V-O-R-C-E... I've got heartaches by the number... ETC.

Although I was once in a band with a guy who ONLY listened to 80's rock radio.:annoyed:

Most older non musicians I know don't seem to care about music at all actually (they don't think new music simply sucks ) . 80's rock radio guy for example- it's like... meh, put it on fm radio at work, when driving,etc.
 
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Y’know, it’s interesting to me how we so easily accept “things have always been this way” narratives.

Less than a century ago, that generational divide in music listening simply didn’t exist. Parents and children listened to the exact same stuff.

The record industry, radio, and film certainly made all of that divide possible, but it still took a couple of decades of it to happen. Everyone listened to Bing Crosby. When the split finally came, it was with Sinatra in the 30s.

Youth culture really isn’t that old.
 
Flamencology said:
Y’know, it’s interesting to me how we so easily accept “things have always been this way” narratives.

Less than a century ago, that generational divide in music listening simply didn’t exist. Parents and children listened to the exact same stuff.

The record industry, radio, and film certainly made all of that divide possible, but it still took a couple of decades of it to happen. Everyone listened to Bing Crosby. When the split finally came, it was with Sinatra in the 30s.

Youth culture really isn’t that old.
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Bingo. Youth culture and generational divides in pop and fashion as we know them are, partly, a function of consumer capitalism.

You start to see the outlines of it in late Victorian England and certainly there’s a kernel of youth culture panic in the 1920s. But Frankie was a BIG DEAL for the bobby soxers. And then Elvis and rock and roll happened and the generational pop culture divide was cemented. This isn’t to say you can’t find some intergenerational paint trading before this, but the Baby Boom “us v. them” pop music thing is really the context for this argument and it’s a relatively new thing.

And, of course, all of this is partly a function of how people internalize market segmentation and turn it into a thing and then internalize marketing values as personal beliefs and sources of meaning and identity-making.
 
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