must everything "pop"?

[NightTripper]

I don't know why some people can't realize that music is subjective. Just because something is less complicated than something else doesn't mean it is less sophisticated. Just different. Thankfully, we all have the option of listening to whatever we please, so why we complain about certain artists is beyond me.

It is possible to appreciate everything from Bach to John Cage, and from the Flecktones to Lady Gaga. None of them are more "musical" than another.

 

[Munjibunga]

At the time, Strauss Waltzes were considered "pop."

 

[sloasdaylight]

This whole thread reminds me of a hipster who is in a folk-metal-polka-breakbeat band who complains that his band can't get any gigs because no one out there is smart enough to understand what he's doing. To feel better about himself, he bashes musicians who are popular and those who like pop music, and says they don't really love music.

 

[sloasdaylight]

Lady Gaga,Rihanna,Beyonce etc. entertains the uneducated ears. Those ears do not understand, want anything that has more to it.

Some people prefer to listen to less complicated music and never educating their ears.

Some others realize there is more to it and go for that road. This is harder than the other and I think it has to be in the person, so many people won't take that road.

I listen to Between the Buried and Me, and analyze their song structures, tempo changes, and time signature changes, and I will still rock out like a little girl to Poker Face when I hear it on the radio, along with Nickelback, Hinder, Staind, Lady Antebellum, The Band Perry, and a whole slew of poppy music.

This notion that if you listen to pop music you don't appreciate music, or aren't educated about it, is so completely asinine and arrogant that if it weren't for the internet and me being a music student, I wouldn't understand how one could hold it.

Bottom line is this: People listen to music for different reasons, and people like the music they like for different reasons. Making sweeping generalizations about the people who listen to a particular type of music without knowing the first thing about them is, simply put, stupid.

 

[zaubertuba]

Subscribed.

 

[sevdog]

I think Geddy Lee framed this whole argument best when he said "there are a lot of empty calories on the radio."

Taste, is taste, is subjective, is you like what you like but somewhere in there the idea of art gets lost and it becomes a freaking car commercial jingle.

Oh, and if you use an auto-tuner then you suck. Period. You are not a musician or an artist, you are a body filling a role. I can push the button on my old church organ that plays a samba beat but I don't record it and sell myself as the next Tito Puente so either sing or shut the f up. End o rant.

 

[Marty Forrer]

I'm sorry O/P, but I view metal in the same vein as Lady Gaga. To me songs with meaning and depth are the likes of Leonard Cohen, JJ Cale, Emmylou Harris etc.
My son is into metal, so I've heard a lot of it and I'm sorry, I hear very little in there that's musical (to my ears) and meaningful.

 

[Marial]

 

[Bert Slide]

I don't think I've ever met a really good musician of any genre who would tell you they don't appreciate the art of a well constructed pop song.

 

[ABravado]

If using a device to change the sound of your voice makes you an illegitimate musician what about using a device to change the sound of your bass? Autotune is an effect just like a chorus pedal.

It seems like the OP thinks it's unfair that the kind of music he likes isn't what the general populace likes. I think it's unfair that I can't make a livable wage eating pizza and sexing college aged females.

And as to the empty calories quote? Empty calories are often the most delicious.

 

[NoiseNinja]

As I wrote in another thread here on TB:

Most people have no sense of what music is or what it could be. The music industry are run by lowest common denominator, which happens to be what the majority want. Sad but true.

 

[sevdog]

If using a device to change the sound of your voice makes you an illegitimate musician what about using a device to change the sound of your bass? Autotune is an effect just like a chorus pedal.

It seems like the OP thinks it's unfair that the kind of music he likes isn't what the general populace likes. I think it's unfair that I can't make a livable wage eating pizza and sexing college aged females.

And as to the empty calories quote? Empty calories are often the most delicious.

Using an autotuner as an "effect" is different than using it to fix your singing. So, I would agree with you partially there. If you use it as an effect you MAY still be an artist. If you use it to fix your voice, like the device was created for and is used more often than most realize, then I stand by my statement that YOU SUCK.

...on empty calories I think you just helped prove the point. They are a quick good taste but don't provide anything besides that short term satisfaction and probably leave you with a sugar headache.

EDIT: And if you eat nothing but empty calories then you end up fat, malnourished, and probably have to have a limb aputated as a complication of type 2 diabetes...that can't be good.

 

[beggar98]

I'm trying to make a mix of hardcore trance and grind

In my opinion, none of these are particularly advanced musical styles. The rhythms are basic and the chord progressions are even simpler than your average Top 40 song. I don't know of a single style of music where musicianship is less valued than hardcore punk. Trance is techno music, so essentially auto-tune for every instrument. I'm not sure what grind is, but I'm willing to bet an in depth analysis of a grind score would probably not pass muster in any Theory 101 course.

Your crap doesn't stink less, it just stinks different.

 

[scorpionldr]

Your crap doesn't stink less, it just stinks different.

stinking different is all I desired out of radio, which is supposed to show "culture" regardless of what the station's priority is.

and maybe I misused the term of trance. Frankly, the entire electronic music category is pretty complex to me in terms of the distinctions in what each subgenre is, and there are so many of them.

here's a couple aspects of electronic I dig.
http://youtu.be/BHTlX3-lp6Q
http://youtu.be/u8IudnJdRdE
http://youtu.be/V7jc3Z3aOq0

some grindcore
http://youtu.be/6hIRjt5oFNA

and some deathgrind.
Invalid Link Removed
for some that view the video too progressive, go ahead and skip to 3:52 or so. Cattle Decap to me tho epitomizes the potential for expression in the deathgrind genre tho.

and, of course, where the genres I've listed begin to merge:
http://youtu.be/wXvV8N3sVHc
http://youtu.be/tiNnQrJHZ68
http://youtu.be/Bd6LTSvOoGg

Frankly this was never about popularity. This was about why every form of music put out by the media must be manipulated to the point of unoriginality in order for it to reach popularity. Its degrading to me, to what I do, probably even worse than pr0n, IMHO. Yea, theory probably is underutilized in even the examples I gave, but then again, we've been downward spiraling since Bach.

These artists are artistic. Letting their music, the product of their passion, promote itself. No spandex, no costumes, no deliberate effect for requiring attention, simply just putting out the music. If people listen? Great. If people avoid it? Probably for the best. Controversy creates great art. Not passive listening.

 

[hrodbert696]

OK, I have to indulge in a history lesson here.

Two hundred years ago, apart from the village fiddler at the peasant dance, musicians worked for patrons, not audiences. You composed what pleased the patron. Being in a position to patronize musicians was a status marker, it made you a member of the elite. This was true of other artists as well. Ordinary people got access to music and art mostly when the church was the patron.

About 150-120 years ago, industrialization and urbanization tipped the balance. There were now large enough populations of wage-earning workers to support a new model: popular entertainment. Factory workers living in cities could set a bit of their weekly pay aside and go to the music hall or theater on the weekend, and musicians (and other artists) could make a living by pleasing the audience rather than depending on the whims of patrons. Over the next few decades, inventions like the phonograph, radio, movies, and TV expanded this popular culture and created mass culture.

However, this creates a problem for elites. You can't show the status marker of being a super-rich aristocrat by buying a ticket to the music hall, any factory worker can do that. So what do you do? Two things: first, you play the philanthropist and BUILD the concert hall or art museum or what have you for the good of the community (hence Carnegie Hall, etc.): and second, you continue to play the patron, but with a difference; the art that you patronize has to be different, more creative, more unique, more avant-garde, than the art that is consumed by the masses.

And thus "high art" or "fine art" was created, and divorced from the mere "entertainment" that is enjoyed by the majority of the culture.

To be sure, I think there is such a thing as mass-produced pop crap that is sheer drivel. But I don't think that just being popular makes something crap. And there is a lot of good, creative music playing to small audiences; but there is also a lot of pretentious drivel masking itself as the "avant garde."

 

[muljoe]

Well in case you fellow TBers think that Lady Gaga is not a "musician" check out this solo version of one of her songs she's playing on the piano. No auto tune...no big loops....no synths.



I have found that a lot of big pop artists are actually "good" musicians. All dependent on what you qualify "good", some people say if you can't sweep to a metal song you aren't a "good/real musician". Some people who still see this wouldn't qualify her as a good musician, but you can't please everyone!

I guess I can't see a record company coming to someone off the street and saying, "Wow you suck as a musician, but we'll hire you anyways to make music." I certainly have no idea, but most of these big names probably had to come up through some local scene to get noticed by a big label. This is all speculation though and of course IMHO.

Speaking of pop musicians...Justin Timberlake is a beast musician. (which is neither speculation or IMHO!)

 

[scorpionldr]

Well in case you fellow TBers think that Lady Gaga is not a "musician" check out this solo version of one of her songs she's playing on the piano. No auto tune...no big loops....no synths.



Entertainment=fun. which is a lot more reason why people end up hired.

 

[BBox Bass]

if you've honestly come to an audition where somebody proclaimed that, it probably was more of a slamfest than an audition. I've never come across anyone that requested anything sweeping straight out of the fence.

Once again, a good musician doesn't equate to a good songwriter. maybe if she actually released her piano version rather than the "in" version she'd be more respectable. But in addition, she had 2008, the performance was 2009, and the release was a few months later. In short, anyone given enough time could put that together.

Lady Gaga was doing the solo acoustic thing well before she got famous.

I consider myself a metalhead, but my band plays Poker Face and I'm not ashamed to admit that I have a lot of fun doing it. IMO, if I like playing a song, it's good regardless of where it came from.

 

[dj150888]

Scorpion...you may never grow out of the music you like, but hopefully you'll grow out of the massively ironically cliche "non-conformist" arguments. Having a passion for alternative art is cool....having a passion for something solely because its alternative isn't.

I felt a bit embarrassed reading your posts purely because of how much they reminded me of my opinions in my early teenage years. After a while, I realised that all those people telling me its all subjective were right.

How do you quantify talent? Do we get experience points and level up? Is the most artistically valid music that which requires the most technical powress? The one that's most unique? Why are those your markers of talent? Its equally valid to argue that the greatest talent is that which entertains most people. Mainstream music doesn't appeal to me either, but after a bit of thought, I realised it takes a whole different kind of talent to create it. Alternative music isn't better or worse....its just different.

 

[pklima]

These threads always make me feel happy. Sure, there's plenty of music I look down on, despise, and hope to never have to play. Fortunately, it happens to be unpopular, unprofitable and unsexy.