Why does mordern pop music suck?

[Carl Hillman]

I just saw this video and my suspicions were reinforced by it. There is a bit to digest here, but I think the video sums things up quite nicely. One thing I really miss is dynamic range in recordings. Why does every sound have to be in your face?
Anyway, Get Off My Lawn!

I'm not saying that today's pop music is an alien plot to prevent humanity from achieving great advances,...

But consider this...

THE loony music video “Invalid Link Removed” surpassed two billion views on YouTube this week, making it the most watched clip of all time. At 4:12 minutes, that equates to more than 140m hours, or more than 16,000 years. What other achievements were forgone in the time spent watching a sideways shuffle and air lasso? It took 50m man-hours to complete the “supercarrier” USS Gerald Ford last year. Had people not been watching PSY—the South Korean pop star who released the song in July 2012—they could have constructed three such ships. Alternatively they could have built more than four Great Pyramids of Giza, or another Wikipedia, or six Burj Khalifas in Dubai (the world’s tallest building). The song’s nearest rival is Justin Bieber’s “Baby”, at a paltry one billion views. The opportunity cost of watching PSY’s frivolity is huge, but humanity has at least been entertained.

Invalid Link Removed

 

[fdeck]

Popular music and its personalities serve all sorts of industries such as advertising, apparel, soft drinks, and so forth. It is integral to the production of media such as video games, movies, and televised sports. People may say that they don't like pop music, but those industries maintain solid growth.

 

[Obese Chess]

Did anyone watch the video? I'm two minutes in and he's comparing the Beatles, Dylan, Zeppelin and the Kinks to Bieber, Britney Spears and Lady Gaga to make the point that the music of the '60s is better than the music of today. Problem is, there was pop junk on the radio in the '60s too. Record companies were just as shady. Lust for money and wowing the consumer with shiny yet worthless baubles wasn't invented yesterday. Likewise, there's great rock and roll being made today, by innovative bands who are pushing the boundaries.

Some say rock died an early death, but they keep filling up the classic rock airwaves with music. When I was a kid, classic rock stopped in the '70s. Now, it's Pearl Jam. Everything gets old. Some of it ages well and we wax nostalgic for it. The rest becomes Captain and Tennille.

I'd watch the rest but I'm pretty sure I've seen this video before.

Just wanted to echo this. Everyone thinks the pop music that came out when they were younger is the good stuff and that the new stuff is terrible. This has always been the case.

To that end, my beef with a lot of modern music is it's totally low effort. I'm running on three hours of sleep so bear with me on this one, I may not explain it well, but, every modern pop singer sounds like they just got wheeled out of oral surgery, propped up in front of the microphone, and told they only got one take. Everyone sounds sleepy, mumbles, trips over words, sings off key and off beat even with heavy use of autotune and quantization. I imagine some of this is an intentional decision in order to make stuff sound more "real" and "authentic," especially with how digital all the backing music is, but it just sounds lame as hell. And between the constant flubs left in the final take, the general half-assedness of the performances, and the trend towards sparse and/or "experimental" instrumentation, every slick, glossy, high-budget pop record now sounds like an unfinished demo tape. (EDIT: Lady Gaga is a notable exception to this rule. Lady Gaga whips ass.)

YouTube doesn't work from my work computer, but two examples that stand out to me are "Work" by Rihanna and "Hold Up" by Beyoncé. "Work" is not only totally incomprehensible and suffering from a melody that doesn't really work with the music, but Drake's verse is frequently just completely off beat. It's not like, an interesting syncopation, he's just... off beat. "Hold Up" sounds like five or six different songs stitched together as a series of bedroom ideas and the fact that it was on a grammy winning album and took fourteen people to write is the most insane thing in the world to me.

Of course, most modern rock sucks too, but for different reasons.

 

[I am Soma]

Different people prefer different things. It happens

 

[Usidore T Blue]

Back in the day—whatever you perceive that to be—the imperative within the record business was to develop new sounds that had never been heard before. Currently, and for the last 30 years or so, the imperative has been to mimic sounds that have already proven to be commercially successful. It's just hard to bring out new, inventive sounds with that mindset.

I think that not knowing what will be commercially successful is the prerequisite to a business imperative to find new sounds. So ignorance and desperation drives exploration and risk-taking.

 

[1bassleft]

Every decade, and every generation has music that sucks, and good music. I'll agree the good stuff is harder to find now, but it's out there. It's easy to sit back and condemn modern music, remember our parents did that about our music..
Whatever you do- DO NOT watch the grammy awards- You will walk away hating music. Jeezus, the crap that gets the nod from the public at large will make you toss your burrito.

Many of the “great” bands/artists of yesteryear didn’t chart well—with exceptions, of course.
Look back at a list of song/album of the year Grammy winners—it’s a joke.

 

[JimK]

Just wanted to echo this. Everyone thinks the pop music that came out when they were younger is the good stuff and that the new stuff is terrible. This has always been the case.

I am gonna give my parents some props.
In 1970, I was 12.
We did not have an FM radio until 1972.
1970...we had an AM radio in the car, 1ea AM radio in the house & 1ea TV.
So, whatever they played/watched is what I saw.

I was fed a steady diet of Pop music. Granted-
Bread, The Carpenters, The Monkees, The Partridge Family, etc. were heard.
So were Chicago, Santana, Motown, BS&T, Rare Earth, Free, The Beatles, Hendrix, The Stones, etc.
Were my parents hipper than other parents?
Please.

 

[JoeWPgh]

Because for the most part, it's not played by musicians. It's assembled by some guy with a computer

 

[franklindayala]

Yeah, because before this, money never slept with\dated\married older men because of their money.

When your 5 year old daughter sings this hit song that's on the radio. Yea it's a problem to me.

 

[BBQband]

I didn't know that modern pop sucked, I haven't listened to it yet. Thanks for warning me.

 

[Eric Swaim]

In The Beginning it was about talent and the Music. Now it is about the lack of talent and Entertainment.

Nothing wrong with being entertained but I prefer talent first.

 

[J-Bassomatic]

What a jerk.

 

[MovingPitchers]

Nowadays the lyrics are about money, drugs, sex, girls, guys, or all of the above. It’s obvious how influential it becomes to younger people.

When rap music started saying more of the N word so casually, it implicitly gives kids the thought that this word is okay to use and I hear it everywhere thrown around. No one knows the true background of that term and it’s sad to see.

That’s why I hate modern pop music.

Then again, I like kpop so I can’t really say too much..although that’s a completely new topic regarding lyrics and culture between the West and East.

 

[Diamond_Dave]

Nowadays the lyrics are about money, drugs, sex, girls, guys, or all of the above. It’s obvious how influential it becomes to younger people.

When rap music started saying more of the N word so casually, it implicitly gives kids the thought that this word is okay to use and I hear it everywhere thrown around. No one knows the true background of that term and it’s sad to see.

Wait--NOWADAYS the lyrics are about money, drugs, sex, girls and guys? When have rock lyrics ever NOT been about this stuff? That's what rock and roll is all about!

I'm with you on the N-word though.

 

[Londo Molari]

"Why does modern pop music suck?"

Because modern pop people make it and they think we suck.

 

[MovingPitchers]

Wait--NOWADAYS the lyrics are about money, drugs, sex, girls and guys? When have rock lyrics ever NOT been about this stuff? That's what rock and roll is all about!

I'm with you on the N-word though.

You know what I mean! XD

But yeah. Derogatory terms are being thrown around casually and so loosely and it’s not just the N word.

All thanks to that goofball in DC.

 

[BAG]

Young humans really are a herd species and constantly need the approval of their peers. How and why some things become popular is beyond explanation.... you only have to look at clothing fashions over the decades to see that people of all ages, but particularly teenagers more than others, can be convinced to at least pretend to like and want things that are really, really ugly...... and music is no exception.

As we become older most of us crave approval less and become comfortable liking things that may not be popular.

 

[Obese Chess]

I am gonna give my parents some props.
In 1970, I was 12.
We did not have an FM radio until 1972.
1970...we had an AM radio in the car, 1ea AM radio in the house & 1ea TV.
So, whatever they played/watched is what I saw.

I was fed a steady diet of Pop music. Granted-
Bread, The Carpenters, The Monkees, The Partridge Family, etc. were heard.
So were Chicago, Santana, Motown, BS&T, Rare Earth, Free, The Beatles, Hendrix, The Stones, etc.
Were my parents hipper than other parents?
Please.

Well sure, but if you're saying that your parents didn't think the pop music they grew up with was better, that's probably because there wasn't really pop music when your folks were kids, at least not in the same way that we would think of it now.

 

[faceless_master]

"Why does modern music suck?"
~Everyone Over 30, Since the Beginning of Time

 

[Thumpin6string]

Because the so called talent scouts wouldn't know talent if it bit them on the butt. It has gotten so bad that I can't stand going into stores because all they play is this .