In the years exiting my teens and entering my early 20's, I made a promise to myself. I promised that I would never be 'that guy' who stops listening to new music and only listens to the stuff they grew up with. I pledged to never be the guy who utters 'music was so much better in my day' when the subject comes up.
But today, I have to think that's the case. Modern music completely sucks.
Let me clarify, by that I mean modern popular music. There is a tremendous amount of amazing stuff being produced by smaller artists and on indie labels that is truly amazing. I've discovered new artists and genres that I never would have been exposed to in the pre-Spotify, pre-YouTube era of music. I love new music from talented and original artists like Pretty Lights, Caravan Palace and Chromeo who are both modern and very original.
But our popular music today is seemingly less about the music, and more about the celebrities behind it. Beyonce, Nicki Minaj, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, etc. have become icons more than musicians. Songs on the radio seem indistinguishable from one another, seemingly spit out of the same pop music generator that most of our new music seems to come from.
It has no creativity, originality or soul. Its auto-tuned commercial fluff.
When I enter my office to go to work, I find myself pulling up playlists of 80's one-hit-wonders, classic thrash metal or 90's r&b. I couldn't name a single song by any modern pop artist because I simply don't care (except for Firework due to YouTube celebrity JonTron's hilarious cover of it). Modern music seems as fake and artificial as Nicki Minaj's...well, pretty much any body part. She look like the unholy amalgamation of a sex doll and My Little Pony figurine.
So while in past generations, the older generations ranted about how bad music is nowadays. But I grew up listening to Michael Jackson, Dr. Dre, Megadeth, Nirvana and countless other bands that stood primarily as musicians first and personalities second.
Today, music has transformed into the platform that holds up celebrities and the music is an afterthought. Beyonce could fart into a tuba and it would sell a million copies, because its simply not about the music anymore, its about our current obsession with celebrity worship.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go listen to some Tears For Fears, Jodeci and Pearl Jam to wash the thoughts of horrible modern music out of my head.
It's both. As you get older you don't have the emotional connection with new music the way you did in your formative years because the music you heard growing up is much more tied to your social development and who you are as a person. I say it's both because there are so many more artists now than there use to be and artists tend to put out A LOT more music. As the amount of music created increases, the quality goes down. And as even the best songs have shorter and shorter runs because more new music is right on it's heels it becomes a lot less memorable
I think most popular music today sucks but there is a lot of good music out there. And fortunately, today you have the Internet to help you find it.
There are so many new niche genres out there today and its fun to discover them. I've found stuff I really like -- electropunk, electroswing, symphonic metal, vaporwave (for background music), and I've started listening to K-pop too, even though its as commercial as American pop music.
Exactly! You're not getting old, this stuff stinks! I'm definitely ol school!
Yep, I don't particularly care for any modern popular music. What's funny is a few days ago while a friend and I were travelling she decided to put on the radio and after a couple songs I started thinking, WTF am I listening to?
See, I have a habit of actually pay attention to the lyrics of a song and then analyzing them. Trust me, if you like modern music or modern music artists, do not do this. What's also weird is I had the same problem that you did with distinguishing between artists, everything started sounding very familiar. To the point I could sound out parts of songs I never heard with a fair degree of accuracy.
When I asked my friend how she could listen to this stuff so easily she simply stated its because its catchy. At first I thought wow that is silly but thinking more I am probably the same, but in my case I can't know what the singer is saying or there can't be a singer at all.
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I feel the same way about mainstream pop. But the hard rock/heavy metal scene is going strong. You just have to find places that can recommend artists for you to look into. You won't find them on Pandora or the radio.
I'm still old school enough that I still listen to a whole album at a time, start to finish.