Nicely encapsulated in the video...I't made me depressed!
Stop the ride, I want to get off!
"lack of passion is fatal"
Vinyl: Thorens TD-124mk2 / SME-312 Aluminium 'special' / SME M2-9R / STEREO: Etsuro Urushi Cobalt / Shure M3D / Ortofon SPU A95 / Cartridge Man Music Master / Shure - SC35C (US) / SAEC C3 MC MONO: Miyajima Zero B 0.7mil mono / Miyajima Premium 1.0 / Amps & SUTs: Radford STA25 mk3 / AD Audio 'Satchmo2' pre & LCR phono / Hashimoto HM-7 SUT / ETR-MONO SUT Digital: Audio Note 4.1 (with DAC5 upgrades) DAC / Roon / Tidal Speakers: Tannoy 12" MGs' in RFC custom 'Rutland' Cabinets with RFC crossovers / Tannoy ST-100 Super Tweeters Cables: LFD Grainless phono / RFC Mercury / Duelund DCA16GA tinned copper / Kimber 12TC / SW1X Audio Design USB-SPdif / Duelund DCA20GA interconnects / SW1X Audio SPDIF Aero 6 / Mains Power Conditioner / Box Furniture rack / Audiodesk Systeme Vinyl Cleaner / a very beautiful & understanding Wife!
Location: East Riding of Yorkshire these days
Posts: 4,779
I'm Shaun.
And there's probably good pop too.where I work they often have Heart radio blasting out, utter bolloxs on a loop,same day in day out.once in a while radio one gets an airing, I couldn't name any of the artists but there was some good stuff on. I think perhaps the question should be, why do people lap this commercial crap up? Look at the xfactor for example,the audience isn't just 12year olds it's 30 40 50 year olds too screaming in joy at the tedious crap
novafidelity x40 music server/pre/dac, Arcam A39, roksan k3 power amp,Monitor Audio Monitor 50, Dali spektor 1, van damme interconnects and speaker cable, roskan k3 CD player
Something has gone badly wrong with vocal production in the last couple of decades. Wannabe-pop stars learn to widdle at the stage schools their wannabe parents send them to - that strange vocal affectation that is absolutely everywhere these days - with the consequence that they all sound like a princess out of a Disney film.
It became most apparent to me when listening to the sountrack of a film about New York's Greenwich Village in the Bob Dylan/Joan Baez era - it was called 'Inside Llewyn Davies' and amongst other things featured some modern pop types singing some of the folk songs - of course they all had the widdle, which was ridiculously anachronistic. (Apart from being a bit silly). The songs sounded nothing like what Dylan and Baez and Pete Seeger and Peter Paul & Mary would have sung like.
To be fair to the widdlers on the film, at least they managed to sing the songs .. the average pop diva seems to have a vocal range of 4 notes these days.
Oh and Roger Scruton is quite good on the whole pop music topic.
That Widdle you very accurately describe, drives me fooking nuts. It's awful and totally unnecessary. Female 'vocalist' do it all the time. There is no expression or depth to it, it's just a vocal exercise akin to a gargle.
God i thought I was alone, when I hear it i want to punch the singer in the throat. it's utter drivel... where did it come from? Where is the purity in the vocal range? It's a shame, I would imagine many of these singers can really
sing and have great natural voices but the 'industry' has dictated they will sing this way.
"lack of passion is fatal"
Vinyl: Thorens TD-124mk2 / SME-312 Aluminium 'special' / SME M2-9R / STEREO: Etsuro Urushi Cobalt / Shure M3D / Ortofon SPU A95 / Cartridge Man Music Master / Shure - SC35C (US) / SAEC C3 MC MONO: Miyajima Zero B 0.7mil mono / Miyajima Premium 1.0 / Amps & SUTs: Radford STA25 mk3 / AD Audio 'Satchmo2' pre & LCR phono / Hashimoto HM-7 SUT / ETR-MONO SUT Digital: Audio Note 4.1 (with DAC5 upgrades) DAC / Roon / Tidal Speakers: Tannoy 12" MGs' in RFC custom 'Rutland' Cabinets with RFC crossovers / Tannoy ST-100 Super Tweeters Cables: LFD Grainless phono / RFC Mercury / Duelund DCA16GA tinned copper / Kimber 12TC / SW1X Audio Design USB-SPdif / Duelund DCA20GA interconnects / SW1X Audio SPDIF Aero 6 / Mains Power Conditioner / Box Furniture rack / Audiodesk Systeme Vinyl Cleaner / a very beautiful & understanding Wife!
novafidelity x40 music server/pre/dac, Arcam A39, roksan k3 power amp,Monitor Audio Monitor 50, Dali spektor 1, van damme interconnects and speaker cable, roskan k3 CD player
It's very enlightening when you hear a 'pop' singer unshackled by the constraints of the horrid, bastard pop machine.
I have no time for any of it, but I was wandering between stages at the fabulous North Sea Jazz festival, in Holland a few years ago and was stopped dead in my tracks by a female vocalist singing just wonderfully.
I entered the Auditorium and singing this beautiful thing live, was (it pains me to say it)... Lady Gaga. She was performing with Anthony Dominick Benedetto, Tony Bennett to you and I.
I have to tip the hat to her. She was very good indeed. But it did throw up the question of how many talented artists are being bent out of shape for the machine.
"lack of passion is fatal"
Vinyl: Thorens TD-124mk2 / SME-312 Aluminium 'special' / SME M2-9R / STEREO: Etsuro Urushi Cobalt / Shure M3D / Ortofon SPU A95 / Cartridge Man Music Master / Shure - SC35C (US) / SAEC C3 MC MONO: Miyajima Zero B 0.7mil mono / Miyajima Premium 1.0 / Amps & SUTs: Radford STA25 mk3 / AD Audio 'Satchmo2' pre & LCR phono / Hashimoto HM-7 SUT / ETR-MONO SUT Digital: Audio Note 4.1 (with DAC5 upgrades) DAC / Roon / Tidal Speakers: Tannoy 12" MGs' in RFC custom 'Rutland' Cabinets with RFC crossovers / Tannoy ST-100 Super Tweeters Cables: LFD Grainless phono / RFC Mercury / Duelund DCA16GA tinned copper / Kimber 12TC / SW1X Audio Design USB-SPdif / Duelund DCA20GA interconnects / SW1X Audio SPDIF Aero 6 / Mains Power Conditioner / Box Furniture rack / Audiodesk Systeme Vinyl Cleaner / a very beautiful & understanding Wife!
I'm not so sure that it is any more or less terrible than it has ever been. The reality is that the really bad stuff from previous decades does not survive or is so seldom played nowadays that we forget about it. My musical tastes are very eclectic and I regularly play "pop" music from the 50's onwards. Some of these tunes remain in our consciousness because they were catchy or were sung well, or perhaps just because they remind us of a particular time in our lives. I agree, that much of what tops the "hit parade" today is disposable rubbish, but it has always been that way. Go back to any of the top 20 listings over the last 60 years and I thin you will find that the vast majority of the tunes were dire. Personally, I have never taken much notice of the charts, and have always based my musical choices on what I like rather than what is popular.
Geoff