Why is modern pop so terrible?

[Pieoftheday]

Hi Phil,

Sorry for the late reply -- just saw your post today. I had a listen to First Aid Kit -- great sound. I just punted their info to my daughters for them to have a listen. Coincidentally, they are doing a concert here in Toronto in a couple of weeks.

I've been a big Simple Minds fan since their early years. Have a listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E0fVfectDo. It's the hit song Reflektor from The Arcade Fire. Tell me what you hear in the first few bars, say from about 0:12 to 0:42

Cheers,
Svend

Was going to say Love Song but no, not sure about New Gold Dream either, great album though. Simple Minds seem to have found their feet again though it's the early stuff I like

[Svend N]

Was going to say Love Song but no, not sure about New Gold Dream either, great album though. Simple Minds seem to have found their feet again though it's the early stuff I like

Yeah, hard to pin it to a particular Simple Minds tune, now that I listen to a few of them. But definitely the characteristic Simple Minds "sound" is there in Reflektor.

I actually quite like a lot of what Arcade Fire are doing. Great band. Very creative.

[Pieoftheday]

Yeah, hard to pin it to a particular Simple Minds tune, now that I listen to a few of them. But definitely the characteristic Simple Minds "sound" is there in Reflektor.

I actually quite like a lot of what Arcade Fire are doing. Great band. Very creative.

Hi Svend, do you have any of Simple Minds live recordings? Live in The City of Light is very good, Hunter and the Hunted is a great live song,on the Bside of Someone Somewhere in Summertime I think,also on a recent CD, but can't seem to find itmy bad, Bside of waterfront

[datdad]

The question is asked ' Why is modern pop so terrible?'
Could the real answer be, with this forum of ancients' that the questioners - and many of the answerers - are too old??
I envy my kids generations ( in their late 20's) they have their own current music, there are a great number of choirs to join, and they can delve back into their ancients music going back yonks.
The only thing I hold agin them is that they seem to hate Jazz!! Heathens.

[struth]

i used to be ancient, but now my daughter is well into her 30's i am apparently still young

[Pieoftheday]

The question is asked ' Why is modern pop so terrible?'
Could the real answer be, with this forum of ancients' that the questioners - and many of the answerers - are too old??
I envy my kids generations ( in their late 20's) they have their own current music, there are a great number of choirs to join, and they can delve back into their ancients music going back yonks.
The only thing I hold agin them is that they seem to hate Jazz!! Heathens.

I reckon your rite,let people like what they like, even if it is crap

[Macca]

I think the bloke in the o/p video is stretching a point. His comparisons are extreme, you can't compare Dylan to modern popsters like Beiber. You can't compare 60s and 70s music by proper bands to songs that consist of a looped vocal and a drum machine.

Where I tuned out was when he talks about the hook being much earlier in the song nowdays. But the Beatles would start a song with the hook, perfectly common in the 1960s.

And as far as I can see a lot of this modern rubbish has no hook at all. Just a meandering verse leading to another meandering verse, no proper chorus at all. I wonder how they can remember them to sing them live.

[oldius]

I think the bloke in the o/p video is stretching a point. His comparisons are extreme, you can't compare Dylan to modern popsters like Beiber. You can't compare 60s and 70s music by proper bands to songs that consist of a looped vocal and a drum machine.

Where I tuned out was when he talks about the hook being much earlier in the song nowdays. But the Beatles would start a song with the hook, perfectly common in the 1960s.

And as far as I can see a lot of this modern rubbish has no hook at all. Just a meandering verse leading to another meandering verse, no proper chorus at all. I wonder how they can remember them to sing them live.

IMO he sounds like an old fart harking back to halcyon days that never were.

[Macca]

IMO he sounds like an old fart harking back to halcyon days that never were.

He doesn't look a day over 35 but reckons he is old. If he thinks 35 is old he's got a shock coming.

[montesquieu]

IMO he sounds like an old fart harking back to halcyon days that never were.

Well I think all the points he makes are spot on - they are measurable after all:

So-called popular music is becoming less harmonically complex - well this is intuitively true and I would suggest a bad thing. And measurable/demonstrable.
So-called popular music is becoming less melodically complex - again this is intuitively obvious, the dumbed down millennial woop is something you can also count.
So-called popular music is becoming less interesting and varied in the textures and timbres used - again, the studies are irrefutable.
So-called popular music is overly risk averse, due to the amount of money needed to break a band now - I would say this is less measurable but I think perfectly defensible.

The result overall is that today's so-called popular music is pretty shit. Note that I'm talking about POPULAR music - the stuff that's forced down your ears when you go to the barbers, or got to a noisy pub, or any other source of noise pollution. The stuff that's everywhere, in Nandos, in the charts, whose stars' names are on the telly and in Hello magazine, who people are supposed to know by sight. And the fact is - it's the shittiest it's ever been.

By no means am I saying that all modern music is shit, or that all kids have bad taste. What I'm saying is that what passes for 'common', shared music of our era, the stuff that's unavoidable unless you go round with ear defenders on, is the absolute pits. Think about it - talent contest rubbish, mass manufactured crap. Was it better in the days of Showaddywaddy, Bay City Rollers and Boney M? Well probably, yes. It was certainly less offensive and had a bit more variety.

I am most certainly not talking about other kinds of music. I have kids too, now 19 and 21. My daughter's taste is completely off the wall and I doubt you'd ever find any of it in the barber's. (She's also a pianist and harpist though, so I'd expect her to have some taste). I use to take the piss that she was putting her south korean bazuki music on again. My son astonished me though, A combination of old Zappa and modern Thundercats-type stuff, his music is not far off the same sort of Jazz Rock I used to mix with classical at that age (I recently bought him a turntable, since I found he already had a vinyl collestion) - but again it's not, by any definition, pop music.

As for comparison with Dylan, the Beatles, Eric Clapton, even the Smiths - yes you can compare it perfectly legitimately, because for all it's treated as art music these days, it competed against the daily dreck and somehow made it to the top of the charts, people got their pocket money out and bought this stuff in their millions. It's a mark of how far pop music has fallen that some would now argue the comparison can't even be made.