What is wrong with today's music?

[Lord Temptation 11,209]

14 minutes ago, giskardsb said:

Those were fine.  The dominant rock brand though was hair metal and new wave, which for the most part sucked. 

Interesting choice of word to describe those albums. I've never heard anyone refer to The Cure, Brucr Springsteen, Sonic Youth or Pixies as "fine". 

And hair metal didn't exist in the 1980s. That's just a word invented by journalists in the 1990s to disparage the glam metal of the 80s, and to make it look dated (so they could hype the sh*t out of grunge)

You sound like a 90s kid who believed everything they read in Rolling Stone, NME and Spin.

[LaBlue 993]

9 hours ago, RAMROD said:

It's a cycle, hunty. Wait for the next 5-10 years for your time to shine again. 

It's so hard 

[BornSimon 4,818]

6 hours ago, Lord Temptation said:

Actually yeah I did live through the 90s. It was bad. Rock was whiney, depressing and bland. Pop was pure plastic bubblegum. Spice Girls, SClub7, Backstreet Boys, BWitched, NSync are all manufactured fake bands, pretty boy and girl dancers miming to a beat. 

Dance music was cheese. That's why only Europe liked it. Rap on the other hands was violent misogynistic "I'm gonna shoot your mother and rape your sister" crap. 

Give me a break. Pretty much everything that was popular in the 1990s was awful. 

EDIT: I do like the early 90s (for hip hop, R&B / new jack swing, house and shoegaze) and the late 90s for French house, and there are a few female singer-songwriters like Tori Amos, Fiona Apple that I love. Also I love Madonna's first two albums of the 1990s (Erotica, Bedtime Stories) , and Janet in the 1990s was brilliant. But most of the 1990s was utter rubbish, and I blame the media for that.

How are people copying the 90s these days if there is literally no difference between the songs that clog up the charts? Back then everything sounded different. You said it yourself: there was 'whiney' rock, 'cheesy' dance, 'manufactured' pop, 'violent' rap.* And today? One watered-down mix of pop, dance and r&b. That's about it.

It isn't about your personal taste, which I obviously won't judge, it's about the STATE of the music scene. It's absolutely terrible and uninspired right now, and it all depends on who has the hottest feature on a song. In the 90s, you could catch a song like Marilyn Manson's "Dope Show" on the radio. Would that ever happen now? No way. Radios don't give songs or artists a chance anymore. If you're over 30 you struggle to get noticed. But in 1998? Cher had her biggest hit ever, aged 52.

It honestly sounds like you literally just scratched the surface, for example you don't seem to know much about the music the Spice Girls made, for example, or their story, so you go and throw them in the same category as B*Witched. I'm sorry to say but that is pretty ignorant. It's what every uneducated try-hard who used to read Q Magazine would say back then. Maybe it's because you didn't care to find out, but that makes you assume stuff that is far from the truth.

* I don't agree with that. There was nothing 'cheesy' about The Chemical Brothers or The Prodigy. There was nothing whiney about Marilyn Manson or Skunk Anansie. There was nothing manufactured about Madonna's "Ray Of Light" or Janet Jackson's "The Velvet Rope". And Will Smith, while cheesy, was never violent in his songs. There was literally a bit of everything back then, you're just sticking to what suits you to make your point. Just my opinion.

[Neight Shayde 7,925]

We get to critique more music because we hear it everywhere. Back then, people had access to music only through the radio and on TV sometimes. Now that the internet is around, we have access to all kinds of music.

Let's not act like there were less terrible singers/artists back then, because there were A LOT. Nowadays we get to hear 'em all, so that's why people usuallly say that music nowadays is terrible.

[babyboo 965]

the generic ones like the chainsmoker who sells quick lil hit singles will be forgotten shortly after their time, but REAL artists/icons of today will be remembered (ed sheeran, JB, miley, calvin harris etc).

every generation has its **** stain tbh, but i agree in a sense that i hate today's music sonically. maybe its just our ears already accustomed to older music.

[Lord Temptation 11,209]

1 hour ago, BornSimon said:

How are people copying the 90s these days if there is literally no difference between the songs that clog up the charts? Back then everything sounded different. You said it yourself: there was 'whiney' rock, 'cheesy' dance, 'manufactured' pop, 'violent' rap.* And today? One watered-down mix of pop, dance and r&b. That's about it.

It isn't about your personal taste, which I obviously won't judge, it's about the STATE of the music scene. It's absolutely terrible and uninspired right now, and it all depends on who has the hottest feature on a song. In the 90s, you could catch a song like Marilyn Manson's "Dope Show" on the radio. Would that ever happen now? No way. Radios don't give songs or artists a chance anymore. If you're over 30 you struggle to get noticed. But in 1998? Cher had her biggest hit ever, aged 52.

It honestly sounds like you literally just scratched the surface, for example you don't seem to know much about the music the Spice Girls made, for example, or their story, so you go and throw them in the same category as B*Witched. I'm sorry to say but that is pretty ignorant. It's what every uneducated try-hard who used to read Q Magazine would say back then. Maybe it's because you didn't care to find out, but that makes you assume stuff that is far from the truth.

* I don't agree with that. There was nothing 'cheesy' about The Chemical Brothers or The Prodigy. There was nothing whiney about Marilyn Manson or Skunk Anansie. There was nothing manufactured about Madonna's "Ray Of Light" or Janet Jackson's "The Velvet Rope". And Will Smith, while cheesy, was never violent in his songs. There was literally a bit of everything back then, you're just sticking to what suits you to make your point. Just my opinion.

Let me break it down for you, considering you've now resorted to calling me a try hard. 

Every decade mythologises the decade before the last.

The 70s was obsessed with the 50s.

The 80s was obsessed with the 60s.

The 90s was obsessed with the 70s.

The 00s was obsessed with the 80s.

The 10s are obsessed with the 90s.

And therein lies why music of the 2010s is so bad. Simple, isn't it?

[BornSimon 4,818]

19 minutes ago, Lord Temptation said:

Let me break it down for you, considering you've now resorted to calling me a try hard. 

Every decade mythologises the decade before the last.

The 70s was obsessed with the 50s.

The 80s was obsessed with the 60s.

The 90s was obsessed with the 70s.

The 00s was obsessed with the 80s.

The 10s are obsessed with the 90s.

And therein lies why music of the 2010s is so bad. Simple, isn't it?

If you say so.

[giskardsb 12,565]

10 hours ago, Lord Temptation said:

Interesting choice of word to describe those albums. I've never heard anyone refer to The Cure, Brucr Springsteen, Sonic Youth or Pixies as "fine". 

And hair metal didn't exist in the 1980s. That's just a word invented by journalists in the 1990s to disparage the glam metal of the 80s, and to make it look dated (so they could hype the sh*t out of grunge)

You sound like a 90s kid who believed everything they read in Rolling Stone, NME and Spin.

lol whatever.  I predate the 90's by a lot.  You wanna blame me for anything its that I was a hard rock and metal head, and glam metal mostly was cheesy pop metal with bad singers pre-autotune.  A few of those bands I liked ok but mostly the "pop metal" scene was horrid.  IMO of course.

But I will revise my 80's statement.... there was thankfully the rise of Thrash in the early part of the decade.

and eventually the bridge between the glam metal era and the grunge/alt rock era was filled with some great bands.

GNR brought glam back to a hard rock attitude.

and my number one hard rock band of all time was born in 1988.

 

 

[Lord Temptation 11,209]

1 hour ago, giskardsb said:

lol whatever.  I predate the 90's by a lot.  You wanna blame me for anything its that I was a hard rock and metal head, and glam metal mostly was cheesy pop metal with bad singers pre-autotune.  A few of those bands I liked ok but mostly the "pop metal" scene was horrid.  IMO of course.

But I will revise my 80's statement.... there was thankfully the rise of Thrash in the early part of the decade.

and eventually the bridge between the glam metal era and the grunge/alt rock era was filled with some great bands.

GNR brought glam back to a hard rock attitude.

and my number one hard rock band of all time was born in 1988.

 

 

All great albums. That's what I love about 80s music, whether it's new wave, hardcore punk, heavy metal or even (later in the decade) hip hop. They gave a sh*t. They put alot of effort, blood, sweat, and make up and costumes, into what they were doing. And they had fun while doing it. 

That's something that died in the 90s. All of a sudden it became cool to look uncomfortable, brooding, bored, conflicted, as if you don't want to be there. Artists stopped being theatrical. Singers stopped smiling, rappers stopped having a boogie with the beat. It became all about attitude. Specifically, having a bad I'm-cooler-than-you attitude. Nothing much has changed since the 90s.

When 90s babies say that the 90s was the last great decade I always tell them actually it was the first bad one. 

There was a sincerity, a commitment to the craft to 80s music that simply no longer exists. And a sense of fraternity amongst artists supporting each other's work. They didn't judge each other like we do today. There were no beefs back then. Artists weren't pitted against each other. 

They performed their asses off and didn't care what anyone who wasn't there would write about.

Nowadays all we do is judge ourselves. And project that onto others. It's a shame.