Have you grown out of really listening to music?

[member 157595]

The older I get the more important music is to me. Some people only have white men in their top four albums. Hopefully they'll discover music someday.

No offense intended, but that's kind of a horseshit way to judge someone's musical tastes and versatility.

If I am listening to music I don't give a rat's ass what sex, race, ethnicity, political beliefs, etc. the artists have/are, and I don't think anyone else should either.

 

[Stylizer1]

I think the mystery surrounding how music is made has made some lose interest. In the age of information you know so much more about an artist where as before you had to read the linear notes, read magazines or go see them live. Having that separation made bands more interesting to discover. When they included lyrics with albums that was like a gold mine. With everything a click away people have more of a short attention span. Like one of the posters earlier said he discovers so much new music that he listens to it for a short time and then moves on. This reminds me of video games. Growing up you had a certain amount of games and going to the video store to rent them was fun. Now you can download all of them and have a catalogue of games you haven't finished because they are not cool anymore.(many don't have endings and you just keep paying and playing for like you are getting somewhere)

I used to listen to albums front to back every night while going to sleep. Trying to isolate every instrument and sound. Really learning the song. Now its so easy to make music that people take it for granted.

 

[Shareefruck]

I think the mystery surrounding how music is made has made some lose interest. In the age of information you know so much more about an artist where as before you had to read the linear notes, read magazines or go see them live. Having that separation made bands more interesting to discover. When they included lyrics with albums that was like a gold mine. With everything a click away people have more of a short attention span. Like one of the posters earlier said he discovers so much new music that he listens to it for a short time and then moves on. This reminds me of video games. Growing up you had a certain amount of games and going to the video store to rent them was fun. Now you can download all of them and have a catalogue of games you haven't finished because they are not cool anymore.(many don't have endings and you just keep paying and playing for like you are getting somewhere)

I used to listen to albums front to back every night while going to sleep. Trying to isolate every instrument and sound. Really learning the song. Now its so easy to make music that people take it for granted.

I really don't think that has anything to do with it. I experienced all of that old music in the age of information, the same way that people experience new music, in parallel with them, just a click away and just as part of the avalanche of all the other music that's available, along with all of its mysteries already demystified. And yet I still feel that something's been lost.

To your point, I do think it MIGHT have something to do with the fact that music being consumed this way in the modern era influences how it tends to be made and designed in a negative way. And maybe the fact that there was less saturation and more unexplored territority fuels ambition, ego, momentum, and inspiration in a way that is now harder to come by and might be useful. It might have something to do with the whole limitations breed creativity thing too.

But even then, I'm not convinced enough about this type of speculation to die on any hill, personally.

 

[End on a Hinote]

No offense intended, but that's kind of a horseshit way to judge someone's musical tastes and versatility.

If I am listening to music I don't give a rat's ass what sex, race, ethnicity, political beliefs, etc. the artists have/are, and I don't think anyone else should either.

Kind of!?

 

[Shareefruck]

The worst thing about that logic is that 4 albums is a ridiculously small sample size to judge that based on. You could have tons of racial variety in your top 100 but still very very easily end up with a top 4 that happens to be white (I imagine that's probably even the most common outcome here).

 

[Roo Returns]

The type of music that uses auto-tune (just going off of what you said, top 40 pop and hip hop). For the record, I wasn't trying to be snarky either-- I assumed that because you were initially complaining about auto-tune, you didn't think highly of the music either, but from your last post it sounds like you're really into the music but just hate the auto-tune part specifically (which surprised me), so that was my mistake and what I said about it can't apply to you.

The most recent two albums that I liked were Crumbling by Mid Air Thief and parts of NTS Sessions by Autechre (still need to finish it), both from 2018. Keep in mind that I'm one of the guys in this thread who are underwhelmed by modern music compared to other eras and arguing against it, so I'm probably not the right guy to ask for recommendations (especially when it comes to something as recent as 2020 specifically-- there's too little payoff for me and too much hype that doesn't hold up for me to keep up year-to-year, IMO, so I tend to lag behind a few years and see what people like in retrospect).

For the record, my top albums from the 2010s as a whole (based one what I've heard so far) are:

1. Ravedeath 1972 by Tim Hecker
2. Tomorrow's Harvest by Boards of Canada
3. Syro by Aphex Twin
4. Crumbling by Mid Air Thief
5. You're Dead by Flying Lotus
6. A Moon Shaped Pool by Radiohead
7. Atrocity Exhibition by Danny Brown
8. The Magic Place by Julianna Barwick
9. Cosmogramma by Flying Lotus
10. Alvvays by Alvvays

... But I don't think any of them are brilliant or among my overall favorites or anything-- I just find them moderately solid. Again, I LIKE when something from this era clicks with me, and would love to find more (balance from era to era is cool when it actually happens), but I disagree with the ongoing sentiment that if it doesn't land that way for someone, it must just be some getting older, nostalgia, or not digging enough thing. From my perspective, it just seems to be a relatively weaker decade/lull to me (I didn't start listening to music as a whole until around 2008 anyways, so it's not like I formed my sensibilities around older stuff). Maybe if I was really into Metal and its subgenres, I'd feel differently, but I'm not.

You have a solid list in these ten. Nothing wrong with any of this stuff!

 

[Pizza!Pizza!]

When I was young I seemed to care a whole lot more about listening to music. Now it seems I can't relate to most of it. I still hear lots of interesting stuff but can't find myself really adding anything new my library, or at least throwing it on once and a while.

It might have to do with Albums not being pushed as heavily as songs are.

"Kids don't buy albums anymore they rent songs" - Me

yes. I actually had this same thought while driving to work today. I used to obsess over hearing EVERY song ever recorded by my favorite bands (live tracks, demos, overseas bootleg covers, etc). Now even when some of my 'top 5' favorite bands release new albums....I'm usually out of the loop that it even happened and once I do find out I rarely bother with acquiring it. For me it started when I lost ~80% of my music to a hard drive crash that wasn't properly backed up. That was 10 years ago but I never bothered to rebuild my music library. I have 2 music DVDs that I burned in college that I leave in my cars for when I don't feel like silence or radio. Every few years I'll switch the discs between my truck and my mustang, but they have like 60% of the same tracks anyway.

 

[holy]

I’m starting to only like new music exclusively. I don’t even care that I won’t like it anymore. I feel like people bigging up old music is the reason new music isn’t where it should be.

**** all the old shit. We want something new.

 

[Shareefruck]

I’m starting to only like new music exclusively. I don’t even care that I won’t like it anymore. I feel like people bigging up old music is the reason new music isn’t where it should be.

**** all the old shit. We want something new.

As someone who doesn't like new music nearly as much, I do think that there's something to this, at least when it comes to artists bigging up old music. The best things of any given time usually don't do it by re-treading the same ground (there's something about boundary-pushing that seems to be able to fuel things to greater heights, even in isolation, for whatever reason-- there aren't bands trying to be The Beatles that end up doing it better-- in my view, the artists that have comparable greatness are pushing in fresher directions), and it's harder and harder to be original as time goes on.

 

[peate]

The old classics will remain just that, classics; people still listen to Mozart, Scott Joplin, Ella, Ray Charles, Elvis, it will never end. Finding new music, whether it's innocuous pop, new age, rock or metal, or even rediscovering something you overlooked the first time around, it's all great.

Maybe those who are musicians have an advantage, or are more discerning and thus able to absorb more of the nuances of a musical composition and performance that makes it stand out from the rest.

(Now I'm just ranting...)

 

[SirClintonPortis]

OP's title and actual post are not matching points.

Music can be hundreds of years old but "new" to the listener because they never heard it before. Me personally, have added a complete set of Beethoven as new music, including obscured works like Ich denke dein theme and variations and the Creatures of Prometheus. I also was curious and decided to sample a bunch of number 1 Hot 100 chart toppers, and stumbled into at least a few artists, of which Belinda Carlisle is one I have clearly become addicted to.

Old Town Road led me to JoJo, as in Joanna Levesque, who has a level of talent on par with Mozart. Listening to her revitalized and made me better understand Mozart.

Olivia Newton-John was another "new" one for me, her song "Landslide" is currently my favorite.

Hotel California is another gem found by Amazon music having it play on random.

OP is more a lamentation that the latest music don't capture his interest.

 

[SirClintonPortis]

It's important to note that literally only one guy brought up auto-tune. It's obvious that that's a bad argument that isn't really representative of the sentiment.

Auto-tune bashing is really overstating things and more of a crutch for people to NOT evaluate a musician properly. It cannot really make a bad musician good, and some of the musicians that get lampooned for using it actually can sing their tails off.

It also shows a lack of understanding of how it is used, as it in itself can be used as an instrument of sorts, such as T-Pain in his rap.

 

[SirClintonPortis]

People who can't find the nuanced changes in more mainstream music as it evolves are actually uncultured swine imo. The songs that are slaps have something differentiating them, but it takes a fine tuned ear and lover of music to hear and understand what those changes are.

Just a simple tempo change can change the way people are living their lives. Craziness, and should be more appreciated. Of course, everyone is a musical expert, studying under the tutelage of Mozart himself. Newsflash, you're looking at it all wrong. You elitists make me vomit in rage.

"Mainstream" is actually hundreds of years old.

Mozart and Beethoven had their "convention-conforming" works. No one condemns Beethoven's Septet and it is catchy as hell, but aside from the innovation in instrumentation, the melody develops as a conventional sonata-allegro in the first movement. So-called "pop" is not that easy to make and the auto-condemnation of it by a certain segment of society is ignorance of the musical skill it took to make said "pop".

Eine Kleine Natchmusik was likely a for-profit work for some occasion that was not personal, but it's Mozart's calling card, for better or worse.

 

[ItsFineImFine]

I wasn't even aware of auto-tune being an issue anymore. I listen to a lot of popular artists, maybe some of these bands are a bit on the obscure side but most of them are quite accessible and I don't think a single one of them is using autotune (outside of possibly DMA'S but I'm still not sure if that's just the way the singer's voice is because he sounds the same live). Or maybe they are using it to a small extent and I'm not picking up on it but it seems like such a trivial point if you can't notice it.

I'd actually have to go out of my way to find a bunch of pop or R&B artists if I wanted to listen to autotune these days.

 

[Shareefruck]

"Mainstream" is actually hundreds of years old.

Mozart and Beethoven had their "convention-conforming" works. No one condemns Beethoven's Septet and it is catchy as hell, but aside from the innovation in instrumentation, the melody develops as a conventional sonata-allegro in the first movement. So-called "pop" is not that easy to make and the auto-condemnation of it by a certain segment of society is ignorance of the musical skill it took to make said "pop".

Eine Kleine Natchmusik was likely a for-profit work for some occasion that was not personal, but it's Mozart's calling card, for better or worse.

I don't think many people who complain about mainstream music have some fundamental problem with their inherent mainstream-ness, but simply don't feel that anything satisfying to them is coming out of the mainstream scene and hasn't for a while for reasons that aren't entirely clear but that they might guess has something to do with the current state of the scene. So bringing up Mozart or Beethoven really doesn't have anything to do with anything, IMO. Hell, whether or not it requires skill to make something that they don't find to be a satisfying or interesting experience doesn't even seem to have that much relevance, in my view (although that's more debatable and dependent on the listener). Personally, whenever I try to convey how much I love and appreciate something, I can't say I've ever cited how much musical skill went into it as the reason why, nor do I think the two things even necessarily correlate. It's not necessarily ignorance of something, it's just valuing different aspects of something.

Personally, my feelings on the mainstream scene has more to do with finding the more common forms of catchiness in mainstream music today grating and lacking in anything that piques my curiosities, interests, and sensibilities, not because I have some misconceptions about how easy it is to make something catchy, but because I think they happen to have that underwhelming effect for me that degrades the more I listen to it.

 

[SirClintonPortis]

I don't think many people who complain about mainstream music have some fundamental problem with their inherent mainstream-ness, but simply don't feel that anything satisfying to them is coming out of the mainstream scene and hasn't for a while for reasons that aren't entirely clear but that they might guess has something to do with the current state of the scene. So bringing up Mozart or Beethoven really doesn't have anything to do with anything, IMO. Hell, whether or not it requires skill to make something that they don't find to be a satisfying or interesting experience doesn't even seem to have that much relevance, in my view (although that's more debatable and dependent on the listener). Personally, whenever I try to convey how much I love and appreciate something, I can't say I've ever cited how much musical skill went into it as the reason why, nor do I think the two things even necessarily correlate. It's not necessarily ignorance of something, it's just valuing different aspects of something.

Personally, my feelings on the mainstream scene has more to do with finding the more common forms of catchiness in mainstream music today grating and lacking in anything that piques my curiosities, interests, and sensibilities, not because I have some misconceptions about how easy it is to make something catchy, but because I think they happen to have that underwhelming effect for me that degrades the more I listen to it.

You don't get my point. I have played music just as much as I listened to it. Beethoven's Septet and Mozart' Eine Kleine are some their relatively rudimentary, conventional works in accordance with the compositional language of the time. Not the more esoteric and highly advanced compositions like the Grosse Fugue or Mozart's last symphony's final movement. The key change sequence of Eine Kleine is "standard", going from the tonic, to the dominant, the parallel minor, the subdominant, and back to the tonic to finish it.

Beethoven and Mozart did not write in an ivory tower. They had an audience with particular expectations. While the modern age herald Beethoven's symphonies, his contemporaries were playing arrangements of his Septet or trying to play his "Andante favori", which was the original second movement to the Waldstein.

"Mainstream" has actually been frozen in time since freaking 2010 or 2000 for many people

If we want to nitpick mainstream for the right here and now, it's stuff like Old Town Road and "bad guy" by Billie Eilish. But "mainstream" to many includes now-old acts like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus, Backstreet Boys, NSync, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera.

Not liking a particular brand of music does not mean the listener can't respect the abilities of the musician. I actually cannot stand Billie Eilish, but I can still recognize her abilities. To pull that off, she is obviously able to convey a "feel" that is not the same as being unable to sing notes at all. Her music absolutely "life-sucking" in nature but other people clear like that feel while I cannot stand it. Soul-sucking vampire music to me.

 

[Shareefruck]

You don't get my point. I have played music just as much as I listened to it. Beethoven's Septet and Mozart' Eine Kleine are some their relatively rudimentary, conventional works in accordance with the compositional language of the time. Not the more esoteric and highly advanced compositions like the Grosse Fugue or Mozart's last symphony's final movement. The key change sequence of Eine Kleine is "standard", going from the tonic, to the dominant, the parallel minor, the subdominant, and back to the tonic to finish it.

Beethoven and Mozart did not write in an ivory tower. They had an audience with particular expectations. While the modern age herald Beethoven's symphonies, his contemporaries were playing arrangements of his Septet or trying to play his "Andante favori", which was the original second movement to the Waldstein.

"Mainstream" has actually been frozen in time since freaking 2010 or 2000 for many people

If we want to nitpick mainstream for the right here and now, it's stuff like Old Town Road and "bad guy" by Billie Eilish. But "mainstream" to many includes now-old acts like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus, Backstreet Boys, NSync, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera.

Not liking a particular brand of music does not mean the listener can't respect the abilities of the musician. I actually cannot stand Billie Eilish, but I can still recognize her abilities. To pull that off, she is obviously able to convey a "feel" that is not the same as being unable to sing notes at all. Her music absolutely "life-sucking" in nature but other people clear like that feel while I cannot stand it. Soul-sucking vampire music to me.

Oh. I guess you're just elaborating on some of the information mentioned by holy rather than actually agreeing with his sentiment? I thought you were giving additional reasons for why people's criticisms of mainstream music in this thread were unfair or outrageous.

 

[peate]

Auto-tune was created as a tool to correct slight pitch variances in vocal tracks. A lot of today's pop recordings use it. When used correctly, you shouldn't notice it, and you don't. The CHER effect comes from over correcting, like they do when they turn speech into a kinda rap music.

Listen to live music and some singers are really bad at keeping their pitch steady, and you can't use auto tune live, so they always sound perfect on record.

 

[holy]

Oh. I guess you're just elaborating on some of the information mentioned by holy rather than actually agreeing with his sentiment? I thought you were giving additional reasons for why people's criticisms of mainstream music in this thread were unfair or outrageous.

I was pretty drunk and or high when I wrote that, but I wasn’t really being serious. I don’t even like most mainstream music, a lot of white artists doing blackface in musical form (Ariana Grande and all her children) is high key pretty cringe.

 

[holy]

On top of that, I will say that the access to the industry being more available to new artists, it seems like the key to most of these new artists is they get good enough to learn 1 new trick (a new flow, a new vocal stretch), achieve their dreams and then ride that pony out into the sunset within a year.

The only ones who survive are those that actually manage to feel that same hunger past their initial nutting as they enter into the industry (the hoes, the money, the instagram lifestyle). This is speaking about hip hop for the most part, because that's really all I listen to.

 

[Fixxer]

I have not grown out of listening, but I'm not sure I look as much for new stuff as I used to. I think the music industry is pretty stale, that a better sound makes up for a people being more lazy on writing quality stuff.

I still do listen to music, to stay grounded. I listen to some stuff that gets shared online, that is not mainstream, unlike the pop and pseudo-rock we hear too often.

 

[tarheelhockey]

"Mainstream" has actually been frozen in time since freaking 2010 or 2000 for many people

Someone pointed this out to me recently in the context not just of music, but of everything else as well. Clothing, hairstyles, TV/movies, even stuff like cars and restaurants.

2020 resembles 2000 a lot more than 1980 did, and 2000 resembled 1980 a lot more than 1960 did.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Stumbled across this channel and it reminded me of this thread.

Simple premise, a musician listens to the Spotify top-10. It’s fun to see the reactions of someone who really knows what he’s hearing. Especially the joy he finds in hearing something creative on the structural level, in what we would normally consider generic pop music.

Anyway, give it a watch for a few minutes. It’s eye-opening.

 

[Eisen]

I’m starting to only like new music exclusively. I don’t even care that I won’t like it anymore. I feel like people bigging up old music is the reason new music isn’t where it should be.

**** all the old shit. We want something new.

Then they should make it better.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Stumbled across this channel and it reminded me of this thread.

Simple premise, a musician listens to the Spotify top-10. It’s fun to see the reactions of someone who really knows what he’s hearing. Especially the joy he finds in hearing something creative on the structural level, in what we would normally consider generic pop music.

Anyway, give it a watch for a few minutes. It’s eye-opening.

Beato's channel is one of my favorite! He's so enthusiastic, always a lot of fun.