Is older music better?

Just my 2 pence worth:

Current *popular* music seems to consist of a talentless rapper (with a capital C) and the chorus sung by (generally a female) who actually has a modicum of talent.

Half of what's out 'these days' is also someone else's song that's already been a chart hit over the last 30 years, or sampled bits thereof.

Being in my 40's, the 80's were definitely my era, and as mentioned from the posts I've skimmed through so far, there was so much diversity there.

Don't get me wrong, I do like some of the current stuff, but the bulk of it is utter, utter crap.
 
Lysander said:
In a word, yes.

Music now concentrates on effect and commercialism more than talent.

Yes, there are more styles around, but the Internet has meant saturation from a tonne of bad musicians who just want to get their stuff out there to bloat their own egos.

There is still great stuff being produced, granted. But music is no way as inventive as it was. Ideas are rehashed and recycled more than ever. I can't remember the last truly original record I heard.

As a result I mostly buy records from the 80s and 70s these days, when creativity was really at a peak, especially as far as dark music is concerned. And how wonderful it is to hear records from these periods with no autotune on the vocals. When people fronted a band because they could sing rather than they just looked great.
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You aren't looking if you can't find original awesome music today. If you want dark music look up tool (start with parabola and schism).
 
SheepBeast said:
You aren't looking if you can't find original awesome music today. If you want dark music look up tool (start with parabola and schism).
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See, this is the problem, most of the good music is quite dark, or at least relatively obscure or fairly niche.

Tool have been around since at least 1993, also.

Not sure if it's just the filter of time, but there do seem to have be more mainstream classics from before 2010.

In the past there seems to have been more focus on songwriting, less production. Production is great these days (loudness war aside), but songwriting seems to have deteriorated. That said, production was probably excellent at the time. There's more variety these days I guess, although tastes and genres have always existed.

There's also question of age and what were you exposed to, and when. Also the platform has changed due to technology, so there's less scope for music to be a shared experience, imo. And of course tastes/opinions open to subjectivity.

Difficult question.

I like metal, hard rock, various electronic at the moment. But honestly the only song I could label as a classic in recent times would be Adele's Rolling In The Deep, and that seems to have fallen off the face of the Earth like the rest after being played to death. What good songwriters are out there always seem to be some small nobody indie band/singer-songwriter, always packaged with some sickly sheen which doesn't appeal at all to me.

Tool is awesome, listening to 'The Pot' at the moment - genius. 1 album every five years but boy is it worth the wait.
 
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You people talk as though when the "old" music was made there wasn't loads of rubbish. Of course there was. You just don't know about it because - surprise - no one cares about 50 year old rubbish music so only the good stuff is remembered.
 
Vonhelmet said:
You people talk as though when the "old" music was made there wasn't loads of rubbish. Of course there was. You just don't know about it because - surprise - no one cares about 50 year old rubbish music so only the good stuff is remembered.
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Yeah, but what do you think the cream of the crop is today? There literally is nothing mainstream worth remembering.
 
With the ability for nearly anyone to be able to record a song in their bedroom song writing has definitely gone out the window. Now it mostly seems to be people copying each other while trying to be the fastest, heaviest, most technical or other things.. Thinking of mainstream(ish) metal here. Mostly lacking the ability to make a good song and not just a load of ideas shoved together.

In popular music, I have to say I agree with the point that we have a sugar coated view of past decades as the crap has been filtered out. Although I can't think what will remain from recent times and last into the future, except for niche stuff and non popular/commercial genres.

Robosapien said:
Yeah, but what do you think the cream of the crop is today? There literally is nothing mainstream worth remembering.
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The music industry has of course always been an industry, but for some reason nowadays it seems more so.. More about the money and commercialism, the marketing.

I swear Radio1 will play a new song so much that people end up liking it. I think mainstream music listeners are not really true music fans but casual music fans.

I think there may be a few artists that may retain a legacy into the future, although being a bit more original than most the stuff, they are often taking ideas from the past, Lady GaGa for example.
Thinking about this, where is Lady GaGa now? I assume she will have a new studio album out eventually, but I think this may be the problem with the industry now. If something stops making money they can just drop it and find something new which can make the money, which mostly seems to be keeping with a trend that will only last a short time before it is then dropped again.

(excuse my bad writing and articulation).
 
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Vonhelmet said:
You people talk as though when the "old" music was made there wasn't loads of rubbish. Of course there was. You just don't know about it because - surprise - no one cares about 50 year old rubbish music so only the good stuff is remembered.
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And here I am to back you up.
I was there, well 40 years ago when I was an impressionable 14 year old, and there was some real crap even in my main genre of music.
 
Music these days is about making as much money as you possibly can in the short term and to do that a large amount of producers for pop music use the wining 4 chord formula, knowing full well the artist will probably be musically history in a year. There's still good music being made under the dross though.
 
No, older music is not 'better'. If all you do is listen to the radio and expect to be fed music that you love, then don't be surprised when it doesn't happen, but don't blame your apathy on the state of music today. There is so much more music available today than there ever has been, with the ease of getting decent home recording equipment to the incredible ease of distribution with the internet... Making music has never been easier, and so many people are doing it, now. And the best part is that it's so easy to find and access.

Go onto Last.fm, MySpace, GrooveShark, or whatever. Just search, and if you haven't found an artist that you enjoy in ten minutes, I'll eat my hat.

There is SO much great music being produced today, go and listen to it.
 
Naffa said:
No, older music is not 'better'. If all you do is listen to the radio and expect to be fed music that you love, then don't be surprised when it doesn't happen, but don't blame your apathy on the state of music today. There is so much more music available today than there ever has been, with the ease of getting decent home recording equipment to the incredible ease of distribution with the internet... Making music has never been easier, and so many people are doing it, now. And the best part is that it's so easy to find and access.

Go onto Last.fm, MySpace, GrooveShark, or whatever. Just search, and if you haven't found an artist that you enjoy in ten minutes, I'll eat my hat.

There is SO much great music being produced today, go and listen to it.
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The internet definitely changed my life with regards to music, various communities where i'd just download something, try it out and find whole new kinds of music I never knew about. Most, if not all CD's on my shelf were discovered via the internet or through other bands not TV/Radio.

Thing is I seem to have settled in the past year or two, where I haven't really found anything new, maybe because its overwhelming with there being so much music with it being so easy to produce. Just makes it hard to find something that truly sticks out as original or interesting enough.

Often takes quite a while to fully appreciate music too, and I find I lack the patience of recent years to actually give some music a chance to sink in.

Doing a music degree did change how I felt about music though, maybe that's what has affected me in recent years.
 
With the growing number of ways that music can be distributed and shared, genres and "niches" of music have split into seperate, almost mutually exclusive identities, which means that you are more likely to hear x music in x place, y music in y place, and z music in z place, instead of xyz all in the same place as you would have 40 years ago.

If they were around today, you would not likely find the soul / RnB of Motown dominating the charts, nor the rock music of Zeppelin, Bowie - and maybe even The Rolling Stones, Queen and The Beatles - on Radio One. They'd likely not have left the legacy they have were they existing in the internet era - not because they "wouldn't be as good today", but because they'd be less likely to reach the mainstream audience.

A track getting the most airtime and topping the charts means a lot less today than it used to, and is much less a barometer of how good or how popular the music is. There is still some truly excellent, groundbreaking music being produced today; music that isn't being played on the top radio stations not because it isn't popular or there isn't a market for it, but because the audience for it aren't the type that will listen to the top radio stations or buy singles.
 
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Robosapien said:
Yeah, but what do you think the cream of the crop is today? There literally is nothing mainstream worth remembering.
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True. I don't think it's sugar-coated to ask where bands like Queen are now. Where is that level of quality?

I remember when Coldplay/Parachutes was released everyone I knew had a copy regardless of what genres they were into.

PaddyMC89 said:
There is still some truly excellent, groundbreaking music being produced today
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Is there? I can't remember the last groundbreaking album I heard. There are some very good ones, granted, but nothing that floors me.
 
Lysander said:
Is there? I can't remember the last groundbreaking album I heard.
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Just off the top of my head, from some more mainstream acts, the most recent albums from Radiohead, Opeth, Bon Iver, Beirut, TV on the Radio, Metronomy, Fleet Foxes, Guillemots, Antony & the Johnsons, Burial, Porcupine Tree, Pain of Salvation, **** Buttons, Animal Collective and Scott Walker have been like nothing I've ever heard before. Not to say every one of these albums is one that should go down in history with Sgt Peppers or Exile, but while listening to them I've had that thought "wow, this is new and interesting", which excites me.

And before anybody reels off names of artists these albums obviously draw influence from, pretty much everything that's ever been considered "original" still has oodles of past music flowing through it. To break new ground is to take a slightly new direction; it's not to avoid using anything that anybody has ever heard before. Otherwise we'd only have room for things like Metal Machine Music.
 
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