Music; where did it all go wrong?

Hades

Hades

Hades

Man of Honour
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I've been listening to some of Oasis and Blur tonight and it just brings it home how poor modern music is in comparison to it. Where did it all go wrong? I'll admit that I loved the 90's and I don't listen to a lot of very recent music but it no longer interests me. XFactor seems to dictate who gets heard and there doesn't appear to be any real feeling and heart behind songs like in years past.

What a truly epic era. Or am I just looking at it through rose tinted glasses?



What a truly epic era. Or am I just looking at it through rose tinted glasses?
 
Depends on genre, me, I like anything.

But this year for me is all about the boom (no pun intended) in drum and bass and dubstep

I wouldn't even call it niche music it anymore...
 
Yeah people were having fun making music, didn't care if it was technically polished or hit certain commercial "sweet spots" so much, etc.
 
I think you are looking through rose tinted glasses, but still you are right..

Its down to ££££££££ more so these days, or at least they know how to make the £ much more.
 
Music has been going downhill since Mozart died. Or else everyone in the world is slowly ageing and finding that music is moving on without them. Face it guys, it's just you getting old. Your favourite bands are the ones you listened to when you are about 14 or 15, and your taste then only changes slowly. But music changes more quickly, so you get left behind.


M
 
NDubz, Gaga, Beyonce....

The list goes on, hardly hold a candle to Iron Maiden, Ozzy and Metallica, and they've lastest longer, groups/singers don't last a year these days, whatever happened to those lesbians Tatu?
 
The 3 Ms. Mass Marketed Mediocrity.

Simon Cowell exemplifies it but it is nothing new. Business extraordinaires extracting money from idiots and the easily impressionable, and thanks to a 21st century scientific understanding of marketing and psychology, that description includes all of us.
 
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Rose-tinted spectacles, tbh.

OP: you've posted one song from Oasis, and one song from Blur... the Oasis ones all sound the same (Messers Gallagher moaning and droaning), and Blur are the progenitors of today's boppy guitar generation.

Both first two albums from the respective acts were good, with Oasis' first and Blur's second being landmark for 'pop-rock', but both struggled to keep sounding interesting after that (Oasis really struggled after their first, but hey).

Step away from Radio 1 and other local/national clones, and there is some interesting stuff out there (I'm not going to bother with specifics, as each person's taste is different)... most of it will never heard by a broad audience because the aim isn't to make money, or it isn't backed by huge amounts of money (to make money).

Also remember, the 90s gave us Mr. Vain, So Solid Crew, Robin S, Eiffel 65, and a load of other absolute and unadulterated turd.
 
At the risk of getting nostalgic The blur/oasis thing was symptomatic of the era. I was in my teens and it was a genuine exciting time.

You had the return of the guitar band to the mainstream. Labour coming into power with a fresh new leader, hell, even Terry Venables and Euro 96 in England. Footballs coming home and all that. There was a feelgood factor at the time that simply hasnt been repeated since. The music of that era takes me back to that feeling of excitment. The reality turned out to be somewhat different.

In purely musical terms "Girls and Boys" was hardly a lyrical masterpiece and "Shes Electric" was stolen from the "You and Me" kids TV show!!
 
Oasis and Blur were ****. I preferred Rage Against The Machine, Deftones, Korn, Tool, Placebo, Primus et al. Britpop was crap. So was the lairy lout scene that came along with it. Both Gallaghers sound as crap today as they did in the 90s. The 90s was also a crap time for everything else from fashion to football (because England still can't win **** all, a nation riding the wave of 66 and bugger all else). The rave scene died. The drugs got worse. Kids today don't know they're born. I remember ARRR BARRR ABBABAGRHAAHGD!
 
there is plenty of good music out there, as mentioned it's just a question of finding it. everything that's on tv/radio (well maybe not everything) is just commercial, and by that i mean mainstream and geared towards that sort of sound that's easy to like. stuff gets interesting when it's a bit more underground i find, or at least if you have to go and find it, it'll generally be better than something that's thrust in your face.
 
I often find myself in the OP's state of mind. The Britpop era ('94-'97) was a fantastic time for bands and guitar music in general. The best thing though was that it somehow broke into the wider conscious of society at that time; bands that were doing gigs to a couple of hundred people could suddenly 'break through' and hit the big time.

Unfortunately the music industry was almost as money orientated as it is now and there was a mass 'feeding-frenzy' from the record labels where they charged their A&R people to find the 'next Oasis' or 'next Blur' which resulted in some good indie bands getting signed up then chewed up and then spat out by the labels when they didn't go platinum on their first album :rolleyes:

These 'scenes' are cyclical. The first sign of the death of Britpop was the emmergence of the Spice Girls (sadly) and OK Computer and Urban Hymns were the final acts of that scene. Some excellent bands did keep going through the next few lean years - such as Idlewild - but the quality of the 'new' bands coming through such as Symposium and Northern Uproar was poor in comparison.

The Strokes, and to a lesser extent Coldplay's first album, reignited interest in guitar music amongst the wider populace in the early noughties and we did have a decent 'scene' once again (that I jokingly call Britpop 2) from around 2003-2007ish where bands such as Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand, The Kaiser Chiefs etc. broke through and were pretty big for a time. Sadly it seens to gone out of cycle once again.

As others have said, there *is* good music from good bands out there, you just have to go looking for it. The Vaccines are perhaps the best known of these bands at the moment but I've discovered We Were Promised Jetpacks (thanks to this forum), Frank Turner and slightly more folky stuff like Admiral Fallow.
 
There will always be good music out there.

The charts have become completely irrelevant thanks to digital downloads. If a movie with an iconic soundtrack is on tv then thats a no.1! If Rocky III is on ITV 1 anytime soon i expect Eye of the Tiger to be riding high the following week!

The difference with the 90s was that it crossed over into the mainstream. Blur v Oasis was on the 6 oclock news. Tony Blair wanted Noelly G at No.10 because he knew what he represented. It really wasnt about the music itself as much as what it represented.

I wish i had been about 5 years older during that period so i could have appreciated it fully!
 
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