Humor Random Comments Thread

[Quick_Nick]

It's time to switch to 2%.

http://tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=1010

 

[fsci123]

Seeing these award shows makes me glad that I stopped listening to hip hop and pop.

 

[Andy44]

You are now breathing manually.

 

[Urwumpe]

Seeing these award shows makes me glad that I stopped listening to hip hop and pop.

The Grammy Awards are turning into the world series of music: Only US winners with famous names but pretty unknown songs or albums. I never heard of the best rock-song here despite listening to a lot of rock here and can't even really understand what is award worthy there.

 

[Izack]

The 'music' part of popular music has been sidelined for decades now. It's been replaced with a self-propelled celebrity machine.

 

[Pipcard]

I'm tired of the attitude that everything today is bad and everything in the past was better.

 

[C3PO]

I'm tired of the attitude that everything today is bad and everything in the past was better.

Claiming that the music part was better in the past isn't the same as saying everything was better.

 

[Pipcard]

Claiming that the music part was better in the past isn't the same as saying everything was better.

Or "all music/music in general, was better in the past"

 

[Urwumpe]

Or "all music/music in general, was better in the past"

That's also wrong. We are mostly complaining about "Award winning music was better in the past".

I'm just listening to a modern German pop music album (Deichkind - "Niveau Weshalb Warum"). No urge to shout that everything was better in the past.

But then, who had won the Grammy for the best song 20 years ago? Bruce Springsteen - "Streets of Philadelphia". A song you can still hear well in the radio.

Who had won it ten years ago?

John Mayer - "Daughters".... do you still know it? I don't even believe I have EVER heard this song.

Five years? Beyoncé - "Single Ladies" ... The kind of music that you will not even hear in the most drugged village club in the central European plains.

And don't get me started on what had been 30 years ago: Tina Turner - "What's love got to do with it" ... *sigh*

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Speaking only for myself, I consider much of "modern" music to be quite abysmal. Rock and roll is almost on life support. Techno is generic as I can't tell one piece of music from the next. It seems much I hear on the radio is either a rehash of something from an earlier time, or is indecipherable.

I'm not into "screamo" because I can't hear or understand the lyrics.

I only listen to k-pop and j-pop because the chicks are generally pretty nice easy on the eyes.

I have been told by my daughter and many of her friends that my music collection is pretty awesome (my dad's is better).

 

[Pipcard]

I don't care about the Top 40 either, but my favorite singer made her debut relatively recently (as in, less than a decade ago). And all of her songs are user-generated.

 

[Urwumpe]

Rock and roll is almost on life support.

Not sure there. Metal is suffering a lot on the creativity edge right now, but not automatically from bad music. It just lacks the innovation. It needs a second "Rebellion in Dreamland" here.

Not sure what to say about house and other electronic music. I thought that Metal fans are conservative, but actually they are pretty progressive to the electronic crowd.

About rock... well. sometimes, I wish to just do something old... not old like classic rock. I mean old like P.I.T.A ... or the days when Korn had been cool. Or Bodycount...the 90s had been so focussed on the bad stuff, that you nearly forget the good stuff...

 

[Andy44]

I'm tired of the attitude that everything today is bad and everything in the past was better.

So am I, but I understand it.

There is plenty of good music, but it's not in the mainstream anymore. Radio rock is all uninspiring rock with no real vocal hooks or catchy riffs, lots of heaviness but no substance. Avenged Sevenfold and bands of that like are quite boring to me. And pop music is now a bunch of girls who all sound similar, sing about the same inane stuff, and use the same software to make up their forgettable dance-beat backing tracks.

Compare that to say, Michael Jackson. Billie Jean is a fantastic pop song, and I'm not one who even likes pop usually. And the lyrics are actually really heavy commentary, which is not something I'd ever expect out of Katy Perry with her dancing sharks.

But there is a lot of really good music out there; you find it around the internet and if you pay attention to the live music scene. Whatever it is you like personally, it's out there and it's only a few keystrokes away.

And if there is a good college radio statio n near you there is another cool place to find good off-the-wall music. For some reason, despite the fact that there are several big universities in DC we don't have any college radio stations here, except for WPFW 89.3 which is a really cool jazz station loaded with some crazy politics. I listen to it often.

And even the mainstream occasionally scores a good one. Gnarls Barkley has had a couple of decent pop tunes on radio, although that's not my thing.

 

[fsci123]

Hip hop recently took a turn for the worse. Most rappers use EDM beats and have sub par rhyming styles. Most hip hop fans only listen to an artist because some "DJ" said his name on the track. Most rappers make no attempt to improve their rapping even after they become famous. A good example of how bad hip hop has got is anaconda by niki minaj and hot ***** by bobby shmurda.

Pop has been generic for a good 30 years.

Rock is dying or being replaced by alternative indie rock. That's actually pretty good.

EDM is the only movement that continues to grow and improve. Primarily because of its fluidity and internal competitiveness.

 

[Andy44]

I have been told by my daughter and many of her friends that my music collection is pretty awesome (my dad's is better).

I think this is a result of the fact that record companies won't take a chance on a band like Pink Floyd these days. Too experimental, doesn't fit the formula for making money. Won't ever find itself on the coprorate borg radio. Maybe?

In any case, the phenomenon of young people feeling nostalgic for music made decades before they were born seems odd to me. When I was growing up in the 80s, music from the 70s was as far back as we were willing to go. Few of my friends were major Beatles fans, and nobody listened to Elvis or other 50s rock. MTV was "in" and it fed us a constant stream of new stuff, some of it awful, some if it quite creative.

Being big into 40-year-old records was not cool to us. But to today's younger people it is?!

 

[Urwumpe]

And even the mainstream occasionally scores a good one. Gnarls Barkley has had a couple of decent pop tunes on radio, although that's not my thing.

I would add Adele here... Most music by her is somewhere between uninspired and too nose-heavy, but "Rolling in the Deep" is a great song.

And it supports my theory of great pop music: If you see a 4 year old girl singing this song after hearing it once, you can be sure its great with or without hype.

Strangely, it also won a few Grammys. Maybe just an anomaly.

 

[Andy44]

I will post some of what I consider "good" modern music in the Listening thread soon...

 

[C3PO]

I'm all over the place when it comes to taste in music. :lol: The only thing I can put my finger on is that I can spot a "bad" musician a mile off. I'm not only into virtuosos but I don't like musicians that haven't put the effort into technique or into composing.

One of the major gripes I have with contemporary music is that almost all pop artists are celebrity performers, while being a good musician or having a good voice doesn't even get your foot in the door. How many songs have you heard in the last 15 years that contained an instrumental solo or a decent bridge? Many live gigs don't even bother to include any musicians on the stage and when they have, it usually play-back or sing-back.

There are off course exceptions but a lot of pop that is churned out of the assembly line industry sounds like it's composed by a committee.

PS: One of the reason some people think "older" music was better is just because they remember the good ones while all the other ones are forgotten.

 

[Unstung]

I like a modern German metal band with an offensive name that often makes distasteful, sexual songs.

 

[Urwumpe]

I like a modern German metal band with an offensive name that often makes distasteful, sexual songs.

Rammstein? :lol: