I'm out of touch... I like it there...

CalhounSq said:

So true!

CinisterCee said:

Agreed. People are really sleepin' on these guys on the org. They are literally capable of almost anything sonically.

minneapolisgenius said:

agreed
totally

I doubt people have been more displeased with the general quality of popular music ever than they have been during the last 5 years. I'd say the real downhill started with the MTV 1999 VMAs - that marked the end of one era, enter the "for real" world of soft rappers and peroxide blondes paying "respect" for the soft rappers. C'mon - even the record company excecutives admit openly that the target audience of the music industry is these days the 10-14-year-olds. You think anyone would have been publicly putting out that kind of shit twenty, thirty years ago. Or even ten.

VoicesCarry said:

Same here. I'm not out of touch. (how can I be? I'm 19...)

I just have taste.

I'm not that old, I'm in touch.

TheJourney4all7 said:

Damn I feel old.

PurpleCharm said:

I don't, EFF these youngin's

Novabreaker said:

Hey! Us 10-year-olds have great taste in music!

I haven't really liked top 40 since the mid 80's (my early teen years).

But I do think popular music got pretty good in the early 90's. You had Jane's Addiction, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana, Dr Dre, Snoop, Cube, Tribe Called Quest all in their primes. Pop music was weirder & less pop (I was having trouble with stuff like Diamonds & Pearls at the time). Pearl Jam was who I thought sucked, and that ain't too shabby!

So while I know I'm old & out of touch, I do think pop music sucks today.

LoveAlive said:

yep! some of yall go on and on about how todays music aint real music....but to us it is....its just like in the 50's and all those moms and dads were sayin rock and roll is a fad...its the devils music..its not real..blah blah blah..

But Honestly, can u listen to say.."Nuck if u buck" or "I aint neva scared" and THINK that is REAL music?

It depends on how you look at it. When I look back in music history, beginning with the 1950s, a lot of opposition to rock and roll was due to racism. It was considered "the devil's music" strictly because it originated from black people. Another argument the so-called "religious" people had was because the rhythm and beat made people gyrate and move their hips. For instance, only filming Elvis Presley from the waist up.

I personally don't care for 1950s music because first of all, I simply don't like the way it sounds and secondly, I consider it too "innocent" for my taste. To me, music progressed and sounded much "harder" and faster in the 1960s. It then progressed and became even "harder" and faster in the 1970s. In the 1980s, it became even more "harder" and faster. This brings us to the 1990s.

In the 1990s, instead of music getting even more harder and faster (with the exception of house music, which eventually all started sounding alike), it did the opposite. It got much softer and slower. For those that say "What could be more harder than rap?", think about it, the only thing "hard" about rap is the "look" of the performer. As for the "music", the tempo is much slower than previous decades. Instead of moving ahead in the 1990s, we started going backwards. Also, the majority of the instruments have been stripped off of the songs and the only thing that remains is a midtempo beat, a sample of an "old" record, and some "talk". A lot of people like to name R&B artists that came out in the 1990s as an argument to say that real music is still around. I've noticed when they name these artists, though, every one of them are balladeers. I could care less if they remain because I never liked too many artists that sang strictly ballads from day one. And even the ballads these days have a hip hop feel to them. So like I said before, to me, music is going backwards instead of forwards.

Another argument people have against today's music is the profanity. The profanity doesn't bother me at all. If the music was good, I could care less about the profanity. Actually, I would probably prefer the profanity (I am a Prince fan you know). LOL

So as I said before, to compare my dislike to today's music to the people of the 1950's dislike is totally uncomparable. I don't need to catch up with today's youth...I passed them long ago....they need to catch up to me. Of course, they never could because they are going at a much "slower" pace.
[Edited 12/27/04 6:02am]

Prince was a very popular artist in the '80s. A lot of fans on the Org also came of age during that era. Many of them are skewed towards music around that time period and are biased to music post-1992. Nostalgia, age, changing tastes and musical biases, among other factors blocks a lot of people from understanding or "digging" today's music. Hence, they're quick to dismiss it or devalue it.

JANFAN4L said:

thats true. but most new music is crappy.for example how does chingy's "ballin'" become relevant? thats just gross. but i get what your sayin'

heybaby said:

That's what I was saying to a friend of mine a while ago. I was like, "how can I defend my generation's music properly when you have muthaf**kas runnin' around like J-Kwon and Chingy, I mean WTF?" We both laughed.

LoveAlive said:

ur right...i cannot defend songs like that and say its real..especially when i hate them..alot...but people like christina aguilera...pink...nas...etc etc they make what i would consider real music.

VoicesCarry said:

You've been 19 for over a year now.

JANFAN4L said:

I'm sure there are some equally horrible 80s songs that those of us that were teens at that time would defend. The music to which a person listens between the ages of around 14-19 is usually what they will connect with the most for the rest of their life.

Cloudbuster said:

Nope! Birthday's in July. And I've only on the org about a year, anyway, so I think you might be confusing me with someone else.

Does anyone remember what Gloria Swanson said about the silent film era in Billy Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard" - "We had faces!"

Well, it reminds me of the state of music today. They had voices 10, 20, 30 years ago. Really distinctive, beautiful, timeless voices. And now, I don't hear them anymore. There is no one to replace people like Stevie Nicks, Annie Lennox, Stevie Wonder, Prince, Michael Jackson, Smokey Robinson, Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke etc. I would love just once for someone with a really impressive voice to come along, but it's been a long time....

VoicesCarry said:

Nope!

VoicesCarry said:

I just think it's kind of an evolutionary process, so to speak. Sadly,rock is nearly passe as far as MTV is concerned. That is just too weird. Now, in regard to popular music, video/musical artists seem to rule rather than just the voice/musicality alone. However, there are underground and/or non-MTV artists that are just as good as those back in the day. We just never hear of them coz they don't get a lot of airplay. Actually, however trite, it might be true that video killed the radio star.

Interestingly, even though I'm in my mid-thirties, I like many of the young artists today. Or let's at least say, I don't think that they are altogether "bad." Well, maybe a there are some that suck, but for the most part, I kind find something to like about their music. I was talking to my husband ( he's older than I) about this, and neither of our parents appreciated the music that we listened to when we were growing up for the most part. But since we were brought up in the rock, r&b,blues, etc., eras or at a least the end of the rock era, my hubs and I can relate to current bands better than our parents would ever have been able to relate to our music.

The funny thing is that the opposite is true, too. Our friend's 10 year-old daughter is going through a Beatles phase. For Christmas, she wanted everything that related to the Beatles. Also, when I was teaching high-school, some of my students really enjoyed Led Zeppelin, the Stones, and the Beatles more than contemporary bands. That's pretty cool.

Cloudbuster said:

At least we both like Kate Bush.

sextonseven said:

Hell, yeah!

VoicesCarry said:

sextonseven said:

Yep. There's tosser music in every generation.

JANFAN4L said:

Tosser music.

minneapolisgenius said:

There is a lot of crap now yes. But there was a lot of crap in 8ts 9ts 7ts 6ts or 5ts. Its always been like that. There is a lot of good music these days. there is always a lot of good music. There was always a lot of crap in the top 40. I am 36, i did everything for the first time( well, the interresting stuff in the 8ts. Thats y 8ts music is special to me. But the 8ts where not really a decade of good music. There is a lot of good music these days. Go to a club, go to house or rave party. I have more fun on the dancefloor these days then 20 years ago.
Prince is great, but there are more great artists. Prince did not invent music. A lot of ppl think that prince songs sound alike. and they have a point. Is that a problem? no.....2 each his own. FREE UR MIND AND UR ASS WILL FOLLOW!!!