I'm 27 years old. So, I don't consider myself old by any means. But, watching the VMA's last night I couldn't help but feeling like todays commercial music is horrible. When I was growing up in the 80's the people I watched on TV was Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna, Run DMC, Van Halen, and so much more. Even though I may not have liked everything I saw, at least I could see some originality. It was like a Rainbow of selections.

Now I see artists like Miley Cyrus, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown, Rihanna, Katy Perry, and the Jonas Brothers. This is the stuff that's being praised. Do the young kids REALLY like this?! If there are any teenagers reading this...Do you really like this stuff on MTV, BET, or VH1?

For the older readers. When you were growing up perhaps in the 50s, 60s, or 70s, did you ever have a hard time finding good music on the radio? Now I do. I'm just making sure I'm not hitting some Mid Life Music crisis or something.

Is it just me or is Commercial Music now really Horrible. I don't wanna sound like an old man that only like the "good ol' days". But, I feel sorry for this young generations. Your commercial music is terrible.

Not always. There was always some quality, especially considering the material released between 1954-1989. There was some good commercial music in the nineties but it was starting to crack by then.

I completely agree with you. I think music today is completely horrible. I watched the VMAs last night and I couldnt believe the lack of originality and charisma these artists (or whatever you call them) have today. All the woman are always dressed in the same skanky outfits, singing about the same stupid crap ("Super bitch" or whatever christina agulara sings). All the dancing is the same, repetitious and unoriginal, and the beats and music all sound like recycled garbage from the 90's. I mean of course you had crap music in every decade, but i must say the 90's i think is when music started to go downhill. Everyone just samples other artists now because they can't come up with a decent tune on there own, and then they stick their voices in this machine to make them sound like they can actually sing when they can't. Miley Cyrus, lol Im sorry but I dont know why everyone is freaking out over her. Sure she can sing but I dont see anything special about her act, nothing new, nothing original. I know a lot of people talk crap about michael jackson but honestly he had so much talent...he was original...his music was original. I just dont see anyone with the talent he had now a days. I can't stand the radio, I think its crap. And i really cant stand Alicia Keys, it seems to me like everyone thinks shes so great cause she can play piano. Her voice scares me. Her lyrics are ridiculously stupid. Sorry I hope im not offending anyone here, please dont throw things at me. Just my thoughts

LizaWoman08 said:

I'm glad I'm not the only one that feels like this. I was starting to think that I'm just a grumpy 27 year old. And your right..there are no Artists that can rival the originality an Artist like MJ had. It's even more so evident now, because you can see how many artists are still "borrowing' from him. and what the hell was that Kanye West performance all about. Was that some promo for that Auto Tune vocal program?
[Edited 9/14/08 19:27pm]

I see where you're coming from. We're close in age, but i get incredulous when i think this is the kind of music i'm supposed to enjoy.

I'm sure the generational argument will have some hand in my stance, because let's face it, the Rag-Timers hated their kid's Jazz, who in turn hated their kid's Swing/Jitterbugging music, who eventually hated their kid's rock 'n roll, and so on and so forth. It's just now, we (people who feel this way) hate their own generations music. I guess the way squares hated whatever counter-culture kids their age were listening to.

That said, i can't help but think that today's music, in overly general terms, is ass.

pulpfictionfan said:

see, i agree with you and i have to keep myself in check when i goof on today's pop music, because i don't want to lose mind of the fact that i'm my parents' age when i was first starting to fall in love with music and when i figured out my own tastes and preferences.

but.

my biggest problem with what's in the top 40 today is that it's SO SQUARE. it's bland, it's conformist, it's formulaic, it's vanilla, it's tepid, it's sterile.

there's no danger to it. there's nothing to threaten the older generation and to say "this is ours and you'll have to fight us to take it away." when i was a teenager, my friends had to hide their albums under their mattress if they didn't want their parents to immediately throw such "harmful matter" in the garbage. what parent is going to be threatened by a jonas brothers album?

well, if *I* were a parent, i'd be throwing that shit out and replacing it with some GWAR or something - hideous loud stupid rawk music that kids should be getting off on. stuff that would make grandma cry.

kids are being manipulated by disneytron animatronic pop bands right now, and disney can get away with it because the music industry is in a slump, so a mega-monolithic entertainment empire like disney can manipulate the hell out of it and pander to the people who don't know shit about music but want a happy shiny product they can feel good about their children consuming.

i dunno. watching the VMAs last night reminded me of watching one of those early-60s teen sensation jamborees with frankie and annette. oh, wait...they were disney creations too, weren't they?

I was jammin' to "Wanna Be Starting Something" the other day and I got pissed thinking about how the media compares Neyo, Chris Brown and Usher to MJ. There is no way in hell any of them could come up with something as funky as WBSS.
It takes more than being able to imitate MJ's moves. Notice how it's never their music that is being compared. It's only the style of dancing that they seem to latch on to.

Prince would be on an independent label or a Myspace/Youtube artist if he were to come out now.

It's so sad that you now have go underground or scour the internet just to find good music.

Bishop31 said:

I'm a teenie (19 y/o) and I DON'T watch MTV nor do I listen to certain radio stations. I dislike most of the music. All of my favorite artists came from the 80s or even longer ago. I find no connection to the current music scene.
I only listen to new music by artists like Madonna or when Prince/MJ/Stevie release new stuff...
Most songs of current pop music lack of character and melody. But the 90s were stupid as well, and SO MUCH 80s music is crappy too. It's just that people remember the hits!

Anxiety said:

It's offensive, but not in the manner it should be.

pulpfictionfan said:

i get what you mean, but i think "insulting" hits the bullseye a little sharper.


allow me to illustrate:

tipper gore being offended by "darling nikki"

or

anyone with any sense being offended by whatever the hell that jonas brothers VMA performance was supposed to be

Music listeners have been complaining about the quality of "commercial music" forever. Long before any orgers on this thread were born.

Anxiety said:

Ah, gotcha!


That bitch knows she loved "Darling Nikki", she was just frontin'

graecophilos said:

I agree with you that there was crap music in the 80's & 90's. But just as u mentioned you listen to MJ/Prince/Stevie/Madonna. 3 of those Artists were at there peak in the 80's. And now you and millions of other teenagers still listen to them. Are there any current Artists that came out in the past 10 years that you can say will be a legend 20 years from now?

This is my problem with todays music..
[Edited 9/8/08 11:59am]

Bishop31 said:

Nicely said. There´s NO RAINBOW nowadays.

dag said:

Thanks. that was the best way I could describe it. Because when I was young up until i was about 16 I could spend hours watching videos on BET or MTV. Now I can't stomach more than 5 minutes on BET. MTV doesn't even play videos anymore other than TRL. But they only play like 2 minutes of the videos. The rest of the show is a bunch of 15 year olds screaming for another "Parrot Haired Boy Band".

I remember the good ol' days of Donnie Simpson on BET. Or Fab 5 Freddy on MTV. They would have World Premieres for the New Michael Jackson videos. There is NO artist that would get that treatment now. Perhaps because there are no Artists that put as much creativity as MJ did in his Videos. Now, it's like I'm watching a collage of videos by the same Director, but different Artists.

Are there any current Artists that came out in the past 10 years that you can say will be a legend 20 years from now?

Britney Spears definately

Bishop31 said:

20 years are a long span...
You should REALLY consider how times changed. One great video made an great impact and millions of people watched MTV. Nowadays its way more seperated, people listen to what they want, artists can mostly make an impact with scandals instead of songs.

One artist of today...?

I gotta admit I like some of Robbie Williams' stuff. I guess he's considered an current artist and he's in business since 1990.

LizaWoman08 said:

A Legend for all the wrong reasons. Even Madonna in all the crazy things she did had consistant hits to match. Britney these days is more scandal than output. I guess time will tell..

Bishop31 said:

also, the crazy things madonna has done over the years have 99% been completely orchestrated for publicity, and madge was totally in control of whatever "controversy" she was in the middle of. i think if madonna is a genius at anything, it's at building and controlling her persona. we might WANT to make that parallel with britney, but the fact is, she's a puppet and her marionette wires got tangled up over the past couple of years.

To answer your question, no commercial music has not always sucked. Well, at least commercial funk didn’t suck (funk that was made for the purpose of selling to large amounts of the R&B/funk crowd and caring less if the pop crowd bought it or not). And no, we didn’t have to go searching for good commercial music either, it was all over the radio. It wasn’t underground, it was all over mainstream radio. I could also make thread after thread about particular songs that would get no replies from orgers whatsoever. It’s not that the particular songs weren’t played on mainstream R&B radio, it’s because these songs haven’t been played on mainstream radio in so many years that people have forgotten about them. Another reason is, a lot of funk that never crossed over, never was re-released onto CD years later. However, if people heard a lot of these songs again, they would definitely remember them because they got a lot of radio airplay when they were released.

As for pop/rock, I could care less so I’m not even referring to it. But as far as mainstream R&B goes, when things first started fucking up is when R&B artists started purposely watering down their music in an attempt to appeal to huge amounts of pop listeners. There have been crossover hits in the past but they just kinda crossed over on their own but not on purpose. Lionel Richie left The Commodores and purposely went after an adult contemporary type pop crowd. However, while he was having crossover hits in the early 1980s, funk was still going on strong so he wasn’t changing or killing anything. Actually, Michael Jackson’s huge “Thriller” crossover success is a major reason for R&B acts trying to get the largest crossover audience possible. However, even while “Thriller” was huge as hell, just like Lionel Richie’s success, funk was still going on strong. It wasn’t until a certain little miss goodie two shoes brought her tired ass on the scene that things started to change for the worst. Not only did she purposely go after the pop crowd from day one, but unlike “Thriller’s” success, she did it by making weak ass adult contemporary music so she could even go after grandmothers and get their money too. Then, the R&B airwaves became flooded with adult contemporary type acts that would make full albums with no even one damn fast song on them. Less and less funk was being made during the late 1980s and a many of the scarce fast songs that were existing during this period were rap songs. Yes, rap used to be fast before it turned to shit hop. With hardly any funk any more, people had to turn to rap if they wanted something fast enough to shake ass to. Now, younger people who are into shit hop will try to plead the case that every generation gets older and starts hating the new music. Well, that’s a damn lie because things first starting getting for the worst in 1985 and I was fresh out of high school and only 17 years old. Now, does 17 seem old to you? Hell no.

Yeah, Shitney Houston killed the funk but shit hop buried it after she killed it. Folks like NWA came along with rap that was just as slow and dull as her adult contemporary, then the little white boys started getting into rap, that’s when more and more rappers started becoming slow as hell with not one damn fast song on the album, just like Shitney Houston. The rap artists also started stripping off all their instruments and relying on samples as the entire foundation of their songs, and what's even worse, they would used ballads for their samples (something 1980s acts "above ground" NEVER did) and even slow the tempo of the ballad that was sampled down. And don’t let anybody tell you that rappers never made original music anyway, because dammitt, folks like Egyptian Lover, Pretty Tony, Freestyle, Newcleus, Twilight 22, etc. had been making original music previously. Folks want to label acts like those as electro these days but, dammitt, there was no such term as electro when those acts came out, those acts were considered rap just like the shitty acts that followed them were known as. The term electro came out later so the talentless rap acts would have an argument to plead when people confronted them about the fact that they had no talent. They needed a separate genre to put talented rap acts into so people couldn't compare them and actually see that the new acts had no talent. Anyway, during this time (the very early 1990s, not the late 1990s) is when rap or hip hop became “shit hop”. And no, it ain’t a matter of someone getting older either because that was when I invented the term shit hop and I was only in my early 20s at the time. Now, once again, does the early 20s seem old to you? Hell no. The youngsters try to use the “getting older” excuse because they don’t want to accept the fact that new music actually is shit and has been shit for years.

Dont' get me started on this subject because it just pisses me the hell off.

i agree. im 21, but all i listen to is the music i grew up on and music that my parents grew up on (nas, jodeci, biggie, mint condition, tony toni tone, ATCQ, michaal jackson etc.) and played in ht ehoue when i was young (k-ci and the sunshine band, stevie, marvin, donny, EWF, kool and the gang, smokey etc.)

the only thing i listen to fro this generation is some music from the early 2000's (music soulchild, the lox, ghostface, donell jones etc.)

as for today's music (2005-present) nothing much really. i cant tell you the last time i even took a blink of an eye on any MTV, BET or even listened to the radio. ....and whatever a "mylie cyrus" is, it sounds dumb anyway...

has it always sucked? no, just this generation it started to go down fast, and around 2003 or so, it took a deep dive.
[Edited 9/8/08 14:52pm]

You damn right! And it's all slow and dull as hell just like old senior citizen's music. The only thing difference between the tempo of their music and a bunch of old fogie music is the fact that the new music cusses. Now, a "person simply getting older" would have a problem with the profanity. I don't have a problem with profanity, the nastier the better. My problem is because it is so slow and dull. Having a problem like that doesn't mean you're getting older, that means you're still staying young. The ones that are "old" as hell are the younger generation with their senior citizen tempoed music. It's rediculous.

And also, just like you said, there is no one "cool" with a style of their own to shake things up. As far the thug image shaking things up, that damn thug image has been in style for more than 15 years. What's the matter, these damn kids can't move on to something else? I mean, really. Bell bottoms were in style during the 1970s. Were we still wearing bell bottoms in the 1980s and on into the 1990s? Hell no. Move on people, move on. We changed styles every few years, why can't they?
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[Edited 9/8/08 15:02pm]

Generally, in order for commercial music to be commercial, it needs to "target" the lowest common denominator.
If it doesn't, it stops being commercial.

Anxiety said:

Exactly. Almost all of her big scandals had been at times when she promoted any product. And even her pregnancies and adoptions happened when she releases something.

Anxiety said:

I totally agree. Britney has never had the Artistic control over her career as Madonna did. Which is why madonna will always get more respect from most people. Britney is the total result of what a Factory artist turns into.

Not at all. Sure in every era you will find your crap, nothing is perfect. But you also had a level of artists that could co-exist, you had variety of ages in the artists getting play, different types of music, different producers discvering new ways to create, pushing the envelope and making the listener actually grow with them not just let them become zombies and feed them a steady diet of normalcy.

Here is a fact adn take what you want from it. In the 80's these artists could CO EXIST, meaning they could have albums,singles,videos and tours at the same time.

Prince,Madonna,Michael,Janet,George Michael,John Mellencamp,Eurythmics,Hall and Oates etc....


Now a recent discussion i had with a label person and heres what he said. "we got this Best of Rihanna to put out, but JIVE is putting out the Best of Xtina and we are gonna hold off the Rihanna one till next year" but why? " they are too similar with their audience and we cant have them co existing in the same marketplace" FUNNY SHIT! not even 2 artists at once

vainandy said:

As always, Great post, Andy. Your Funk knowledge amazes me everytime. It's sad to witness the decline of music before your eyes. What's even worse is when people act as if your being old when you point out the obvious.

lastdecember said:

I know she's like 3 albums deep but how is it that Rhianna has a Best of release coming out? I don't really want to know the answer but I thought the question was worth bringing up.

Thank you. And I know you aren't nearly as old as I am so the fact that someone that much younger than me knows what time it is really means a lot. There are even younger orgers than you that know what time it is also. I don't know how so many gravitated to this one site but it's a good thing to see.

lastdecember said:

That's crazy. I don't know what's worst, the fact that Rihanna is even coming out with a "Best Of..' or them being afraid to bring it out because her and Xtina are so similar. It speaks volumes of how unoriginal these artists are these days. You would never hear a Label exec. for MJ, Prince, or Madonna scared to release a product for fear of the same Marketplace. It's like the same soul with a different name.