MotownSubdivision said:

JayCrawford said:

The 90s, even the 00s didn't have anything that comes close to what the 50s-80s had.

Disagree 1000% about the 90s. Grunge/alt rock and hip-hop put the 90s above the 80s IMO.

Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam....that was fantastic music, better than 80s glam rock.

uPtoWnNY said:

JayCrawford said:

JayCrawford said:

uPtoWnNY said:

Disagree 1000% about the 90s. Grunge/alt rock and hip-hop put the 90s above the 80s IMO.

Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam....that was fantastic music, better than 80s glam rock.

Lool! Sure. If you think that was better than what the 80s had like Michael Jackson, Prince, Sade, Whitney, Donna Summer, Metallica, Queen, The Police, U2, George Michael, Lionel Richie, Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Van Halen, Guns n Roses, The Cure, R.E.M. Def Leppard, NWA, Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, Run DMC, Public Enemy, Tina turner, Chaka Khan, Luther Vandross, Patti Labelle. 90s rap doesn't compete on the level of talent the 80s had and so does 90s. rock. You probably grew up in the 90s. [Edited 12/13/20 8:01am]

Well, that's just YOUR opinion..and no, I didn't grow up in the 90s, but the music from that decade moves me more than the 80s.

Facelift, Dirt, Badmotorfinger, Superunknown, Ten, Core, Nevermind, In Utero, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness....just as great as any music from the 80s, and that includes Prince, who I became a fan of in '79.

uPtoWnNY said:

Good decade for alt-rock in general. Good decade for Trip-Hop, good decade for hip hop! Good decade for pop punk. Good decade for Britpop. I mean, the only good music is the stuff looking forward, even the supposedly retro sounds of Britpop included many, many bands that could not have existed previously (Pulp, Blur, hell even Supergrass).

It sounds like music changed into something you didn't like, i've been through that many a time, you just gotta keep digging. Usually when the charts suck then the non-chartstuff is good. Grunge is a varied genre, Soundgarden sound nothing like Nirvana who sound nothing like Pearl Jam who sound nothing like Belly who sound nothing like whoever. I've been relistening to Jawbox recently, it'd been a good while since i'd listened to them, good albums. Would you like them? Probably not

[Edited 12/14/20 5:35am]

EmmaMcG said:

purplethunder3121 said:

Why don't you just look them up?

Exactly

Eh? Look up what? I want something to CLICK on. Kinda hard to "look up" 10 people or whatever *separately* (which I did do, btw). Also, we get to discuss them.

It changed, as popular music always has.

And IMO, the focus needs to be on what has happened to popular music, not music as a whole. There's a lot of repetitive, throwaway music topping sales and charts. But it's always been that way.

The difference in the 60's and 70's, and to quite a degree, the 80's, was that many of the most talented artists regardless of genre were also the most popular and top selling acts. It hasn't been that way for some time.

There is quite a lot of interesting, thought-provoking and enjoyable music out there to explore. We just can't write off music as a whole because we can't connect to or like what's popular these days.

Music lovers have to search for good material. it won't simply be fed to us like it was to Boomers like my folks, and X'ers like myself.

namepeace said:

It changed, as popular music always has.

And IMO, the focus needs to be on what has happened to popular music, not music as a whole. There's a lot of repetitive, throwaway music topping sales and charts. But it's always been that way.

The difference in the 60's and 70's, and to quite a degree, the 80's, was that many of the most talented artists regardless of genre were also the most popular and top selling acts. It hasn't been that way for some time.

There is quite a lot of interesting, thought-provoking and enjoyable music out there to explore. We just can't write off music as a whole because we can't connect to or like what's popular these days.

Music lovers have to search for good material. it won't simply be fed to us like it was to Boomers like my folks, and X'ers like myself.

Thank god for streaming services so I can listen to what I want to and not what iHeart or someone else wants to shove down my throat.

namepeace said:

MotownSubdivision said:

namepeace said:

The difference in the 60's and 70's, and to quite a degree, the 80's, was that many of the most talented artists regardless of genre were also the most popular and top selling acts. It hasn't been that way for some time.

This sums it up. The biggest were drfinitely the best.

I can think of -- or maybe just speculate on -- 2 reasons why.

One, in those times, it seems the industry put a high priority on artist development/A&R. Artists were encouraged (or at least, allowed room) to grow, and sometimes protected from themselves. This allowed for so many artists to reach their peaks creatively and commercially.

Second, in those times, DJs across all formats were tastemakers, and in many cases, king-and-queen-makers. They got records on the air that would not have been as successful otherwise, and sometimes even uncovered hidden gems from established artists.

I can't help but think of artists back then who could have easily been lost in the sauce today, and other underappreciated artists of today who may have had a chance to hit it big back then.

[Edited 12/15/20 14:22pm]

namepeace said:

That's what people said back in the '50s...

purplethunder3121 said:

JayCrawford said:

MickyDolenz said:

So what? Paul McCartney can do that.

I always thought Paul was better than Prince at that. There are certain Prince fans who do act like the man couldn't do no wrong

lol........

looby said:

EmmaMcG said:

So called "popular" music has always been very much a mixed bag. A lot of those artists mentioned in the OP were never big commercial acts. Even Prince had relatively little chart success. Shakin' Stevens had more UK top 10 hits in the 80s than Prince did. So even during his heyday, Prince was never in the same category as the likes of Michael Jackson and Madonna. Now, I think his music is miles ahead of pretty much any 80s act but talent has never been equal to chart success. And it's the same now. The charts are predominantly filled with crap, manufactured pop acts. But great music still exists and just like most other decades, you have to look outside the charts to find it. Acts like Mayer Hawthorne, Ekkah, Tuxedo, Chromeo, Niki & The Dove, Boulevards, Chromatics, Gaslight Anthem, Harts etc are all relatively new and all put out quality music.

Uh, excuse you! To Prince fans, Michael Jackson and Madonna were "never in the same category" as Prince! All Michael could do better than Prince, was dance, but Prince wrote his own songs, played his own instruments, and could sing his ass off, in both low and high pitch. He wasn't some one note, commercialized puppet, who only thought that "making the charts and having chart success" was his end all and be all.

[Edited 12/10/20 11:44am]

exactly, looby.

.

the ONLY thing MJ &/or Madonna has over Prince is total album sales &/or "#1 singles/albums".

.

Prince - in every other substantial & significant way - is far superior to MJ & Madonna. at least Madonna had enough motivation (or arrogance?) to want to be able to strum a few bar chords on some random guitar (who knows how long it took her to "master" those bar chords..) as for MJ - someone literally needs to post a video that shows him actually playing an instrument - even bongos - with even minimal competence. I'm getting some popcorn & a nice, comfortable seat - I expect to be WAITING A GOOD MINUTE on that 1..

.

anyone can say they prefer the music of MJ &/or Madonna, based solely on their own personal preference.. this cannot realistically be argued. but in terms of pure musical talent & musical genius.. Prince runs MULTIPLE circles around anyone else who became "popular" in the 80s

Shit hop happened.

vainandy said:

Phase3 said:

JayCrawford said:

vainandy said:

Shit hop happened.

I wouldn't just blame it on shitty so called gangster rap, you had the so called "R&B" that was just as slow as a turtle's walkspeed and 90% of it was rehash sampling, the teen pop explosion, Europop, the whole invasion of 500000000 boy bands and girl group's who had 0 talent and were 90% of the time 1 hit wonders, I think grunge killed rock music, rise of autotune's. Man... I wish the 90s didn't happen for music..

I was aware of rock but I didn't pay much attention to grunge because I was mainly heavily into R&B in those days. My first love was disco so during the disco backlash in 1979, pop radio had almost stopped playing it so I searched all over the dial for more of it. That's when I came across R&B radio which was still playing disco and also playing funk which, at the time, was the closest sounding thing to disco. I converted to R&B radio and listened to it almost exclusively until 1997 although I should have taken it off my dail about five years earlier when house/dance type R&B drizzled out of the mainstream and the only thing that remained on R&B radio was slow to midtempo shit hop and adult contemporary R&B. Prince had come to my area in 1997 and the main station that was advertising the concert was a pop station which had all types of promotions, gimmicks, and contests for the concert. I tuned in to the station to keep informed on all the info for the concert and the music I was hearing on the station, while not nearly as good as pop/rock from the 1980s, sounded much better than what I was hearing on R&B radio so I started listening mainly to that station until around 1998 or 1999 when we got our first oldies station that played music from the 1960s and 1970s and later branched out into the 1980s. The previous oldies stations played mainly 1950s stuff so the more current oldies were more my taste. I started listening mainly to the oldies station but I still would flip back and forth to the current stations just to see if any progress had been made. When the year 2000 arrived, I just knew we were going to have a complete style change like all the previous decades but I was wrong. I kept flipping back and forth for about two years to give a style change a little time to occur but it never did so I said fuck it, took current stations off my dial, and never looked back. 2010 arrived and still no style change. It's 2020 and I'm not holding my breath any more for a style change. I doubt we will have one this decade either.

.

Anyway, during my brief return to pop/rock radio in the late 1990s, what I did notice, which I hated, was some of the pop/rock was turning into folk sounding music which sounds a step away from country music to my ears. But folk is even more depressing sounding because it's all stripped down and the voices sound like they are moaning in pain like a dying cow. There was a singer called Jewell at the time that bored the hell out of me. I think all that came as a result of everyone wanting to do "MTV Unplugged" at the time which bored the absolute hell out of me. When they stripped those songs down, they no longer sounded like rock, they sounded like country. Then there were certain voices that just irritated the hell out of me. I remember a video of a group called Four Non Blondes and the sound of their voices sounded absolutely horrible to me. And Alanis Morisett, when I hear her voice, I think of a used tampon. The sound of it just irks the hell out of me.

.

Once I dropped current music, I've been entertaining myself by catching up on loads of old rock from the 70s and 80s that I previously ignored because I was heavy into funk. A lot of it sounds new and fresh to me because I didn't listen to it much back then. I've recently branched out even further in the past to the 60s and exploring Beatles albums which I've been loving. Hell, I've even gone back to the 40s and checking out The Andrews Sisters. The worse current music becomes, the further back in time I keep exploring. If they keep it up, I'll eventually end up in the 1800s which would definitely turn me back forward because it would be so slow, I would think I was listening to current music.

vainandy said:

vainandy said:

JayCrawford said:

vainandy said:

I was aware of rock but I didn't pay much attention to grunge because I was mainly heavily into R&B in those days. My first love was disco so during the disco backlash in 1979, pop radio had almost stopped playing it so I searched all over the dial for more of it. That's when I came across R&B radio which was still playing disco and also playing funk which, at the time, was the closest sounding thing to disco. I converted to R&B radio and listened to it almost exclusively until 1997 although I should have taken it off my dail about five years earlier when house/dance type R&B drizzled out of the mainstream and the only thing that remained on R&B radio was slow to midtempo shit hop and adult contemporary R&B. Prince had come to my area in 1997 and the main station that was advertising the concert was a pop station which had all types of promotions, gimmicks, and contests for the concert. I tuned in to the station to keep informed on all the info for the concert and the music I was hearing on the station, while not nearly as good as pop/rock from the 1980s, sounded much better than what I was hearing on R&B radio so I started listening mainly to that station until around 1998 or 1999 when we got our first oldies station that played music from the 1960s and 1970s and later branched out into the 1980s. The previous oldies stations played mainly 1950s stuff so the more current oldies were more my taste. I started listening mainly to the oldies station but I still would flip back and forth to the current stations just to see if any progress had been made. When the year 2000 arrived, I just knew we were going to have a complete style change like all the previous decades but I was wrong. I kept flipping back and forth for about two years to give a style change a little time to occur but it never did so I said fuck it, took current stations off my dial, and never looked back. 2010 arrived and still no style change. It's 2020 and I'm not holding my breath any more for a style change. I doubt we will have one this decade either.

.

Anyway, during my brief return to pop/rock radio in the late 1990s, what I did notice, which I hated, was some of the pop/rock was turning into folk sounding music which sounds a step away from country music to my ears. But folk is even more depressing sounding because it's all stripped down and the voices sound like they are moaning in pain like a dying cow. There was a singer called Jewell at the time that bored the hell out of me. I think all that came as a result of everyone wanting to do "MTV Unplugged" at the time which bored the absolute hell out of me. When they stripped those songs down, they no longer sounded like rock, they sounded like country. Then there were certain voices that just irritated the hell out of me. I remember a video of a group called Four Non Blondes and the sound of their voices sounded absolutely horrible to me. And Alanis Morisett, when I hear her voice, I think of a used tampon. The sound of it just irks the hell out of me.

.

Once I dropped current music, I've been entertaining myself by catching up on loads of old rock from the 70s and 80s that I previously ignored because I was heavy into funk. A lot of it sounds new and fresh to me because I didn't listen to it much back then. I've recently branched out even further in the past to the 60s and exploring Beatles albums which I've been loving. Hell, I've even gone back to the 40s and checking out The Andrews Sisters. The worse current music becomes, the further back in time I keep exploring. If they keep it up, I'll eventually end up in the 1800s which would definitely turn me back forward because it would be so slow, I would think I was listening to current music.

When would you say music went downhill all together? What year specifically? I'm going with around 94ish time. Hell most of my favourite artists were done or dead before then. Marvin Gaye (died in 84), Donna Summer was pretty much done after that awful piss poor Mistaken Identity album which did bad and she wasn't with a record label for many years then out of the picture mainstream wise, James Brown was... Done, Stevie Wonder's career took a nosedive after the 70s when he was the trend chaser. Instead we had someone like Mariah Carey 🤣

It's hard to say but the last time I heard a song on the radio that I absolutely fell in love with was probably 1993 when I heard "Movin' On Up" by M People. Even at that time though, there was still more stuff that I didn't like on the radio than stuff that I did like. Radio in the 1970s and 1980s had previously been more fast stuff on the air than slow stuff. It had turned around to be the exact opposite. It had gotten sooooooo bad that you might hear only one fast song per hour. That's a damn shame and a huge fall from where radio had previously been and it was still only the early 1990s. And as for ever popular argument that people like to make.... "All older generations hate the current music when they get older."...... Well, that's a bunch of bullshit because I was at the ripe old age of my early 20s and I hated the absolute hell out of it. Previous generations hated new music because it was too fast for them. They thought all that fast rhythmic music was "the work of the devil". I was the exact opposite. I hated the new music because it was too slow. If anything, especially since I was only in my early 20s, everyone else around me, including people my own age, was turning into old farts that only like slow music and I was the only one that remained young. I used to tell them all the time.... "Hell, you're the same age as me, in my 20s, but all that slow mess you like, you have the taste of someone who is in a nursing home.". I used to insult and piss them off by telling them they might as well be listening to Lawrence Welk. I try using those same insults today but they don't work any more because these youngsters don't even know who the hell Lawrence Welk is. Plus, they weren't even alive when it was considered uncool to only like slow music and no fast music. In my day, if you didn't listen to any hard type of music, you were considered sissy as hell.

.

I would say music fell off even earlier than 1993 though because I remember when there was a lot of hype about the upcoming Janet Jackson album, "Janet". I was already disgusted with mainstream music by then so I got excited when I heard it was coming out because she had jammed sooooo hard on "Rhythm Nation". I figured that all we needed was for somebody who was as big as she was to make a comeback, throwdown real hard, and turn things back around. Boy was I wrong. Instead of trying to beat the boring assholes, she joined them. I dropped her ass like a hotcake and called her every sellout name I could think of. I just hung around for the house/dance type tracks but the radio wasn't playing them anymore and never had been playing many of them. I heard them mainly in the clubs so I really didn't need radio at that time. I also liked the fast rap at the time such as 2 Live Crew, Dis N Dat, 69 Boyz, 95 South, etc. but after hearing "Planet Rock", "Egypt, Egypt", and so many of the old songs sampled over and over in those songs in every way possible, I said to myself, hell, I'm not hearing anything new, just a really good DJ altering the songs. Hell, make something actually "new" that is a "song" and not a "mix" and let the DJs do their talent in the clubs, not on the records. I absolutely love a good DJ and a DJ can't do their thing if the records they are mixing aren't actual songs but simply some rapping over a mix. They are just simply mixing someone else's mix.

.

As for Stevie and Donna. I loved Donna all the way through "She Works Hard For The Money". After that, I simply only like the songs "Dinner With Gershwin" and "This Time I Know It's For Real" but not for whole albums like before. And with Stevie, his last great album was "Hotter Than July" which was my favorite. There's a few songs I like after that but as far as albums go, "Hotter Than July" is the last one I like.

vainandy said:

JayCrawford said:

But man just like Prince once said "Golden ages of 60s, 70s and 80s of music." He's not wrong. Thank god for YouTube hey.

If you think Prince is right, then you wouldn't use Youtube for music. Prince spent a lot of time having his music taken off from there or threatening to sue people like the woman with the baby video. As soon as he passed, his videos started show up and official uploads too.

alphastreet said:

Welcome back vainandy, good to see you!

Thanks honey. I just popped in to see if there was any news on the next Prince project and saw a rumor thread that it might be a "Diamonds and Pearls" deluxe which I hope like hell is not true.

.

Then I came over here to my old stomping grounds and got sidetracked. As I scrolled down and read the thread titles, I thought "Damn, this place ain't what it used to be.". You know we used to have a ton of threads up in here on a lot of forgotten jams through the years. Then I saw a good bitching thread and saw bitchers bitching because other bitchers bitched. Well, you know a bitch like me couldn't resist. Poor things just keep insisting that good music still exists with no proof to back it up. Hell, it makes me wondering if they're posting from the White House.