thawed_caveman , (edited )

I have all of the Billboard Top 100's for every year from 1950 to 2009. When i downloaded it i thought that litterally every popular song i've heard of would be on there.

Not only are there a lot missing, there's so so much crap. It turns out bland generic love ballads have sold really well throughout the decades, and genuinely memorable songs are a lot fewer than 100 a year. Not even to mention all the ones that don't chart. Sure 1957 had Elvis's Jailhouse Rock, but you know what else it had? Elvis's Loving You, Elvis's Love Me, and Jerry Lewis's "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody". Cool. Thanks for that, Billboard.

Overall there's a tremendous survivorhip bias. By definition we only remember the memorable songs, which gives the illusion that everything was memorable.

But also, having grown up in the 2000's, i really think it's one of the worst decades for music. So much so that i was into 60's rock back then, and in the 2010's i was into the new wave of thrash metal, literally one of the most regressive genres there are. I wasn't alive for the 80's, i didn't like the video games or the movies and didn't participate in virtually any of the 80's nostalgia that was trendy at the time, but i did prefer the music to anything my current decade had to offer.

udon OP ,

🏆 Official most helpful comment

chunkystyles ,

I've heard a saying, and I really like it.

The best music is the music that was popular when you were a teenager.

Basically whatever was popular in your formative years will be your favorite. Because that is the time where you start experiencing all that music can be and expanding your horizons. And every generation says the music if their youth was the best. And everything after that is garbage.

None of it is true.

Nacktmull , (edited )
@Nacktmull@lemmy.world avatar

Yes it was, because you could hear the singers/rappers actual voice, instead of purposefully misadjusted autotune.

trashgirlfriend ,

There's a lot of artists today who don't do that?

Plus vocal correction in general has been done for ages, it was just much more labour intensive before autotune.

Nacktmull , (edited )
@Nacktmull@lemmy.world avatar

There’s a lot of artists today who don’t do that?

That statement is true by itself ofc. However, my point still stands because there have never been more artists using purposefully misadjusted autotune than today and there are even genres now in which it is mandatory.

Plus vocal correction in general has been done for ages, it was just much more labour intensive before autotune.

How is that relevant to my comment? Sure, vocal correction is what Autotune was initially developed for but as we all can hear that is not what they do with it nowadays, instead they purposefully misadjust it to create the most unnatural vocal sound possible ...

trashgirlfriend ,

Issue: "I don't like music where autotune is used to heavily modify the singers voice."

Investigation:

There are artists which do not use this type of effect in their music.

What to do:

You can listen to music which does not incorporate this type of sound.

Examples of other sounds you may avoid if you do not like them:

Screaming, the tuba, Ed Sheeran, etc.

Nacktmull ,
@Nacktmull@lemmy.world avatar

Issue: “I don’t like music where autotune is used to heavily modify the singers voice.”

No, that is not my issue. What I am unhappy about is that genres I started to listen to when there was zero autotune abuse (and which I loved very much), have been ruined for me because now 80% of the releases have Autotune robot vocals.

Investigation:
There are artists which do not use this type of effect in their music.
What to do:
You can listen to music which does not incorporate this type of sound.
Examples of other sounds you may avoid if you do not like them:
Screaming, the tuba, Ed Sheeran, etc.

Nope, there are many details that define the style of an artist or a genre, if they use Autotune is only one of those. I am certainly not going to listen to artists and genres I do not like, just because they use their natural voice.

HobbitFoot ,

Cher used auto tune a lot and most of her career was in the 70's.

Nacktmull , (edited )
@Nacktmull@lemmy.world avatar

Not sure what you mean to imply, please elaborate. All I know is that:

  1. Antares Autotune was first released in 1997, before that there was no Autotune, so it was definitely not used before that. The intended use was to inconspicuously correct small mistakes, when singers would not hit the exact note, in a way that listeners would NOT notice if the plugin was adjusted correctly.

  2. One year later, Cher made purposefully misadjusted autotune famous with the song Believe

HobbitFoot ,

You could be a bad singer before Auto tune and still have a career.

Nacktmull ,
@Nacktmull@lemmy.world avatar

Sure, why not.

Mastengwe ,

Yes.

LunarLoony ,
@LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

C'mon, they weren't that bad. A bit esoteric at times, sure...

stoy ,

Music from the past has been filtered through many people, and a concensus has developed on what is good music and what is not.

This means that we simply don't hear the names of bands producing the crap of the day, and are just focusing on the top 20-75% of music from an era.

udon OP ,

That is exactly why I asked for the trash that was filtered out. Some people posted trashy old music examples here

gregorum ,
@gregorum@lemm.ee avatar

Always

HubertManne ,
@HubertManne@kbin.social avatar

I liked music before my time to begin with but more modern stuff as well. Still even older songs than the normal before my main likes can be really good. like band of gold.

willya ,
@willya@lemmyf.uk avatar

No, not at all.

IchNichtenLichten ,
@IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world avatar

The best music sounded better, I’m not a fan of the harsh, over compressed and brick wall limited digital stuff these days. It’s tiring to listen to.

Aussiemandeus ,
@Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone avatar

I don't know about better, but it's survival bias.

Only the good music is remembered

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

I see this said a lot and as someone who lived through the 80's and 90's I just have to ask: If that was true, why did people in the 80's or 90's not think music mostly sucked, but people tend to think that now about current music?

Aussiemandeus ,
@Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone avatar

There was less options back then, only the better stuff really made it out to public consumption.

I could be wrong but it's just my take on it all

udon OP ,

Like the pure musical gold of Boney M?

rickyrigatoni ,
@rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee avatar

These days any asshole can put their shitty music on soundcloud and buy a spambotnet to post it a thousand times a day. Back then only assholes with the right connections and money got their shitty music on the radio.

eagleeyedtiger ,

I can guarantee you there were people in the 80's and 90's who thought music was better in the 50's and 60's and so on and so forth all the way back through time since Grog hit two sticks together rhythmically

ouRKaoS ,

I was always more partial to Kroog banging stones together in a pattern.

SquiffSquiff ,

People who think this about current music simply aren't hearing/listening to a lot of current music. There's great stuff out there being created all the time but you'd never come across it in 'mainstream' places. Take a genre I really like (I realise not everyone does), blues guitar/vocals. 3 brilliant current artists:

  • Grace Bowers (will be 18 in July)
  • Christone "Kingfish" Ingram (currently 25 years old)
  • Muireann Bradley (also currently 17 years old)

Obviously with those ages, these aren't golden agers coating on past glories. To take someone totally different, Ren isn't 'commercial', even if some of the people he's worked with, e.g. Chinchilla, are. I don't expect to see any of these artists become 'mainstream' like e.g. Ed Sheeran or Taylor Swift.

gap_betweenus ,

Drums by the fire on shrooms was the best music epoch, after that all down hill. Stoneage gang.

spittingimage ,
@spittingimage@lemmy.world avatar

There's a new classics station in my city, playing music from the 90s, 00s and 10s. I've been listening to it almost exclusively. Based on that I'm going to say it wasn't, but we've forgotten about the stuff we didn't like.

Blackout ,
@Blackout@kbin.run avatar

Well the 50s was a magical time.

LanternEverywhere ,

Holy fucking shit literally laughing out loud over here!!!

pastermil ,

Just because there are more crap music these days, doesn't mean music is worse these days.

bpev ,

I would say no.

Honestly, since directly after the dubstep craze era, there has been suuuuuuch good music, because I feel like that's when electronics became much more mainstream for ALL musicians to play with. Prior and during that time, I think a lot of electronic music was about experimenting with sounds. But during that era I think was when everyday musicians got comfortable with the soundscapes, and started incorporating all their other music knowledge and to make more varied, complex, and interesting stuff.

The problem is just finding the good music, since it can be so quick for anyone to produce and distribute it. There's just way too much.

andyburke ,
@andyburke@fedia.io avatar

Sweet summer child, replace "dubstep" with "techno" or "techno" with "disco" or ....

bpev ,

? I mean I'm not disagreeing with you. Each of these step changes increased the usage of technology dramatically. I'm not really naming dubstep as the instigator as much as much as I'm just using that to describe the general point in time where I felt like computers became more prevalent as the defacto composition tool. I feel like this is around the time where computer music has really evolved in usage in all genres. For example, the amount of computers in new orchestral scores right now is wild. Of course it was used long before this, but there's a big difference between usage in specific genres and/or to make music stand out, and it being a part of the general palette for every genre.

andyburke ,
@andyburke@fedia.io avatar

Personally I feel your view is too constrained to your own timeline and experiences and is discounting the spread of technology in music for at least a century.

bpev ,

I mean, that very well could be so! After all, I've only lived during my timeline, so recency bias probably does make changes seem more dramatic 😂 . But I do feel like computer usage has created a pretty significant change in how music is composed and produced compared to prior technology, and a lot of those innovations are relatively recent.

andyburke ,
@andyburke@fedia.io avatar

Look, I agree, but:

https://youtu.be/n6QsusDS_8A?si=BbLriyh73saY-XbT

Someone just like you would have written the same comment back then.

It is always this way.

bpev ,

I'd probably agree with them 😂 . This is a cool video thanks for linking!

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