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Is Music Really Getting Worse?
www.quora.com/Does-the-common-complaint-that-modern-music-is-getting-worse-have-any-merit/answer/Alex-Johnston-39
Every single generation has its batch of contrarians who think that music is somehow going "downhill" and is not as good as their own era or some previous era.
And it's utter fucking bullshit every single fucking time.
The response in the link above doesn't even get into a comparison of some of the most banal and trivial music of the era being touted as "good" music, although it mentions it. I host a dance event that is specifically themed around music of that exact era. I *like* that era of music.
But let me tell you about some of the crappy ass music put out in that era. Nonsense lyrics, repetitive and simple melodies, formulaic writing, mediocre performances. Meanwhile, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Kesha, Miley, and all the rest are fucking performing their asses off to music with hooks that are catchy and enjoyable.
You don't have to *like* them, just know that they're not any worse than any other era of music. Music of previous eras that you only know about today because it was *popular* enough to have survived through the years, I might add.
These half-baked rants always remind me of the Harper Hall Trilogy from the Dragonriders of Pern series, where a truly brilliant and talented singer and songwriter goes undiscovered for years because people think her tunes are "just little twiddles". But the reality is that her music is *memorable* and able to evoke feelings in the listeners.
In a society where education is passed through music, the ability to write music that listeners can remember easily and attach emotionally to is an incredibly valuable skill that tangibly benefits the entire society. The more classical orchestral pieces might be rich and complex, but they are only accessible to a small percentage of the population. While that has some value too, it's certainly not the *only* thing of value in music, and I would argue that inaccessibility actually *decreases* its value - if it's only "good" when it's not "popular", that means fewer people *like* it, which means it's less accessible to fewer people. What good is "good" if nobody but you likes it?
I'll tell you what's banal and trivial - music snobs who think their particular genre or era of music is the only music of value. You're not some highly evolved specimen of taste and discernment that raises you above the masses. You have limited imagination and vision and an undeserved ego who is missing out on a whole range of pleasurable experiences that the rest of us are fortunate enough to have access to.
It's a supremely arrogant, classist position to think that, just because lots of people like something, it must not be good and the only things that have value are things that are out of reach to most people. And to think that music of a bygone era is somehow always "better" than modern music is the result of several logical fallacies including Confirmation Bias, Rosy Retrospection, Declinism, and most importantly Survivorship Bias. Older music is only "better" because only the "better" stuff stuck around long enough for later generations to hear it. The far more numerous "crap" got buried in obscurity over time.
Refusing to like a kind of music just because a lot of other people like it, or a specific kind of people like it, makes you just as much a slave to "demographic brainwashing" as those you deride because you're still being told what to like and what not to like on the basis of outside pressures, not your own personal enjoyment. For more on the arrogant, classist segregation of musical genres, see:
www.runoutnumbers.com/blog/2015/11/16/everything-except-country-and-rap
www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/3/27/its-not-country-youre-just-classist/
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150603124545.htm
https://junkee.com/time-stop-calling-pop-music-guilty-pleasure/110264
#FormerMusician #YearsOfMusicalTheory #Dancer #YesILikePopMusicAndClassicRockMusicAndClassicalMusicAndMusicFromOtherCultures
Every single generation has its batch of contrarians who think that music is somehow going "downhill" and is not as good as their own era or some previous era.
And it's utter fucking bullshit every single fucking time.
The response in the link above doesn't even get into a comparison of some of the most banal and trivial music of the era being touted as "good" music, although it mentions it. I host a dance event that is specifically themed around music of that exact era. I *like* that era of music.
But let me tell you about some of the crappy ass music put out in that era. Nonsense lyrics, repetitive and simple melodies, formulaic writing, mediocre performances. Meanwhile, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Kesha, Miley, and all the rest are fucking performing their asses off to music with hooks that are catchy and enjoyable.
You don't have to *like* them, just know that they're not any worse than any other era of music. Music of previous eras that you only know about today because it was *popular* enough to have survived through the years, I might add.
These half-baked rants always remind me of the Harper Hall Trilogy from the Dragonriders of Pern series, where a truly brilliant and talented singer and songwriter goes undiscovered for years because people think her tunes are "just little twiddles". But the reality is that her music is *memorable* and able to evoke feelings in the listeners.
In a society where education is passed through music, the ability to write music that listeners can remember easily and attach emotionally to is an incredibly valuable skill that tangibly benefits the entire society. The more classical orchestral pieces might be rich and complex, but they are only accessible to a small percentage of the population. While that has some value too, it's certainly not the *only* thing of value in music, and I would argue that inaccessibility actually *decreases* its value - if it's only "good" when it's not "popular", that means fewer people *like* it, which means it's less accessible to fewer people. What good is "good" if nobody but you likes it?
I'll tell you what's banal and trivial - music snobs who think their particular genre or era of music is the only music of value. You're not some highly evolved specimen of taste and discernment that raises you above the masses. You have limited imagination and vision and an undeserved ego who is missing out on a whole range of pleasurable experiences that the rest of us are fortunate enough to have access to.
It's a supremely arrogant, classist position to think that, just because lots of people like something, it must not be good and the only things that have value are things that are out of reach to most people. And to think that music of a bygone era is somehow always "better" than modern music is the result of several logical fallacies including Confirmation Bias, Rosy Retrospection, Declinism, and most importantly Survivorship Bias. Older music is only "better" because only the "better" stuff stuck around long enough for later generations to hear it. The far more numerous "crap" got buried in obscurity over time.
Refusing to like a kind of music just because a lot of other people like it, or a specific kind of people like it, makes you just as much a slave to "demographic brainwashing" as those you deride because you're still being told what to like and what not to like on the basis of outside pressures, not your own personal enjoyment. For more on the arrogant, classist segregation of musical genres, see:
www.runoutnumbers.com/blog/2015/11/16/everything-except-country-and-rap
www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/3/27/its-not-country-youre-just-classist/
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150603124545.htm
https://junkee.com/time-stop-calling-pop-music-guilty-pleasure/110264
#FormerMusician #YearsOfMusicalTheory #Dancer #YesILikePopMusicAndClassicRockMusicAndClassicalMusicAndMusicFromOtherCultures