I don't know, I've been hearing a lot of music lately and comparing it to music from the past, I think lately music's going down in terms of quality. Of course, I'm talking about a majority of the tunes that make it to the Top 40 charts. Is music becoming uninspired?
Music about fifty to ten years ago, they used all sorts of crazy chords and stuff in the music regardless of what genre it was. Rock, disco, hip hop, pop, folk, early rap, etc. And the beats were interesting all the time. And then in the late 1990s, the use of chord patterns lessened. When it used to be about 15 chords per song in the past, it became about 8 in the 1990s. Also, song topics started to consistently focus mainly on teenage romance, etc. One of my pet peeves is the fact that artists try to use the word "love" for a lot of the teenage romances that clearly are no more than superficial crushes. Which are fine, as long as it isn't romanticised to be "love."
And then came the new millennium and the chords lessened in mainstream songs. A typical pop song (pop-rock, hip-pop, etc.) carried only 4 or 5 chords throughout the whole thing. Vocal abilities started to become mediocre and more reliant on technical enhancement. The topic stayed on "love," but now was made worse as songs that use "love" somewhere within the lyrics talk about sex and lust mostly. A few years into the 2000s, the use of instruments gradually decreased and right now it's just mainly a Neptunes/Timbaland-type beat with some anonymous vocals thrown in singing monotonously about how they want to impress that guy or girl at the club. The lyrics are no longer even focusing on the topic, they're just mainly using gimmicky phrases as metaphors for sex. (ie. "I'll take you to the candy shop, I'll let you lick the lollipop")
As for rock songs lately, well I find it hard to distinguish a lot of punk/rock bands from each other. I can't tell the difference between Fall Out Boy and Simple Plan, for example. The lyrics though, have some substance in a lot of the songs which I'm glad for, but a lot of the time they're pretty negative.
As for the music videos, it used to be just moving images to accompany the music. Recently, it's switched to background music accompanying videos that just look pretty.
Now, I'm not saying all this goes for EVERY band or artist out there, there are wonderful musicians out now that continue to make unique music with lyrical masterpieces and talented vocals, or at least one or two of those. That's what I like to hear on the radio, it just annoys me lately that nearly everything else sounds the same. And I say nearly everything, not all.
So does anybody else thing music lately is uninspired? Has it become just business and marketing strategies and numbers and money? This makes me sad.
Sorry if I offended anyone, this is just my ranting.
Music about fifty to ten years ago, they used all sorts of crazy chords and stuff in the music regardless of what genre it was. Rock, disco, hip hop, pop, folk, early rap, etc. And the beats were interesting all the time. And then in the late 1990s, the use of chord patterns lessened. When it used to be about 15 chords per song in the past, it became about 8 in the 1990s. Also, song topics started to consistently focus mainly on teenage romance, etc. One of my pet peeves is the fact that artists try to use the word "love" for a lot of the teenage romances that clearly are no more than superficial crushes. Which are fine, as long as it isn't romanticised to be "love."
And then came the new millennium and the chords lessened in mainstream songs. A typical pop song (pop-rock, hip-pop, etc.) carried only 4 or 5 chords throughout the whole thing. Vocal abilities started to become mediocre and more reliant on technical enhancement. The topic stayed on "love," but now was made worse as songs that use "love" somewhere within the lyrics talk about sex and lust mostly. A few years into the 2000s, the use of instruments gradually decreased and right now it's just mainly a Neptunes/Timbaland-type beat with some anonymous vocals thrown in singing monotonously about how they want to impress that guy or girl at the club. The lyrics are no longer even focusing on the topic, they're just mainly using gimmicky phrases as metaphors for sex. (ie. "I'll take you to the candy shop, I'll let you lick the lollipop")
As for rock songs lately, well I find it hard to distinguish a lot of punk/rock bands from each other. I can't tell the difference between Fall Out Boy and Simple Plan, for example. The lyrics though, have some substance in a lot of the songs which I'm glad for, but a lot of the time they're pretty negative.
As for the music videos, it used to be just moving images to accompany the music. Recently, it's switched to background music accompanying videos that just look pretty.
Now, I'm not saying all this goes for EVERY band or artist out there, there are wonderful musicians out now that continue to make unique music with lyrical masterpieces and talented vocals, or at least one or two of those. That's what I like to hear on the radio, it just annoys me lately that nearly everything else sounds the same. And I say nearly everything, not all.
So does anybody else thing music lately is uninspired? Has it become just business and marketing strategies and numbers and money? This makes me sad.
Sorry if I offended anyone, this is just my ranting.
