When did mainstream music start to go downhill?

Interesting thread!

I can hardly comment on post 90s music, as I know visually none of it.

But from the little I see of popular culture, at least the Anglo-American popular culture that saturates the Anglosphere, a lot of it seems bland, formulaic, identikit . . .

A result of the Thatcher-Reagan revolution in part, I imagine, and the capitalist pressures it liberated.

I wonder what others think, not just about music, but all popular culture?

That's how I feel about 90s and 00s music. Both terrible eras as far as I'm concerned and pop culture of those 2 eras were dire
 
I went along to gigs with my youngest daughter and bands like the 1975 generated just a much excitement for my 17 year old and the other 20k people there as The Smiths did for me in my youth.

Perhaps so, but the product is comparatively awful.

I'm much younger than you, and I can objectively perceive the gaping chasm of qualitative worth that exists between the output of a Smiths and that of a 1975.

Contemporary popular music really is a wasteland. It's not just old people looking down on the new stuff, as in days of yore. The last album I heard that I felt truly deserved to be in a conversation with great albums of the past — albums of the Chet Baker Sings, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, A Love Supreme, Pet Sounds, Astral Weeks, Odessey and Oracle, Scott 4, The Gilded Palace of Sin, Come to My Garden, What's Going On, Pink Moon, Heart Food, Radio City, Tonight's the Night, Pacific Ocean Blue level of creativity and enduring depth/replay value — was Ocean's blond. Moments like that are so scarce now.

I had a very musical and musically literate parent and was lucky enough to be surrounded by a wealth of enthralling sounds as a smaller child and as an adolescent. I was aware that there had existed a vibrant music industry before my own coming of age, so I had something to which I could compare the increasingly barren 2000's and 2010's. It's not fun to come to the realization that your own generation is so creatively lacking.
 
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Perhaps so, but the product is comparatively awful.

I'm much younger than you, and I can objectively perceive the gaping chasm of qualitative worth that exists between the output of a Smiths and that of a 1975.

Contemporary popular music really is a wasteland. It's not just old people looking down on the new stuff, as in days of yore. The last album I heard that I felt truly deserved to be in a conversation with great albums of the past — albums of the Chet Baker Sings, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, A Love Supreme, Pet Sounds, Astral Weeks, Odessey and Oracle, Scott 4, The Gilded Palace of Sin, Come to My Garden, What's Going On, Pink Moon, Heart Food, Radio City, Tonight's the Night, Pacific Ocean Blue level of creativity and enduring depth/replay value — was Ocean's blond. Moments like that are so scarce now.

I had a very musical and musically literate parent and was lucky enough to be surrounded by a wealth of enthralling sounds as a smaller child and as an adolescent. I was aware that there had existed a vibrant music industry before my own coming of age. So I had something to which I could compare the increasingly barren 2000's and 2010's. Music has become as a utility, like gas or electric, as David Bowie apparently foretold around the turn of the millennium.

Sounds something similar to what George Michael said lol. I remember when George said music between the mid 90s - mid 00s "rubbish."
 
I thought yoshimi was a pretty great pop album that did well commercially just to name one album
 
You might as well face it fellas. Real music is gone. We have YouTube to relive the glorious 60s, 70s and 80s "golden era" (as Prince once said). It all went downhill after the 1980s.
 
You might as well face it fellas. Real music is gone. We have YouTube to relive the glorious 60s, 70s and 80s "golden era" (as Prince once said). It all went downhill after the 1980s.

What’s ‘real music’ ?
 
When the average age of posters who grew up with The Smiths on this board hit 45 and users started complaining about that 'noisy shit' that today's kids listen to.

It has always been thus.
 
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When artists and bands could sing, when they knew how to write songs without needing 10 people needing to help them, playing instruments, no lip syncing on stage, no sampling

I agree, but it’s still ‘real music’ to other people.
 
Verso,

obsessively downvoting my posts won't stop me contributing, but do carry on. :tiphat:
I downvoted maybe two of your painfully pretentious posts where you conflate your own subjectivity with a greater truth about mainstream music and your "generation" as a whole? You come off like an insufferable student, I'm just giving you a polite heads up.
 
Perhaps so, but the product is comparatively awful.

I'm much younger than you, and I can objectively perceive the gaping chasm of qualitative worth that exists between the output of a Smiths and that of a 1975.

Contemporary popular music really is a wasteland. It's not just old people looking down on the new stuff, as in days of yore. The last album I heard that I felt truly deserved to be in a conversation with great albums of the past — albums of the Chet Baker Sings, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, A Love Supreme, Pet Sounds, Astral Weeks, Odessey and Oracle, Scott 4, The Gilded Palace of Sin, Come to My Garden, What's Going On, Pink Moon, Heart Food, Radio City, Tonight's the Night, Pacific Ocean Blue level of creativity and enduring depth/replay value — was Ocean's blond. Moments like that are so scarce now.

I had a very musical and musically literate parent and was lucky enough to be surrounded by a wealth of enthralling sounds as a smaller child and as an adolescent. I was aware that there had existed a vibrant music industry before my own coming of age, so I had something to which I could compare the increasingly barren 2000's and 2010's.

It's not fun to come to the realization that your own generation is so creatively lacking.

Why do you think that is?
 
Perhaps so, but the product is comparatively awful.

I'm much younger than you, and I can objectively perceive the gaping chasm of qualitative worth that exists between the output of a Smiths and that of a 1975.

Contemporary popular music really is a wasteland. It's not just old people looking down on the new stuff, as in days of yore. The last album I heard that I felt truly deserved to be in a conversation with great albums of the past — albums of the Chet Baker Sings, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, A Love Supreme, Pet Sounds, Astral Weeks, Odessey and Oracle, Scott 4, The Gilded Palace of Sin, Come to My Garden, What's Going On, Pink Moon, Heart Food, Radio City, Tonight's the Night, Pacific Ocean Blue level of creativity and enduring depth/replay value — was Ocean's blond. Moments like that are so scarce now.

I had a very musical and musically literate parent and was lucky enough to be surrounded by a wealth of enthralling sounds as a smaller child and as an adolescent. I was aware that there had existed a vibrant music industry before my own coming of age, so I had something to which I could compare the increasingly barren 2000's and 2010's. It's not fun to come to the realization that your own generation is so creatively lacking.
"I'm objective so I my opinions are facts."
#Awesome
 
I downvoted maybe two of your painfully pretentious posts where you conflate your own subjectivity with a greater truth about mainstream music and your "generation" as a whole?

Four downvotes within twenty-four hours — one of which was elicited by an entirely innocuous meditation on the state of twenty-first century popular music — suggests that you have a bug in your ass over a random internet person. Please understand, I'm not asking you to stop, I think it's funny and cute. :lbf: Do continue with your blitz.


You come off like an insufferable student, I'm just giving you a polite heads up.

Thanks, man. You come off like someone whose opinion about art I wouldn't give a fart for. That's a heads-up from me — you'll excuse me if I don't follow your example and couch it in a risible pretence of politeness. When in Rome and all that...

(With that said, could be I should downvote myself for mentioning A Love Supreme in the context of 'mainstream music' — that might've been a stretch, although it certainly left an imprint on the mid-sixties mainstream, e.g. Eight Miles High. Then again, I'm not inclined to downvote anyone's posts, because I'm not a weak, spineless bitch who can't handle a difference of opinion. Grow a pair and show some character.)


"I'm objective so I my opinions are facts."
#Awesome

Eh? I dropped my 2¢ into the thread (sans any particular ceremony or grandstanding). Nobody has to agree with me, chum, and I won't be offended if they don't. Should anyone disagree and make a point I find interesting or worth challenging, I might reply, but not with a particular desire to make anybody think like me. It might surprise you to learn that not everybody is a weak, spineless bitch who can't handle a difference of opinion — I guess that's what happens to a person when they have little in the way of an existence outside of the internet?

Anyway, the tendency now for some in middle age is to dismiss their own interpretive instincts and discernment, rationalize that the music isn't made for them, shrug their shoulders and conclude that they're just too old to 'get it'. Fogeys in past eras might well have been jaundiced in their attitudes when it came to the qualitative worth of the music produced by the generations that followed their own, but I don't think it's the case in the present day. The oldest millennials or youngest Gen Xers were in their late twenties or early thirties when stuff like Lollipop was dropping — they're not exactly musical prudes or puritans, for the most part, and yet many of them do struggle to relate to what passes for popular music now. Maybe there's a bit more of a culture gap to navigate for guys who were teen schoolkids or young adults when This Charming Man was on TOTP, but we're talking about The 1975 here, not XXXTentacion. :lbf:

I contend that it's an even weaker era for music than it is for film and the fight game, and that's saying something. Again, I'm not offended if you disagree, but it would've helped your case if you'd offered a point instead of ad hominem and hashtags.


Why do you think that is?

A compound of factors, Ket.

Internet hasn't been great for the music industry (if such a thing even really exists anymore), for one. It's helped create a much less fertile, i.e. overbearingly postmodern/relativistic/ironic milieu. It's helped reduce the content of a massive percentage of 'urban' music to mere boasting about Instagram, pussy and fabrics (and other symbols of clout — at least The-Dream, for all his fixation with opulence, materialism and status, sought to examine that culture in his art, to pull it apart and present some kind of human insight or compelling psychological dynamic, rather than just indulging in tedious lyrical flossing for its own sake). Anything that was ever considered outre or 'edgy' (hate the term, but it'll do) is a corporate meme anymore, to be tried on one day and discarded the next, conviction and passion be damned. If we narrow the discussion to kids with guitars, A&R is dead because labels tightened their belts in the aftermath of P2P and a great amount of disincentivization has come with that.

There's a whole book to be written on the subject, but those are just some thoughts. What could have been done differently is another matter.

(This post and any authoritative statements contained herein represent my own interpretation of the subject under discussion, for the benefit of the butthurt weirdo contingent on this forum.)
 
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Random adjunct;

It's helped reduce the content of a massive percentage of 'urban' music to mere boasting about Instagram, pussy and fabrics

I mean, to cite just one recent example from a vast sea of similarly stunted offerings, All the Smoke (Tyla Yaweh) is a smoooooooooth tune and a fun production, but the content is unmitigated garbage.

So even when you chance across a snappy or genuinely arresting beat, the messaging is almost always hopeless, empty nihilism of a stripe that can only inspire lostness in any who harbor some kind of misguided sense of attraction to it.
 
I love my Elliott smiths records my Wilco records my decemberists records my shins records my belle and Sebastian records who all had some great songs instrumentation and all enjoyed wide mainstream support. Like I said above yoshimi vs the pink robots is a pretty great flaming lips album that was pretty popular
 
From my perspective it’s just time moving on as we get older. My Mum was into Johnny Mathis, Charles Aznavour and Jean Michell Jarre, imagine the shock on her face when I played her Sheena is a punk rocker. I also think by theres a lot of great music around nowadays, pre pandemic and due to the Mancheter Arena attack, I went along to gigs with my youngest daughter and bands like the 1975 generated just a much excitement for my 17 year old and the other 20k people there as The Smiths did for me in my youth.
But, to complicate things, I love Johnny Mathis and Jean Michell Jarre; I always have. I’m not finding much to enjoy in new popular music. The last ‘new’ pop outfits I heard, and recognised something special, were Go! Team c.2007, and John Grant c.2010. I do hear good singles from time to time.

Having said that, I’m still regularly buying new music: it tends to be stuff on the ECM label. Jazz still seems exciting.
 
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I don’t know I would not say the 90’s well maybe the late 90’s maybe.But I think it was more towards 2007 all the best music was going away my young days were coming to a end,music changed I think as you get older your music taste changes sad part of life but I don’t let get me down.Whatever young people think is music the mainstream pick up on most of it very manufactured & tinkered around with like the circus.MTV still played music and was popular in the 90’s not just Nirvana and Madonna but look at the good dance music before it became watered down.Now people can just choice a list of the best music artists they like on You Tube Without going to radio or MTV young mum tv.
My brother used to buy loads of music, he’s older than me and stopped buying records by new artists in the early nineties. I remember asking him why at the time. He argued that pop is self-consciously (1) about history and (2) about masking the fact that it’s artists are heavily influenced by history—so the regurgitation can pass as fresh.

This, he suggested, breeds a dislikable arrogance. He couldn’t suffer Oasis for instance, as they both copied others and raved about their own brilliance.

Similar occurred with his experience of The Stone Roses—he immediately reduced them to The Smiths meets The Lovin’ Spoonful. His additional point was broadly this: if you own The Smiths and the Lovin’ Spoonful it not only makes the arrogance (of the newer band) hilarious, it detracts from the experience of The Stone Roses’ music—it loses the sense of urgency that gets you going out and buying records, because you recognise it existing in your collection already.

I guess this is why pop is nihilistic and doomed to empty itself of the sense of need which it depends on. Diminishing interest obviously occurs at the level of the individual, but I’d argue it’s built into the whole project: Pop music, as a concept, has its own end built into it.

I recall John Peel talking about why The Smiths were exceptional. He said that he could not really make out what it was they’d been listening to: that’s the nut to crack.

One of the funniest arguments I remember occurring within The Smiths (it was recalled by Marr, I think) referred to whether they identified themselves as ‘a band’ or ‘a group’. I think the debate might ultimately relate to this thread.
 
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Four downvotes within twenty-four hours — one of which was elicited by an entirely innocuous meditation on the state of twenty-first century popular music — suggests that you have a bug in your ass over a random internet person. Please understand, I'm not asking you to stop, I think it's funny and cute. :lbf: Do continue with your blitz.




Thanks, man. You come off like someone whose opinion about art I wouldn't give a fart for. That's a heads-up from me — you'll excuse me if I don't follow your example and couch it in a risible pretence of politeness. When in Rome and all that...

(With that said, could be I should downvote myself for mentioning A Love Supreme in the context of 'mainstream music' — that might've been a stretch, although it certainly left an imprint on the mid-sixties mainstream, e.g. Eight Miles High. Then again, I'm not inclined to downvote anyone's posts, because I'm not a weak, spineless bitch who can't handle a difference of opinion. Grow a pair and show some character.)




Eh? I dropped my 2¢ into the thread (sans any particular ceremony or grandstanding). Nobody has to agree with me, chum, and I won't be offended if they don't. Should anyone disagree and make a point I find interesting or worth challenging, I might reply, but not with a particular desire to make anybody think like me. It might surprise you to learn that not everybody is a weak, spineless bitch who can't handle a difference of opinion — I guess that's what happens to a person when they have little in the way of an existence outside of the internet?

Anyway, the tendency now for some in middle age is to dismiss their own interpretive instincts and discernment, rationalize that the music isn't made for them, shrug their shoulders and conclude that they're just too old to 'get it'. Fogeys in past eras might well have been jaundiced in their attitudes when it came to the qualitative worth of the music produced by the generations that followed their own, but I don't think it's the case in the present day. The oldest millennials or youngest Gen Xers were in their late twenties or early thirties when stuff like Lollipop was dropping — they're not exactly musical prudes or puritans, for the most part, and yet many of them do struggle to relate to what passes for popular music now. Maybe there's a bit more of a culture gap to navigate for guys who were teen schoolkids or young adults when This Charming Man was on TOTP, but we're talking about The 1975 here, not XXXTentacion. :lbf:

I contend that it's an even weaker era for music than it is for film and the fight game, and that's saying something. Again, I'm not offended if you disagree, but it would've helped your case if you'd offered a point instead of ad hominem and hashtags.




A compound of factors, Ket.

Internet hasn't been great for the music industry (if such a thing even really exists anymore), for one. It's helped create a much less fertile, i.e. overbearingly postmodern/relativistic/ironic milieu. It's helped reduce the content of a massive percentage of 'urban' music to mere boasting about Instagram, pussy and fabrics (and other symbols of clout — at least The-Dream, for all his fixation with opulence, materialism and status, sought to examine that culture in his art, to pull it apart and present some kind of human insight or compelling psychological dynamic, rather than just indulging in tedious lyrical flossing for its own sake). Anything that was ever considered outre or 'edgy' (hate the term, but it'll do) is a corporate meme anymore, to be tried on one day and discarded the next, conviction and passion be damned. If we narrow the discussion to kids with guitars, A&R is dead because labels tightened their belts in the aftermath of P2P and a great amount of disincentivization has come with that.

There's a whole book to be written on the subject, but those are just some thoughts. What could have been done differently is another matter.

(This post and any authoritative statements contained herein represent my own interpretation of the subject under discussion, for the benefit of the butthurt weirdo contingent on this forum.)
Congratulations, you may have written the cringiest thing I’ve ever seen on this forum.
 
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