Normally, the non-political posts appear on weekends, but -- ah, hell. Screw the rules.
I have to ask a question that fogeys like myself have asked for generations: What is it with the music kids listen to these days?
I don't like today's music, but that's to be expected. As a lifelong classical aficionado, I've always felt alienated by the music young people favor, even when I was among their number. My tastes were set at the age of six, when Dad took me to see Fantasia. The dark god Chernabog was, like, the coolest thing ever. I wanted to grow up to be just like him.
What bugs me is this: The music that kids play to piss off creepy older guys like me has not changed in -- what? -- roughly twenty years. Twenty freakin' years. Twenty years of hip hop. Longer, really: Hip hop traces back to the 1970s. And the non-hip hop crap we hear nowadays sounds more-or-less like the non-hip hop crap that kids listened to back in 1989.
Why can't young people come up with some new ways to annoy me? Have they lost all creativity? Is there no spirit of rebellion?
It used to be that styles in popular culture changed every few years. By now, someone should have come up with some form of music so new and different and radical and dissonant and irritating and nerve-fraying that it makes Eminem seem as outdated as Sinatra. But no. I googled the top songs for 2009 -- and do you know what's topping the list? Some unlistenable piece of oatmealish pop glop warbled by a creature named Miley Cyrus, whom I understand to be the tartified alter-ego of this Hannah Something-Or-Other personage whose insanely-grinning face I see plastered all over merchandise at the 99 Cent Store. I'm not sure which persona came first, nor do I care.
That's it? Is that all you people got? You kids are boring me. I want you to make me angry.
I asked a similar question once before (about sagging, which is a very ancient affectation by this point), but none of the answers satisfied me.
12 comments:
Has popular music really changed much at all in the past 50 years really? Honestly, as a musician, I don't hear much stunningly new music out there at all. Variations and combination's pretty much sum it up. I was reminded of watching Star Trek Voyager recently, and seeing a bit where the holographic doctor makes himself a holographic family that is picture perfect. One of the crew makes them more realistic. The son is blasting Klingon music from his room when the doctor walks in the house. This is the kind of music I think you are expecting to hear. But sadly, I think most desire by popular musicians to push boundaries and create truly new and different music disappeared sometime in the mid to late 1970's (and I'm only 40, only a borderline old coot :-)
Perhaps you should try this website:
http://crabbyoldfart.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/god-damned-young-people-and-their-rap-music-make-me-angry/
Joe I think it's the general corporate lock down. The folks that own everything will not allow the new in....seems to me and so you have 30 year old hip hop as the "new" .
The actual new cannot be controlled,( nor can talent)and so it's locked out. Lord, look at the movies...pathedic.
"Why can't young people come up with some new ways to annoy me?"
I think four or eight years of Barack Obama will be sufficiently annoying for me.
Clear Channel and their corporate butt buddies have a strangle hold on what is played over the airwaves. They seem to think that Rap and bubble gum bullcrap is all we are supposed to be listening to.
I know how you feel Joe! I hare me some Rap...Hate it and don't get me started on Hannah Montana!
O tempora o mores. (Cicero, ~c. 60 BC)
Roughly translated-- oh, the kids these days!!
Sic semper juvenalia!
Who knew that the disco era would shine like a beacon of good music by comparison with most popular music the past 10 years?
XI
Meh--
Have you ever listened to Outkast??
I'm as old as you folks, in my 40's but I have had the good fortune of working on some of the biggest music festivals in North America (one of which, Joe, included Ryuichi Sakamoto & his Bang on a Can All-Stars, and Massenet's La Navarraise, this summer). And I have heard my fair share of techno and hip hop over the years... And when someone says that the music hasn't changed in 20 years, it sounds to me like someone saying all jazz (from Jango's Hot Jazz to Michel Petruciani) is the same.
Hip Hop, back when we were kids, was Kool Herc & Grandmaster Flash, real rudimentary stuff-- almost always using Chic's Good Times as the break-beat, and only using a ROland 404 drum machine. And the rhymes were facile (remember YoungMC's "Bust A Move" with the brilliant iambus; "Your best friend Harry/ has a brother Larry/In five days from now he's gonna marry/He's hopin you can make it there if you can/
'Cause in the ceremony you'll be the best man/You say "neato"/check your libido/And roll to the church in your new tuxedo" in the 80's it was like Sesame Street-- until Gangsta Rap took over (to be replaced, eventually, by New Jack Swing and Jazz Rap).
And still the genres morph-- how else could we go from Public Enemy to Dead Prez:
"You can't fool all the people all of the time, But if you fool the right ones, then the rest will fall behind. Tell me who's got control of your mind?"
..and what about Lupe Fiasco's "The Cool," Deltron 3030, and "Carmen (a hip hopra)," and the other "rap Operas?" Surely, we have come a long way from YoungMC and The Fat Boys. What about NerdCore (2 Skinny Js)?
And that's just in Hip Hop. What i see here is a further bemoaning that there is no more good music. But all i see as an example is Billy Ray Cirus' daughter. Top-40 has sucked for at least 35 years. What's new there?
If you want good new music, it is out there; Black Moth Super Rainbow is amazing, Amy Denio has at least 3 bands (incl. the all- women Billy Tipton Memorial Sextet) and sells out pretty much every show she plays,
And then there's contemporary work by Jim O'Rourke, Wilco, and the new bluegrass fusion of Railroad Earth and Yonder Mountain String Band is quite popular. Then of course there's the Jam Bands (while Phish and The Dead are gone, for the most part, there's Tortoise, Moe, and the delightful + delovely Grace Potter and the Nocturnals...)
There's more good music out there than ever before. Problem is you have to work on it to find it.
And then if you want the really annoying bands, you can always listen to what my nephew listens to; My Chemical Romance and Tool (Tool, while they play in 9/8, still scare me)
There's still more out there. But like i said, you have to work to find it. You don't get it fed to you in a trough.
It's a lack of talent.
Young folks today have their virtues, but writing songs is simply not one of them. A good song today is one that has more than two notes.
I won't mention the fact that these young people also mar their flesh with grotesque body-piercings and tattoos.
You can tell young musicians know they're bad by the names of their groups--Weezer, The Wallflowers, The Smashing Pumpkins, Placebo.
Whoops--Placebo is actually a good band. Exception that proves the rule.
A dissenting voice from a father of two teen-age sons who both are in bands -- lots of good music out there(of course,not all of it is popular). A few bands with staying power (but in the last 15 years) are Radiohead, the Killers, Foo Fighters (former drummer for Nirvana), Neko Case, and Wilco. Three very new bands who are excellent are Grizzly Bear, Arcade Fire and Arctic Monkeys, among many others. Now that the labels have collapsed, I-Tunes, youtube and tours decide who succeeds and who fails.
Pop culture is controlled to turn our minds to mush. Pop culture is slimey. Anyway, the smart (cool) kids don't listen to rap and hip hop, that's for the African-American wannabees, the posers.
Listen to JUCIFER.
I'm not sure how to approach this subject... what is it that offends thee? What type of music, if listened to by today's youth, would make you 'angry' ? Is it a matter of an abrasive sound? Revolting mediocrity? Or is it a question of a genre that is incomprehensible, or un-appreciable, to the previous generation? Is Eminem really where you place the beginning of the plateau in irritability to one's parents? And if so, why?
I would agree with other commentators on the general points of 1: There is still good music out there, maybe more than ever, but it requires a bit of effort to locate, and 2: "Popular" music has long been largely bereft of aesthetic value.
If you're looking for music that is more obnoxious than current or recent popular hip-hop or the many sub-genres of rock, believe me, it is there and has been for a long, long time.
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