Almost 70 percent of the medieval music was written in Dorian mode - that’s what we now experience as minor or sounding darker / unhappy.
The themes back in the day were not so different to now. My once music history teacher let us listen to a medieval madrigal and the class vote was that it was solemn church music. It wasn’t. It was about stealing a bergerette and taking advantage of her.
Just 2 associations …
And especially for our Parisian friend a piece of programmatic modern organ music about a TGV played on the organ of the royal college of music in London.
Perhaps because you don’t feel as though you are being profiled and potentially targetted ad wise based on this. Maybe not currently but I could see it happening.
Aren’t we just becoming a little old boring and intolerant. My grandparents used to say the same thing about the Beatles and all pop music and I’m sure their parents said the same about Benny Goodman etc. It’s a generational thing.
Also contemporary art/music has been frown on by lots of societies most were either communist or dictatorships.
There’s always going to be music that someone likes and/or dislikes. There’s nothing new about this.
What annoys and depresses me is what I call self indulgent/talentless “Arty” or “Experimental” Albums… By that I mean a whole album of disjointed endless noise of pops/clicks/ticks/knocks or short bursts of different instruments or long never ending synth pads.
These albums are completely unlistenable and I wonder how or if other people actually listen to them.
I have an annual Qobuz membership and there’s plenty of these types of albums that come up on Qobuz’s new releases albums listing.
Tidal is just as bad with endless amounts of Trap/Grime albums on there new releases album listings.
I agree with some of their points but have issue with a number also…
The reviewer gives different reasons why contemporary is depressing :
the offer is too big. Millions of albums, but how many really valuable ?
Who decides on value? They may not be a commercial success but if a person enjoys either listening or making the album then it has a value just not monetary.
computer music : so many albums made quickly on a computer, with no real instruments, just an organised noise more often.
This suggests a computer is not an instrument. Thats akin to the log bashers saying the pipe blowers aren’t real instruments players. Instruments are tools used during the creative process or playback. A computer is a modern instrument.
The ability to play the ‘real’ instrument is not in itself creative, its a skill. I can speak several languages but I cannot write a lyric to move a person’s heart or stir their soul.
72% of sales are coming from reissues. Pink Floyd , Dire Straits, Beatles…remastered and remastered and remastered again.
Not everybody purchases music, to consider just sales and not streams is selective to make a point.
jazz offer is 90% of commercial music: Diana Krall, Norah Jones, Stacey Kent and hundreds of same vocal sirupy jazz.
Maybe stop listening to commercial music! Of the milllions of albums being released how many would they classify as jazz? Their arguments appear to want a return to the gate keeping record companies of yesteryear. The ease of self releasing these days has done away with that and has resulted in a creative explosion. Sure, not all of it may have a commercial value nor will appeal to many people but i think it is wrong to dismiss it all out of hand.
Maybe they should get out of the podcast booth and make more effort to find things they like rather than lament the loss of being spoon fed.
Over the last ten years, there has been an increase in the number of female artists. Doesn’t that represent pop music’s evolution, which male artists have traditionally dominated? For instance, last year, the aggregate from the general round-up of critics’ end-of-year lists featured eight female singers in the top ten. In comparison, the list from 2012 had 4 and 2013 had just one. The 1973 thread on here has only one album that I’ve noticed that features a female singer. Listening to an album created by a female artist is a different experience from listening to one created by a male artist.
The challenge here is to define what ‘new’ means in music terms. A new music genre? The problem with any unique style of music is that most people of the previous generation will dismiss it as rubbish and then say it all sounds the same. See the 80s house and hip-hop scene or the 00s R&B scene. However, let’s go back to when it all started with Elvis. Lennon categorically told us, ‘Before Elvis, there was nothing.’ As Courtney Love recently commented in the Guardian, it was ‘Big Mama Thornton first sang Hound Dog, written for her (and possibly with her) in 1952, which later put the King on the radio.’ Elvis borrowed his style and singing from Black artists and made it into something new. Artists today do the same, incorporating their influences and adding their own style to the music. It has been the essence of pop music since Elvis and before, whether through the singer’s voice, lyrics, or instrumental skill.
I don’t have any statistics, but there certainly was a lot of pop music -as in chart singles - released in the early 70s with female singers: perhaps what the 1973 thread here reveals is that the pop music of the day in general didn’t have staying power (perhaps in common with the pop chart music of today, and decades between?). But why there were a minority of female singers in the bands with longevity back in the 70s I don’t know - and whether that will prove to be more balanced looking back to today in 50 years’ time we have no way of knowing, but good balance of female and male singers (and instrumental musicians has to be a good thing.)
Only in as much as listening to any piece of music is a different experience from any other piece of music. Whilst some music with female singers moves me more than sone music with male singers, the converse is also true. And with instrumentalists I can’t say I’ve noticed any characteristic that identifies their gender or any difference in experience that equates to the fact of players being of one gender or another.
Just to clarify. I am not saying that contemporary music is rubbish and depressing in general. More for the reasons I gave above.
I am burying new albums since many years, contemporary, and enjoy discovering a lot of fabulous bands.
But more and more these interesting albums are drowned in an ocean of rubbish or commercial music. IMHO. It takes time to discover them so.
