# Why is modern music so lazy?



## Blaze163 (Mar 20, 2016)

Lali ho!

I hve a very simple question for everyone. Why is modern music such lazy generic garbage? 

Don't get me wrong. I know music is all down to personal taste and I'm open to considering that this is just my personal opinion. But to me, modern music is almost all lazy, generic, paint-by-numbers crap that all sounds the same and all has damn near the same lyrics. All this 'rap' about how much money somebody you've never heard of has, and how they're such a 'baller', whatever the fuck that means.  I get that music, like all art, goes through peaks and valleys. But it's pretty hard to deny that we're in a valley right now. I'm not saying that all old music is good by default, every era has its fair share of utter shite. But the major sticking point for me is this;
*
Name one song from the last five years that will be thought of in decades to come the same way we all see songs like Bohemian Rhapsody, November Rain, Stairway to Heaven, etc.*

Seriously. Name ONE song that people will look back on as a defining piece of music from the modern era. Hell, make it the last ten years to be on the safe side. I've been trying all day and I can't think of a damn thing. 

Thoughts? Opinions? Maybe some examples of modern music that WON'T make my ears tear themselves from my face and run for the hills? 'cause in my new job we have the radio on in the office, and if I hear any more songs like 'Bimmer' by Tyler The Creator (arguably weaponized brown noise to reduce the surplus population) then the work radio is going out the damn window.


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## Link. (Mar 20, 2016)

Whether *you* hate it or love it, there's plenty of music that will be thought of for decades. Everyone has their tastes. I think you should just honestly look at this argument and "*Let it Go*".


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## Depravo (Mar 20, 2016)

Link. said:


> I think you should just honestly look at this argument and "*Let it Go*".


That's the first song I thought of as well. That and Gangnam Style.


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## ieatpixels (Mar 20, 2016)

I saw an interesting view on this.
Not everything he says is right but there's some good points.


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## Trill Spector (Mar 20, 2016)

>dadrock

Literally every song you posted is extremely formulaic (and stairway to heaven is plagiarized as well)
however a serious response







All of the tracks i posted were mainstream releases last year (plenty of great self released records are also coming out on small labels) that can easily be found if you place the tiniest bit of passion into music as a hobby. Past your rose colored glasses there is a great variety of technically complex and enjoyable music that can be found at a local record shop or by reading music blogs. If you use a radio station as your primary curator of music, don't be surprised that it isn't challenging, as it needs to appeal to the highest common denominator. Older tunes are easier to enjoy/find now since all of the garbage that came out in those decades has been lost in the flow of time, leaving only things that have both critical acclaim and mainstream appeal to stick around in the public's collective memory.

TLDR- music doesn't currently suck, you passively consume content and wonder why it isn't engaging


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## GuyInDogSuit (Mar 20, 2016)

Because that's what people are buying. Blame the record companies. They keep signing on these shit "musicians" because that's what the public wants. Listen to the Top 40 radio, you'll hear a lot of garbage, that people are just eating up. People these days have no idea what real talent is. You ask them if they've heard "War Pigs," "Black Dog," "Comfortably Numb," "Ziggy Stardust," or "Redemption Song," and they'll look at you funny. And don't get me started on rap.... Tupac is rolling in his grave right now.


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## Trill Spector (Mar 20, 2016)

GuyInDogSuit said:


> Tupac is rolling in his grave right now.


tupac was a great performer and has an extensive legacy, however artists such as kendrick lamar and kanye west's 2004- 2010 output were both more musically sound.
Also if you go beyond the billboards, rap also has blu, dessa, atmosphere, milo, 2006 joe budden, death grips, 2007 lupe fiasco, mf doom, the roots, chance the rapper, danny brown, elzhi, mick jenkins, open eagle mike, kno, aesop rock (break for the sake of not having 100 artists) all have done great releases that musically and lyrically surpass tupac and have all released an album in the past 10 years

also sidenote that bowie's best album was low tho ziggy was a great album


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## jubbagee (Mar 20, 2016)

No one knows q.o.t.s.a.


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## m_babble (Mar 20, 2016)

Dig deeper. Contemporary music isn't necessarily lazy. Commercial music is. Picking definitives is arbitrary, so none of these can fill those shoes. However, here are a few examples of active musicians pushing the envelope.


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## Veho (Mar 20, 2016)

Why are you too lazy to search for good music?


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## GuyInDogSuit (Mar 20, 2016)

As somebody mentioned, sometimes it's best to avoid the commercialized crap. And it doesn't hurt to search. Music blogs are a good source, as someone else mentioned. Also, if you like a certain band or genre, plug it into streaming services like Pandora or Spotify, and you'll be surprised by what you hear. They'll compile new music based on your feedback (thumbs up or down, etc). I've discovered some good bands that way. Also, ask your friends if they have suggestions. It's not that difficult to find stuff you like. It's really a matter of perspective. I'm like you, I don't like a lot of the popular stuff (the most popular being a majority of pop artists and rappers) nowadays, it's heavily commercialized and jammed down our throats, and I almost never listen to the radio. But that doesn't mean there isn't good stuff out there. You just have to look.


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## Plstic (Mar 20, 2016)

Looks like you're not looking hard enough. There is plenty of good modern music.


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## Blaze163 (Mar 20, 2016)

Veho said:


> Why are you too lazy to search for good music?



What worries me is that I should have to search for talented musicians while the charts is full of the same generic crap.  Did people have to search for blogs to find bands like Queen, G+R, etc? No, it was the industry standard to promote the best because people wanted the best. Now it's the case that the lowest common denominator in society is catered for, they buy whatever they're told is popular instead of having any sort of interest in the art, and now we end up with the airwaves clogged up with the garbage. 

Basically the core of the issue is that there are now so many stupid people in the world they've become music's primary marketing demographic.


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## GuyInDogSuit (Mar 20, 2016)

Blaze163 said:


> What worries me is that I should have to search for talented musicians while the charts is full of the same generic crap.  Did people have to search for blogs to find bands like Queen, G+R, etc? No, it was the industry standard to promote the best because people wanted the best. Now it's the case that the lowest common denominator in society is catered for, they buy whatever they're told is popular instead of having any sort of interest in the art, and now we end up with the airwaves clogged up with the garbage.
> 
> Basically the core of the issue is that there are now so many stupid people in the world they've become music's primary marketing demographic.



Exactly. Stupid people buy into the stupid crap. The record companies are making a killing.


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## VinsCool (Mar 20, 2016)

I kinda like older music better.
I have to agree with OP about the charts filled with crap. But good stuff still exists at least.


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## Veho (Mar 20, 2016)

Blaze163 said:


> No, it was the industry standard to promote the best because people wanted the best. Now it's the case that the lowest common denominator in society is catered for, they buy whatever they're told is popular instead of having any sort of interest in the art, and now we end up with the airwaves clogged up with the garbage.


 The music industry has always promoted what they thought would sell, and quality was always the least of their concerns. 
You are comparing the "best of" selection of the last 100 years to last week's pop chart. Well look over the pop chart for any given week of any of the "glory years" of "quality music" and tell me how many of the songs you've ever even heard of, let alone have survived until today. And tell me most of them aren't garbage. The reason you think music was universally better before is the fact only the good music survived, but you're overlooking the other 99% which was, quite frankly, crap. 

Like I always say when discussions like this crop up, the the time to judge the music of today is 20 years from now.


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## The Catboy (Mar 20, 2016)

When something sells, people copy the formula to make their own brand sell as well. The same goes for music.
Hell, all eras of music have their lazy periods. Just looking back at The Beatles craze. Once they started making money, bands similar to them started crawling out of the woodwork. We try to credit the past like these things didn't happen, but they've always been happening, we're just starting to notice it more.


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## Blaze163 (Mar 20, 2016)

Veho said:


> The music industry has always promoted what they thought would sell, and quality was always the least of their concerns.
> You are comparing the "best of" selection of the last 100 years to last week's pop chart. Well look over the pop chart for any given week of any of the "glory years" of "quality music" and tell me how many of the songs you've ever even heard of, let alone have survived until today. And tell me most of them aren't garbage. The reason you think music was universally better before is the fact only the good music survived, but you're overlooking the other 99% which was, quite frankly, crap.
> 
> Like I always say when discussions like this crop up, the the time to judge the music of today is 20 years from now.



I agree that we should be judging modern music in about 20 years. But my point still stands. What songs from this era will we be looking back on as classics a la Queen or Led Zeppelin? Or whatever your poison is from the past. Hell, maybe you're a fan of the band Poison, I dunno. My point is that there's such a dip in quality in the modern popular media that it's highly unlikely any of it will stand the test of time as anything more than a novelty act. We'll probably remember Gangnam Style for the novelty, Friday for just being pure distilled essence of failure, Let It Go for how bloody long it took to start dying, and maybe Nicki Minaj as the moment we lost our faith in humanity.


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## Veho (Mar 20, 2016)

Blaze163 said:


> What songs from this era will we be looking back on as classics a la Queen or Led Zeppelin?


Ask me again in 20 years.


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## endoverend (Mar 20, 2016)

It's easy to look at some music today and call it lazy shit, but you think there wasn't lazy shit when Queen was around? In fact I'm sure there were people who hated Queen just like you hate modern music. I would say "hindsight is 20/20" but that makes no sense, rather in this situation i would say that hindsight is not at all 20/20 and is blinded by nostalgia.


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## Sliter (Mar 20, 2016)

some are junk because they are simple so it's easier, cheaperr to make, easy to get into people mind since repeat so much and sell for people wich is simple minded to understand complex music.. do you know "brazilian Funk"? I think there aren't worse "music genre" .. it can't even be called music ....to start with they stole the name of a nice genre and all the lyrics are about sex or money xp


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## Xexyz (Mar 20, 2016)




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## dfsa3fdvc1 (Mar 20, 2016)

Anyone calling modern music shit must not seek out new music. 
There's so many great artist out there that I can not comprehend how anyone could possibly feel that way. 

I guess if you only listen to on the air top 40 music you might feel that way but if you look online, you can find so much great stuff. 
There's probably more music being produced today then there has in any other point in history. 

PS: Porter Robinson is amazing


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## Margen67 (Mar 21, 2016)

Blaze163 said:


> Thoughts? Opinions? Maybe some examples of modern music that WON'T make my ears tear themselves from my face and run for the hills? 'cause in my new job we have the radio on in the office, and if I hear any more songs like 'Bimmer' by Tyler The Creator (arguably weaponized brown noise to reduce the surplus population) then the work radio is going out the damn window.


"le wrong generation" and all that, but still. While I may like modern music, I will admit it mostly sounds like shit.
And not just because it's generic or unoriginal, but because it sounds so bad due to the loudness war.
Older music actually sounds better because of this.


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## funnystory (Mar 21, 2016)

GuyInDogSuit said:


> Because that's what people are buying. Blame the record companies. They keep signing on these shit "musicians" because that's what the public wants. Listen to the Top 40 radio, you'll hear a lot of garbage, that people are just eating up. People these days have no idea what real talent is. You ask them if they've heard "War Pigs," "Black Dog," "Comfortably Numb," "Ziggy Stardust," or "Redemption Song," and they'll look at you funny. And don't get me started on rap.... Tupac is rolling in his grave right now.



you guys are just living in the past. If it sells it is good music,nothing else to it.


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## Margen67 (Mar 21, 2016)

funnystory said:


> you guys are just living in the past. If it sells it is good music, nothing else to it.


Just because something sells well or is popular doesn't mean it's good.


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## gman666 (Mar 21, 2016)

The music on mainstream radio is shit, but that doesn't mean all modern artist produce shit. The marketing tactics have changed, of course you're going to market the same repetitive crap (singles) if it makes you money. Why change the formula when you can safely profit on the same thing? When the top 10 songs consist of single sylable words and sometimes unintelligible lyrics there's definitely a change in the way music is being consumed. This generation and their listening habits have been warped for the greater good of the corporations that control the music. However, I will say that there still is great music out there it's just a matter of going out and finding it. And you're not going to find it by listening to mainstream. Actively looking for music will definitely help rather than asking the question "why is 'such and such' shit?"


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## DDTarZan (Mar 21, 2016)

I am conflicted on this whole topic. What I want is some really good, hard vocals in my rock music. No, not straight belting into a microphone kind of vocals. But what I do like to hear is someone's voice sort of breaking apart as they try to convey their soulful feelings. But the problem with rock music today, not only losing popularity (why??) is that it's actually relatively hard to find, even on the internet. Not all artists try to make their stuff published and well known, and among them you have the ever-growing array of subgenres that make it so confusing that it's a little off-putting to pick up on something completely new.

Honestly I would love to tell you all about some great music that I know, without naming non-popular groups that I like. Tbh I've been so cut out of music that I've very much neglected my ability to create my own, and I don't even know _what type_ of music I love anymore. : personal rant :


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## Aerocool (Mar 21, 2016)

DDTarZan said:


> But the problem with rock music today, not only losing popularity (why??)


 
so true!


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## Ericzander (Apr 3, 2016)

Blaze163 said:


> I agree that we should be judging modern music in about 20 years. But my point still stands. What songs from this era will we be looking back on as classics a la Queen or Led Zeppelin? Or whatever your poison is from the past. Hell, maybe you're a fan of the band Poison, I dunno. My point is that there's such a dip in quality in the modern popular media that it's highly unlikely any of it will stand the test of time as anything more than a novelty act. We'll probably remember Gangnam Style for the novelty, Friday for just being pure distilled essence of failure, Let It Go for how bloody long it took to start dying, and maybe Nicki Minaj as the moment we lost our faith in humanity.


You should really check out http://reddit.com/r/lewronggeneration .

People in this thread keep saying over and over that there's a lot of good music today and a lot of crappy music from the the past.  The difference is that the crappy music from the past is filtered out and the good music of today has to be taken with the crap.  In the future I guarantee that people will complain about how great the music from the 2010's were compared to the garbage in 2030. 

And on another note, I love Queen and Led Zeppelin too, but lets not pretend that they haven't had some terrible songs too.  Same for The Beatles.  We just don't listen to those songs.


GuyInDogSuit said:


> People these days have no idea what real talent is. You ask them if they've heard "War Pigs," "Black Dog," "Comfortably Numb," "Ziggy Stardust," or "Redemption Song," and they'll look at you funny.


Unless you're talking to 6 year olds, this isn't true at all.  All of those songs are still extremely popular and you can even hear them on the radio still.  Maybe they don't know them by name, but they know the sound.


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## DinohScene (Apr 3, 2016)

Only good music is Post-hardcore.


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## GuyInDogSuit (Apr 3, 2016)

Ericzander said:


> Unless you're talking to 6 year olds, this isn't true at all.  All of those songs are still extremely popular and you can even hear them on the radio still.  Maybe they don't know them by name, but they know the sound.



I have talked to 17-year-old millennials that have no clue what those songs are, even when I played it for them.


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## cvskid (Apr 4, 2016)

So something like this could be considered good music???


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## Ericzander (Apr 4, 2016)

cvskid said:


> So something like this could be considered good music???



I'm pretty sure that that song was a parody.  

Personal favorite song of this decade:


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## Subtle Demise (Apr 22, 2016)

Crystal the Glaceon said:


> When something sells, people copy the formula to make their own brand sell as well. The same goes for music.
> Hell, all eras of music have their lazy periods. Just looking back at The Beatles craze. Once they started making money, bands similar to them started crawling out of the woodwork. We try to credit the past like these things didn't happen, but they've always been happening, we're just starting to notice it more.


Funny you mention that...During the mid sixties, when the boys were making psychedelic music popular, there was a certain other English rock band that copied and pasted the psychedelic formula that was popular at the time with their first album. That band was Pink Floyd.


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## osaka35 (Apr 22, 2016)

Blaze163 said:


> Lali ho!
> 
> I hve a very simple question for everyone. Why is modern music such lazy generic garbage?
> 
> ...



Who knows what will be remembered. I ain't no fortune teller. But there are quite a few songs that I feel are lovely. Mostly "indie" stuff.

And who can't forget songs like "my name is jonas"? or "on the radio"? or "murder in the city"? Just me? okay, that's cool. I'm fine with that.


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## Deleted User (Apr 22, 2016)

While the kind of music I listen to is mostly Japanese Pop from the 70's 80's and 90's, I have to disagree. There's tons of good modern music out there, and simply saying "practically all of it shit mmkay" just shows you're not looking very hard at all.


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## pastaconsumer (Apr 22, 2016)

All I will say on the matter as a guy that can (or at the very least attempt to) make "modern music", it takes a lot more work than people give it credit. First, you need to learn what synthesizers do what, and find the sounds you like. Then you need to make melodies, harmonies, etc. until you have an instrumental. Then if you ABSOLUTELY want to, you sing and add it in to the instrumental. There you go, new song. Of course, this can take several days, weeks, months or longer. It all depends on the creativity of the artist. Don't get me wrong though, some of the "trendy" music out there bores me, but all you need to do is look for music. There is no such thing as "good music" because everyone has a different opinion. Best thing I can say is search for what you like. Let the people that like modern music like modern music.
(waiting patiently for incoming shitstorm and my impending doom)


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## mammastuffing (Apr 22, 2016)

I think the main problem with popular music is that it's *just* an industry. They're not interested in making anything meaningful, it's all just about money.


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## Elton D. Tiglao (Apr 22, 2016)

I think it's not because of the "laziness" of the songs but it's sort of what you listened to when you were younger. I believe you are like 20+ years old so ofc you were listening to music 2000's and below just like me and It's never boring to listen.
Like video games, young people right now directly play ps3, ps4, ipad etc that is why when they play ps1 or snes games they find it boring or "lazy" in your term.

and if you ask me yes there are thrashy songs that doesn't make sense but mostly most songs in our generation gives good thoughts that we cannot just relate about it.

maybe it's the nostalgic feeling on old songs that is why we keep on listening to them


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## BORTZ (Apr 22, 2016)

either
1. you are lazy
2. you are looking at the wrong genres


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## mgrev (May 7, 2016)

dfsa3fdvc1 said:


> Anyone calling modern music shit must not seek out new music.
> There's so many great artist out there that I can not comprehend how anyone could possibly feel that way.
> 
> I guess if you only listen to on the air top 40 music you might feel that way but if you look online, you can find so much great stuff.
> ...



I love Porter Robinson!


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