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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   25745 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 25, 2024

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This is such a bizarre take to me. Can you provide some specific examples of songs that you think sound “exactly the same”? I think there’s plenty of differentiation among pop artists today - easily as much as there was during any previous era, and almost certainly more than in, say, the 1960’s.

I think this community suffers from a general inability to actually appreciate pop music, and apparently even to detect differences between different songs, artists, and sub-genres. This is a reflection of the limitations of the user base, not of these artists.

It's a very common take, universal to musical genres someone doesn't like. Most people can't tell jazz or classical music pieces apart, it all sounds the same to them. My wife loves listening to jazz but can't identify the pieces I put on at virtually every dinner party for years, or even pieces we've seen performed live. Most people would call anything harder than Slipknot "death metal" and say it all sounds alike.

It has nothing to do with judgement of musical quality and everything to do with what one identifies music by.

Most people would call anything harder than Slipknot "death metal" and say it all sounds alike.

Oh, I’m intimately familiar with this. I cannot count the number of times I’ve had to explain (unsuccessfully, as if my words were harmlessly impacting a brick wall) that “death metal” and “screamo” are actual distinct genres of music, and not just interchangeable terms meaning “any music with unclean vocals.”

You are of course correct that it’s common for the average person, with a passive approach to music and zero music theory training, to lack the ability to discern somewhat subtle differences between pieces of unfamiliar music.

What I find bizarre is the claim that pop music used to be more differentiated and varied, but that it has recently started to all sound the same.

Yes, I’m aware that some YouTubers, courting the engagement of boomers (both literal and spiritual), have produced some videos claiming to demonstrate objectively that all modern pop music sounds the same. As someone who is an avid listener of music spanning several decades, though, I’m just not seeing (hearing?) it. As you’re getting at, it’s almost certainly just that most of the people commenting here have no interest in any music produced after their mid-20’s at the latest, and thus they have no ear for it.

What I find bizarre is the claim that pop music used to be more differentiated and varied, but that it has recently started to all sound the same.

Depending on how you define "recently", is it really so bizarre? Why couldn't popular music be moneyballed into a garbage incredibly formulaic product like so many other things?

Again, the claim is superficially plausible as long as you don’t actually listen to the music in question. Yes, I’d be perfectly willing to believe that pop music had been reduced to an undifferentiated miasma of formulaic crap, except for when I actually listen to it that’s not the reality I encounter.

Like, I don’t read modern YA fiction, so if you made an effortful case to me that it’s all just formulaic indistinguishable garbage, I might be willing take you at face value because I don’t have any firsthand experience with the phenomenon you’re discussing. If someone who reads a lot of the books in question were to push back on your claim, though, I would have to take their claims seriously and actually investigate it myself, or else remain studiously neutral.

I'll also add that the take I find most bizarre is when people say that modern music is corporate. Pop music has never offered more opportunity outside the structure of major labels.

People have a lot of trouble understanding that they, too, are subject to biases. The brain perceives at the level of its baseline skill, and it stops processing information as quickly as possible. It's the source of the claim that Asians/negroes/blonde sorority girls all look alike.

It's much more fun to get on ones high horse about one's own superiority.

This is a bizarre take? Really? Because I’m far from the only one that’s noticed this. Just a couple curso dry examples I found with a quick google:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=9IucBIoCzc0?si=_mta-cYZ9v_t8dhR

https://youtube.com/watch?v=AsQUQ8P8c-A?si=1hpvTqFEX9Bd0Gn_

I’m not going to go out and find examples, sorry I’m just not that invested in this argument to go listen to a bunch of music I find unappealing to prove this to you. But I do find it kind of funny you think this opinion is strange or unique to this community. I guess if you’re a real music nerd you can hair split but I think you could probably find data to show variance in music has gone significantly down. Music is likely stagnating and decadent, along with all the other creative fields.

I have no idea as to overall style, but in at least one respect—dynamic range (how quiet and loud a song gets)—there is far less variance than there used to be. A quick search pulled up this article from 2017, which in turn cited this video from 2006, showing that the trend has been going on for awhile.

...And that's a good thing!

Listening to music with high dynamic range is a drag. I want to hear the quiet parts over ambient background noise without bursting my eardrums in the loud parts. Normalise normalisation!

The loudness war refers to dynamic range within a song rather than across songs, so it's not really relevant here. I've never seen e.g. an analysis of range of maximum loudness across all songs in a given year.

Agreed. Pop music seems to be in a really good place right now, and has a ton of variety.

I guess part of the problem with all discussions of music is, what genre are we talking about, does that count as pop, does this, etc. Does, I like the way you kiss me, by Artemas count as a 'pop' song? What about, I had some help, by post Malone? To me they are both pop songs, but I could see arguments for defining them (and all the other pop songs I like) out of the pop category and then maybe I too would think that 'pop' music is bad.

(Am I being overly literal and autistic when I define pop music as, popular music played on mainstream (none genre specific) radio stations?)

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