music

I'm generally sanguine about popular music that is brainless, the shit that drives me up the wall is pretentious shit like modern Arctic Monkeys. "There better be a mirrorball" and "Body paint" will make me irrationally mad. Give me one million Pink Pantheresses before that, they at least tend to have a nice hook.

Rock as a genre is basically dead since the indie landfill era.

I wouldn't know, I don't listen to the radio and I usually wear headphones when I'm out shopping to help me deal with my burgeoning agoraphobia

They should bring back 80s commercial music. I need insane tom fills

ok but kpop still puts out some bangers

I would agree but every time I say I hate some kind of music I end up liking it a year or two later so I'm not touching this one lol. Happened too many times now.

yes but also its not for us because we are old

and also I don't care because I can still listen to old music (and there's still tons of it I haven't discovered

You are just not listening to the right radio. Avoid the commercial stations, the ones run by colleges are usually cool. Also, just avoid commercials and literal TV (piracy is cool).

It's not you. It definitely does. ECM FTW!

Say what you will about the politics of Rush (aka Randian inspired libertarianism) but Spirit of the Radio has some good lines

One likes to believe in the freedom of music But glittering prizes and endless compromises Shatter the illusion of integrity, yea

And

For the words of the profits Were written on the studio wall

Of course they also frame it as personal failings ("All this machinery making modern music Can still be open-hearted Not so coldly charted, it's really just a question of your honesty") instead of blaming the system of record companies and producers picking and choosing marketable/profitable bands/music over more talented but less commodifiable musicians.

Of course then we get into controlled dissent, when opposition to the record company system itself is packaged and sold, as is with bands such as Reel Big Fish

Cause you're gonna go to the record store You're gonna give 'em all your money Radio plays what they want you to hear They tell me it's cool, I just don't believe it

Sell out, with me, oh yea Sell out, with me tonight The record company's gonna give me lots of money and Everything's gonna be alright

i dunno, i think it's the opposite, the market is so fragmented that recognizing what's really the mainstream is harder than ever. of course you have your david guettas or whatever producing the most unbearable pabulum known to mankind and getting substantial radio play but even he belongs on a niche of techno/trance hack musicians. like normal-ass people who are into david guetta suddenly blurt out to me like 10 other european trance DJs and they're all named like Güren Von Heimlich and they think that stuff is mainstream, it's baffling. it all sounds fucking repulsive of course but it surprises me that there's deep scenes for normie stuff like that. there is no mainstream anymore in truth.

I agree with you, I still spend more time enjoying great mainstream songs from like, 30+ years ago (of which I could name many) than contemporaries.

I'll only concede that it's a 'getting old' thing when in 30 years I'm banging my head to those great 2010s mainstream songs that will remain classics for the foreseeable future (of which I can think of no more than 1 or 2 at most).

Congratulations of being old.

But I agree, and only add that I think that "pop" music from every era is equally awful. Shitty bands like ac/dc are permanently blocked on all of my music playlists.

Tbf literally no one under 30 listens to radio anymore lmao. I also think young people growing up with instant access to a world of music definitely have far more diverse music taste than in the past, not that people in that past didn't, but everyone I know my age listens to stuff from the 80s to the 2020s, and rap, pop, rock, indie, etc.

As for mainstream/popular socially conscious music, first things that come to mind are Kendrick Lamar, Beyonce, Childish Gambino, and Hozier

I think what you referring to by mainstream here is probably just 'popular commercial American-style music'. But most of this music has always been bad. If you listen to the first white commercial Jazz from the 20s it was also garbage.

But there is also always a huge amount of good music. I think it also depends on what you listen to. This becomes even more clear if you listen to non-American music, whether of traditional or contemporary genres. It's mainly a question of the means and effort you have available to search and find good music.

I can't speak to genres like rock or indie or metal as I don't listen to them, but Hip Hop/Rap is a good case study at the moment because I think we're in another local peak for quantity and quality after the big one of the 90s, with a difference the RnB influence is less pronounced, G-Funk declined, Trap took a central position, and there is more range of experimental style due to digital technology and the international evolution of the music. There are a bunch a young American rappers at the moment who are up there with the best imo. However as it also has a central place now in popular music and has never been more culturally influential, the relative and absolute quantity of poor stuff has also never been larger I think.

Honestly I’m increasingly adopting the dfa party line that 1979 was the last cool year. Hip hop is really the only post-79 music that I don’t think I could live without, and the last year I was truly excited about contemporary hip hop was like 2016. It sort of bores me these days, and the stuff that is good is mostly just “listenable” good, not “exciting” good. Maybe this is getting old.

Listen to 'Free Mind' by Tems! Really powerful song.