as we approach the end of the 00s, as far as it's worth caring about these things from a critical pov, what is the ONE thing that has bothered you most about popular music developments since 2000?

emo

Corporate "indie music"

THE one and only correct answer, tell them what they've won, John...

http://americanidolist.com/files/2008/02/32246817-simon_cowell.jpg

I was actually thinking of mentioning him myself.

iPod generation meaning that bands are happier doing 4 genres shittily than one genre well.

I'll tell you
Yahoo! Answeres: Best Soft Rock Songs?
I actually bothered to make a list of great soft rock songs that I either like nowadays or I used to like. Anyways, the best answer chosen by the asker was:
coldplay
Dave Matthews
Lifehouse
Nickelback
Howie Day
Jon Mclaughlin
Daniel Powter
Creed
Daughtry
Elvis Costello
Clocks by Coldplay
viva la vida by coldplay
etc..
hope i helped
those are some really good soft rock singers...

Asker's Rating:
5 out of 5
Asker's Comment:
awesome!!!

somehow this is a metaphor to most people still listening to crap on a regular basis, which bothers me most. ignorant fools.

Corporate "indie music"

Yep. Also the fact that 90% of dance music to trouble the charts since the days of 2-step has been bland as fuck and devoid of funk.

Sorry, that's two.

OK, I'll take the bait ... what's so bad, or to be more specific, what's so *uniquely* bad about Simon Cowell? It's not as if arrogant svengalis of manufactured pop haven't been around forever, and won't continue to be around forever.

Truly, he is history's greatest monster.

To be honest he's had a far bigger effect on TV than on the charts.

That requires a long detailed answer and I don't do those on ILx. Suggest you read Morley's words on Simon Fuller in Words And Music since they are equally and arguably more appropriately relevant as far as Cowell is concerned and both are partners in killpop crime anyway.

What chap just said, and as such it's less about him that it is his shows being the byword for how music is seen and consumed in what's left of the monoculture. I actually have no problem with him being a contemptuous annoyance -- on that front he's the most successful critic ever!

Indie went from being too raw and unpolished for mainstream rock/metal to being too wussy and mannered to rock as hard as mainstream rock/metal.

Corporate indie has already been taken, so I'll go with the acceptance of MP3s as a valid paid-for sonic alternative to CDs (to the extent where it has become impossible to purchase most current hit singles in a decent sound quality), and the shitty mastering that has followed in the wake of that.

Mixtapes overtook albums as the primary outlet of music in hip hop, and ultimately that made the quality of albums go down the shitter more than label intervention or artistic decline.

^cosign

I guess, and this is just a personal thing, the extent to which music has become more of a lifestyle accessory than anything else. It's the way most people don't feel like they should have to give up any resources to have recorded music around, the way I see so many kids walking around with their friends with one iPod earbud always on. Internet music dorks who have downloaded hard drives worth of stuff that they're never going to listen to.

God I sound like such an old. I don't want to be all "music is a sacred art form" but it appalls me how many people will drop 10 bucks on a horrible film and wouldn't even consider paying a dollar for a song they like.

music has always been a lifestyle accessory

indie music has always been corporate

simon cowell always has been and always will be

people still listening to crappy music and loving it bothers me...
I use yahoo answers: music, to gauge what (mostly) younger people listen to nowadays... it sucks!

Electroclash didn't really work out (not that surprising, but still) and then just kept going and going and going producing waves of boring rock bands w/added kbds and occasional drummachines and annoying clothes.

Also Bright Eyes/Sufjan/etc, the rebirth of the boring singersongwriter

singer/songwriters have always been boring

how about booty rap? and how degrading it is to black people.

rock bands have always been boring, had added keyboards and drum machines, and work annoying clothes

in a way i think Cowell may actually have done less damage in the 00s than in the 90s. was it not he who foistered Robson & Jerome upon us back then? Will Young and Leon Lewis are a clear step up from those depths. selective memory tho perhaps.

thats LeonA obv

and obviously the followers of booty rap, white or black, are pitiful as well

The decline of great bands from the nineties into sad parodies of themselves (Foo Fighters, Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nine Inch Nails [Ghosts? come on who are you kidding! Take drugs again, please], Audioslave [parodying both RATM and Soundgarden, and making me hate both every time I see a stone in a field], etc)

Runners up:
ubiquity of music making it just a little less special. I mean, if EVERYTHING has a soundtrack, what are you associating the music to? "Oh I love this song, it always takes me back to walking down the sidewalk by the McDonald's with my 10 piece nuggets every other day since I was four. Sniff," yeah, great. Music may risk becoming permanent elevator music. Modern grunge is already the bad background music in restaurants...

Emo has made it uncool to sing anything melancholy without first asserting one's non-emoness or sounding like a grunge or indy wannabee (they make great honey!).

Grunge sticking around as complete filler.

The radio.

American Idol being presented as good singing. Here's a hint, kiddies: IT'S NOT! Now go back to watching survivor or whatever other shill you want shoved down your throat as both innovative and cool. I'm going back to MASH reruns.

How about Rage Against the Machine not being active for the one decade they would have been useful? Maybe that's more ironic than anything else. They went from tired political activists in a nice era to non-existent in a chaotic strife-filled era. Well done, the revolution lives on. This is for the people of the...sun?

Johnny Cash worship. ugh.

Dance music being bump n grind music. Someone come up with a better dance than superman, please.

Or maybe the doubling of gas prices making me not have money to spend to buy albums wholesale.

Oh, and all those damn kids on my lawn (shakes walking stick, rocks back in chair, falls asleep)...

CaptainLorax is my single biggest gripe or disappointment

It's just remarkable how Cowell is singlemindedly intent on not only pretending that the last fifty years of popular music never happened but actively trying to erase them. Back to polite Dickie Valentines and Alma Cogans who are clean and smartly dressed and never answer back and sing songs that everyone can enjoy from eight to eighty (if nowhere in between).

Cutting insight from n/a up in here.

It's just remarkable how Cowell is singlemindedly intent on not only pretending that the last fifty years of popular music never happened but actively trying to erase them. Back to polite Dickie Valentines and Alma Cogans who are clean and smartly dressed and never answer back and sing songs that everyone can enjoy from eight to eighty (if nowhere in between).

-- Dingbod Kesterson, Wednesday, 6 August 2008 15:30 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

You sure you're not thinking of Kanye West?

Have you ever seen Simnon Cowell and Kanye West in the same room at the same time? I THINK NOT! hmmm...

I guess most popular music nowadays is not for me, and I don't like it, or the genre it belongs to. But that was true before 2000; it's not really a new development, so I can only name the fact's persistence.

I could nominate the world's failure to make me a pop legend somewhere where the lines meet that connect Ira Gershwin and Robert Quine, or Hal David and Terry Bickers, but I don't really blame the world - in truth I haven't made much effort.

Actually most of the things I don't like about pop don't bother me as much as they did (eg in early days of ilx) - they don't seem to impinge on my life anymore, somehow; I am more isolated or protected from them, perhaps I now nestle in a niche where they do not really touch me.

So the one thing that disappoints me would indeed be the end of my 2nd point - the fact that I haven't spent the decade making records which a few other people, let alone me, might have loved and admired. Partly my fault, partly just fate and life, and somehow not the end of the world.

Cutting insight from n/a up in here.

-- call all destroyer, Wednesday, August 6, 2008 2:31 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

dang, sorry they weren't up to trenchant standards set by the ILM superstarz

what is music other than a lifestyle accessory, for real?

I dunno I've been listening to a lot of like Ayler and Pharaoh Sanders lately and it's like does anyone today make music that is so sincere yet totally fucked? And if so would anyone respond to them the way Ayler and Sanders were critically received (at least by some) at the time?

I dunno is film or visual art or whatever the fuck else a lifestyle accessory?

life... style.... accessory

I think music people listen to, can say a lot about who they are.

Marcello is actually OTM for once. Pop Idol is surely the most annoying thing about 00s. And, no, it isn't like manufactured pop is a new thing. In fact, I might have gone for boy/girl bands as one of the most annoying things about the 90s. But it has become so extremely dominant. It is like having creative control doesn't mean anything anymore.

In the early 80s, you had acts who were very much obviously pop stars. Their music was obviously pop, not rock. They wanted to be pop stars, and wanted to have commercial success. Yet, they had creative control. They had their own style, wrote their own material, were in control to a much bigger extent than today's Idol stars are.

what is music other than a lifestyle accessory, for real?
-- n/a

An event?

I dunno I've been listening to a lot of like Ayler and Pharaoh Sanders lately and it's like does anyone today make music that is so sincere yet totally fucked?

yes

I dunno is film or visual art or whatever the fuck else a lifestyle accessory?

yes

And if so would anyone respond to them the way Ayler and Sanders were critically received (at least by some) at the time?

i "dunno" what this means

i like pinefox's answer

i'm still trying to think of my own

re 'lifestyle accessory', music's 'portability' became a legitimate/realised concept for our generation, from personal players to 'no moving parts' digital freedom - i see what n/a means on that basis

Autotune

It's not their fault per se, but I blame U2 for kicking off a chain of bad things (and I like U2). When "All That You Can't Leave Behind" blew up, making them one of the only "Rolling Stone"-friendly mega-star bands from the 80's and 90's to continue their success into the 00's -- and possibly even eclipsing it -- it cemented the notion (in the minds of industry types) that at the end of the day, only established superstar acts were worth a damn, taking us down the road to $100M LiveNation deals for acts who don't need the money or exposure while everyone else is left in the cold and wondering if they'll still have a record deal in a year's time (yes, I'm generalizing).

I miss Pharaoh Sanders' beard. If more people made music AND grew beards, I'd probably forgive anything they wrote. I mean, who can really hate ZZ Top? They're so...fluffy

yeah, but not that many, and garden state didn't start the whole thing off, here in britain for instance the soundtrack to "trainspotting" did rather well in the mid-90s

as we approach the end of the 00s we speak of trl

AUTOTUNE.

autotune is one of my favorite popular music developments since 2000

Re: Garden State strk

I no, I'm just saying that the "indie film + indie pop" had been building for quite a while & that there were precendents (of a sort).

Plus Trainspotting OTM, though that's not quite modern American indie, either..

I wouldn't blame MTV/TRL for anything, and I don't think the decontextualization (recontextualization) of music is worth complaining about.

how many frigging abbreviations do you people have?

I think I just worked out that 'sdtk' must mean the same thing as 'OST', but still don't know what TRL is (though somebody said something about it), and ... SLF??

yeah maybe I'm just bitching because I personally love music videos.

Total Request Live starring Carson whatisass

dude pay attention

SLF = Stiff Little Fingers as ref'd in previous post

sussussussussusoutsussuspect device

It's not their fault per se, but I blame U2 for kicking off a chain of bad things (and I like U2). When "All That You Can't Leave Behind" blew up, making them one of the only "Rolling Stone"-friendly mega-star bands from the 80's and 90's to continue their success into the 00's -- and possibly even eclipsing it -- it cemented the notion (in the minds of industry types) that at the end of the day, only established superstar acts were worth a damn, taking us down the road to $100M LiveNation deals for acts who don't need the money or exposure while everyone else is left in the cold and wondering if they'll still have a record deal in a year's time (yes, I'm generalizing).

The solution is of course for the majors to look for acts with potential staying power rather than acts that they don't expect to last for more than three years at most.

Ed Banger.

The solution is of course for the majors to look for acts with potential staying power rather than acts that they don't expect to last for more than three years at most.

Yes, but that still means they have to take a risk and invest in a new artist that may or may not become a success (or may not be a success with their debut album). Instead, the majors are more likely than ever to forego any and all perceived risk and throw more money at acts that have been around for 20+ years.

"majors" lolz

Yes, but that still means they have to take a risk and invest in a new artist that may or may not become a success

Yes, it does. But they did that kind of thing before, and it pays in the long run.

Instead, the majors are more likely than ever to forego any and all perceived risk and throw more money at acts that have been around for 20+ years.

The trouble here is that those acts generate considerably more money from touring with their old material (which their fans know and love) than from recording new material (which their fans may buy to some extent, but will probably not like as much as the old stuff). The majors need to investigate more time in trying to find tomorrow's U2's, Pink Floyd's, Rolling Stones' or Bon Jovi's instead.

They should maybe invest in teaching Norwegians how to use apostrophes properly.

Maybe they should teach you Norwegian while they're at it? Or would that fraught task cost too much and break the industry once and for all?

Are you really sure they need invest time in finding tomorrow's Bon Jovi?

What Geir doesn't actually realise is that the LiveNation deals are actually going to be massively self-perpetuating, and as such bands that get one now are going to have a "Champions League 4" style grip on the recording/touring industry for the next 40 years: ie, Nickelback and Jay-Z will still be headlining stadiums in 2045.

I don't see neither Nickelback nor Jay-Z as lasting material.

Coldplay and Oasis on the other hand.

Wrong Geir, anyone have a long career these days

You see, this is a matter of timelessness. Part of the reason why U2 is the band from the 80s that has retained their live popularity best is that they never were a typical "80s band" to begin with. They always did their own thing, and have kept on doing their own thing in spite of all the changing trends. See also Iron Maiden, although personally I hate them.

So what the majors need to do is to stop searching for bands that sound "modern" and just stick to stuff that sounds like something that might have been made in the 60s or 70s or 80s.

Timelessness has nothing to with, there's lots of shit bands who keep going on and on or reform and sell out gigs

Coldplay are pretty much just a Merseybeat band, yeah.

Genesis for instance... can't get any shitter than that

http://www.last.fm/tag/timeless

I'd like to add the exponential rise in decrepit old bastards listening to or writing about or making popular music to my previously listed "things that have bothered me". In fact, it's top of the list.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds US Tour Dates [Started by kwhitehead, last updated 23 seconds ago] 1 new answer

FABRICLIVE at Fabric

DJ Yoda, High Contrast, Dillinja, Goldie, DJ Format, Nu:Tone, Commix, Scratch Peverts

^^^OTM, DJ Format will still be remembered long after all the other so-called "musicians" of this era have faded away.

I don't see neither Nickelback nor Jay-Z as lasting material.

Jay-Z has been selling for at least 12 years and his profile has probably never ben higher worldwide but see what you prefer to see as usual eh

when does one become decrepit? and in an ageing population, what are most people supposed to with the second half of their lives?

It's true, if anyone finds another Bon Jovi I hope they put the stone back.

I don't think Oasis have lasted terribly well.

Jay-Z has been selling for at least 12 years

But he will vanish soon unless he starts singing. Rapping is on its way out.

http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00384/mystic-meg-horoscop_384331a.jpg

The Aryans Will Rise Again

Rapping is on its way out.
No doubt you've been saying this for 20 years.

As an expert on hip hop, Geir should know.

But he will vanish soon unless he starts singing. Geir Hongro is on its way out.

But he will vanish soon unless he starts szinging. Geir Hongro is on its way out.

-- Tom D., Thursday, 7 August 2008 13:44 (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Top notch re-write

I don't believe that rapping is on its way out.

"Guitar groups are on their way out, Mister Epstein."

I'm more concerned about Geir's knowledge of "the kids."

http://www.bizarrerecords.com/letters/pics/minipops.jpg

Contains proper singing.

Approved by Philip Larkin.

rave synths in rap & r&b

"The majors need to investigate more time in trying to find tomorrow's U2's, Pink Floyd's, Rolling Stones' or Bon Jovi's instead."

Or just wait for indies and mini-majors to find 'em, then poach them. See: White Stripes (though, in fairness, they're not as huge as Bon Jovi).

I hate the climate the the micro-genre/internet niches have inspired. The rollercoaster of attitudes toward music has never been more schizophrenic and hostile. At least this is what I think about when I think of the backlash toward groups who enjoy moderate success like Clap Your Hands and Arcade Fire, the fact everyone acts like they never enjoyed an electroclash/snap music/crunk song 5 years ago, techno/house/disco heads at each others throats (though this is typical of the entire dance music scene), the rise of hipster-hop and the backlash against it, "Hip Hop is Dead" people, anti-"Starbucks music" reactions, blaming Gadren State, MySpace bands (both American and British varieties), etc.

I don't think any of the above attitudes are invalid. Most are spot on. I just think that the speed at which the internet thrusts all of music in general has made the scene a crazy bipolar bitch who's playing you some new music one moment and slapping your face with her ring turned inwards the next. I feel like the caffeine rush of any trend and the crash that comes after it (say, like electroclash) would have been a much slower ascent and descent if they had happened 10 years ago.

Of course, my thoughts don't speak to the quality of the music at all - just the climate that surrounds it. If I had to speak about actual MUSIC that's disappointed me, well, that's easy. Post-2000 Biggie Smalls music.