Once upon a time music was good. We had bands like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. We had individuals with great bands to play with them, like Thelonius Monk and Lewis Armstrong. These obviously talented groups of people were praised in their time for writing and performing obviously wonderful music. If you look at the current situation in popular music, all the rock bands, mediocre, most Jazz bands, nonexistant, and Lo and behold, the genre called Rap was created. This so called music is merely spoken prose over synthesized beats, which for a time, was acceptable. But it has slowly become a worthless meaningless style, the only things I hear in rap are lyrics that say, have sex, do drugs, rape women, this is not creativity, this is ignorance. For a time this was even ignorable. Then came the bane of all music, modern and classic. Puff Daddy, after his good friend Notorious B.I.G. died, he became nothing more than a music theif. It all started with the cover of \"Every Breath You Take\" by the Police. Which would have been fine, had not every other song on the album been sampled from someone else. This went out of my mind for awhile, until it came to my attention that he took the riff from the song Kasmir by Led Zeppelin, and rapped over it, not an interpretation, as a cover should be, but a copy with some rap.

Let us speak about how music declined from great talent, to speaking over beats that are written and played by a computer

To what shall we respond, sir? The explanation seems simple enough: People became steadily more ignorant. As the consuming masses bought blindly because they couldn\'t tell the difference, the songs of yore faded from existance. After all, why pay a drummer or a guitarist when you can buy a synthesized sound track for half the cost and make double the income? Why even bother to create new songs, when there are confused drones who will buy \"remixed\" or redone songs with cheesy changes to make it sound fresh and new? There\'s no reason to do so. People are ignorant, so they don\'t even bother to listen to the lyrics of a song before making judgement. How many people knew Kansas was a Christian Rock band when they debuted? How many parents listen to a song with their kids? Within my own school, the teachers played on the closed-circuit anouncements a song with strong sexual orientation, completely unaware of their error because they don\'t listen. Music became noise, which is exactly what Rap is now: noise, not meaning or care, just something to liven up the otherwise silent parties or videos.

It\'s not really a decline... there\'s plenty of good music out there. Most just arn\'t on radio stations.


All it is is a shift in popular taste. You should just look up more underground bands. The radio sucks.

Personally, I don\'t think that most music these days are worth my 20 CAD. Most of the time, it\'s better to just listen to some underground stuff like Gutter suggested.

Now don\'t get me wrong, there is good music nowadays, what I\'m talking about is, back in the day, you needed some talent to make music. Now just turn on the drum machine, throw in some weak lyrics, and you\'ve got a triple platinum album. How do these people get away with this?

For one thing, it only takes a few thousand singles to reach number one -- if that.

You know what steams my broccoli? How one of those stupid \"pop divas\" covered a White Stripes song (Fell in Love With a Girl) that was made what, a year earlier? GOOD GOD! Can\'t even wait until the ORIGINAL song is played out?!

But that\'s the problem now. The \"in\" thing is pop divas like \"X-tina\" and Jessica Simpson. Masters of the \"lipsynch to not-so-obscure headset device\" onstage antic. And rap, of course. Which..to a point, isn\'t so bad. \"Rappers Delight\" which was like, the first rap song ever..the guy somewhat sounds like he\'s actually singing abit, or at least has differing tones in his voice. Nowadays? It\'s just straight, boring, droning talk. I don\'t see how people listen to it. Hip Hop and R&B sometimes are the same way..except usually the females sing, heh.

As for rock music, don\'t get me started. I\'m ashamed to say I was a Metallica fan, I\'m ashamed to say I was a Heavy Metal fan even. Look at Motley Crue for god sakes, washed up ugly old dogs crawling back on stage just to try and make money for their crackbabies\' college education. I haven\'t listened to the radio in a long time, and damn I\'m glad. I have plenty of old music to listen to.

The radio isn\'t so bad though, occassionally a good band will come along.. I found Orgy, Seether, Garbage, and plenty of other good bands on the radio.

I don\'t tend to generalse music anymore. I don\'t say something like \" I like rock music\", I rather say \" I like good music\". Chilli Peppers, Queen, White Stripes, you know...

Yeah, most of the \"IN\" music today is junk. All the do is say lets do drugs and kill people etc. And if not that they are cussing all the time. Like you guys were saying earlier is that you have to find some good underground bands. Most of like christian rock is pretty good. They have good positive lyrics and talent. Since they have to be good in that genre to get a recording contract. You guys should at least listen to the \"30 second sample\" on itunes of some of those bands. One I really enjoy is Relient K. They are good musicians that can actually play the guitar etc.

At least here me out,

gwXtreme

I personally don\'t think it is a coincidence that standards seem \"declining\" since more and more styles have been already been invented. Therefore it only gets harder and harder to invent even more styles that are something completely new and not a rip off from some other.

So it would seem that we have to look back to all the goods of the past more and more. So I think we should be glad that there are some people who are actually trying to preserve what has made in the past.

*Is still in the Power/Gothic/Black/Folk/Viking Metal mood*

Yeah, people want to be edgy. Now, thousands of 70\'s-90\'s musicains were edgy. So 00\'s are edgier. This means packing in every little controversial thing they can in every single song or album they can. We got drugs, violence, and of course the two building blocks of all music nowadays: Women and course language. Indeed, quite a lot of that. Not that it\'s new, it\'s simply just that it\'s even more common today than it used to be. I guess people have to turn to sexuality as a selling basis since violence is too much of a risky influence on kids.:lol:

Yeah. You know a good example? \"My Back\". I suppose with lots of the music like this, the people who listen to it are so high on weed anyway, they don\'t have a clue what they\'re listening to!

The ironic thing is that people in the 60s and 70s halucinated better things than that and rote them down. Good old Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

Part of the problem today is that the record producers are just a bunch of money hungry idiots. Back in the day, a lot of musicians produced themselves. Frank Zappa, though just a little bit insane, was a great guitarist. And even though the lyrics were silly, if you listen to the complexity of the music they were playing, you would realize that these guys are really great musicians. Frank Zappa had his own record label, he didn\'t need a company.

Nowadays the system is designed in such a way that supergroups, such a Zeppelin, are not allowed to make it in the pop world. All that is allowed is short bursts of popularity from the Britney Spears\', and Ashley Simpsons. And Ashley Simpson is tone deaf. They run her through an effects box that makes her sing on key. I might even be willing to accept her popularity is she danced or something, but she doesn\'t. And I know some people who still listen to her \"music.\"

And do you know what steams my broccoli even more than that, she blamed her lip synching screw up on the drummer. That drummer has more musical talent in his pinky toe than that little tool of the company has in two of her, that is, if she were to be cloned.

Another thing, the musicians that play behind those pop sensations at live performances tend to be really talented, if they got some of these people and made a real band out of them, they could be compared to some of the great musicians of yesteryear.

Pop sucks.

There a many groups like that. Busted, McFly, etc. CRAP! You can tell if they are really any good by getting them to perform live with no voice altering devises o anything like that. See how well they do then.

You really need good songs. Slow, songs with a message like Clifornication, and then add guitar parts on top of that , like Boulevard of Broken Dreams, and you have one good song. Real bands you have real talent. I always say the perfect group needs four or five people in it:

Vocalist
Lead Guitarist
Rhythm Guitarist
Bass Player
Drummer

It only needs four, if the vocalist playes either guitar, drums or bass.

[Edited on 22/12/04 by AirMan]