Fvck yeah!

Graceland is a peculiar unique record and not representative of what normal 80s pop was like back in the 80s. I guess it falls under the western world music genre.

There was a complexity to the compositions and a focus on melodies even in cheesy pop songs that is totally absent today. Lot's of incredible talent and dedication. And joy.




I take good (and there is a lot of it) 80s cheese any time over the self-indulgent pseudo-artsy monotone gimicky sad-excuse-for-actual music that permeates the charts today.

Today's stuff is just as cheesy but incredibly more generic and boring.

That's number 1of the hot 100. Sounds like an AI on ritalin and valium combined.

You tell 'em. Modern music sucks. Kids these days. Back in my day, now that was music.

The problem is also with the very word "Cheesy" itself.

People tend to apply it to the stuff that is not to their personal taste. But, (like politics) if you get to know them, you soon discover the hypocrisy: the "Cheese" they like is given a magic pass.

Reminds me of a fellow I worked with at a Mastering Studio endlessly complaining about the pop material that came through the door.

Then one day I find out he's a huge Kiss fan.

Mostly before my day. I have been complaining about the state of pop music since my teens. It objectively sucked more and more each year.

Basically the west has reached its peak in the early 90s and since then is in decline. Objective metrics like IQ tests and a host of other measures don't lie.

Blaming it on generational tastes is denial of the unfortunate facts.

There are always exceptions put in the aggregate that's what it is.

No music "objectively" sucks. It's totally a matter of taste.
There is also some pushback on the "objectivity" of IQ tests.

In my world, there is a shit ton of great music being made today. It depends on where you look.

You seem like a "glass half empty" kinda guy. The modern world, especially ITB mixing, is evidence of the decline of Western Civilization. I'm glass half full - things are getting better and better, well in music at least. But then, I don't listen to pop music. I only see your point if the sole metric is pop. Popular music has always been both great and awful.

Let's not engage in ad hominems.

This thread is about "cheesy 80s music", so naturally the charts - what is popular and pluralities listen to - is the benchmark.

The current attention economy doesn't allow for a "shit ton of great music being made today" to reach significant audiences.

Like I wrote, there are far more measures beyond IQ tests that show the obvious decline. I could point you to good books about the subject, in case you are interested.

Incidentally, one of the problems is that fewer and fewer people actually read (and finish) something as complex as a non-fiction book today.

Denial of objective reality should not be confused with a "glass half full" mentality. That train has left the station a long time. Accepting the facts is the first step in fixing a problem - that's a constructive attitude and I am an optimist by nature.

The cheese you like is called "guilty pleasure."

Yes, it depends on whether you're talking about just the mainstream or not. Underground music or niche music doesn't represent the contemporary culture because the contemporary culture is unaware of it. Henry Threadgil is never cited as an important 80's artist despite his great 80's output.

In America, in the 80's, we stopped protesting and went shopping. THAT is the source of the cheese. And it reverberated around the world and that is what made the 80's suck.

What was good in your view?

When? In the 80s?

I think contemporary culture encompasses far more than Billboard-oriented pop charts or artists/entertainers/genres that get the most mainstream media coverage. There's so much music beyond that; there's always been and always will be.

Henry Threadgill was an important figure in the 70s. Air with Steve Hopkins and Fred Hopkins was easily one of the best and most distinctive bands of the era. They got a fair amount of critical recognition, but hardly anyone knew of them. Bill Laswell was for sure paying attention.

Any period.

Seriously? I like music from classical to punk, from acoustic to electronic, from the 18th century to today. It can be minimalistic or oppulent.

I think there's a sweet spot from ca. the mid 60s to the mid 90s where most of the good popular music resides. There needs to be melody, harmony, variety and the right mix of predictability and surprise. And lot's of "bad" music (in my book) happened in that time as well.

There's a parallel development in film scores that illustrates the changes over the recent decades very well. We went from the distinctive melodies, motifs and themes composers like Enrico Morricone, John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner etc. used to the generic Hans-Zimmer-esque drone-and-drumloop kind of background sounds (his "Interstellar" score being an exception in the last two decades). I enjoy well-made ambient-music and weird electronic stuff, but there needs to be an idea worth listening to and a journey the music leads you through.

It's hard to put into words what creativity actually means, but when you hear it it still should be kind of obvious.

Like this highly unconventional masterspiece (definitely not pop music).



Anyway, this is really OT.

this pretty much nails this thread...
and all the other threads exactly like it

and everybody has a different "my day"

What kills me is that not one of the perpetrators recognizes themselves when it is done to them. Seemingly not one of them remembers how they felt when their elders told them that the music they were into sucked compared to what had gone before. They apparently seriously believe "this time it's different" and that they alone have a handle on some kind of absolute form of aesthetics.

Even within this thread, two people can at first seemingly agree that "today's music sucks" but then they get into a knock-down-drag-out over Eddie Van Halen or whatever. I have to tell myself that it is hilarious, because if I allow it to color my judgement of the intelligence of my fellow human beings, I get depressed.

At age 17, listening to the Doors, and my dad overhears

Father?
Yes son.
I want to kill you.
Mother?
I want to Doooo Alllll IIIII CAAAAnnn!

If I were my dad in that moment, I would have killed me.

I’m trying to not mention things that will get the thread locked down. Art is a symptom of society at a certain point in time. Sometimes it’s forward thinking, but it is still of its time. With that in mind, the shallowness of mainstream music was more predominant in the 80’s than the previous two decades because society moved in that direction.

Threadgill has a biography. Good read.

Laswell made great music in the 80’s. Some of it even made it to the mainstream. I saw Last Exit at some point in the 80’s. Nothing mainstream there. But Sonny Sharrock did appear to be wearing a Members Only jacket…

Is that yours? I'm using this.

What's lost among today's cloud yellers is that their animus towards what they perceive as 'new' or recent music is that such attitudes and critiques have always existed, going back centuries if not further back, and generally, it was much more visceral and vicious. (same could be said about politics - man, it was much more no-holds-barred and personal in nature than what's going on now)

Everybody should check out Lexicon of Musical Invective by Nicholas Slonimsky, which is an anthology of critiques in classical music from the 19th and 20th centuries. Much of the attitudes can be applicable, transposed to current times.

At least racism is taboo in people opining about music, but it wasn't that long ago when Louis Armstrong called bebop "Chinese music" or Elvis was said to sound like a caterwauling N word. It shows we progressed somewhat...

Use it all you want. But you have to credit... "Poopypants."

I recall reading a book, Can't recall title or author, about the history of temperament (tuning systems) and the eventual settling on even temperament. If I recall correctly, people were murdered over their opinions!


Racism was plenty prevalent in music critiques in the 70's, and the racist (and homophobic) anti disco stuff prevails to this day. I believe it was David Bowie who shamed MTV into playing black music. 70's FM was frequency modulated Jim Crow. In recent years, overt public racist opining has been subdued, but have faith that it will comeback stronger than ever. These topics are important for this discussion, but we need to be careful. That's as close to that nerve as I'm willing to get. Hope I didn't already cross the line.

Nah. His generation read the story of Oedipus in school. He would have scoffed and said "Drunk hippie has no original thought."

Mainly from the low scorers.
It's always been known IQ tests only measure certain aspects of intelligence, but if overall scores are falling it still suggests something significant is going on and it's probably not positive. When you compare society and culture in general to decades previously, I'd say it's also clear we've significantly dumbed down.

"Dumbing down" is not about our ability to think. It's about our access to information and education. We're just as smart, and as stupid, as we've ever been. But we used to have societal consensus based on expert opinions that we could trust. There was always stupid shit floating around (Moon landing faked, etc.) but the internet has amplified that garbage.

Personally I'd say the most obvious sign of the dumbing down is in the mainstream (journalism, culture, pop music etc.) It's a shadow if its former self and intellect is almost seen as something to be ashamed of.
Even actors, models and pop stars of the past were (on the whole) vastly more intelligent than those of today - whose opinions on most matters are pretty much interchangeable.

Yeah. I remember those two. That one was especially bad. It was a precursor to what was to come a few years later with Wilson Phillips and I guess Michael Bolton.

Better to keep the ad hominems going instead of engaging on substance, right?

This day and age is different, because everything has become about marketing. The packaging has become more important than the content, and there are obvious and measureable technological and societal forces to point to. This has been a longer term development, but the advent of the smartphone and social media have put the shift into overdrive.

The way music ist produced without much need of actual skills now is another factor. The erosion of the business model of musicians is another one.

So keep on yelling your narrative to the clouds, but realize it doesn't make it true.

The bridge is like straight out of a South Park parody.