# It's not just you. Today's top 40 music is garbage



## Metalkitsune (Jul 11, 2011)

Music producers nowadays are only concerned about playing it safe and not taking any chances in search of the mighty dollar.

We need someone like another Frank Zappa who isn't afraid to take chances, much of the music of the 60's,70s,80's and such was of a experimental nature and they weren't concerned whether a lot of people would like it and it would sell. But now, every song sounds the same.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Metalkitsune said:


> Music producers nowadays are only concerned about playing it safe and not taking any chances in search of the mighty dollar.
> 
> We need someone like another Frank Zappa who isn't afraid to take chances, much of the music of the 60's,70s,80's and such was of a experimental nature and they weren't concerned whether a lot of people would like it and it would sell. But now, every song sounds the same.


Well...........you don't have to listen to it


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

There is something vaguely familiar about this topic.....


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

* It's not just you. Today's top 40 music is garbage*



Metalkitsune said:


> ... But now, every song sounds the same.





Strange Magic said:


> There is something vaguely familiar about this topic.....


I've been round long enough to have heard this same contention expressed in decades ... let's see ... the 1950s ... the 1960s ... the 1970s ... the 1980s ... the 1990s ....

(Of course, there is an alternative: their names are Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven.)


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

I actually like some of it  I often realize they all have 4 chords, but that's ok...


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## Metalkitsune (Jul 11, 2011)

This song nowadays seems almost prophetic about how music has become only about stars looking good and such.






And a interview by the late Frank Zappa on how music industry only cares about musicians looking good.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> I actually like some of it  I often realize they all have 4 chords, but that's ok...


Of course, the four chord song has been around for quite some time, and is not likely to be going anywhere anytime soon. The I-V-vi-IV progression is common. (For those of you who know little about music, which also includes me, those chords may be rendered in the key of C as C-G-Am-F. Try playing those, and you'll have dozens of familiar songs at your fingertips.)

Several popular variations on the "standard" four chord progression allow for so many other familiar songs. My favorite one works for a number of great jazz ballads: CMaj7-Am-Dm7-G7.

When I bummed around in a small, local bar-band power trio back in the late 60s / early 70s, the call was mostly for three chord songs (which was often two more chords than many of the band-mates I ran with knew). What was the expression ...? "In order to have a rock band, all you needed was three chords and a joint." That expression, too, had many variations: three chords and a beer, three chords and a song, or, in Van Morrison's cogent and enduring words: three chords and the truth. I always took the "joint" in "three chords and a joint" to mean the venue; other band mates interpreted it differently. Oh well ...

The point remains, it is not the number of chords a song contains, it is the quality of the song that essentially matters. If you can communicate "the truth" with a single chord, go for it. More power to you, and a lot less to learn. And, I can recommend a lot of former band-mates who just may be able to negotiate that "progression" with little difficulty. They may, however, require a joint.


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## Guest (Aug 9, 2020)

How about writing a tune based upon *a single repeated note* with THE most astonishing lyrics imaginable:






The highest level of artistry in the form of music/lyrics/dancing/direction - all for popular culture. Imagine us assuaging our Depression blues with such artistry today!!


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Are you saying porn stars can't have musical talent?


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## Metalkitsune (Jul 11, 2011)

regenmusic said:


> Are you saying porn stars can't have musical talent?


Well there are a lot of good songs out there,but remain undiscovered,because they don't sell a product.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Metalkitsune said:


> Well there are a lot of good songs out there,but remain undiscovered,because they don't sell a product.


It takes a certain degree of genius to recognize genius. Brian eno coined a term "sceneius" -- to think in terms of the scene that produces greatness, not just lone individuals. Both are important.


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## Varick (Apr 30, 2014)

Metalkitsune said:


> Music producers nowadays are only concerned about playing it safe and not taking any chances in search of the mighty dollar.
> 
> We need someone like another Frank Zappa who isn't afraid to take chances, much of the music of the 60's,70s,80's and such was of a experimental nature and they weren't concerned whether a lot of people would like it and it would sell. But now, every song sounds the same.


Your post is a non sequitur: You talk about "Top 40" music in your title but then in your second paragraph you reference Frank Zappa. Frank Zappa never ever had anything to do with Top 40 music. He never wrote for it, nor ever had the desire to write or be in that genre of music.

There are plenty of musicians out there right now who are not top 40 who are doing great experimental, edgy, and quality work. The vast majority of top 40 music in the past 30 or so years has been garbage. That's the nature of that beast. Why anyone would look to Top 40 for "great" or even "good" music is beyond me. sure, every now and then you'll get some good stuff that lands in there. 
And if you want a "catchy" beat, rhythm, or simple melody, sure, check it out. But if you want MUSIC....

V


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## norman bates (Aug 18, 2010)

Christabel said:


> How about writing a tune based upon *a single repeated note* with THE most astonishing lyrics imaginable:


but that single note repeated is just the introduction of Night and day, that has a gorgeous melody and chord progression, it's not like the entire tune is based on that trick.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

norman bates said:


> but that single note repeated is just the introduction of Night and day, that has a gorgeous melody and chord progression, it's not like the entire tune is based on that trick.


...and famously Jobim, well for a while anyway. The middle 8 makes me smile, being the complete opposite to just one (or two) notes.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

_De gustibus non est disputandum._ You can quote me.


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## philoctetes (Jun 15, 2017)

Top 40 has rarely been the place to find the best popular music imo


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## Varick (Apr 30, 2014)

Strange Magic said:


> _De gustibus non est disputandum._ You can quote me.


Do you mean the close to literal translation of: "In matters of taste, there can be no disputes"

or do you mean in the more "English" version: "There is no accounting for taste?"

Before I quote you of course. 

V


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Varick said:


> Do you mean the close to literal translation of: "In matters of taste, there can be no disputes"
> 
> or do you mean in the more "English" version: "There is no accounting for taste?"
> 
> ...


I like and endorse them both. To repeat my mantra: All esthetics is both purely subjective and personal. copyright SM in perpetuity.


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## Eva Yojimbo (Jan 30, 2016)

People have posted that video before. I've debunked it before. It's utter nonsense. If it were true then everyone would be Max Martin (who, btw, is only behind Lennon/McCartney for the most #1s of all-time), and most songwriters/producers have nowhere near his success. Pop music is a competitive market, and competitive markets incentivize talent to rise to the top. Yes, the goal of all pop songwriters/producers is to make hits that most of the general population will like. The notion that this is easy, or that it can be reduced to a repeatable formula, is a nonsensical myth. When that video (and others) talk about formula, it's less formula and more form, and pointing out that there's a common form to pop music is no more a revelation than pointing out there's a common form to all classical music that's written as a sonata. If we don't believe all classical music that uses the sonata form is formulaic or of equal value, then there's no reason to think that of pop music. 

One of the issues with modern pop is that most of the artistry has transferred from classic songwriting to production, and very few people outside of music producers know anything about production or the art behind it, and so much of it we take for granted, if we even notice it at all. Much like with classic Hollywood, part of the magic is how invisible the art actually is. To the extent that pop music hasn't changed, it's always been about catchiness and hooks, and on that subject I'd say the exact same thing as above: anyone who thinks it's easy to write catchy hooks has never done so in their life. I often suspect that the reason so many musicians lean on music theory, technicality, virtuosity, and complexity (call it what you will) is that they're too often bereft of inspiration for memorable material. When you write a hook as memorable as Call Me Maybe, you don't slather it in complexity, you highlight it, and if that means very minimal supporting material, that's OK. He also talks about synths and drum machines disparagingly without realizing their very nature means a near unlimited palette of sounds at your disposal, from the imitation of classic instruments to completely new sounds that sound like nothing else. 

It's also untrue that pop music doesn't take chances. Certainly, there's limitations to pop music's risk-taking, but it exists. Taylor Swift has continually taken musical gambles by switching genres--starting out country, then going synth-pop, then electronica, then indie-folk. This may not be the kind of musical risk-taking that avant-garde artists employ, but any switch of genres is a risk in that you could easily lose your fanbase (who liked you for one sound) and fail to gain a new fanbase. But that's just one example, and, in general, you can see the "risk-taking" nature of pop music merely in its evolution. The fact that the popular genres of the 80s and 90s and 00s and 10s are all very different. That difference wouldn't have happened without some artists taking risks and it paying off enough to where you had copy-cats. Take, eg, the recent disco revival trend that can be heard all over pop: this arguably originated with Kylie Minogue in the early 00s. Nobody back then was doing disco, so it was certainly something of a risk (and certainly against the modern pop trends of the time) to attempt disco. Now it's popular enough that Dua Lipa just had a huge hit album this year basically doing disco, and Minogue herself is releasing an album soon titled (guess what?) Disco. Here's another example: last year's biggest pop star was probably Billie Eilish, and literally no popular artist has sounded like her in decades (one could argue Lana Del Ray to an extent; though Del Ray never achieved Eilish's popularity). 

One of the biggest problem with that video is that it makes the silly assumption that complexity = good and simplicity = bad. Now, I love plenty of complex music and hate lots of complex music; I love plenty of simple music and hate plenty of simple music. I've never noticed that either have any correlation with quality. 

Finally, the entire ending of that video where he talks about "brainwashing people" to like music is complete and utter BS for almost too many reasons to go into here. For one thing, it was far easier for record labels to control what people listened to back in the day where there were only a few ways for people to listen to music. This is no longer the case. People today listen to music in a tremendous variety of ways and, thanks to the internet, have a tremendous tool at their disposal to seek out the music they like, which in turn the internet algorithm will keep recommending that kind of music. If all you ever search for/listen to on YouTube is classical, you aren't going to be recommended any pop music. Same thing for internet radio. It also completely ignores how many of the biggest modern pop stars started as grass-roots music. Eilish started out writing/playing/recording songs in her bedroom and posting them on YouTube and was a success long before she was signed to a label. Taylor Swift was initially signed to a small indie label who had no money to promote her, and everyone from that label said she made the label, not the other way around. We live in an age where it's entirely possible for massive amounts of people to never listen to the same music. That wasn't the case in the 60s and 70s when all you had was a few radio stations and whatever your local record store carried. But I can easily go weeks/months without hearing a single song on the Top 40 if I want to, and so can everyone else, far easier today than ever. 

Don't be fooled that just because the video cites "science" that's it's good science or scientifically accurate. Here's more science for you: we know that people's musical tastes tend to align with whatever they liked as a teenager, and as people get older their openness to new music radically decreases. The consequence of this is that you can find audiences and critics in every single generation for every single artist calling them trash and signs of how music is getting worse, including The Beatles and all the other band that video praises highly. What happens is that eventually those people die, the youth that liked the music grow up, and suddenly these artists that the older generation hated are now heralded as the greatest artists of their time. Watch and I guarantee the same thing will happen with the music of this generation, if you live long enough to see it.


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

Most of the music made in any given time is garbage. Pop music especially so since it is not musically focused but rather aims to appeal to images and ideals of what is cool and fashionable.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Computer recording is what ruined it. The compositional process of music is no longer aural, but has become visual, due to computers. As Marshall McLuhan prophesized, we are a visually biased culture. The visual mode of perception is uniform, connected, and continuous. 

"Continuous" means predictable (we can see what's coming on the computer screen) unlike the world of the ear, in which things are hidden from vision, and sudden, and abrupt (like tape, with no visual feedback provided by a screen).

"Connected" means the elements are always in relation, unlike the ear-world in which events are abrupt and isolated, emerging from the hidden darkness of silence.

"Uniform" means things are repeated in chunks, like typography. Chunks of sound are moved around and rearranged, such as 4-bar measures.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

philoctetes said:


> Top 40 has rarely been the place to find the best popular music imo


If you have to go searching for it it's not popular. But that's fine with me.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

I did a search on who was most played on spotify the other day and...
1.) JUSTIN BIEBER
2.) THE WEEKND 
3.) ARIANA GRANDE


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

millionrainbows said:


> "Uniform" means things are repeated in chunks, like typography. Chunks of sound are moved around and rearranged, such as 4-bar measures.


That's really irritating. The last time I was in a studio, I played a solo for a friend of mine's recording (and it was pretty good, if I can say so). When I heard the record, it wasn't what I had played. The recording engineer took it apart and pieced it together according to his particular whim.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Manxfeeder said:


> That's really irritating. The last time I was in a studio, I played a solo for a friend of mine's recording (and it was pretty good, if I can say so). When I heard the record, it wasn't what I had played. The recording engineer took it apart and pieced it together according to his particular whim.


The exact same thing happened to me. It makes you feel like your true musicianship is not appreciated.

In my case, the acoustic guitar solo I played was broken down into little "fills" which appeared here and there.


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## mikeh375 (Sep 7, 2017)

I just watched a brilliant documentary on BlueNote records which gave some good insight into Hip-Hop which made me more appreciative of it as an art form.
You can watch it on the BBC iPlayer, it's well worth the hour and a half, full as it is with interviews and live footage of recordings and gigs from Bebop to Hip Hop....so cool.


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## atsizat (Sep 14, 2015)

Agreed.

Listen to this one. Vertigo (1958).


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