# Is Pop/Rock music more emotionally shallow than Classical?



## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Here is an offshoot from the Captain's Baroque and Classical thread. What say you's? I suspect it isn't the emotion that is shallow in Pop music like the Top 40 Billboard. But the lower level artistry gets in the way of the emotional experience for more experienced listeners. The emotions can be as real as in Classical?


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Phil loves classical said:


> Here is an offshoot from the Captain's Baroque and Classical thread. What say you's? I suspect it isn't the emotion that is shallow in Pop music like the Top 40 Billboard. But the lower level artistry gets in the way of the emotional experience for more experienced listeners. The emotions can be as real as in Classical?


No, not emotionally shallower.

Jeff Buckley - Mojo Pin Live at Glastonbury 1995


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

My absolute favourites. They mean to me as much as classical music does


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

It’s no longer for me whether it’s “shallow” or not. As I’ve gotten older, I no longer require the incessant beat of pop to get the blood flowing, though I still occasionally enjoy it. Rarely. I consider pop as intended for the masses, not for those seeking something off the beaten track that interests only about 3% of the population. Or a great jazz album by Bill Evans or Art Pepper that can touch you to the depths of your soul and give you goosebumps. I believe that some are born already tired of the ordinary and they seek something creative that’s opposite to that, and find it, even if they have to seek it underground or from an usual source. That’s what feeds their soul and I think they’re the ones who keep the arts moving forward while trying to preserve the best of the past.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

I think terms like 'pop/rock' and 'classical' encompass way too much music to make very meaningful generalizations about emotional content. 

I will say in general these different musical styles appeal to different aspects of our personality. They aren't trying to do the same things. In any genre you are going to find examples of excellent and mediocre music.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

^^^^As above. In all musical genres there are example of emotionally deep and shallow. I also think we all know this to be true; there are certainly enormous quantities of emotionally shallow, ankle-deep classical music, and anyone familiar with rock can easily generate exhaustive lists of emotionally wrenching songs and of singers/composers of such songs. All pretty obvious to those with an ear on each side of their head and who listens to a wide range of music.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I guess I would say >>in general<< classical music has a greater ability to be emotionally complex than most pop.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I'd say that pop songs, at least in the last half century, have the potential of achieving the same results in terms of complexity and depth of feeling as classical lieder.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Pop songs can be quite emotionally charged, and not always shallow. But...without the lyrics, pop pales in comparison to classical. It's not even close. In pop/rock/country/rap the music is just a vehicle for the lyrics which may or may not be of any literary value. But its a rare pop song in which the music alone conveys much information. Contrast that to something as powerful as the Tchaikovsky 6th, Shostakovich 5th, or Prokofieff's Romeo and Juliet. Those works ooze emotional content even to people who don't listen to much classical. It's clearly heard that the music is about something and it somehow burrows into the brain and the composer speaks. A pop song with the lyrics removed can convey a general feeling (happy, sad, melancholy, joy...) but a lot of it doesn't.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

"Shallow" is an ambiguous and loaded term. It's opposite, "deep," is equally vague. When people speak of "deep" emotion in music they may mean only that the music makes them feel something strongly. But I don't think strong emotions are necessarily "deep," a term that implies something important and lasting; strong feelings can mean little and be over in a moment, but deep feelings mean something not necessarily obvious, something with wider implications, something beyond an immediate response to a stimulus. 

I'd only say that Classical music tends to be more complex, and to engender more large-scale forms that structure time in complex ways, than music considered "popular," and that this complexity allows it to convey feelings and concepts with which popular music doesn't ordinarily deal. I think it's more accurate to say that different kinds of music express different things by different means, rather than the same things with more "depth" or "shallowness."


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Classical music doesn't lead where rock leads.....


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

mbhaub said:


> Pop songs can be quite emotionally charged, and not always shallow. But...without the lyrics, pop pales in comparison to classical. It's not even close. In pop/rock/country/rap the music is just a vehicle for the lyrics which may or may not be of any literary value. But its a rare pop song in which the music alone conveys much information. Contrast that to something as powerful as the Tchaikovsky 6th, Shostakovich 5th, or Prokofieff's Romeo and Juliet. Those works ooze emotional content even to people who don't listen to much classical. It's clearly heard that the music is about something and it somehow burrows into the brain and the composer speaks. A pop song with the lyrics removed can convey a general feeling (happy, sad, melancholy, joy...) but a lot of it doesn't.


Shouldn't the comparison be made like with like? Pop/rock songs against Classical songs with lyrics removed?

As for instrumental rock with emotional depth:
We lost the sea - Bogatyri


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## Guest (Dec 2, 2018)

If I consider the music in my collection that has "moved" me the most over time, it would include pieces from all parts of Pop/Rock and from Classical. By "moved", I'd include tears, elation, adrenalin rush, dance, melancholy...

Examples - songs by The Police and Robert Wyatt, Bryan Ferry and China Crisis, Elbow and Peter Gabriel, instrumentals by Gong and Genesis, Sigur Ros and Brian Eno, and symphonies by Sibelius and Mahler, piano by Debussy and Satie. Note that although the sharpest of emotions stirred by these pieces may have been dulled by familiarity over time, each still has the power to move to some degree.

It's not only the music that counts, but what the listener brings. No generalisation about any musical genre is really possible when there are so many "exceptions" possible.

If _Sugar Sugar _by The Archies is an archetypal shallow "Pop song", it must still be borne in mind that enough people were "moved" by it to take it to No 1 in the US and the UK and 7 other countries worldwide. That might be a fleeting phenomenon, but cannot be ignored. After all, what matters is what music lasts long enough to move us in our own lifetime, not in everybody else that came before or after.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Phil loves classical said:


> Is Pop/Rock music more emotionally shallow than Classical?


sure it is and was to be such from its very inception.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Zhdanov said:


> ...and was to be such from its very inception.


You make it sound like an objective truth. It isn't.


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## Guest (Dec 2, 2018)

Zhdanov said:


> sure it is and was to be such from its very inception.


I know you like to be pithy, Zhdanov, but a little elaboration on your part might elevate your post from argumentative to argument.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> "Shallow" is an ambiguous and loaded term...


Speaking of 'Shallow' and pop songs:


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

One of the more amazing emotional moments in popular (well, country popular) music. Watch the effect on the audience and the judges. Classical music has always been the more powerful emotional support for me, but that doesn't mean that popular music can't touch deeper emotions also.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)




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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

No it isn't. If it moves you, it moves you.


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

Zhdanov said:


> sure it is and was to be such from its very inception.


Is there a different definition of "shallowness" that I am unaware of?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

janxharris said:


> Shouldn't the comparison be made like with like? Pop/rock songs against Classical songs with lyrics removed?
> 
> As for instrumental rock with emotional depth:
> We lost the sea - Bogatyri


As I said, 'modern pop music' still uses '4 chords' like 99.999% of the time, and use Lip-sync and Autotune to fake practically everything. I often ask why people craze about this stuff so much when there's almost no talent needed or skill involved in making it. Indeed, there are some artists who try original stuff but it's always the '4-chord artists' who completely saturate the market. There's no point talking about how there are still some good pop songs when they are being completely neglected by the general public because '4-chord artists' like Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber have dominated and will continue dominate the industry, and most pop fans don't realize what's the issue. I think they need some constructive criticism to improve.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Much as I hate to disagree I believe pop/rock is more emotionally shallow than classical (including contemporary classical). But what does "emotionally shallow" mean? I know lots of rock music and some pop (Beatles!) that has excited me and moved me (to tears, to anger, to...) more than anything classical has. But I feel that classical goes "deeper" and is more "true". Words don't work too well here!


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

ask the question on a rock music forum. The people here might be biased.
I usually listen to rock while driving. Show me a classical piece that pumps you up with energy as this kind of music


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Jacck said:


> ask the question on a rock music forum. The people here might be biased.
> I usually listen to rock while driving. Show me a classical piece that pumps you up with energy as this kind of music


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

janxharris said:


>


I will be blasphemous, but the Rite of Spring never did much for me. I get a much more intense feeling of energy from the 1st movement of Prokofievs 2nd symphony


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Jacck said:


> I will be blasphemous, but the Rite of Spring never did much for me. I get a much more intense feeling of energy from the 1st movement of Prokofievs 2nd symphony


Nothing wrong with being blasphemous. Will check the piece out.


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## Guest (Dec 13, 2018)

hammeredklavier said:


> As I said,


Did you? I missed that. Was it in another thread?

If all that's under consideration as 'pop' music is Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber, it's not much of a debate, is it?

And of course that means the emotional range and depth is inevitably narrower than if you listened to a fuller range of artists.

The same applies if all you listen to is Mozart or Carter. Though doubtless some would find either of these two very emotionally satisfying, I'm sure they'd also agree that to listen to everything from Palestrina to Part would be even better.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

regenmusic said:


> Classical music doesn't lead where rock leads.....


Right. Both play upon emotions but to make an extreme (and loose) analogy, classical is more like sipping fine wine, whereas rock is more like binge drinking MD 20/20! :lol:


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

MacLeod said:


> Did you? I missed that. Was it in another thread?


I did some time ago, I thought I did it in this thread. It was actually another one.



MacLeod said:


> The same applies if all you listen to is Mozart or Carter. Though doubtless some would find either of these two very emotionally satisfying, I'm sure they'd also agree that to listen to everything from Palestrina to Part would be even better.


We all know there are some better artists out there like Carter, and I said earlier in this thread I think Jon Lajoie is a far better artist than any of the big "4-chord masters" of today's pop industry. The problem is Bruno Mars's typical 4-chord song Uptown Funk gets like over 330 times the number of views Aaron Carter's All About You gets on Youtube even though AAY was uploaded 5 years earlier than UF. 
Carter has only 0.55 million followers on his facebook account. Whereas Bruno Mars has like 55 M, Taylor Swift has 72 M, Justin Bieber has 77 M. 
Surely there's something wrong with the industry, we all have to admit. I think the slogan "modern pop music sucks" will help pop enthusiasts to realize what's wrong with the industry, get them to search and promote lesser-known, underrated artists.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

One of the most reliable, repeatable subjects for threads on TC is to wring one's hands over the degraded state of the other person's music, or, if that no longer offers a _frisson_ of sufficient force, then to post of the degraded state of classical music. I wring my hands over all such posts--posts were better in my youth!


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## Guest (Dec 13, 2018)

I don't follow the logic of this at all. By all means complain about specific artists if you wish, but to dismiss an entire genre on the basis of those narrow representatives is absurd.

Btw, I was referring to Elliott Carter.


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

Obviously not; any number of three-chord blues songs are emotionally deeper than Corelli's concertos, for example.

Anyway, not all great music is primarily concerned with emotional depth, however you define it.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

isorhythm said:


> any number of three-chord blues songs are emotionally deeper than Corelli's


are you being serious?


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Zhdanov said:


> are you being serious?


He is being serious. You should visit the non-classical forum more often....

Best Blues


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

Popular music is, generally speaking, composed in strophic form -- phrases repeat often, tunes carry the music (not the other way around) and the whole thing tends to be very repetitive. A typical strophic song has four stanzas, two the same followed by a variant followed by another like the first two.

Much classical music is composed in sonata format that takes longer to develop. The first part of sonata format, the exposition, is what comprises almost everything in popular music.

While any form of music may carry strong emotional content there is much greater capacity to do so in sonata form than in a strophe unless the text is extraordinarily powerful.

One of my favorite rock groups, Cream, regularly recorded songs composed in sonata form. Their greatest album, Wheels of Fire, has two long songs in sonata form, Spoonful, a variant on a triple concerto, and Traintime-Toad, two songs played together where a drum solo carries the latter tune.

While I've always been more intellectually attracted to the development in these songs I admit there is a strong emotional chord played out as well.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

isorhythm said:


> Obviously not; any number of three-chord blues songs are emotionally deeper than Corelli's concertos, for example.
> 
> Anyway, not all great music is primarily concerned with emotional depth, however you define it.


I think we have opinions divided on what constitutes 'emotional depth' in music. I think just because a piece of music has a catchy, sentimental tune in it, it doesn't make it 'emotionally profound'. I hate to say it but I find all the songs posted here as being 'emotionally deep', somewhat boring because of lack of texture, structure, contrast, development etc. There's no sense of balance (chaos coming to order, tension being eased) or completeness felt in the end. They don't give me feelings of 'satisfaction' of having completed a 'musical journey'. (The kind of feelings we get when listening to sonatas, variations, fugues, rondos, fantasias etc in classical music) 
To some degree I have the same kind of problem with Chopin or Grieg's smaller miniature pieces (like Waltz in F minor or Remembrances from Lyric pieces), but at least they wrote much more dramatic melodies than today's pop music.
Most lyrics of pop music today aren't even interesting, they use the same love story with different names inserted in. At least Jon Lajoie wrote lyrics that are genuinely hilarious. 
Although I find Eric Carmen's classics "All by myself", "Never Gonna Fall in Love Again" somewhat good, maybe because they're 'originally written' by Rachmaninoff.


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## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

There are redeeming examples of 'light' music out there but one has to search deep. 99% of what is popular is also—to put it delicately—sonic excrement.


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## Gordontrek (Jun 22, 2012)

Not necessarily. I've yet to hear pop music that's more emotional than Tchaikovsky or Shostakovich, but just about any pop song has more emotional depth than Ferneyhough.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Now that we're finished(?) excoriating Pop, and are all feeling really good about it--have had the courage to rip off the mask and expose the rot and corruption, against terrible opposition, we can turn to shooting the fish I have in this barrel here.....


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## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

Gordontrek said:


> Not necessarily. I've yet to hear pop music that's more emotional than Tchaikovsky or Shostakovich, but just about any pop song has more emotional depth than Ferneyhough.


That's because Ferneyhough is AI in the flesh.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> "Shallow" is an ambiguous and loaded term. It's opposite, "deep," is equally vague. When people speak of "deep" emotion in music they may mean only that the music makes them feel something strongly. But I don't think strong emotions are necessarily "deep," a term that implies something important and lasting; strong feelings can mean little and be over in a moment, but deep feelings mean something not necessarily obvious, something with wider implications, something beyond an immediate response to a stimulus.
> 
> I'd only say that Classical music tends to be more complex, and to engender more large-scale forms that structure time in complex ways, than music considered "popular," and that *this complexity allows it to convey feelings and concepts with which popular music doesn't ordinarily deal. *I think it's more accurate to say that different kinds of music express different things by different means, rather than the same things with more "depth" or "shallowness."


At last, objective quality like "complex" that I can sink my teeth into. Yes, all music and art can be emotional because we are all human; but harmonically complex music has more shaded nuances of emotion and states of being, and can convey, as Woodduck said, "feelings and concepts with which popular music doesn't ordinarily deal."

Like Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra, the movement called Vergangenes. It conveys some "states of being" almost like a soundtrack, which are hard to identify, but are nonetheless there. I also heard Joni Mitchell say that she uses different guitar tunings in order to convey "more emotions" than simple folk guitar chords can convey.

Listen to "Vergangenes" at 2:27:


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## isorhythm (Jan 2, 2015)

hammeredklavier said:


> I think just because a piece of music has a catchy, sentimental tune in it, it doesn't make it 'emotionally profound'.


I agree, but I wasn't thinking of popular music with catchy, sentimental tunes - something I associate as much with Rachmaninoff as with pop, anyway.



hammeredklavier said:


> I hate to say it but I find all the songs posted here as being 'emotionally deep', somewhat boring because of lack of texture, structure, contrast, development etc.


I think these qualities are separate from emotional depth.

I'm actually not sure what "emotional depth" means, and as I said before, I don't think it's necessarily a quality of great music. Does Palestrina have emotional depth?


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Strange Magic said:


> Best Blues


no, thanks, keep it to yourself.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

Strange Magic said:


> You should visit the non-classical forum more often...


with such tastes you should not visit classical forums.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Zhdanov said:


> with such tastes you should not visit classical forums.


Best post of the day!:lol:


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

Yes it is, by far.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Here is a mouthful, which some may take offense to. I think emotion is all individual to the listener, and how well it is conveyed by the artist. There is emotion in colour, and music projects emotion through its tonal colours. That is why atonal music is pretty unemotional to most. Also interpretation could inject emotion through dynamics and rhythm. The music of Adele is pretty uninspiring, but it is the way she sings it which some feel emotion.

Emotion in music may not be "real" anyway. Nietzche had something to say about emotion from Wagner.

https://www.roger-scruton.com/about/music/understanding-music/181-nietzsche-on-wagner


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## Guest (Dec 14, 2018)

Phil loves classical said:


> Here is a mouthful, which some may take offense to. I think emotion is all individual to the listener, and how well it is conveyed by the artist.


All individual to the listener, yes. Conveyed by the music, no.

As Isorhythm suggests above, what some are referring to as "emotional depth" is nothing of the kind. The length and "complexity" and "subtlety" of extended musical forms cannot be simply translated as "nuanced" and "deep" emotions, no matter how satisfying some may report they find them.

As usual, some simply come to parade their credentials as deeply sensitive souls, a cut above those in thrall to the cheap allure of pop.


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## Guest (Dec 14, 2018)

Zhdanov said:


> with such tastes you should not visit classical forums.


Why ?


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## Red Terror (Dec 10, 2018)

What’s considered pop? Zappa, Beefheart, King Crimson, Can? If so, I am a philistine.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

MacLeod said:


> Why ?


Z will explain it to you. Somehow.


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## Frank Freaking Sinatra (Dec 6, 2018)

Zhdanov said:


> with such tastes you should not visit classical forums.


Something was lost in translation so I took the liberty of translating this sentence into Russian -

"С такими вкусами вы не должны посещать классические музыкальные форумы."

And then I translated that into French -

"Avec de tels goûts, vous ne devriez pas visiter les forums de musique classique."

And then I translated that into English -

"With such tastes, you should not visit the classical music forums because the people who tend to haunt classical music forums see intolerance and narrow-mindedness as virtues to be gloried in rather than vices to be ashamed of..."


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Frank Freaking Sinatra said:


> Something was lost in translation so I took the liberty of translating this sentence into Russian -
> 
> "С такими вкусами вы не должны посещать классические музыкальные форумы."
> 
> ...


Are you implying that Zhdanov voted for Trump? :lol:


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

There are some posters here who should stick to classical because they don’t know squat about pop.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

While some are concerned with what's shallow or not, others are far more interested and concerned with what's *authentic*-and *authentic *can cut through all genres, from *pop* to* rock* to *jazz* to *blues* to *Mozart*.


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## fliege (Nov 7, 2017)

Phil loves classical said:


> Emotion in music may not be "real" anyway. Nietzche had something to say about emotion from Wagner.


That indeed sounds like the sort of statement philosophers adore: it gives them a lot to talk about.


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## Steve Mc (Jun 14, 2018)




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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

DaveM said:


> There are some posters here who should stick to classical because they don't know squat about pop.


how i know nothing of it since i played in a garage band when i was young?


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

people hate pop for they know it too well, thats why.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Zhdanov said:


> how i know nothing of it since i played in a garage band when i was young?


I didn't name you. Interesting that you think it referred to you.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

to the admins: we have a non-classical subforum here, don't we?

so why not move no classical related threads over to there?


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

DaveM said:


> I didn't name you. Interesting that you think it referred to you.


me or not, it was naive of you to think anyone to be not a pop fan in the past before he ditched the habit and began listen to classical.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Zhdanov said:


> to the admins: we have a non-classical subforum here, don't we?
> 
> so why not move no classical related threads over to there?


Good question because the thread involves discussion of both pop and classical, but the focus seems to be on pop (non-classical) so I think the non-classical forum might be better.

I ditched non-classical but still listen at times.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Zhdanov said:


> me or not, it was naive of you to think anyone to be not a pop fan in the past before he ditched the habit and began listen to classical.


I didn't say anything about that. Interesting that you are assuming what the history was of given posters I was talking about...or not.

Btw, having a garage band when one was younger does not guarantee that one has a wide experience of pop music from past to present.


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