Algorithmic Analysis Shows That Pop Music Is Sadder and Angrier Than Ever (bbc.com) 224
dryriver writes: BBC Culture reports -- with some neat graphs in the article -- on two different scientific studies that both found that chart-topping pop music has been getting steadily sadder and angrier since the 1950s, and that both song lyrics and the musical tone in hit songs are sadder, more fearful, and angrier than ever before in history. Lior Shamir of Lawrence Technical University found the following trends in his algorithmic analysis of Billboard Hot 100 hit song lyrics: "Expressions of anger and disgust roughly doubled over those 65 years, for instance, while fear increased by more than 50%. Remarkably, today's songs are even more aggressive and fearful than in punk's heyday. One probable reason for this is the growing influence of rap music, which, like punk, has reflected social unrest and feelings of disenfranchisement. Sadness, meanwhile, remained stable until the 80s, then steadily increased until the early 2010s, while joy, confidence and openness all steadily declined."
In the second independent study, Natalia Komarova, a University of California Irvine mathematician who had been shocked by the negativity of her daughter's own music taste, found the following: "Looking through half a million songs released in the UK between 1985 and 2015, Komarova and colleagues found that the tone of the music had become less joyful since 1985 -- just as Lior Shamir's analysis of the lyrics had also suggested. Interestingly, Komarova found that the danceability -- as measured by features of the rhythm -- had increased alongside the negative feelings. So, despite the negative feelings they expressed, the songs were also more likely to get people moving. Just consider Robyn's hit Dancing on my Own -- the pulsing synths and percussion belying the lyrics of loneliness and isolation. In terms of albums, Komarova also points to Beyonce's Lemonade and Charlie XCX's Pop 2 mix-tape as being full of dark but danceable tracks."
In the second independent study, Natalia Komarova, a University of California Irvine mathematician who had been shocked by the negativity of her daughter's own music taste, found the following: "Looking through half a million songs released in the UK between 1985 and 2015, Komarova and colleagues found that the tone of the music had become less joyful since 1985 -- just as Lior Shamir's analysis of the lyrics had also suggested. Interestingly, Komarova found that the danceability -- as measured by features of the rhythm -- had increased alongside the negative feelings. So, despite the negative feelings they expressed, the songs were also more likely to get people moving. Just consider Robyn's hit Dancing on my Own -- the pulsing synths and percussion belying the lyrics of loneliness and isolation. In terms of albums, Komarova also points to Beyonce's Lemonade and Charlie XCX's Pop 2 mix-tape as being full of dark but danceable tracks."
No problem for me ... (Score:2)
The music I am mostly listening to has been recorded in the late 60's and early 70's ;-).
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The stuff I listen to was written in the 60s. 1760s, that is.
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What? THAT [wikipedia.org] stuff?
You sick, sick bastard!
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Rammstein never made a song about shit, as far as I know.
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Rammstein never made a song about shit, as far as I know.
They made a whole bunch of shitty songs, does that qualify?
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I'm into the early 90's metal right now.
But my kids enjoy the 1700's, specifically, Mozart.
I love to wake up and still hear it playing in their room. I wasn't exposed to classical until college and didn't appreciate it until a few years after.
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about bad parenting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] (sick, sick bastard! :P)
When people are getting poorer, they get angrier (Score:5, Insightful)
For most people, real wages have barely budged for decades.
The more people feel squeezed, the sadder they become.
The longer people feel squeezed, the more angrier they become.
Music is but an outlet for most people. Sadder and angrier people, of course, choose to listen to angrier and sadder music.
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For most people, real wages have barely budged for decades.
Yeah I'm sure Taylor Swift's wallet is bleeding while she's pop singing her sad / angry lyrics about breaking up with another rich famous dude.
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To test this we would need to look at the new music preferences of people at different socio-economic levels. Real attention should be given to that those who are moving into a new quintile, both up and down.
In principle, it looks like a good hypothesis. It is falsable (that doesn't mean it is false, just that it can be tested). Frankl;y, I am thinking it isn't bad. I will check to see if it has been beaten to death in the journals. If not, I may look more closely.
Vote Hater! (Score:5, Interesting)
Incidentally for those in Europe you kan vote for Hatari (Icelandic for hater) in tonight's Eurovision semi-final https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://eurovision.tv/particip... [eurovision.tv]
Re:Vote Hater! (Score:5, Funny)
Lol, I just wrote a reply mentioning them, then scroll down literally one post and see that you mentioned them too ;)
They're hilarious in interviews, too. Such trolls. Some of their moves have been just classic, like announcing (after they won the local contest) that they had hired a social conservative who had been protesting them as their PR rep, because without her hard work raising awareness about the band they couldn't have won - and every time after that that she said anything in protest, they referred to her as their PR manager and thanked her for her excellent campaign. ;) At one point they released a video (parodying one of a local conservative politician) where they're all carefully decorating a beautiful birthday cake for Klemens' young daughter, this over-the-top wholesome scene, while in the background someone constantly reads off hate mail they're received.
They're also well known for, despite being anticapitalist, for constantly plugging "SodaDream", a fictional soft drink - and when asked about it, they sheepishly admit that, well, the struggle to end capitalism is very expensive, so they had to take on a sponsor... ;) One searching for SodaDream wouldn't immediately realize it's fake because it has its own website [sodadream.is], which among other things states that made from "the purest water left on Earth" at Hálslón in East Iceland. Hálslón actually being the reservoir of the highly environmentally controversial dam at Kárahnjúkar. The band is also a subsidiary of a holding company, Svikamylla e.h.f. ("Relentless Scam Inc."), which also owns Iceland Music News (which brands itself as the most honest name in Icelandic media). Not mentioned is the fact that Hatari runs all three of these entities, so the regular Iceland Music News pieces on them are actually Hatari interviewing Hatari ;) Amusingly, Iceland Music News appears to be possibly starting to morph into a real thing during Eurovision, scoring interviews with other contestants and the like.
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They learned from Elon Musk, I presume?
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I guess they just noticed that way more important than any songs you produce is the media circus that you produce.
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Early bands in any genre are always authentic. Early punk was as authentic as even early new romantics were. Early blues was as authentic as early rap was. Because that's when people do something they like to do while having to pretty much assume that "their" music won't sell because it's something they want to do, not something they do because they think someone else wants to listen to it. I'm fairly sure there's even authentic Country somewhere out there, in some ancient recordings.
Every generation, you'l
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YES!!! They went to the final!
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It's going to be exciting tomorrow night, that's for sure!
I'll be going to a Eurovision party with friends in the Keflavík area. I guess I'll need to improvise some BDSM gear to stay in theme ;)
Ahh, the scientific yardstick of "Sadness" (Score:3)
But of course anyone listening to such terribly sad and fearful hits such as "Sunflower" and "Castle on the Hill" could tell this instantly. It must be that damned rap music! Back in MY day we had wholesome Punk songs about necrophilia, killing babies, and making holocaust jokes. Nothing more wholesome than that, not like the damned kids these days.
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I just wanted a Bitchin' Camaro, but ended up with a pretty sweet 69 Mustang...
Lyrics excerpt (Score:2)
"We dance to the sound of sirens
We watch genocide to relax
We dance to the sound of sirens
We are the heroes of self-deception."
-- Covenant, "Theremin" (1994) --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Lyrics excerpt (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds like Sisters Of Mercy recorded on a potato under a small hill of cushions.
I am so sad ... (Score:4, Insightful)
This sad state of affairs makes me very angry.
Now back to listening to Weird Al's "Generic Blues".
I wish somebody would come along, put a pitchfork through my brain
I'd flush myself right down the toilet, but I'll just clog up the drain
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Talk to Max Martin (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, most pop hits of the last decade were/are written by Max Martin or one of the other super producers. They are very talented (in their ability to generate 'hits') but extremely formulatic. It makes complete sense that 'pop' in general follows whatever current mental space these guys are in as their careers progress. If you go back before them, there was the matrix, quincy jones, prince etc, who stamped their mark all over pop music for a varying periods of time.
Pop music is an industrially manufactured product made in one or two factories. It is not a product of artistic diversity.
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In the 50s pop music was mostly love songs and pretty up-beat. As that got old it started to explore darker themes, naturally. And now we have the rise of social media you see a lot of songs about acceptance and how it's okay to be less than perfect.
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It's more about "we're fucked, and we noticed we can't do jack shit about it."
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One of the interesting things about music history is you can almost always find someone else who did it first. There are few epochs like the birth of recorded sound or that of the synthesizer etc which changed what was possible but otherwise someone else already did it.
Darker themes in (pop)ular music. - See: Bluegrass - sub genre - murder ballads
A lot of female vocalists (Score:2, Interesting)
Not THAT insightful, the way I see this? (Score:5, Insightful)
People modded your comment all the way up to +5, but I'm not really getting why?
Alanis Morissette wasn't singing angry, bombastic stuff back in the 1990's and getting hits from it?
PJ Harvey got a hit song back then by singing about drowning children in a river ("Down By The Water")!
Or how about Veruca Salt, and songs like "Seether"?
Really, the entire grunge scene was a focus on singing depressing, dark or angry songs and it eclipsed pretty much anything else interesting going on in the pop/rock/metal music scenes at the time. (Courtney Love and "Hole" would be another female example here.)
It seems to me like it just swings back and forth between the happy/sappy material and the darker, brooding stuff. People get collectively bored with the same themes or same type of music after so long and it changes direction.....
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for some reason are now fat/chunky angry bombastic chicks (Meghan Trainor, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry) who mostly sing about how a man left them/they are too good for men and don't need them anymore.
Miley Cyrus is "fat/chunky"? Do you even know who she is? And Katy Perry, most of her songs are about men or how attractive she is to men.
This. Cyrus, Perry and Trainor are really generic, standard spec pop stars produced from the factory. Their songs are designed to appeal to the widest possible audience.
The problem isn't that pop is anti-men, but some men are so insecure and living in a 50's Hollywood fantasy of masochism that they think anything is against them.
There was upsurge a few years ago where they suddenly replaced the previous generation of anorexic manufactured female singers who sang more straightforward love songs
Back in the 90s we had the Spice Girls, back in the 80s we saw arguably the first of the modern girl bands, and long before that Country music stars were going the whole girl power thing.
Country has always done the angry, sullen thing but girl groups really started back in the 70's, they were mainstream by the 80's. The pinnacle that IP owners are trying tor re
Planet Money (Score:2)
Planet Money had a great episode about how pop music is built. You go to a show where producers are selling beats, musical stems, lyrics, looks/marketing, and you can piece together a hit. A producer buys a beat from one guy, some melodies from someone else, buys some lyrics from another person, then hires someone else to rewrite them to fit the bits they had bought. By the end you have the latest Katy Perry hit.
The funny bit was, at the end of the show, a couple of super-producers from Sweden had spent all
Music reflect society (Score:2, Offtopic)
* global warming
* clean water shortage
* inability of social changes and inequality increases more and more
* automation and AI will hit more poor people than it help at least initially
* advance we had in the 60ies and 70ies are getting demolished after the boomer profited from them (e.g. retirement funds, social security and it is getting demolished by the boomer)
* general boomer media keep pooing over generation X,Y,millenial etc...
* only pos
There has been a force (Score:2)
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Simple moral stories are trite and both children and adults want the more complex version. But this is just not new, fairy stories were not always nice. If anything, we're coming out of a brief period of time where all stories told to children were extremely sanitised. Except that's not really true either, when I was
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You'd be sad and angry too if... (Score:3)
...your record company made you re-write your song multiple times to fit into a 3-4 minute block for people with a vocabulary of a twelve year old.
Victimology (Score:3)
>"Remarkably, today's songs are even more aggressive and fearful than in punk's heyday. One probable reason for this is the growing influence of rap music, which, like punk, has reflected social unrest and feelings of disenfranchisement."
And this is what happens when we teach everyone that they are victims.
Oh my! (Score:2)
Just look at today's movies (Score:2)
Spoiled Millennials Complains (Score:2)
Yes, "complaint rock" is getting worse and worse.
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“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” - Sokrates
Re:never heard of of it... (Score:5, Insightful)
My shit is stuff; your stuff is shit." - George Carlin
I'm coming to believe that musical preferences are imprinted; the shit you're listening to around the age of sixteen is generally the shit that you believe is "shit you would actually want to listen to", subject to occasional re-imprinting experiences.
Having said that, I think we can all agree that most dubstep is garbage.
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+1 Insightful.
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I have a few theories as to why this is.
Before about 1990 music was written to fit the lyrics, after 1990 it became much more common to sample lyrics or heavily process them. As such songs from the 80s and earlier tend to be more singable and the lyrics more detailed and meaningful. I'm talking very generally of course.
There is also a lot of survivor bias, as in there were actually loads of crap bands from those earlier decades that we forgot about. We only remember the ones who are still being played, or s
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One thing that changed music in the 1990s was the consolidation of radio stations under one company. "Rock" stations went from playing new stuff that was made that year to being forever in a time warp playing 60s/70s stuff, and at most 25-50 songs. Most of those stations can be replaced by an iPod Shuffle, and except for the morning DJ, nobody would really notice.
Another blow to music was the selling by song. Bands used to make money by selling CDs, and even though most of a stuff on a CD was mediocre, t
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What once was a creative process turned into just singing another person's same old vapid stuff. However, this is a working, profitable tactic, and that is why when you look at the top 100 list, it is mainly autotuned, vapid songs about love.
I know that it wasn't the core focus of what you were getting at, but just throwing it out there, even the 'love songs' have kinda started to suck. The two that come to mind as actual love songs in the 2010's are John Legend's "All of Me" and Ed Sheeran's "Perfect". One could sorta argue Julia Michael's "Issues", but that song sounds a bit more like unhealthy codependence rather than actual love, in my opinion. Really, I'd say that the 20-year window between 1995-2005 had more songs of that nature; Journey'
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Ariana Grande's "7 Rings" is my go-to example of a song that basically isn't about people.
To be completely fair, it's a sort of re-make: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music (1965).
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Ariana Grande's "7 Rings" is my go-to example of a song that basically isn't about people.
To be completely fair, it's a sort of re-make: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] My Favorite Things from The Sound of Music (1965).
Musically, it is. The original "My Favorite Things" was about changing one's focus from things that are bothering you, to things that are not. Yes, many of them were material, but not as much - at least half of them were things in nature (snowflakes, geese, flowers, etc.), and others were more about experiences or simpler things. 7 Rings says "happiness is the same price as red bottoms", a colloquialism for Christian Louboutin shoes with a trademarked red color on the underside of the shoes and cost about $
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The real reason that modern music sucks is that it's copies of older music which was perfectly fine, thank you; much of it even came from before the age of auto-tune, which means there's actual vocal talent involved. The original music was pretty good, and while there's a lot you can do to make it sound more impressive by adding reverb or bass or whatever, there's not much you can do to make it better.
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Auto-tune is one of the reasons why modern songs are not as singable. I don't know how that affects sales, if at all.
In Japan songs use a lot less auto-tune and are generally written with karaoke in mind to some extent. At least they avoid too many effects and too much heavy processing so that people can sing them naturally. That also means less sampling, especially where lyrics are layered and cued up impossibly close together so a single person can't possibly breathe enough to get through a verse.
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I'm coming to believe that musical preferences are imprinted; the shit you're listening to around the age of sixteen is generally the shit that you believe is "shit you would actually want to listen to", subject to occasional re-imprinting experiences.
I'll agree with that. I have my music collection mostly from when i was 15-25 then I just stopped being interested in new music and haven't really bought any in years. I have my little bubble of music I like and I'm more than happy with it.
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> American TV is very, very depressing with the raunchy unreality shows. People watch that
crap and believe that what those people do is good human behaviour.
FTFY.
unreality = manufactured drama where people watch someone else's fake life rather then live their own.
e.g. Kartrashians.
Compare and contrast to Sci-Fi like "Seth Trek" (The Orville) or The Expanse which uses Science Fiction as the backdrop for social commentary on human behavior.
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That didn't happen to me. I guess it's because I never stopped looking for contemporary good music, and I find it all the time. As a matter of fact, my favorite band is relatively recent (MONO Inc.), and I'm nearing 40.
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That didn't happen to me. I guess it's because I never stopped looking for contemporary good music, and I find it all the time. As a matter of fact, my favorite band is relatively recent (MONO Inc.), and I'm nearing 40.
Somehow I don't think you're intentionally trying to be funny, but...
"Mono Inc. is a German Gothic Rock band from Hamburg, founded in 2000." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
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I'm in my late 30's and in the recent years I forced myself to listen to a Dubstep station for a week as an experiment (on Somafm.com). I got there with the preconceived notion that what I'm going to listen to was the sound of farting robots.
Still, after that time I got used to it and I assume others can do the same.
Since then I've moved on to other Electronic and don't r
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Most music is garbage. No matter what era, no matter what decade, most of it is utter trash.
You think the 60s only produced gems of rock'n'roll? Bah. Like always, most of it was garbage. The reason why you think the 60s was a golden time of music is that you only remember the great pieces. The great musicians that did something awesome and made timeless classics. They get played and played on the radio. The garbage fades into blissful forgetting and you only remember the good ones, the classics, the great m
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"Anyone remember Disco?"
Gloria Gaynor, Chic, Donna Summer, Bee Gees, Sister Sledge, Michael Jackson, Barry White...
And all the funk bands that were before and during.
So, yes, I think comment is needed. It may not be my favored style, but when it was good it was good.
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Popular music is both a cultural phenomenon and a business.
Usually new styles originate organically. Often if their originators become popular, they get a hit or two, but often they get surpassed and forgotten about when the commercially refined version of the style gets promoted, leaving all kinds of good, original music forgotten because he originators and early adopters got shunted to the side for not changing their sound or compromising for the music business' idea of a good pop song.
Once in a while, t
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Except that look at all the one-hit-wonders with absolutely atrocious filler back catalog material who had huge successes. That's almost always the result of good producers, and sometimes good songwriters.
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Notice how every oldie reminds you of where you were when it first became a hit?
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I had a strange realization last week. I didn't really start listening to music as an act of auditory pleasure that I would actively seek out until I was about 15 years old. I never really thought too hard about why until it suddenly hit me while listening to a song: I didn't like pop music, and that's what seemed to be playing everywhere, so I just assumed I wasn't that into music. Once I realized that a lot of people listen to and love music that a majority of other people would consider crap (and tha
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Having said that, I think we can all agree that most dubstep is garbage.
HEATHEN! How dare you insult the beat of our gods!
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Having said that, I think we can all agree that most dubstep is garbage.
Sturgeon's Law applies to all media, all of the time. "90% of everything is shit." Most dubstep is indeed awful. Some of it is awesome. A handful of tracks are sheer genius. As with every art, there's a lot of variance and at the high end it gets very thin indeed.
Re:Moral panic (Score:5, Interesting)
Old people have been complaining about music since humans figured out how to beat rocks with sticks. Nothing to see here I think.
And young people have been choosing whatever sort of music makes the old people the angriest.
too many notes (Score:2)
This. Music is also crappier than ever - and always has been.
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Agreed. Ever since Beethoven and those damn romantic composers with their puffy shirts and dramatic polonaises it's been a downward spiral.
Hey you... (Score:2)
Get off of my lawn you noisy kids!
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Skill and talent needed to "rent" the production equipment kept talent standards way up.
Now people with few skills and not much to say are able to "access" music sales and production.
Their skill, lyrics, vocabulary are lower in quality than what was once accepted as needed to get music "made".
The gatekeeping that made people show they had "skills" is now gone.
The music now made shows the drop in ability.
Are you saying that the cost of production regarding popular music is now lower than previously? Look at the billboard chart today and then 50 years ago.
Re: In the past (Score:2)
Thanks Grandad ;)
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Highly talented artists were and are rare.
There was plenty of trash music in the 40-50-60s too. You just filter and forget it and the good stuff is remembered.
Now everyone and their neighbor can record video/audio and upload it to Youtube in a minute... So long I'm not forced to listen it, they're welcome to enjoy themselves.
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This just isn't true. Look at Elvis; he walked into a record studio off the street to record an album for his mother. So small vanity press recording was very much accessible in times past. It so happened the producers recognized his talent and decided to sign to him to record on their label; but he and presumable many other people came in off the street and left with studio recordings.
Then there was the entire 60s filled with skittle, bubble gum, etc. Don't forget you could affordably get reel to reel
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While the means has been around for awhile it is much cheaper to make studio quality music today than ever before and it is also far easier to get the music out there as well. Its as simple as making a Youtube account or soundcloud. Even Spotify allows independent artists to self publish on the platform now. Depending on the genre of music, all you need to make a hit is a laptop and a pirated copy of your DAW of choice. That's what Skrillex did. If you want real analog instruments and vocals then you have t
Re: Can you recognize every syllable in a song? (Score:3, Funny)
I think you'll like my new track, it consists of me hitting a single B-flat piano note and then sitting there for 3.5 minutes, thus achieving a new record 0.29bpm
Re: Can you recognize every syllable in a song? (Score:5, Funny)
Philip Glass posts on slashdot?
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Philip Glass posts on slashdot?
I can't understand why you've been modded funny, Philip Glass doesn't write that kind of music.
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Isn't that what Johnny Cash did in his video for Hurt?
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Re:is it possible to estimate (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, this year Iceland decided to send to Eurovision - the most gigantic lovey-dovey, peace-will-prevail, love-is-awesome pop fest on Earth - an anticapitalist BDSM act screaming that hatred will win, Europe will collapse, and love will die, while the lead singer abuses a bandmate on stage, and the son of Iceland's ambassador to the UK, in a spikey gimp mask, hits cages with women in them with a sledgehammer. [youtube.com].
Is that close enough? ;)
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Sounds like Rammstein. Are their fans about to sack Lindisfarne all over again?
Re:Rap... (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in the day people used to rap about being sharp in the mind, not missing any opportunity, working hard, studying and getting smarter, avoiding tricks traps and pitfalls. It was music for people who were struggling, encouraging them to keep their heads up and keep trying hard.
Nowadays people are rapping about getting fucked up on codeine and cocaine and how much money they spend and how much they don't give a fuck. And a lot of people who aren't struggling in daily life listen to it for seductive superficial aspects and get obsessed with that lifestyle. It's trash talk and bullshit and it isn't the same.
There's some good stuff out there but it's buried. Rap got big and then pop stars and charmed life kids started rapping.
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Back in the day people used to rap about being sharp in the mind, not missing any opportunity, working hard, studying and getting smarter, avoiding tricks traps and pitfalls.
They used to rap about the devil! [youtube.com]
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Half a year ago I googled for Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five, because I basically only knew one song of him, "The Message".
The texts are super insightful, and the message still applies today!
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maybe, only the mainstream Rap in the US (here in Brazil there's no such thing like US Gangsta Rap...)
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possibly, only the mainstream Rap in the US (here in Brazil there's no such thing like US Gangsta Rap...) * fixing own comment
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Gangsta Rap was not the end of thoughtful MCs. Far from it. The problem is making music and lyrics for superficial reasons and for superficial people. You can get that in any genre.
For gangsta, you have to take things in context. Consider the frame of reference for many MCs. Living in poverty, under the harassment of the local police, being excluded from jobs and neighborhoods, forced to live together under these conditions. Success here is anything that helps them get an advantage.
For people who are book s
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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* here in Brazil there's this prejudice about "funk" (again: not any kind of "funk" is bad...)
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Why do we take a look.
Pop music:
Rap:
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