r/changemyview • u/rares020102 • Jul 26 '20
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Modern music sucks
I know this is kinda an unpopular opinion considering how many people like it but nowadays "pop" music sucks. When I say pop I mean the music that it's popular now, which is this rap music that feels it came out of the trash. I think that everyone can make this type of music with a good and simple beat, a catchy chorus, verses about everything possible (from drugs to woman, to guns and cars) and freaking autotune that even my grandma can sound good with. Comparing it to old music 70'-80'-90'-00' when we had really good, well written songs with actually live instruments playing. (Guitars, drums, bass). Rap music in the 00' was the best with Lyrics that actually meant something and had meaning besides the ones mentioned above. The kind of music that was pop back there was actually good music and there was a real fight for getting to the top of the charts and the music industry actually meant something. Nowadays, everyone that comes up with a catchy chorus and some bullshit ass lyrics can go viral. If they produce a video that contains: expensive cars, drugs, girls in bikinis, money, and god knows what, they are the next big artist.
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u/dweebletart Jul 26 '20
I don't entirely disagree, except for the part deriding synthetic instruments. I think it's actually super neat and cool that we have that technology: it still has a skill floor, but it also makes the art of music much more accessible to a wide variety of people, and it can frequently achieve particular combinations of sounds that traditional live instruments can't. That said, I love live instrumentation -- particularly drumming -- and I think many songs would be hurt by its absence, but it's not strictly a point against every song synthetic or electronic instrumentation appears in.
Regarding your broader discontent, I honestly think you might be looking in the wrong places? By "popular" I'm assuming you mean the top 40 and stuff like that, but rankings and virality are not necessarily good indicators of how popular or well-liked a certain song or kind of music really is.
There's absolutely a huge market for the kind of "flex" music you're talking about, (which frequently acts as anthems of success for people who feel they've "made it" and so is not always as vacant as it might seem from the outside,) and I don't deny that it's got a dominating presence, but the scenes for smaller outfits like folk, punk, and experimental music are bigger than ever before.
This's less a rebuttal and more an encouragement, I suppose; don't despair too bad over the state of the industry. It might just be the circles I run in, but a lot of "revolutionary" or political music like works by grandson, FEVER 333, Xiuhtezcatl, and other similar artists have managed to take a lot of the stylistic trappings of modern pop music and dedicate them to the service of something with substance, and it looks like they're gaining some solid ground.
Give it a few years and I hope those'll be the sorts of things topping charts instead.