What's with the idea that contemporary hip hop and pop lack melody?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by lc1995, May 12, 2019.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. winders

    winders Music Lover

    Location:
    San Martin, CA
    You have no idea what you are talking about.
     
    Mechanical Man and broshfab4 like this.
  2. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member


    It depends. Much of the pop and rock from the era people hail around her does have broader melodic structure and variety, sometimes with multiple strains and bridges, and much more harmonic movement than the kind song involving a single short diatonic phrase repeated over and over on top of an unchanging groove with limited harmony, Whether that's "superior" or preferable is just a matter of taste. I'm a James Brown fanatic from my childhood in the early '70s, so, you know, I'm cool with narrow melody, minimal melodic and harmonic variety, and groove. But I do think there's quantitatively more melodic and harmonic variety in a lot of these other kinds of pop and rock music of the past. Even and I-IV-V boogie with a bridge like "Tutti Frutti." Any qualitative difference though is just a matter of taste.

    I think a lot of people who complain about the narrow, minimal melodies in some of these styles of music, however, don't really believe that melodic and harmonic variety is the be-all, end-all. For example, probably a lot of them would prefer "I Saw Her Standing There" to a much more harmonically and melodically rich song like "By the Time I Get To Phoenix," so it's something more than just melodic and harmonic variety, or the lack thereof, that they are responding to.
     
    danasgoodstuff and Jarleboy like this.
  3. Jmac1979

    Jmac1979 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Louisville, KY
    I don't? The Moody Blues and Yes by the late 90s/early 00s when they were reaching the 35 year mark were solely banking on previous glories and touring the same warhorses and living off nostalgia (Yes has at least done a couple albums since, The Moody Blues haven't done a non-Xmas release since 1999 and even their Christmas album is 16 years old now). The Flaming Lips seem to still be going forward with an audience whose still interested in what they're doing now, because their audience isn't all about boomer nostalgia and the concept that the world stopped turning once college ended. Their first EP came out in 1984 and we're in 2019 and they're still doing their own thing and not just doing some concession to just rehashing She Don't Use Jelly.
     
    Last edited: May 14, 2019
  4. manco

    manco Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Jose, CA
    You don't have to go back to the 'Golden Era', even as recently as the early 2000s was overflowing with alternative rock bands infused with melody. Bands like Radiohead, Sigur Ros, Mono, Muse, Interpol, Arcade Fire, The Delgados, Franz Ferdinand, Coldplay.
     
    mark winstanley likes this.
  5. Christian Hill

    Christian Hill It's all in the mind

    Location:
    Boston
    Is it music of a type?

    I'm fine with it.
     
  6. eric777

    eric777 Astral Projectionist

    I don’t listen to hip hop, but I do hear a lot of it at work due to the younger demographic that works there. Most of the hip hop they play does have melody.
     
    lc1995 likes this.
  7. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product

    If we are talking about hip hop ... which particular brand of hip hop are we talking about?
    If we are talking about melody, what and how much use of various intervals and instruments are we going to include as being relevant to melody ...

    For example Ice T - Original Gangster. There is virtually no vocal melody to speak of. There are some fantastic horn samples used that inject some melody into the rhythm... Does that count as having melody?

    Another example Coolio's remake of Pastime Paradise. Certainly the main vocal has little to no melody, but the chorus is drawn straight from Stevie Wonder, who has written some wonderful melodies.

    I know they're both old, so am I lol

    We need to be online with each other as to what we consider to be no melody. If we have no parameters for a definition, then it is impossible for anyone to state what does and what doesn't have melody.

    Hip hip and rap is wonderfully rhythmic. I'm young enough to appreciate some of it, but old enough to understand why others don't. I am also in a position to understand why many think it has no melody, and that is because they are relating the melody to the singer, and in hip hop, aside from choruses that are sung, or sampled, the main vocal is not going to generally be the main source of melody in the song. The style just doesn't generally work like that.

    As for modern pop ... pop has always been in the same boat. It is the popular music of the day, and somewhat like fashion, reflects certain things seen to be popular and more often than not, based in some sort of formulaic construct, therefor instantly putting people off who particularly dislike formulaic construct ... which in reality is all music, because everybody is using some sort of formula lol. The popular music of the day, to the best of my knowledge (I admit that I am out of touch, and not too concerned about it) is again generally rhythm based. I have heard stuff with and without melody, just as I always have. As to whether one likes a song or artist is really just going to be a matter of taste and exposure ... it isn't about someone being a good or bad person, or being a musical or non musical person.

    There are still enjoyable melodies, but they aren't often the main focus of the currently most popular styles.
     
  8. Gaslight

    Gaslight ⎧⚍⎫⚑

    Location:
    Northeast USA
    Going to respond this particular line of thought because you and I are very much alike then. I generally don't listen to lyrics unless it's pretty much "out in front", for example a folk song that's telling a story. Otherwise, the vocals are just an instrument to me.

    So you'd think I would dismiss hip hop outright, but that's not the case. Not that I like every sub genre out there, but I definitely zone in on albums where here's a good backing track which keeps me hooked. The vocals just add to it, just as you wrote above.
     
  9. drad dog

    drad dog A Listener

    Location:
    USA
    They lean on their words so much. You;d think they were all Bob Dylans. They get a lot of credit and not much critical backlash or grief. But lyrics are less than 50% of music. It sounds like a free ride to me, not making up melodies.

    It seems to me that rap and hip hop are uncriticizable on musical grounds. If you do you are out of date. In rock there is a lot of crap. Bad reviews occur too in response. The way I sifted it out was easy: original strong melodies, or at the very least a fresh take, with a new melody. (IE one that sounds good and does not infringe too much on it's antecedents.) (I'm a white male boomer though.)

    If i spend my musical time in a given month getting into Joni Mitchell, Al Green, Fleet Foxes, Freedy Johnston, I am going to judge a hip hop record by the same standard of melody and harmony. I don't do that to be contrary. I don't do it intentionally at all. It's a biological reality. No melody, no me, and thats not generational to me. It's eternal.

    I can't congratulate someone for having like, any melodic contour at all on their record. It's a competition for the best of them. Everyone is not a winner.
     
  10. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    You can do anything you want, it's your life. But judging the aesthetics of one thing by some aesthetic yardstick you project on it instead of by its own aesthetic is the classic case that led Western observers to hear music they encounters from other cultures as noise and nonsense no matter how evolved or systematic it may have been within its own aesthetic and tradition. It's not biological at all. Its entirely acculturated and relative and learned. Music is an art of sound and duration; and music with lyrics are also an art of language, Melody is just one kind of way of making something out of sound and duration. It's not the whole of music. Its not even necessary for there to be music. If your preference and interest is in European style harmony/melody development, no one can fault you for your preferences. But there's not kind of imperative to it -- biological or otherwise.
     
  11. Diamond Dog

    Diamond Dog Cautionary Example

    All well and good, my well-spoken friend but the post I responded to said this :

    So we aren't just talking about Gucci Gang here. We're talking about your oft-mentioned Beyonce, too. And her sister Solange. And the late great Prince. And Janelle Monae and Alicia Keys and John Legend and D'Angelo and Meshell N'degeocello and Frank Ocean and The Weeknd and Rihanna and Khalid and Bruno Mars and Daniel Caesar and... No sophisticated melody to be found here ? Really ?

    It's just ludicrous ( Ludacris ? ) to make these sweeping generalizations about big-tent genres. Utterly risable.

    D.D.
     
  12. HotelYorba101

    HotelYorba101 Senior Member

    Location:
    California
    No offense to anyone here (not directed specifically but more of an all-encompassing response), but for me I can't grasp hearing vocals, autotuned or not, with a combination of different notes and rhythm, and not calling it a melody


    I get it if people called it a melody they don't like the presentation of, or a melody that is not what they want to listen to, but in theoretical definition of what a melody is - there objectively is a melody there. Is it a great melody or even a good melody? I suppose that is up to the listener to decide, but there is a melody there nonetheless
     
    Joker to the thief and lc1995 like this.
  13. drad dog

    drad dog A Listener

    Location:
    USA
    Yeah fair enough. By melody I mean more than just a series of tones. I meant the melody created in your head around the sound.(even philip glass) And you'd have the right to say that you get that out of hiphop. Although it's too hard for me to pick out stuff I need to come back to to make headway. I've tried before. I'm not a genre person anyway. I might even say I dislike "most" "stuff" broadly.
     
  14. drad dog

    drad dog A Listener

    Location:
    USA
    It has a melody, technically. The objection would be it's very repetitive though, to the point of "...". One idea really. But the vocals are autotuned to a fine art. To my ears: It would sound lame as a melody without the autotune. It's not sung really anyway. It sounds like it's played on a keyboard. It's an impressonistic piece.
     
  15. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    Yes well I guess no one has quantified "most" or even "pop" in this context.

    It may be a sweeping overstatement on @Lownote30 's part, but it's not wholly off base either.

    Honestly, it's not most pop music today has the melody range or harmonic movement of, say, typical '30 or '40s pop. It's just not. "Someone to Watch Over Me," "Stardust," "St. Louis Blues" even, etc. It just not that kind of material.

    I think American pop music in the last 100 years has slowly, steadily moved to narrower and narrower melodic and harmonic range and variation. Part of that is that the influence of vernacular and folk music has overtaken the influence of Western conservatory music. Part of that is that musical traditions of the African diaspora -- in which there's a greater emphasis is on rhythm and counter rhythm, repetition and pattern, floating modal lead lines over a ground beat vs. theme and variation, major-minor harmony as a formal structural aspect of development -- have become more the forward element in American and Anglo-American popular music than at any other time in our history. And there are probably other reasons too. Which is fine, there's nothing that says that more or less melodic variation in a piece of music makes it inherently better or worse than another piece of music. But I don't think it's wrong to say that if not most at least much of the most popular stuff is very reliant on "same 4 or 5 interval sets and are based around a very limited set of chord progressions."

    That said, I like "I'm Sorry Ms Jackson" AND I like "Someone to Watch Over Me" -- they're both wonderful.
     
  16. drad dog

    drad dog A Listener

    Location:
    USA
    Jimmy Crack Corn might be said to be a direct descendant of Hip Hop.
     
  17. drad dog

    drad dog A Listener

    Location:
    USA
    It's not a rock or instrument thing. Is there a world of music outside of melody and harmony? For some it's yes. It probably is yes. I'd say for me, it's no.
     
  18. Tim Lookingbill

    Tim Lookingbill Alfalfa Male

    Location:
    New Braunfels, TX
    Then you've been listening to too much Pat Boone!
     
  19. Diamond Dog

    Diamond Dog Cautionary Example

    You make solid points here but given the nature of this forum and the relatively narrow scope of the pop music most frequently discussed here, I might suggest that many of the detractors here are more likely to be comparing
    hip hop/modern pop to Chevy Van than to Stardust . Just sayin'.....

    D.D.
     
  20. Diamond Dog

    Diamond Dog Cautionary Example

    Nonsense. Everyone's a winner, baby. That's the truth.

    D.D.
     
    Devin likes this.
  21. Diamond Dog

    Diamond Dog Cautionary Example

    Unlikely.

    de·scend·ant
    /dəˈsendənt/
    noun
    1. a person, plant, or animal that is descended from a particular ancestor.
      "Shakespeare's last direct descendant"

      antonyms: ancestor
    D.D.
     
  22. drad dog

    drad dog A Listener

    Location:
    USA
    Pat Boone did the whitebread cover. Or the shortnin' bread cover.
     
  23. broshfab4

    broshfab4 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Long Island, NY
    There is no melody in rap music and nothing in that so-called song from this thread either.
     
  24. broshfab4

    broshfab4 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Long Island, NY
    So true my friend!!
     
    Sear likes this.
  25. lc1995

    lc1995 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    New York
    Motley Crue's Kickstart my Heart maybe?
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine