The discussion about the pace of the music evolution

I think it's telling that some are so desperate to shut the conversation down. These are the same ones who claim that great music is everywhere, that you just have to look for it. Strange that they wouldn't want a chance to prove it. Yes, I know they claim that everytime they make a suggestion, it gets shut down. But they don't accept that the suggestions they make are the very things that we say we don't like.

 

Did we choose to live in a world that dictates the necessity of a car for transportation, or a smart phone or an internet connection to do business or communicate? The power of conformity is too great to say that it's solely the public's choice. Especially when there are industries that don't respect their customers and try to make the maximum amount of profit through the least amount of investment. That may be good for business, but it's bad for art.

 

I don't think that's what gets these threads shut down. Usually it's because the conversation goes in circles, people take things personally, someone uses a personal attack, someone says some rude generalization about a group of people, rules are broken and the mods have to step in.

 

Nah, we can have this dance for as long as you like. Or the mods allow.

 

I've seen practically every single variation of modern music suggested on these threads. If all of them are rejected then there must be something else at play here.

 

The evolution of popular music was driven by technology and ripping off the music of other cultures. We reached the end point in technology (autotune) and we've run out of cultures to steal from. Now there is nowhere else to go. It's over, Johnny. I don't care what dumb name you come up and they'll always come up with new names - that's marketing.

 

Evolutionary pace is not the same as quality - so let's dispense with the "old men who hate all new music" stuff and get down to it.

Yes, music's evolutionary pace has obviously slowed. In 1965, you can pretty much tell what month something was recorded in. That's how fast things were changing then. Today, it's quite possible to hear something from 1995 and assume it's new music. So yes, clearly things have slowed dramatically.

Here are my theories why:

1. Basic 4/4 blues based music only has so many permutations. There are a mathematically limited number of ways that chords and notes can be arranged. Once they've all been done, everything that comes after will sound similar to what's come before. When Dylan, McCartney, Lennon et. al were composing back in the 60s, they were like the first archaeologists inside King Tut's tomb. It was laden with jewels and beautiful objects no one had ever seen before. They filled up their buckets, shared it with the world and were proclaimed as geniuses.

Today's songwriter, no matter how gifted, is staring at an empty tomb. What's left to do is create replicas of those treasures, because the treasures themselves have long been exhausted.

2. The music industry in the 60s couldn't control trends. They could barely keep up with them. So, rather than question the variety of what was coming from artists, they just rolled with it. That's why Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa were on major labels. The labels heads probably didn't understand the music, but they didn't try to control it, for fear of missing out on the next big thing.

Today, it's completely the opposite. Labels know what sells and their interest is largely in feeding new material into the sales machine. Consider hip-hop. At an earlier stage in music, it would have been a transitional step leading to something else, in the way that swing led to bebop which lead to hard bop which led to free jazz, for example. But, because it had carved out a massive sales niche for itself, labels and radio kept hip-hop almost cryogenically frozen so as not to upset the balance sheets. So now we're coming up to 40 years of hip-hop, a style that probably should have morphed into something even better and more interesting somewhere in the 80s.

Radio's treatment of "classic rock" is another example of this.

3. Genius exists, but it's highly diffused. Consider bands like The Who, Cream and Led Zeppelin. All chart toppers and all manned by rock musicians of the highest possible caliber. And all with songwriters who had the ability to create songs that could transcend many decades. Why did they come together like that? Because only a handful of bands could get record deals, and the best musicians in any particular scene wanted to be part of those bands. Put the best songwriters with the best players and you've got artists that can have the songs and the chops to move music forward quickly.

Today there are tens of thousands of recording artists. As a result, more musicians are needed. And, as a result of that, many more mediocre musicians are working now than in the 60s (when a mediocre musician was either playing in a covers band or doing something else for a living). Even brilliant songwriters today have difficulty finding musicians who can deliver their music an even push their music to a higher level. (One reason why so many modern indie rock songs are simply chord changes behind a singer who's actually providing the melody)

Add to that the many artists who record alone using samples, drum machines and the like. They have no one to push them and make them better, in the way that Dylan had The Band or Townsend had the Who.

4. People today largely don't listen to music for revelations. (Broad brush -- obviously there are young music fans who care deeply. I'm speaking generally here)

They get their cultural revelations from movies, TV, video games, podcasts, street art, the internet or some other source. Music is simply the soundtrack to these things and, thus, shouldn't be especially challenging or require too much attention. In 1975, I had nothing but rock and roll. TV wasn't for me. Magazines (except those that covered rock and roll) had nothing for me. I had music, and I cared deeply about it because it was my connection to the outside world. So I expected -- and demanded -- creativity and excitement from it.


Bottom line: The 60s was a unique period in which creating something new was much easier, record labels weren't controlling the narrative, greatness was far more concentrated into a handful of musical acts and listeners demanded quality and innovation.

Ultimately, while it's disappointing that (for many of us) overall musical quality has declined over the years, the fault doesn't lie with modern musicians -- many of whom are immensely talented. The fault is in expecting them to match up to what was produced during an environment that no longer exists. The 60s was a magical fluke , a perfect alignment of forces. Modern musicians shouldn't be blamed for being born too late. They're doing their best with the situation they have.

 

And that's usually the elephant in the room, with these discussions.

As an old fart who lived through the latter half of the classic rock period and LP's and FM radio, it was great. But it was also frustrating as hell unless you were listening to Top 40 - sitting by the radio, record button on standby, I don't really miss that. And I certainly woudn't have time for that today.

Today I can fire up Napster or streaming service of the month and, somehow, I still manage to find new music that engages me. Perhaps it was released last week, or maybe a few years back. Or maybe something that escaped my view decades ago. But for the actual new / modern music there's been a lot to like.

Is it evolving? I have no idea....maybe? There's probably entire genres that I haven't even delved into, and may never delve into. Am I finding great new music in general? Yep.

 

I think you're missing the point.

Take the auto market in the early 1970's, during and just after the first oil crisis. US auto makers were still foisting giant road Titanics on the buying public, but fuel efficient Japanese imports had already made some inroads and the public went for them in a big way, to the point that a little less than ten years later Japan was smashing the US auto industry.

What if those first Japanese imports had never been allowed in? What would the direction have been then if the US buyer never had that option? Sure, there'd have been consumer demand for better mileage, but without the option to go Japanese, when and how would the US automakers have responded when they were the only game in town?

Those are the questions I'm getting at. It's about choice and what kind of choice can one make when one doesn't know what choices are available because they've never been made accessible or promoted much -- because the buying public is funnelled into a particular direction, for whatever reason, by the wide channel.

Lots of factors and variables involved in the discussion, I know, but the point I'm making, the question I'm asking is to what extent is the market informed?

You're right the public dictates the market, but the public can't buy what's not available and it won't buy what it doesn't know is available.

 

Every variation except anything innovative and bold. People with musical knowledge aren't going to settle for less than they know they could get elsewhere. Then there are those that just like new music as a thing in itself, which is cool. But you can hardly expect everybody else to feel that way.

 

Well then you have decided that there has not been any innovative and bold music since (take your pick - the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s) and that's fine. Why not just enjoy the music you know?

I think many people are disappointed that they don't get the same rush that music provided them between the ages of, say, 12-25. And that's understandable that nothing may hit you the same way it did in the hormone explosion of adolescence. I will always have a soft spot for late 70s and early 80s punk, post-punk, reggae, hip-hop, etc. for those reasons.

But that doesn't mean I don't think some fantastic music has been released in the decades since. To say otherwise would be because I was too attached to the intensity of my music experience 30+ years ago.

 

Awesome post, BroJB.

 

I think a big factor here is the necessity of "niching down" to survive as a musician. If you have limited distribution opportunities, it's much smarter to create music that a small, but highly loyal niche will enjoy than to try to create music that tries to appeal to everyone.

You can make a living creating music that's not especially accessible or interesting to 99% of the population if 1% like it. So we have all these silos of music with limited appeal across the spectrum. (The stuff is cuts broadly across the spectrum - Ariana Grande, let's say -- is pure formula and not really the point of this topic).

So yeah, there's lots of new stuff out there. And most of it won't appeal to any particular person (which is the point). That means that we each have to dig for the niches we like and find the artists within those niches. That can be a chore and, when we try to share our discoveries with others, we're probably met with blank stares.

In the end, for many folks (and me, more often than not) it's just easier to call up Miles Davis or Radiohead or Chuck Berry or whomever on Spotify and be done with it, rather than find needles in the haystack.

 

This is another common theme I've seen with these arguments - usually the music is dissected or data points thrown into the picture (I assume at some point the Spanish National Research Council study will come up).

It's one of the reasons why I'm actually glad that I'm not a musician. Or into music theory in general. I started going into that direction a few decades ago but once I started hearing music in that way, it wasn't really fun anymore. Ended up taking that side of my personality and focused it on my day job, and left the music appreciation in the same evolutionary state as it was when I was probably fifteen.

 

Excellent questions. I don't claim to know the answers, but I think we all know some of the factors that drove people in those directions. The histories are really interesting to me. Like with the absolute necessity of having cars. For that you have to look at the first suburb developments, that actually came before the auto, but what happened to make people (who could afford it) move out of the city and into the new suburban developments? Part of it was simple desire -- a suburban house was like a 'mini-estate' to the city dweller. You could have a yard and lawn grass and have a mini version of what the well-to-do had. But the other side of coin was deteriorating city life after industrialisation got into full swing -- stenches, pollution, declining health, noise -- not nice. So if you could afford it you moved out.

But you still had to get into the city to work -- so the demand for better systems of public transportation. Then eventually those get dismantled in favour of car transportation, to the point that, in most places anyway, you must have a car to work.

The American Social Security Card used to read "not to be used for identification purposes." Yeah, right. Try getting anything done without one. Ditto the credit card, which blazed the trail for the internet connection and the smart phone. It may come slowly, but inexorably choice is narrowed or even removed from the equation. That's happening with cash now. Banks are removing ATM's the world over and governments in many places are heavily encouraging people to forgo cash, because. I use debit cards all the time -- it's convenient. But I've lived through disasters and had I not had cash-in-hand I'd have been in some serious dire straits. I like my cash. I'm sure there are lots and lots of other examples to underscore the point here.

Exactly.

Not only bad for art, but bad for all the commonly held notions -- used to be commonly held notions -- about professional, or even decent norms of customer service. How often have you not been able to reach a human on the phone to help answer a question or solve a problem? How often to you find on a company website no telephone number or sometimes even no address is listed? Or even, sometimes, no email contact address, just an online form you send in?

About 12 years ago I needed to get some information (here where I am abroad) from the US Embassy. There was no way to get to an actual person by phone, taking a day off from work to travel to the city was out of the question, but there was one option available: if you submitted a credit card number, you could email your question in and, in case it was answered, your credit card would be charged approximately US$20 for each answered question -- didn't matter whether you were a US citizen or not.

Anyone here think there was any choice involved in any of that?

 

There can never be a consistant opinion about the way music is evolving, because we cannot even define what "music" is. Usually it is an understanding of how "music" affects various peer groups, age groups and people who want to use their opinions about "music" to pursue some other adgenda.

We can't even agree on whether music is an "art", or a "business", and whether the complaints stem from whether everybody is invested it the success of it evolving. Even those who think we think too much about our own opinions and "why can't we just shut up and enjoy the music", are by that very sentiment, turning their own preference into a conflict. So, we're wrong if we argue, we're wrong if we don't argue. Like every other common occurrence in public life today, everything seems to polarize people.

We have to stop comparing whatever is happening later on in our lives, to the sort of entertainment we were using and approving of during our younger lives, when we still had our hormones, weren't defending our nest egg, but were first experiencing our financial freedoms to some extent, and how we used the commalities in the music of the times for mating rituals. We will simply not succeed in reaching people outside of our eras, with arguments that were only valid in our salad days. They do not hear us with the same ears.

So - we gather in groups online to discuss things that put us in conflict with others in our own discussion groups, and those that own and maintain these discussion groups for purposes other than our own privilege, have a vested interest in keeping us civil. So, even the notion that you were not allowed to step out of your civility, brings you more anxiety and resentment. We actually have rules in our bylaws, whether we approved of it or not (above our pay grades), that try to put a lid on the polarizing discussion in hopes that we will instead focus on the things we have in common. Because there are always people besides ourselves, who don't enjoy watching discussion groups become bickering groups just to have our opinions agreed-upon.

If you tried to start a "discussion", but didn't like the way the moderators curtailed the noise, there is actually a rule against making public complaints about their decisions. Starting yet another thread trying to talk about the same thing, and hopefully reaching the same impasses without overtly trying to do so, is in violation of rules you agreed upon by becoming a member here.

And if you don't like that, there's procedures in place that couldn't care less whether you like it or not.

Please try not to break our community.

 

I see it as - babies like candy, and it can be profitable to some to give it to them.

 

I don’t think the current musical landscape is comparable to that of previous decades. In the 60’s, the styles of the era were very unified. By that I mean everyone seemed to stumble onto folk rock, then psychedelia, then roots rock, etc all around the same time. That was a very unique time for music and the rate of evolution and innovation was indeed extraordinarily fast. If the 60’s were unified, then the current industry is the opposite. Genres are more fractured and disparate than ever, and a lot of the most innovative stuff is the furthest from the mainstream. Pop, rap, jazz, rock, R&B, etc all exist in their own separate bubbles and don’t always influence one another. Even the 70’s were far more unified than now because everything was connected by the fact that most of it was rock or R&B (in the mainstream at least). I wouldn’t consider the 80’s or 90’s to be eras of great musical innovation at all. Both decades favored similar-sounding artists and production styles for the majority of the decade.

 

Exactly. To extend the analogy a bit, humans (and other mammals as well) are heavily predisposed to strongly desire the taste of salt, sugar and fats because those represent things necessary to our bodies, but that were at one time in our evolution hard to come by. Once humanity sorted out agriculture, mining and animal husbandry and those things were no longer quite so rare, subtleties in taste were acquired when they became available and new choices could be selected. But there's high profit in pumping out salts, sugars and fats -- sometimes all in a single package -- in mass volume outlets to mass numbers of buyers.

 

The 70s were better than the 60s. Now, I've got that out the way, it's hard avoid using the O word in these discussions because it's true that the older you are the less likely you are to be in touch with new music and new trends in music - and more likely to cling to what you already know. Note I said more likely before someone shoots back with "I'm 60 and I'm down with the Hackney Drill scene".

 

Man that video and annoys me. The presenter is rubbish and his arguments aren't any good. My favourite is when he says that a song nowadays can only be made by a computer ( I assume he's talking about DAWs, which takes years to to become decent at using these programs and have a complex knowledge of synthesis and sound design) and how "lifeless" it is (what???). Just another "I wasn't born then but the old times were just a whole lot better!" kind of person. Also, maybe the reason why old music seems better is because we only remember the good music.

 

I imagine the guy's just presenting the video and didn't write the script. I watched a bit of it but I've got better things to do than watch all of it.

 

I really don't care about innovation. I don't know if I ever have... I guess I kind of did, but especially as I get older I find what I respond to is simple things, things that have some 'truth' in them.

Of course nobody is going to agree on what that is either..but that's my thing. Something that hits me as truthful. Meaning emotionally really more than lyrically but that too. Just a good song that sounds and feels real. That's much more important than whether or not it's innovative. To me anyway.

But I also think an artist expressing their own unique truth in their own way is something will always sound new. So I do still find things that sound new to me whether or not they're necessarily 'innovative'.