The problem is that Lorde is actually really talented, but the mastering in her music is a total mess Another really bad one is Imagine Dragons, a so-called "rock band" whose biggest hit is nothing but distortion, and the production is horrible, way too loud and overcompressed.... but let's still beat up on the 80s because 60s rock stars decided to use drum machines for a moment
A song like Der Kommissar by After the Fire was a good example of synths used creatively. Later in the 1980s, not so much.
On thinking about this outrageous statement I can't help but ponder what that corporate meeting was like... "So, Roland, Curt...what do you have for us?" "Well we have an album about child abuse, emotional distress, the absence of love, suicidal thoughts and the hit single we brought you is about friends turning their back on you." "Great! Sounds like it will outsell Michael Jackson!"
Eh, I think modern music production isn't the worst of pop culture's problems. I give you: Michael Bay movies and Hollywood having no other ideas than to remake everything. '80s still had great movies. Don't think anyone is going to argue that.
Really? There were some 80s acts that were totally derided ala Nickelback... TFF and Simple Minds though? you're just using personal dislike as fact. TFF's first two albums are pretty much accepted as alternative classics (None of Nickelback's albums are) and Simple Minds were around long before The Breakfast Club. Bet you probably never even listened to New Gold Dream 81-82-83-84. Many SM fans view Once Upon A Time the same way Jefferson Airplane fans view Knee Deep In The Hoopla. And even then, they quickly made up for it with Street Fighting Years.
Cold digital 80s production sounds good on some things, like a lot of the new wave/post punk stuff. I really wish "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" would have had a warmer sound (and scrapped Dogs of War and added Peace Be With You), then it would have been a much better Pink Floyd album. Floyd sounds great enough as a 'cold' band, but not when it comes to the sound quality of the production. What made kids like me at the time embrace the grunge era was, for example, hearing more bass that we didn't hear in a of 80's heavy metal (think Soundgarden or The Melvins). It was the reason we embraced older bands like Black Sabbath that had that warmer, kick-to-the-chest sound. This sparked the "stoner rock" branch of metal with bands like Sleep and nowadays The Sword and Orchid. Too much 80s heavy metal didn't sound 'heavy' at all. Just loud. Even bands we liked had weak production due to the 80s being so treble heavy and slicker sound. Some of it was just too clean, so we called it clinical because it sounded as cold and clean as a doctor's office or a hospital. That also sparked the 90s lo-fi indie rock movement (which also got out of hand after taking it to the other extreme for a while). Everyone was caught up in the clean sound of compact discs after years and years of scratching records, that they went to the extreme in 80s production sound. This is why I come to sites like this to hear other audiophiles point to great sounding, 'warm' new records that are 180 gram vinyl and warmer cd/dvd-a/sacd formats. I like the warm sound of analog without the surface noise.
Digital reverb, new synths, and instruments plugged directly into mixing consoles instead of taking the time to capture a performance in a room. I think producers at the time liked the resulting clean sound and less work involved, plus getting to use the new toys of the day. There was also a lot of talk of "heh, we don't need the drummer anymore"...
In fact, I'm pretty serious. Many more of my favorite band/recordings/etc are from the 80s than the 60s/70s combined. Of course, I am one of those people who moves forward. I like a lot of stuff from last year even.
really? I like a few songs off that album (tell it to your heart is amazing) but lou rapping never cut it for me
Well, Lou was always rapping anyway, that's why he made up song about it. He was the original (w)rapper!
You're not alone. The most of my favorite albums, and songs are from the 80's, though this stuff is usually from artists who were prominent in the 60's and 70's. With that said, I love 70's music almost as much, while I merely like 60's music.
I'm not a fan of drum machines for the most part although they can some times be used well. I do agree that it's all on how you use the sound--as you mentioned it was HOW the musicians adopted it-- for example Tears for Fears integrated it into the sound as did Peter Gabriel but there are other artists that just added it as decoration and it's when the music is dressed up in it that it doesn't work.
If there is one word I'd choose to sum up the '80s sound' it would be 'overbearing'. There seemed to be a philosophy of production and music-making that everything had to sound 'big' and 'busy'. That gated drum sound pioneered by Phil Collins (which first appeared on Peter Garbriel 3) got very old very quickly. For a long time, I fell into the trap of thinking that music basically sucked in the eighties: not true - there were still a few good artists around making good stuff - but the way they were seemingly obliged to record and arrange it seriously compromised the product. In fact, the more I think about, the more bitter I am that I happened to be young in the 80s, a decade that was so culturally and politically arid that I'd have literally preferred listening to silence as an alternative to listening to the music of the period. The boomers got everything, didn't they?
The Mellotron is an interesting case though, because even though it's evocative of a certain era, it's FAR more used now than then. It's been a regular feature on records for about 20 years now, and with the plug in versions is really everywhere. I wonder if it will ever be seen as more evocative of the late 90s/early 2000s rather than the late 60s. Synthesizers were around in the 60s too, yet for many it's an 80s thing.
Pardon?! Tears For Fears "The Hurting" was anything but stale when it came out. It sounded like absolutely nothing else before it, and it still holds up pretty well today. I remember hearing "Change" and "Pale Shelter" on the radio and being blown away by how fresh and imaginative they sounded. Parts of "Songs From The Big Chair" might feel stale now, but IMHO that's more to the huge success of the album, and how ridiculously overplayed the singles were, which went a long way to defining what we think of as the 80s sound in the first place. The production was much more commercial, but the most of lyrics were still basically about primal therapy, hardly "corporate" content there. And even then, it closes with "Listen", which isn't exactly radio-friendly material. Only "The Seeds Of Love" comes close to being corporate, and that was at the end of the decade. I'm not as familiar with Simple Minds and only know their big hits, but as pointed out above, there was much more to them than just a few singles.
I think Random Access Memories is a hugely weak album. Daft Punk were AMAZINGLY inventive when they were doing their first few albums in their home studios, they were using the influence of funk, disco and house and crafting their own thing, and it worked. They're now seen as true pioneers and one of, if not the biggest and longest lasting acts in dance music (no mean feat). With RAM, they're basically just recreating the records that inspired them, right down to hiring the same session musicians. A pointless exercise, if that interested me I'd be watching YouTube videos from guitarists who buy all the Edge gear or Jimmy Page gear and try to recreate those sounds. RAM just sounds kinda boring, and all the guest vocalists are a crutch. IMO. But, anyway, more to your point, you're right for the most part. The excesses today are the same as yesteryear, just with different tools. Actually the public is probably much more aware of studio hi-jinks now than they ever were in the past, EVERYONE knows about autotune and pro tools fixes, etc, but generally don't realize that this is just an easier way of doing what was done before via razorblade and sampling. I wouldn't paint Pro Tools as quite an enemy here, there's a lot of reasons to use it that have nothing to do with avoiding hiring session musicians (that's categorically out of style these days, except for orchestral musicians). It's really rare to make an album all analog these days, especially when time and money are a factor. A lot of more lo-fi punk type bands and people that home record can still do it, but in a professional environment that ship has sailed (sadly).
Synthesizers, drum machines, the advent of digital recording. The talented got a bit lazy, but it also brought cheap recording means to the untalented, as well. We all continue to suffer.
It was a dreadful decade, at least from about 1983 or 1984 on. Music was just one aspect of the cultural rot. 1977 to 1982 was pretty amazing.