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View Poll Results: The 00s is a terrible time for music. Do you agree?
Yeah. 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s... music was waaay better. 10 45.45%
Not really. There are numerous new acts that really shine. 4 18.18%
I LOVE RIHANA KANYE WEST JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE! (Vote this if you like most of 00s music) 1 4.55%
I don't think there's a correlation between music quality and the year it was released. 7 31.82%
Voters: 22. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 2007.10.01, 09:06 PM   #1
justriiingo
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Default '00s - A terrible time for music.

The '00s is a terrible time for music. Discuss.
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Old 2007.10.01, 09:33 PM   #2
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Quite frankly, I think the best music is being made now. If I take my 15 or so favourite albums, maybe 10 are from the 00s, and that's certainly not for a lack of exposure to decades past.
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Old 2007.10.01, 09:54 PM   #3
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I really wanted to say that there's no correlation between release date and music quality, but if we take into account the tendency of history as a whole to act like a huge pendulum (of which music is just a subset), then it seems that it's just naturally swinging towards crap right now. When it'll get back up to really good stuff, who knows.

Now, I make this judgment call based on how much effort I have to put into finding good music. Back in the 90s, I could get away with just surfing radio stations that broadcast recent music and have a decent shot of listening to something that was actually good. When I gained the ability to earn income for music and use the internet, I burned/downloaded a few songs from that era as well as stuff farther in the past, but it was easy pickings. When the new decade started kicking into high gear, there was a depreciation of quality that was largely to blame by the haphazard integration of hip-hop elements into other genres, as well as a slight stagnation of the rock scene. Because of this, now I had to actively start searching for interesting music, and my radio pursuits have been limited to classics stations (old jazz and rock, love songs, classical) and some alternative. Word of mouth, Pandora internet radio, and random DC++/torrenting are how I find stuff I'm interested in.

(On a side note, that's also probably the reason I started to get into international/foreign music, and consequently SR. Yay!)

For the other decades, well, I owe a lot to parental influence, my best friend, and old local jazz musicians. A lot of the 50s-80s is classic just because the times allowed for a lot of great shifts and new directions in composition, making for a lot of fans that stood the test of time along with the music. Nowadays, there's a lot of recycling, a lot of sampling, and occasionally something novel and good. It's as if this decade is a bunch of weird experiments, much like the Variety album is for Shiina Ringo and the rest of Tokyo Jihen. Because of this, I don't really see anything with the Chicago/Hendrix/Beatles/Metheny/Oasis/Sinatra/whatever-old-stuff-you-like level of staying power.

We've got three years left, however, so I'm ready to be surprised.

Age would normally be a large concern in such a case study, but luckily hindsight is 20/20. However, even that can't compensate for my crap taste in music, so hopefully other people's votes will balance it out.

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Old 2007.10.01, 10:36 PM   #4
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Originally Posted by madpawn View Post
Quite frankly, I think the best music is being made now. If I take my 15 or so favourite albums, maybe 10 are from the 00s, and that's certainly not for a lack of exposure to decades past.
I'm just curious, how many of those 10 albums are from hugely popular artists?

Originally Posted by Positron View Post
Now, I make this judgment call based on how much effort I have to put into finding good music. Back in the 90s, I could get away with just surfing radio stations that broadcast recent music and have a decent shot of listening to something that was actually good.
That's a good point. Listening to the radio was a huge and extremely enjoyable part of my 90s. Now any radio I listen to is classical music (just cuz everything else is so offensive).

So combining those two points, I get the impression that "good" music of the '00s just got less accessible. Is that true? Seeing that a lot of music gets posted on the internet these days, and that the internet is an instrument of accessibility, it's rather strange to see that the two trends are diverging rather than converging.
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Old 2007.10.02, 08:24 AM   #5
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Now the nu-millenium isn't a total wasteland for music, there are "numerous" acts I like (Feist, Strokes, uh... The Charade.) Howevva, those acts are far from mainstream (excepting the Stroke's first album.) What is mainstream in the 00's, what does sell, is a wasteland. This popular mainstream makes the "underground" stuff all the more inaccessible.

It has alot to do with the mindeset of what is popular. Now 70's and 80's I'm a bit oblivious to, but its no secret I'm a sucker for the 60's and 90's. The 60's mindset was certainly capitalist, sure. But there was definitely a push to expand one's boundaries (even before the Haight Ashbury stuff) to really test what is accessible and acceptable, how much 'you' you could put out there. The 90's were I think generally less capitalist, more about showing your identity, proving yourself. It was after all the excess of the yuppies and the hair bands. This was a scaling back, trimming down of "acts" and just showcasing your music/what you had to say.

The 00's is definitely throwing back to what the 80's were about, excess, money, how much whatever you have. The 90s and 00s can be, I think, pretty much iconified with the "drug du jour" of the time. Nowadays it seems everyone is on cocaine. In the 90's it was heroin. (Not to say no one was snorting cocaine in the 90's, but it was in the back page where heroin was on the cover.) Cocaine is a very celebratory kinda deal, almost glamorous in a sick kind of way. You take your snuff and you head back out and party and shit. Heroin, you shoot up and you nod off in a corner for the rest of the afternoon. Not a particularly appealing sight. Cocaine meant your famous, heroin meant you were trash. Plus in the 90's you were on drugs: eventually we see you on the front page that your dead. The 00's you're on drugs: we see you're on the front page at some private resort "detoxing"/vacationing. I think thats a horrible message.
What I'm getting at with my drug-rant is that in the 90's, idols werent generally "glamorous" they had problems, they were "of the people." And in some way it inspired you. "They have the same shit that I do, and they made it big. Maybe I can too." In the 00's, the idols are larger than life. They are above the law, and seemingly above mortality. Even them buying a pair of shows, or a bag of Cheetos is "news" to some people. They are imposing figures that generally the only reason you might aspire to be them is so you can get away with as much shit as they do.

I hope if I ever have kids, its in an era like the 90's I grew up in. I think theres a terrible disservice to kids in elementary/middle school right now.
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Old 2007.10.02, 10:50 AM   #6
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Originally Posted by justriiingo View Post
I'm just curious, how many of those 10 albums are from hugely popular artists?
This is an interesting point--not many of them, really. Either they're from a non-mainstream act or an act that was mainstream in the 90s, stopped being quite so popular but released their best work in the 00s (Bjork, Erykah Badu, Radiohead). The most mainstream album is probably the new Feist album--it may not be considered mainstream in the states, but here it Toronto she's every other song on the radio, in every commercial, and listened to by everyone of all age groups, by metal heads, by gangstas...

Yet it's difficult to judge a decade by its hitmakers. If you look back at the #1s for the 60s and 70s, most of them were forgettable crap--of course the only ones remembered are, well, the memorable ones, the Sinatras and the Beatles.

Even so, I would argue that the beginning of this decade was one of the only times since The Beatles that some of the most innovative music was also topping the charts--Outkast, for example, and Missy Elliott. And the popular music scape right now is fascinating; what's with the current trend towards minimalism? Two of the biggest hits are just so simple in terms of arrangement--"Girlfriend" by Avril Lavigne and "Umbrella" by Rihanna are little more than drums and another instrument that sometimes kicks in--was this a reaction to the excess of the aforementioned hip hop artists of just a few years ago?

It's almost like the fashion industry--though every decade past had their own distinct looks and styles, the 00s really don't. It's a mixtape, basically. It's all over the place. And with the increased anarchy of music downloading and ways-to-find hot artists, the free-for-all of the music industry makes it just that more diverse--Lily Allen became a star! M.I.A. became famous!

Anyway, I could go on and on.
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Old 2007.10.02, 11:05 AM   #7
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please, this is the bullshit that every generation deludes themselves into thinking by believing themselves to actually matter more than anyone else. It is like when you go to high school graduations and every year you hear the same stupid speech about how it is "our generation that will make a difference."

music is as was and will continue to be, regardless of the time period. You may look at music from the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, hell, even the Middle Ages, any period, and feel they might be better or worse, but the point of the matter is we can only judge from our own perspectives which is very much influenced and shaped by the times.

so I can't help but laugh at this entire thread and wonder why people even waste time thinking about such a stupid question.
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Old 2007.10.02, 01:14 PM   #8
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Hey guys, Neko is deluding himself into thinking he matters more than us by telling us how we think we matter more
Originally Posted by kuro_neko View Post
so I can't help but laugh at this entire thread and wonder why people even waste time thinking about such a stupid question.
Yet you waste our time by posting anyway.
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Old 2007.10.02, 06:19 PM   #9
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Originally Posted by kuro_neko View Post
music is as was and will continue to be, regardless of the time period. You may look at music from the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, hell, even the Middle Ages, any period, and feel they might be better or worse, but the point of the matter is we can only judge from our own perspectives which is very much influenced and shaped by the times.

so I can't help but laugh at this entire thread and wonder why people even waste time thinking about such a stupid question.
So basically, since it depends on perspective and is subjective it's not worth talking about?

If you think a discussion about art and the state of it is not worth having because it's probably impractical and we all have different opinions--well, then, why post?
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Old 2007.10.02, 08:41 PM   #10
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Originally Posted by madpawn View Post
Anyway, I could go on and on.
No one's stopping you but yourself.

So do we agree that music that's most accessible are horrible and the godly stuff is hidden in an obscure corner of the music sphere that very few have access to? If the music is actually good, why aren't the broadcasting media (TV/Radio) actually broadcasting them, making them accessible to the general public? What is it that changed in terms of the way we receive music?

Maybe we can also think in terms of the environment for making music. The price of recording technology quite a lot lower than before and you do get a number of musicians who released CDs recorded at home. How much are people willing to pay for these recordings? Can it be comparable to similar releases from record companies with proper recording equipment? Are people more or less willing to pay for music these days?

The effect of piracy and the Internet is something that shouldn't be overlooked. Also, popular music usually reflects on a certain socio-political climate. The 90s was a boomtime for many economies but in the 00s we have 911/terrorism, economic slowdown, hurricanes and tsunamis etc; how much is the artistic and/or business direction for music reflects on that? I certainly remember music in the 90s being "happier" and the 00s being "angstier".
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