galt54

Well, I will never reach omniscience. And I am too smart to worry my head about that fact. The best procedure is to think in principles.

On the basis of rational principles, I say that it makes sense that people whose minds were crippled by modern education would only be able to achieve less in all fields, including songwriting, than in earlier years. So my impression that there is less good pop music around today than in former years makes eminent sense.

Also, I know on the basis of rational principles that it does not make sense to hypothesize that there might be a lot of good pop artists out there who have been neglected by the commercial music industry. For music industry executives who neglected anything as good as, or better than, The Beatles would be guilty of leaving an awful lot of money on the table for no good reason. And why would they do that?

Zer0

Are you even reading and understanding what other people are posting?

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DriveYourCarDownToTheSea

Y'know I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't even a fair question anymore. On the one hand we can applaud the songwriters of the 60's for their innovation, but on the other hand, musicians these days have so many more tools to work with to create sounds songwriters in the 60's could only dream of.

Could Brian Wilson have even thought of something like this?



This is the closest he could manage at the time.



One can argue the BB song is "better" than the AnCo song because the AnCo song is derivative of the BB song, and thus "copying" it ... but on the other hand you can't blame AnCo for copying a successful formula - even the BB's did that.

And yet, the AnCo song is clearly more complex than Good Vibrations (which says a lot), with a density of sound and layers of counter-melodies even the BB's would have had a difficult time pulling off. But I dunno, a lot of people will say the added complexity is a weakness, not a strength, because it makes the song too busy. But there were people at the time who thought Good Vibrations was too busy.

Or maybe the complexity is neither 'better' or 'worse' and it just depends on how you pull it off. Or maybe it's both, depending on who you ask and what their tastes are.

Maybe this is like comparing the pop of the 60's with the pop music of the 20's? Not sure it's really fair. In the 60's they had so much more to work with than they did in the 20's, kinda like what they do now. I've little doubt there were a lot of older people in the 60's who thought the tunes from the 20's and 30's was better. Sometimes when I listen to Sinatra I can understand the "older is better" mindset.

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Stop and find a pretty shell for her
Beach Boys vs Beatles comparisons begin here

Surell

Business has nothing to do with quality, and pop music isn't just popular music if you think of it's genre status. Also, Radiohead.

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djchameleon

This sums up the whole thread.

The older generation will always think that the new generation is crap.

Same thing happens with parents calling new music noise compared to the music of their glory days.

They have their rose colored glasses on and memories attached to the music of their heyday and will always think it is superior.

In 30 years, kids today that have grown up will talk about how Dubstep was far superior than whatever future music genre that is the in thing in that time.

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Fame, fortune, power, titties. People say these are the most crucial things in life, but you can have a pocket full o' gold and it doesn't mean sh*t if you don't have someone to share that gold with. Seems simple. Yet it's an important lesson to learn. Even lone wolves run in packs sometimes.

DriveYourCarDownToTheSea

Now that I've listened to more recent music in the intervening 7 months, from page 3 I'm going to answer my own challenge.

To be honest, I still can't find a recent song as beautiful as Faithless Love ... melodically ... though for all I know there's something out there I haven't heard that is. But of the stuff I've become familiar with, I'll give a few songs honorable mention, albeit for different reasons.

Again, here's Faithless Love. Gorgeous, sad song. Great songwriting.



Now, the more recent stuff seems to emphasize the overall sonic effects/instrumentation/arrangement at the expense of the melody. I note that's a generalization based on my anecdotal listenings. That said, there are recent songs whose overall sonic effects/instrumentation/arrangements are, indeed, as beautiful as is the melody of Faithless Love. I'll use Easier as an example: It's a beauty, but a different kind of beauty.



In a way, the Grizzly Bear song is more interesting. The Linda Ronstadt (actually JD Souther) song has more passion, but the Grizzly Bear song is more complex. It's like listening to Tchaikovsky, and then comparing it to Stravinsky. They've both got beauty, but completely different kinds.

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Stop and find a pretty shell for her
Beach Boys vs Beatles comparisons begin here

Surell

I'm still very confused by the concept of the crippled education system. You're insisting that a more available education system would result in a a generally less educated public. You infer from your own education, and the fact that you enjoyed such a thig when it was more luxurious, means that everyone had such an education, is not a rational conclusion. Because you were a part of such a fortunate circumstance, I'm sure you knew people of a similar sort, and indeed may have been surrounded by them. Do you really think the whole of a country had such luxuries, when your hypothesis relies on an education system not readily available to all? How could it follow then that education was universally better and thus able to produce more able musicians?

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DriveYourCarDownToTheSea

Here's a song whose emotions challenge me as much as Faithless Love. It's much more "minimalist" melodically, to the point where they almost can't be compared, but that in itself gives it a certain beauty, and makes it a very sad listen. Just 4-5 notes define the entire melody.

melody: B-A
counter melody: F#-E ... or ... F#-E-D ... or F#-E-A

Then they do a refrain D-A-D-B.

It's almost like Gregorian Chant in its simplicity. But that's what also gives it its sad, ethereal feel.

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Stop and find a pretty shell for her
Beach Boys vs Beatles comparisons begin here

William_the_Bloody

I think there has been a turn around in pop music in the last 5 years, largely because the R&B that had ruled the roost since the 90's has run its course.

Nothing against R&B per say, but it was all music based on sampling beats from Britney Spears to Lil Wayne, to $hit artists singing Toto's Africa over a sampled hip hop beats.

In short people got tired of the bull$hit, you can only market music to 14 year olds for so long, so real musichans are returning to the forefront. ie









So lets cross are fingers and hope that this bull**** finally fades away.



Because the original is so much better than what these R&B jackasses put out.

Neapolitan

The Rock bands that immediately follow the Beatles weren't exactly Pop groups. It seems the music industry ignore these underground Rock bands, but maybe that only pertains to the Top 40 format. The industry made plenty of money on a lot of non Top 40 bands through selling albums and also with concert revenues as well. They were bands still part of the recording industry but were not bands on the Pop charts. As far as musicianship they were better than the Beatles. The Beatles were good for what they did, but they were not better than musicians found in most hard Rock and Prog Rock. The Beatles of course had more hits, but that doesn't mean they were better underground bands that didn't have any Top 40 hits.

The Beatles went from a unknown scruffy pub band to a Pop band for screaming girls back to experimental and underground music. There is two sides to their music. The Pop songs and the rest of their catalogue. Besides being on the charts, The Beatles seemed to be on the vanguard of underground. But most of Rock went that way underground during the late 60s. I'm not saying the Beatles lead the way or split music into Pop and underground. There has always been a divide between very popular music which was tracked on the Pop charts and an underground of less familiar music to the public as a whole, which was the case even in the Jazz era. And when speaking of underground Rock music of the late '60s, '70s Jazz had a far reaching influence. The Beatles really didn't delve into Blues or Jazz like hard Rock & Prog bands did. Rock music didn't get worse after the Beatles, to many it improved and got more sophisticated with things the Beatles didn't bother with or couldn't.

Sometimes I go back and forth whether the bands that were in the Pop charts after the Beatles were for the most part industry's choice and were not always as good as the Beatles. I do & don't agree depending on the band/artist and what type of music etc.

It seems as an apple or orange comparison when talking about The Beatles that a fan knows everything about versus a bunch of groups that a (Beatles) fan knows very little about them. Is the Beatle fan comparing #1 hits or non-singles of The Beatles to a song on the Top 40 chart? How can one say The Beatles are better than so-and-so when all they heard is that one hit?

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