The Official "Music Was So Much Better in the Glorious Days of Yore" Thread

[Nine Black Poppies]

Originally Posted by duga

Everyone seems to be talking about what is popular.

This is definitely an important distinction that doesn't seem to be being made much.

I mean, look at, say the Billboard charts for any given year and you'll find a hell of a lot of fluff--"Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies (1969), "Tonight's the Night" by Rod Stewart (1977), "To Sir With Love" by Lulu (1967) were all the #1 songs for their respective years--all music I'd wager that contemporary people complained about the same way we're all bitching now. And a large quantity of music considered the creme of the crop of their era was essentially unnoticed by popular consciousness at the time.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, the past dozen or so years have radically shifted the way music is released and absorbed, as well. There's SO MUCH out there now, so much easy access to such a mind-bending array of different musical ideas, that any generalization about the state of modern music, especially to bemoan it for a lack of... well, frankly, anything... just seems like laziness. And not just laziness, but laziness attempting to justify itself with a comfortable elitism.

I wouldn't get on such a high horse about that, except that that kind of negativity in an artistic community makes it that much harder for that community to thrive. If one assumes that good music (however one defines that) isn't being produced, it's that much more unlikely one will find it when it is, that music doesn't get supported and ultimately either flounders, continues to live in obscurity or changes into something else, leading to more people bitching about it not being out there.

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