Unpopular Music Opinions

grtwhtgrvty · 05-12-2015, 12:18 PM

Ugh fine.

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Originally Posted by ZRFTS

ncreasing control, profit over quality control, payola over the radio and them utilizing their licensing abilities to their fullest potential.

The music industry is the most DIY and least controlled it has ever been. People used to be slaves to the record label and studios. Now a large portion of artists are doing things entirely on their own. This is an ignorant statement.

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([I]Examples: Vevo has nothing but major artists and if you're really lucky you'd never get to see an indie artist, only a major one.

Yeah and back in the 70s and 80s, whatever the VEVO equivalent was pretty much the ONLY way to get your music out there to anyone. Now, more than ever, it is easy to be an independent artist. This statement you posted here is literally the opposite of the truth.

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Another Example: It's really difficult to get your song on a major radio station;

Who cares

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I also believe we have no generational music.

The new wave of experimental electronic music, experimental r&b, vaporwave, new synthpop, chamber pop, dance pop, the meshing of shoegaze and electronic sounds, post-dubstep, dance music, experimental pop, the new wave of hip hop (incorporating noise / industrial sounds), the new wave of dream pop, glitch music, indietronica, indie pop, basically a huge amount of sub genres revolving around electronic and pop music, to name a few of the top of my head. The fact that you are talking about VEVO and the radio indicates that you know nothing about the contemporary music industry.

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Alternative.

What

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We have new musical genres now but do they inspire us to question our society,

The Knife, Death Grips, Holly Herndon. Three artists off the top of my head who address politics, social normality, etc.

The Knife devoted an entire album of incredibly unique, progressive music in 2013 that was an entirely political piece of art addressing feminism, gender normality, heteronormativity, classism, racism, and the concept of privilege. It's Called Shaking the Habitual and that album refutes every point you've made on it's own.

Death Grips is incredibly political. They literally put their drummer's erect penis as an album cover.

From Wikipedia.

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In an interview with Spin Magazine, Burnett responded to the interest by saying, "If you look at that and all you see is a dick, I don't really have anything to say, pretty much. I looked at it and said, 'This is a great photo, and I'd love for this to be the album cover.'" Hill further explained, "It was difficult to do, honestly, in general, it was very difficult. It's difficult even telling people that's the source of it; it feels sacrificial in a sense. That idea existed long before, by the way. This is going to sound funny to other people, but we saw it as tribal, as spiritual, as primal. Also, it comes from a place of being a band that is perceived as...such an aggressive, male-based, by some, misogynistic-seeming band... It's a display of embracing homosexuality, not that either of us are homosexual. Am I making sense? People are still going to think that it's macho, but that's not the source of where it comes from."[25] In a separate interview with Pitchfork, Hill expounded, "It's also a spiritual thing; it's fearlessness...it represents pushing past everything that makes people slaves without even knowing it."[26]

Death Grips is in many ways a commentary on the hyper violent, misogynistic, homophobic, rape apologist culture of hip hop music, arguably the most progressive hip hop music ever made.

Holly Herndon addresses internet culture and the NSA in a lot of her music, and her music is also an amazing commentary on the segregation of the academic art world vs the hyper accessible one.

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Dubstep/EDM is terrible because no effort goes into it

Which DAW do you use?

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everything sounds mostly the same.

True dance music is very stagnant and derivative past it's initial conceptions. So was 60s psychedelic, 70s funk and r&b, punk is incredibly derivative, 80s synthpop definitely all sounds the same and they all have the same look, industrial music is hugely derivative, grunge literally caused rock music to freeze in it's aesthetic and it hasn't been the same ever since. Grunge literally killed rock music. That's why we have ****ty bands like Nickelback, 3 Doors Down, etc. I don't know what you mean by "alternative".

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Emo/Indie is also terrible because the people who are emoting have no real reason to be emoting or even making music. If you don't like the place you live in, move. If you having problems, face them head on.

This is stupid as ****. You don't know what they are going through. It's also incredibly brave to put your problems out there and to express them artistically. By making music about your issues and broadcasting it to the entire world, you are literally facing your problems in the most blatant, straightforward way possible. Brand New is amazing. It takes a ****load of courage to express artistically how weak, ugly, alone you feel, and making that music IS facing it way more than any other method.

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Only if you have some right or some prejudice (like something out of your control aka death);

What

**Frownland** · 05-20-2015, 08:49 AM

More often than not, vocally driven music is pretty boring.

Chula Vista · 05-20-2015, 11:31 AM

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Originally Posted by Frownland

More often than not, vocally driven music is pretty boring.

Define vocally driven please. I'm not sure what you mean.

A lot of avant garde music is weird just for the sake of being weird and really holds no true artistic merit. And those who argue otherwise are doing so just to try and come across as edgy, i.e; pretentious.

**Frownland** · 05-20-2015, 11:44 AM

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Originally Posted by Chula Vista

Define vocally driven please. I'm not sure what you mean.

When the entire song is based around what the singer is doing and instrumentally, the band is just there to count to four.

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A lot of avant garde music is weird just for the sake of being weird and really holds no true artistic merit. And those who argue otherwise are doing so just to try and come across as edgy, i.e; pretentious.

So would you prefer if they were weird on accident? And what defines artistic merit?

**Goofle** · 05-20-2015, 11:44 AM

Artistic merit is pretty low on the scale of what I look for in music.

Chula Vista · 05-20-2015, 11:55 AM

Artistic merit equals achieving a perceived level of harmonic quality - IMO.

And weird for the sake of weird is the same as punk bands who purposely wouldn't tune their instruments. Or garage rock bands that went for the worst lo-fi sound possible. What's the point?

Just yelling at clouds here.

YorkeDaddy · 05-20-2015, 11:56 AM

I will freely admit I've made quite a few tracks where my sole goal was to be weird for the sake of being weird

So Chula's not totally off base although it's definitely not a black-and-white situation, and making a song just to be weird doesn't necessarily mean it's not artistic

FRED HALE SR. · 05-20-2015, 11:56 AM

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Originally Posted by Goofle

Artistic merit is pretty low on the scale of what I look for in music.

Yeah we know. I was forced to listen to Led Zeppelin for a few minutes yesterday. Still hate Robert Plants voice. His face doesn't help.

**Frownland** · 05-20-2015, 11:57 AM

Unpopular opinion: it doesn't matter how technical, analog, composed, or artistic music is. What matters is if the music is good or not.

FRED HALE SR. · 05-20-2015, 12:00 PM

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Originally Posted by Frownland

Unpopular opinion: it doesn't matter how technical, analog, composed, or artistic music is. What matters is if the music is good or not.

Some would say that is a function of the composition. I agree with playing it and putting it in its rightful place, the garbage or the collection.

05-20-2015, 08:49 AM	#10492 (permalink)
Frownland SOPHIE FOREVER Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: East of the Southern North American West Posts: 35,548	More often than not, vocally driven music is pretty boring. __________________ Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth. d e a f b o x

05-20-2015, 11:55 AM	#10496 (permalink)
Chula Vista Toasted Poster Join Date: Oct 2014 Location: SoCal by way of Boston Posts: 11,332	Artistic merit equals achieving a perceived level of harmonic quality - IMO. And weird for the sake of weird is the same as punk bands who purposely wouldn't tune their instruments. Or garage rock bands that went for the worst lo-fi sound possible. What's the point? Just yelling at clouds here. __________________ “The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

05-20-2015, 11:57 AM	#10499 (permalink)
Frownland SOPHIE FOREVER Join Date: Aug 2011 Location: East of the Southern North American West Posts: 35,548	Unpopular opinion: it doesn't matter how technical, analog, composed, or artistic music is. What matters is if the music is good or not. __________________ Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth. d e a f b o x