Yeah he seems to have disappeared. Just in time for him to avoid listening to the songs I asked him to listen to. ;)

EDIT: No I meant this guy:
http://www.musicbanter.com/search.php?searchid=4039706

Hasn't been here since February. Said he was going to be back in Sweden after Valentine's Day. Maybe his return just got delayed?

The amount of blind nostalgia in some of these posts is just nauseating.

No you did not grow up during the best era of popular music, please don't inflict your generation on the rest of us who didn't, it just makes you seem sad and out of touch.
And please stop ignoring all the awful music that surrounded all these 'classics' you love.

You know who sold the most singles in the UK in 1967?
The Beatles , Nope
The Stones, Nope
The Kinks, The Who, Hendrix, Cream, The Doors ..... not even close.

It was Engelbert Humperdinck

I rest my case.

It's long past due to stop complaining and comparing decades of Pop that are worlds apart. A long time back in The 80's as a listener to American Top 40 as a kid I though that The 60's was this great wonderland of music until I heard several songs that went to #1 in a special song spotlight segment. Right there and then, before all of my research, I found out the hard way that there is crap no matter what era you look in, and it was not just the fabled time when Rock and Roll was not in fashion from 59 to 63. Continued proof was given to me as a listener to listening to the legendary Detroit area 1960's-1972 WKNR Top 40 charts on an Oldies station played on Sunday mornings that had 1 good song for every 3-4 pieces of garbage, with the bad song ratio growing by 1970. That's education!

The default guilty pleasure of Pop's Past for modern listeners was that there was more instrumentation as compared to the Hyper Corporate Digital/Synth/Pro Tools stuff going on now, but I'm sure people who wished to be back in time and lived in their chosen year would possibly be sick of the crap of that particular era after being exposed to it quick, especially if they're the Alternative type and saw who liked the music then.

Release me is a great song

Sincerely, Angela Lansbury

Hasn't posted since February 5th, but according to his page, he was online on March 9th.

Ah, I see.

Well then I hope he was quietly checking out the songs I recommended!

:laughing:

Too true. I think people get too wrapped up in their nostalgia. There has been horrible pop music in every.single.decade.

I certainly have been. Enjoying Lonerism very much!

Glad to hear that. So far I've converted Taxman into a Tame Impala fan. You're my next victim. :bringit:

I have seen the light! Am going to purchase Innerspeaker soon.

Two victims now. :cool: I should start collecting commission from Kevin Parker. :cool:

Now I've got to work on Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear with you two, though those might be a harder sell.

To me it just seems that nothing is what it once was. No matter what genre of music you are into. Pop, hip hop, heavy metal, rap. None of it is the same as it once was:(

That's a good thing! Music would get boring if it didn't keep evolving.

I don't think it'll be too hard. Got a specific song/album recommendation?

I've already got several AnCo and Grizzly Bear songs linked in pages ~10-13. Go through those, but here's some more highlights.

I've already shown you the AnCo song "Guy's Eyes." That's a good start.

Be sure to view this in full screen mode. :D



Same song, different video. Again, try it on full-screen mode. Trippy stuff, especially if you've got a large monitor! :D Helps to appreciate the song I think.



Some of their earlier stuff featured a lot of acoustic pieces. Kinda weird, but in an amusing and interesting way. If you don't like weird stuff, this probably isn't for you. But very creative I think!



Onto Grizzly Bear, this was the first song that caught my attention. Even my 70-something y.o. mother thought this was an interesting song.



I find this song to be exceptionally well-written. Great transitions between the soft and loud parts.



There's an Animal Collective thread in the "Avant Garde & Experimental" section and a while ago I started a Grizzly Bear thread in the "Indie & Alternative" section. Lots more stuff there.

Here's another one I like. Weird words but really great tune.

Thanks, DriveYourCarDownToTheSea (do you mind if I just call you Drive? - it makes typing easier). I enjoyed all of those and will definitely explore both bands further.

I first heard SMiLE (various versions) when I was four years old, so the weirdness doesn't really bother me. I'm used to it.

Yes you can just call me Drive. By now I think most people already do.

In further explorations, you might want to listen to all of Merriweather Post Pavillion. It is the Pet Sounds of the 21st Century IMO.

That is enough to make me listen any album. Will check it out.

OK: Sorry for my long absence. I did come back to Sweden on February 14. But due to the fact that I am away from home 14 hours per day from Monday to Thursday due to work, combined with the fact that I have many things competing for my spare time, I have had too little spare time available to be able to make any new posts here. I will rectify that now. I will give you all my take on the songs posted on pages 12 and 13 of this thread.

1) Grizzly Bear - Dory: This song does not impress me because the melody is not the type which excites me and "sticks" in my mind.

2) Tame Impala - Feels Like We Only Go Backwards: Pretty good! Definitely has a clear and distinct melody. I will probably purchase this song from iTunes, if it is available there.

3) Animal Collective - Rosie Oh: Not good. I perceive this song as "noise".

4) Tame Impala - Island Walking: This is OK. But the melody is not to my taste all that much.

5) Tame Impala - Mind Mischief: Too slow and somewhat dissonant. Not my cup of tea.

6) Animal Collective - Guys Eyes: I don´t like the element of dissonance in this song.

7) Jack Johnson - Better Together/Good People: Not my cup of tea. I am not fond of acoustic music unless it is exceptional.

8) Fleet Foxes - Tiger Mountain Peasant Song: Good melody, but the song is not lively enough to tickle my fancy.

9) Of Monsters and Men - Little Talks: Pretty good melody, nice and lively. However - it is not in the same league as The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones and the other stars of the 1960s.

10) Gotye - Somebody That I Used to Know: Rather boring.

11) Shiny Toy Guns - Le Disko: Not my cup of tea - the song does not "flow smoothly".

12) Bastille - Laura Palmer: Generic, non-interesting melody.

13) Fleet Foxes - The Plains/Bitter Dancer: I cannot really explain why, but this melody is not my cup of tea. I don´t like it.

Conclusion: Out of 14 songs (there were two by Jack Johnson) I only like one of them enough to go out and purchase it. And I would not say that said song, by Tame Impala, is in the same league as the songs of the great pop bands of the 1960s.

The most recent two pop music groups/artists which I really like a lot are Madonna and The Pet Shop Boys (Yes, I like many of Madonna´s early songs for their melodies!). These two groups/artists broke through during the 1980s. No one more recent really excites me. I do like a few songs each by Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Scissor Sisters, No Doubt, Right Said Fred and Oasis.

Good to see you back. At least you liked one.

Animal Collective does add a lot of ambient/background noise to their music. Sometimes they do overdo it a bit, but even in those cases I tend to ignore it. For Guy's Eyes, it didn't really have any "dissonance," but the part that might turn some people off is the countermelody which does not fit against the main melody in the same way most countermelodies do. It makes the song sound "busy." Personally I think that makes it more interesting and adds a level of sophistication most pop tunes don't have.

If you liked that one Tame Impala tune I suspect you'll like others. Might want to give some of their songs a few more listens. I'm surprised you didn't like Mind Mischief, since it's practically a Beatles ripoff, even moreso than any other Tame Impala song.

Anyway, from the looks of it I'd say you've got very specific tastes, which probably explains why you don't like a lot of recent stuff. I'd say your objection to recent music has nothing to do with the educational issues you mentioned before; rather, it has more to do the fact you only like a very small subset of things. If you don't even like acoustic, melodic stuff like Jack Johnson, I don't know what to say.

Need I say more?



I mean, ^that^ could be straight off Revolver.

Here's a little "trick" one can do to find out whether a song has a nice melody. Especially for a band like Animal Collective who adds a lot of background and electronic effects to their songs, a good idea is to try to find an unadorned version and see if the melody stands on its own. This is a great example here:

"In the Flowers" by Animal Collective. It actually has a quite beautiful melody - reminds me a lot of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, frankly. Here we have a completely unadorned version - just a vocalist singing against a piano.



Now add the modern arrangement and you get this. A lot more going on obviously, but beneath it, still the same beautiful melody. The trick is to find the beauty beneath the ornamentation. One must learn how to listen through the effects and focus on the core of the song. This is why I think songs like this are actually quite sophisticated: You cannot grasp the merits of the song on the first (or even second) listen, the songwriter is forcing you to listen to it carefully and mentally peel away some layers to find the song's inner beauty.



Then, once you've discovered the song's "inner beauty," the additional ornamentation makes more sense - it is adding atmosphere and complexity to a melody which is really fairly simple.

I think that's a great point. I think it's sort of similar to bands like Dinosaur jr. or Pavement who mask their solidly written or simply beautiful songs with feedback. The melodies might be really great or poignant, but they present in a kind of bashful way. It might not be quite the same, but a lot of noisy bands suffer a little for their choices in feedback or layered production

I do have very specific tastes. I like simple melodies more than complex ones. I find it easier to listen to "simple" music. This might have something to do with the fact that I am a recovered psychotic. I was afflicted with schizophrenia when I was in my late teens. Ever since then I have had great difficulty with the concentration thing. My attention tends to wander. And I am not good at multitasking. If a piece of music is complex then I would have to do something akin to multitasking in regard to the listening. I would have to "pick up" several different elements in the music at the same time. I find classical music to be boring - probably because it is complex.

Here are the eight musical artists/bands which I most like to listen to: Madonna, Pet Shop Boys, the Beatles, Blue Oyster Cult, the Queers, the Punkles, Blondie, the Rolling Stones.

What do those eight disparate groups/artists have in common? Songs with simple melodies is the common denominator which I see in them.

Another concrete example of my preference for simplicity in music is that I like to listen to many of the 1970s era songs by - get this _ Kiss! Kiss is just about the most simplistic rock group that ever walked the Earth! But those four rock and roll clowns did write some catchy melodies!

I see. Well then, Animal Collective definitely isn't going to be for you. I presume you're not really into jazz, either.

Along those lines, here's a Grizzly Bear song you might like. This sound very much like an 80's pop tune. It came out in 2009, on the same album as the "Dory" song I linked before.

Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks

I couldn't handle the second Animal Collective. I like music which would be consider unusual to other people, but something about it didn't grab me at first. I like to identify with something in a song. Is Animal Collective on the charts or popular? Honestly I don't think I could name any recent Pop songs.

Here's a little "trick" one can do to find out whether Pop is improving or not. A good idea is to try to find songs from different bands with identical title and see which one you like. Take "All Summer Long" for example, I think the Beach Boys and Hatcham Social is clearly better that the Kid Rock song so it seems like Pop was good then turns bad then turns good again I guess, I don't really know if Hatcham Social is a Pop band or not. But if it isn't a Pop band that only proves another theory that the less mainstream a song is the better.

July 13, 1964


April 5, 2008


October 22nd 2012

Somehow I don't think finding songs with the same name is a good way to compare them. Much too random.

Finding somewhat similar - and yet representative of their period - songs would be a better way.

Like this ...

Or this ...

Here might be another one ...

This one is almost too obvious, but ...





I should put these two in that thread about one song sounding suspiciously like another. :D

Don't think White Denim considers themselves a "Southern Rock" band, but they do have a bit of a "Southern" twang (and they're from Texas, to make it authentic!)

Last one.

Bonus attempt ...
 

I've been trying reeeally hard to find someone who can hold their own against Stevie Wonder. I found some artists in the so-called "neo soul" genre who at least sound like they would be capable of writing something as good as Wonder. I think the styles might be too different these days, maybe. But I am NOT remotely knowledgeable on this stuff, the following is my best find from a 15 minute internet search in a genre I know almost nothing about. It sounded pretty good, though I can't really say it competes against the Stevie Wonder tune.


^
That truly brings tears to my eyes. Of of my top 3 best-written songs ever.

If you like that Raheem Devaughn song you may like Maxwell. I feel like he's a slightly better match. Also John Legend is another good one in a similar vein.



idk I don't really like to compare artists from today with artists from the past even though they may pull influences they are creating their own music and not trying to be the new version of some older artist.

Edit: Might as well include a John Legend track.

I didn't like James Taylor at first, there was one song he did I found annoying Copperline, (I swore he was singing "a cup of lime.") He wrote that song with Reynolds Price. It took me a long while before I liked him. Jim Croce was more a favorite of mine as far as a singer/song-writer/guitar player goes. I also like Nick Drake, Gordon Lightfoot, and Joni Mitchell. Something about them seems more authentic and more original than some of the newer artists out now. An exception would be First Aid Kit, a duo who seems like they that have been transplanted from the 70s to now.

I don't like Jack Johnson. I won't listen to him or care for his music. I Got You by the Split Enz was much more of a better song so that goes to prove Pop music has gotten worse.

@djchameleon: Yeah I had checked out a few John Legend tunes too. My choice above was pretty arbitrary.

@Neapolitan: Funny you should mention Copperline, that's one of the few James Taylor songs I don't like. I'm more into his stuff from the album JT and earlier. Interesting to hear you don't like Jack Johnson, he's got such a nice, mellow voice.

I'm currently reading a book on technology, and one thing they were discussing was the migration of music from physical form to digital form. Anyway, I was surprised when they mentioned a study which said music had actually gotten better in recent years. Anyway, their footnotes had a link to the study they cited, so I was really curious and looked it up. It's definitely not how I would judge the quality of music (which is extremely subjective, needless to day), but I found it interesting nonetheless.

The full copy of the study is $5 to download. Didn't want to bother doing that, but they have a synopsis of it here, which is good-enough to get the gist of what they're saying:

Copyright Protection and the Quality of Recorded Music Since Napster
Kinda interesting, and it does seem to reflect my own tastes, even if it's not how I would judge the quality of music myself.

I don't know much about Pop, but I must say that the Pop of yesterday was more meaningful than the pop of today. That's just me. I respect different viewpoints; I just felt like cashing in an opinion...