Stay Inside The Box
 

I didn't want to crap all over IvanMC's thread with my creativity rant. So I made this thread.

People especially music fans don't really like creativity when it comes to their favorite artists.

As soon as their favorite artists experiment and try something new. They are immediately shunned for it.

What are your thoughts do you think that people actually don't like creativity and that creativity is often rejected?

I think it comes down to the fact that many people are set in their ways in terms of music taste. They don't like change and they want their favourite bands and singers to have a consistent sound. People need to understand, or maybe just accept, that artists want to branch out in hopes of gaining a wider audience or just simply exploring the limits of what they can do. Things need to evolve, and musicians want to refrain from becoming boring or repetitive.

Like The Beatles for example. In 7 years, their artistic output changed quite drastically. They went from generic Top 40 songs about love and girls and all that, to a more progressive psychedelic sound after 1965 - i.e. Sgt. Pepper's in 1967, maybe even as early as Rubber Soul in 1965 with the sitar parts on "Norwegian Wood". The audience for that music shifted a bit, I think, and a lot of their original audience (young teen girls, of course) weren't interested in the new direction they were taking. The members were also becoming more distant from each other from that point on, and a lot of the songs were actually more individual efforts rather than the Lennon/McCartney output from the early days that their target audience was used to.

I think that it's almost a vicious cycle. A band might change their sound or experiment more, then record sales will go down because people aren't interested in the new approach, so the band will go back to what they were always doing before, and then people will wonder what happened to the newer sound.

Audiences need to keep an open mind, but at the same time bands have to be willing to take a leap of faith when they want to explore a new sound.

It's a sad but true fact of Music Life. I say we all (or at least most of us) were there at one time or another, but it's the end of that point when you discover of you really were listening to the music or wanting to be in that group of people with a soundtrack that has the potential to go on and on and on forever with very little change or experimentation. The saddest thing is that if a band is iconic in a certain style, especially if they released album after album of the same thing and still getting goals, it usually sounds changed enough for the fans to cry out FAIL and wish for the "better" (ie Early Days) to reappear with a carbon copy of what made them known, although of course it sometimes works when an artists forms something new.

Fans are like packs. When a band starts to do something that's considered not in that pack's law book, to that group of listeners it's a crime that should be punished with no sales and a bunch of whining - back in the pre-internet days, it would be like a secret meeting huddled around a table debating of what they were guilty of. To those of my age, maybe some memories of hanging out at a party declaring so and so a traitor to the cause like some society of hardcore fans of a music will be brought out once again.

That fear of "The Change" for better or worse is in the inner CEO of a number of music fans. A lot of people seem to develop that trait of the very people we criticize.


ADDING ON - Just thought about the rare exceptions to the rule...thinking of packs. This will be a bit cynical, but read on. Keep in mind I'm not dissing on the music...

Sometimes those who do make it with the radical changes fall into the category of having a strong attraction. Especially when it's a Pop Band with a sizable following that still has those drawn into the image...As for The Beatles and their fans accepting a lot of their great White Album madness, as for Blur and Blur and 13...you know what I mean. Or how about Radiohead and College Rock face Thom Yorke? And Varg Vikerens has had his female following after turning from Black Metal to Ambient. How about The Clash getting away with that great 3 album set Sandinista! and the Hip Hop Punk "This Is Radio Clash" single as they were still in sharp style with their music, Siouxsie's Gothic Magical Mystery Tours of The 80's with a touch of exotic percussion that were very 180 degrees from the Punk beginnings or John Lydon moving into PiL with a good amount of success?

No dissing on the music, but once again, the pack is the rule. In Music, the attraction sells, but sometimes is either grows up with it's audience with that attraction still there or moves onto a new one if the change is radical enough to grab a new set of followers.

Yeah, we can go on about the true greatness of the White Album, 13, OK Computer, and so on, but their success measures up to having an attraction that can be the exception to the rule even if the great music is still the final thing that we judge them on.

Just throwing another side to this topic.

I never have a problem with "experimentation", the problem usually comes when a band is already somewhat experimental, but then dulls their sound down to something that really isn't anything special or unique.

I use Metallica as an example of this because they were already recording music at such a high level, but then they started making rock albums and passed it off as blues metal. I've heard bands make albums like that, it isn't mind-blowing like a Master of Puppets or even an AJFA, it was like they were trying to re-hash the work of Bad Company with a little bit of their own influence and a little bit of Hetfield trying to sing melodically.

It was just... Rock.

The way I see it, they became less experimental at that point rather than expanding on what they had been doing on the two albums previous. Hey, more power to them though. They scored the big money after that, and are now considered one of the biggest rock acts in the industry.

Precisely, it has to do with interpretation... for example, I think "The Unforgiven II" was nothing but decadence masquerading as experimentation. However, some might have considered this actual experimentation. Many Megadeth fans were let down by Youthanasia. Well, in that case, I thought it was trying something new, and I found that album amazing. I think "Return to Hangar" (by Megadeth again) was nothing but decadence masquerading as experimentation again.