The Last New (popular) Music

[BrunoBass]

12 hours ago, Maude said:

Where's the young 'tribes' wanting to take on the world and shout angrily about it? 

Idles 

Slowthai

Fontaines DC

Grime / UK hip hop generally

many more...

[Dad3353]

12 hours ago, Crawford13 said:

The maroon 5 track wouldn’t have been out of place in the 1600’s...

What's so special about four o'clock..? 

...

 

[mikel]

11 minutes ago, BrunoBass said:

Music hasn’t stagnated, it’s evolved in the way it’s made and the way it’s consumed. The singles chart is not wholly indicative or representative of music taste or popularity anymore. For example the new Stereophonics single didn’t even make the Top 200, yet the album went to number one and they sold out their arena tour. 
 

Does that not simply mean that Albums and singles are two different beasts?  The Stones still sell out arena tours and have not produced a single for a long time.

[casapete]

4 minutes ago, mikel said:

Does that not simply mean that Albums and singles are two different beasts?  The Stones still sell out arena tours and have not produced a single for a long time.

Agreed. For a long time now, the whole 'singles chart' thing has been a completely different world from what it was originally. Most mainstream acts usually had single releases, even those considered primarily album bands (OK, Zep and Floyd may have been some of the exceptions! ). The thinking was that singles led to album sales and also increased awareness of those acts. This was in a time (60's /70's) when pop music was still relatively young. Nowadays many singles enter the charts quickly (without mega sales required) and also leave at the same rate. Those bands that are still liked by the older music fans rely on album sales and touring to earn their keep. Singles are no longer needed to acquire new fans, as they have a massive following from over their long history that faithfully still buy their stuff and keep them going (I should know, I'm one of them!) Even bands like The Stereophonics are now approaching 30 years old so hit singles aren't a priority for them, apart from getting some Radio 2 airplay maybe in order to plug the new album or tour.

 

[MacDaddy]

1 hour ago, BrunoBass said:

. Stormzy and Post Malone have both figured strongly this year with music that could only exist in the present day.

Could you post some examples? Ta.

[BigRedX]

3 hours ago, BrunoBass said:

Idles 

Slowthai

Fontaines DC

Grime / UK hip hop generally

many more...

Sorry to burst your bubble but from a musical PoV none of the bands you have specifically mentioned would have been out of place on John Peel's show in the early 80s. And Slowthai/Grime/UK Hip Hop is just Rap with a UK rather than an American accent.

I'm not hearing anything radically new.

[BrunoBass]

10 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Sorry to burst your bubble but from a musical PoV none of the bands you have specifically mentioned would have been out of place on John Peel's show in the early 80s. And Slowthai/Grime/UK Hip Hop is just Rap with a UK rather than an American accent.

I'm not hearing anything radically new.

You’ve completely missed the point of the post. Me listing those bands was in response to @Maude asking where the angry bands were. I didn’t say they were doing anything radically new.

To dismiss UK hip hop as just rap with an American accent is a glib and lazy generalisation. 

 

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

hit parade? ...more like 5hit parade!

[cheddatom]

What about Billie Eilish with Bad Guy? It sounds very original to me and would have sounded out of place in the 90s, and it was a HUGE single

 

[MacDaddy]

13 minutes ago, cheddatom said:

What about Billie Eilish with Bad Guy? It sounds very original to me and would have sounded out of place in the 90s, and it was a HUGE single

 

to me that sounds as if it would be perfectly 'in place' with the early to mid 80's synth bands.

Sex Dwarf - Soft Cell, was the first thing that came to mind.

[cheddatom]

Just now, MacDaddy said:

to me that sounds as if it would be perfectly 'in place' with the early to mid 80's synth bands.

Sex Dwarf - Soft Cell, was the first thing that came to mind.

I'd never heard that track so I just put it on. It's a standard 4 chord pop tune with dated synth sounds, same constant 4/4 beat all the way through. 

Bad Guy is extremely minimal. Generic bassline I'd agree but the majority of the sound is made from a quietly sung vocal which some very cool harmonies. The whole sound is very original IMO, almost as original as Bjork on her album Medulla - except this is full of "hooks" meaning it has mass appeal. On top of that, there are big breaks in the beat which is very unusual in pop music. Then the outro is very different, bares almost no relation to the rest of the track and yet fits. Obviously it's all subjective but IMO is a production masterpiece and very original in those terms

[BigRedX]

8 minutes ago, cheddatom said:

I'd never heard that track so I just put it on. It's a standard 4 chord pop tune with dated synth sounds, same constant 4/4 beat all the way through. 

Bad Guy is extremely minimal. Generic bassline I'd agree but the majority of the sound is made from a quietly sung vocal which some very cool harmonies. The whole sound is very original IMO, almost as original as Bjork on her album Medulla - except this is full of "hooks" meaning it has mass appeal. On top of that, there are big breaks in the beat which is very unusual in pop music. Then the outro is very different, bares almost no relation to the rest of the track and yet fits. Obviously it's all subjective but IMO is a production masterpiece and very original in those terms

There were loads of bands in the early 80s doing this kind of minimal music with more conventional instruments mainly because they couldn't afford to buy synths. Musically it's very post-punk, and it reminded me quite a bit of Delta 5, but with a more "modern" production. 

[cheddatom]

It seems to me, when the music stops for 2 bars and she says "Duh", that is very unusual for popular music. I can't think of another example like that.

[Maude]

7 hours ago, BrunoBass said:

Idles 

Slowthai

Fontaines DC

Grime / UK hip hop generally

many more...

I meant more of a movement when I wrote 'tribes' rather than individual bands. 

[bassace]

I still can’t get my head round some z list singing person credited with ten-fifteen top ten hits. Who are these people? What are these songs? It’s all a cynical racket.

[Misdee]

Totally agree that mainstream pop music has been going nowhere for a very long time. The exception would be rap-/hip-hop/grime etc. 

 And yes, Oasis sounded nothing like the Beatles, more like Slade for the TFI Friday generation. They just thought that if they mentioned themselves in  association with the Beatles repeatedly they would somehow appoint themselves as inheritors of the Beatles genius. The major difference being that Oasis were of very limited ability and even more limited intelligence. Testament to just how unaware they are of their shortcomings is just how enamoured the  Gallaghers nowadays  are of their own importance, offering their wisdom on a whole host of subjects. Brett Anderson once  famously described Oasis as electricians with guitars, but I would take exception to that. No way could any of them learn a trade. 

[skankdelvar]

9 hours ago, cheddatom said:

It seems to me, when the music stops for 2 bars and she says "Duh", that is very unusual for popular music. I can't think of another example like that.

The golden age of pause / interjection was the 1950's, perhaps the best-known example being the spoken interludes in Mr Eddie Cochran's Summertime Blues.

My favourite, however, is Mr Peanuts Wilson's Cast Iron Arm a song of 2'26" duration which pre-dates Summertime Blues by four months. The space at the end of a verse where a turnaround would go is occupied by a voice which says, first, 'Siddown, boy' then, later at 1:37 'So I hit him in the head'. The song concludes with the voice saying 'That'll teach you to mess with me, boy' followed by a cymbal crash.

Frankly, I'd like to see Ms Eilish pull off something like this without introducing the currently ubiquitous ennui which would undoubtedly be fatal to the enterprise.

 

[cheddatom]

7 hours ago, skankdelvar said:

The golden age of pause / interjection was the 1950's, perhaps the best-known example being the spoken interludes in Mr Eddie Cochran's Summertime Blues.

My favourite, however, is Mr Peanuts Wilson's Cast Iron Arm a song of 2'26" duration which pre-dates Summertime Blues by four months. The space at the end of a verse where a turnaround would go is occupied by a voice which says, first, 'Siddown, boy' then, later at 1:37 'So I hit him in the head'. The song concludes with the voice saying 'That'll teach you to mess with me, boy' followed by a cymbal crash.

Frankly, I'd like to see Ms Eilish pull off something like this without introducing the currently ubiquitous ennui which would undoubtedly be fatal to the enterprise.

 

very nice! Terrible production compared to Billie Eilish though

[skankdelvar]

10 hours ago, cheddatom said:

very nice! Terrible production compared to Billie Eilish though

 It's a great choon, isn't it, which I think it's held up pretty well in terms of fidelity considering it was recorded through this desk  ↓ then through a single-channel valve compressor to 1/4 inch mono tape, mastered with an in-house disc cutter and eventually to a cheap 45rpm single.

FWIW, Norman Petty spent $100,000 in 1954 building and equipping his studio. Which would be just short of a million dollars in 2019. 

Today we can record in pristine digital then chuck the output through a free VST plug-in to make it sound (a bit) like Norm's studio recordings. It's a funny old world.

Edited December 20, 2019 by skankdelvar