Is today's music horrible and if so why?

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It seems to be a general conclusion by most people that today's music sucks. Do you think music really is worse today, or are people just really hipster and nostalgic today? And why?

Er, no. On what information are you basing your statement that most people think today's music is bad?

the most popular music yes. but that may have always been the case. and infact i think it may have. Think of any of the great artists of music of the past, there are a few for every generation. There must have been other 'artists' that sucked, some people, or a lot of people listened to them at the time, but they did not stand the test of time and were forgotten.

Some of the great artist working today : Dave Matthews Band, Avenged Sevenfold, Nine Inch Nails, Cage the Elephant, Tool . . . . others that dont readily come to mind. i'll have to go look through my cds. i know those are stylistically very different, but they take similar approaches toward the quality of art they create. in my book (which if you missed the memo, is the only book that matters)

Most of today's mainstream music is bad because they don't cover a wide range of subjects that are interesting or contemplative, are nonsensical, have limited lyrical style, and are only controversial in unoriginal disgusting ways.

Today's music does NOT suck. But that doesn't mean there hasn't been LONG stretches of years when music DID suck...like, well, pretty much everything between 1992 and 2000.

When I was a kid, I used to love listening to the radio--I mean, it was GREAT. Then, well, things started to change. My favorite radio station changed to oldies format. Like, I went on vacation, came back, and the only station that played great music was GONE. Finito. I gave it a chance...got hooked on Beach Boys, the Turtles, Beatles, Stones, etc. And that was when I discovered you couldn't really find a station that played good rock music--it was all crap synth pop. I mean, if they'd just played Depeche Mode every now and again, but no. Within a year every rock/pop station was playing Nirvana and everyone I knew started wearing flannel. Um, I live in Mississippi, not Washington state--wtf??? What happened to all the cool LA bands?

So I gave up and started listening to nothing but oldies. And when I got tired of that, I started listening to public radio, classical music, and got my space music and new age music fixes on Sunday nights. That became the highlight of my week.

Meanwhile, I took up clarinet, learned romantic period standards, attended band camp religiously every summer, and started writing instrumental music in the styles I enjoyed most. I learned music theory, started improvising, etc., etc., and I gradually just stopped listening to the radio at all--mainly because I was so preoccupied with my own music I just didn't have time for anything else anymore.

I began getting a little relief later on in college when you had cool bands like Creed, Linkin Park, and eventually Nickelback. And then all the old guys started coming back and releasing new albums--like Bon Jovi and Metallica. Now you have people like Natasha Bedingfield, Adele, Amy Winehouse (RIP), and so on who are genuinely talented and not too terribly cynical. The "My So-Called Life"/"Daria" era is definitely OVER (loved the show, hated the pervasive cultural attitude prevalent during that period of time) and "Beavis and Butthead" are finally back.

I mean, you got things in music today we'd never have dreamed of back in the 80s simply because the technology didn't exist yet. Like Deadmau5. Even Kraftwerk got cooler with their live shows, and that had a lot to do with the ability to dump all the heavy equipment in favor of laptops and MIDI controllers. It's a GREAT time to make and hear music, and any dummy with a laptop can make any kind of music he or she wants.

IF today's music is horrible, that's exactly why: the new dominance of the laptop musician has made music-making cheap and easy--hence the sound is also cheap and easy. As a musician myself (who has put in the hours to earn a master's degree in music, I might add), I have to tell you the best thing I've done to make my "sound" high quality is invest in musical instruments that delivered the sound of the 80s: Synclavier (the BIG one), Yamaha FM synths, Akai S2000 sampler, Roland alpha Juno, and Oberheim Matrix 1000. Aside from the Synclavier, everything I have is pretty cheap, but that SOUND was what defined a whole decade. When music was still awesome. And you'll still hear that vintage sound in today's productions. Let's face it: The latest synths coming out of Japan are not anything really new since the late 80s/early 90s (they're all basically jacked-up versions of the Korg M1), and the best-sounding, most in-demand guitar tones are still coming from tube circuitry instead of 80s solid-state. The best mics are still Neumanns. The favored synth sound is retro analog or analog-modelling. As long as a musician or band has the money to invest and invests wisely in both their equipment and ability, the music will be great. A 13-year old hack with daddy's MacBook and GarageBand might make a few interesting sounds, but at the end of the day it just sounds like a little kid playing on the computer.

But overall I think commercially available music is improving. The 90s were just a bad time, but I'd say around 2003 or 2004 things have been getting much better and I hope they will continue to do so.

Well, I do like some music coming out today. However, it's usually not on American Top40 stations. I think for the most part, Europe's been doing much better with music being consistent compared to America. I'm more talking pop music, I quite like various forms of pop music, just usually not American Top 40 pop (though I do like a few Lady Gaga songs...)

I think it comes down to 2 things. First off, pop music in general has gotten more raunchy and explicit over the years, and the sexual references which used to be vaguely coded innuendos, usually to fairly vanilla sex practices, now have gone to almost uncoded innuendos, and then the sexual practices described are less vanilla. One example of this is Rihanna's "S&M" talking about, well, the song title.

The other issue too with American pop music, we never really had a good clear identity for American pop music. It's always in a constant identity crisis, and we don't know what elements of other music types, like rock, rap, etc, to incorporate into our pop music. Arguably, we have very little actual "pop" around now, ie, Taylor Swift is a country singer, whose songs had enough pop appeal to make her popular. Europe and Asia, and pretty much the rest of the world (though I've never gone past Canada and being in the Bahamas for like 6 hours) pretty much figured out a "pop" formula and stuck to it. I think America purposely is averse to having actual pop music. They want it sorta flavored by other genres.

My idea about this comes from the two times like, the most "poppy" genres were introduced into America, disco and eurodance. Both those times, people initially liked the music, then it got associated with homosexuality and sorta shunned, with disco in particular having a big backlash and public burning of disco records. However, into the 80s, disco evolved in Europe, and they loved it there and made it really wonderful. But really, "pop" genres really have to be mixed with something else to make it "cool." IE, people listen to LMFAO, but these same people generally wouldn't listen to normal house music about love and dancing and whatever. But add rap's misogyny and talking about drinking and stuff, and people love it. People basically won't take their pop music "straight" here, so thus pop music always has an identity crisis.

To sorta prove my point, let me use the example of Justin Timberlake's "My Love." The Paul Oakenfold one has a different beat, but the lyrics are pretty much all Justin Timberlake's lyrics kept in tact, but the radio one heard most had some rapper talking about having sex over the thing ruining it. But the club mix is quite a nice song, imo. Basically, people are now scared of hearing of romantic love in songs, as it'll make them "gay" of course, and to hide their insecurity about hearing about romance in music, the music has some rapper more or less talking about the woman in objective sexual terms. Or guys have such hardened consciences they hate the concept of romantic love being predominant in a song.
Justin Timberlake - My Love (Paul Oakenfold Remix)
Justin Timberlake - My Love (regular stupid version) Just hear the difference for yourself, besides the techno beat, the Oakenfold remixed "My Love" sounds like more or less an "old" love song lyricwise, but the other one just sounds like...crap, because the rapper ruining it.

Anyway, that's my sorta theory, at least regarding pop music, and it's all encompassing, as in America, pop music is all encompassing so it sorta just "takes over" genres, and what's left is more or less too obscure to be affected by big trends.

Today's music - as currently presented as popular by the media - was not around during the time when I was of an age to be emotionally affected by repetitive lyrics, sampled accompaniment, and generally derivative concepts...

... therefore, today's music is horrible.

No idea. I've barely bought music since about 2003. Wouldn't know where to start looking for the stuff I'd like.

I don't think today's music sucks. A lot of it is well played by talented musicians. I'm just not into it. It doesn't do anything for me.

I tend to think of music as a nonverbal conversation conducted aurally: through rhythm, melody and/or tone.

Therefore, I tend to like music made by groups where everyone writes their own parts based on what they personally are into. A lot of the times, this ends up making a weird band that spawns a new kind of music because they blend disparate influences into a semblance of a whole. (let's say ... Sonic Youth, for example, or Pere Ubu)

When people start a band because they're really into a particular style ("we want to do something super metal, like Slayer!" or "let's do a new orleans folk jazz band!"), it's kind of just like listening to people quote a movie. Not very interesting. Kind of annoying, really. When good bands start making new albums that are just like their old ones, it's like they're having the same conversation over and over. Hence the common phenomena: "their first album was the best."

And it's getting harder to come up with anything new now, since so many combinations have been tried out already, so many "conversations" have been had already. Compound that with a big corporate music industry that is only interested in cranking out slight variations of already proven "styles" of music that are likely to make money. It's not just generic music, it's genreic.

The new music that I like is weird. REAL WEIRD. Cause all the comprehensible stuff's been done already.

Well, as a working musician, I have to admit I go where the money is. At the moment my best steady gig is working for a church--so I make a point of listening to a lot of CCM when I'm not busy working on my own projects. The sad part is back in the 90s people like Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Stephen Curtis Chapman, Newsboys, Audio Adrenaline, and the beginnings of Hillsong were about all that was worth listening to. Back then CCM was hanging onto the coattails of then-current commercial music--now I feel like the change is such that CCM is actually MORE progressive than what you hear with "secular" music.

When I finally gave up my dreams of growing my hair long, donning massive doses of hairspray, leather pants and spandex, I pretty much committed myself to classical and New Age music. College opened me up to the avant garde and I've come to realize that commercial music is the folk music of the laptop age. So given what I do musically, whether I'm making ambient/space music or if I'm writing for handbells, I'm stuck between 80s metal/pop and German high modernism of pre-WWII. I foresee that much of what we call new "classical" music is headed that direction.

I'm musically stuck in the 70s. Coincidentally, this is the time I was an emotionally impressionable teenager. While I realize that some contemporary music is well-crafted, it has little (if any) emotional effect on me - I just don't feel any "connection" with today's popular music.

I don't know what the heck "Today's Music" is. The 90s were the last iconic decade in music as far as I can tell. Most popular stuff beyond 2000 is derivative of past genres for the most part. There's nothing new under the sun anymore, unless you look really hard, and then you're considered a hipster.

I thought we all agreed that everything I don't like sucks.

EVERYTHING HAS ALWAYS BEEN HORRIBLE
THE CRAPPY MAINSTREAM MUSIC OF TODAY
WILL IN THE FUTURE HAVE THE SAME KITSCH VALUE
THAT THE CRAPPY MUSIC OF THE PAST NOW HAS

Music in the new millennium has svcked big time. Just generic pop, regardless of genre. If I want to hear something "new" and good, I'll listen to the local jazz station.

Think of the 60s...you had Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Dylan, The Who, Cream, The Doors, Black Sabbath, Beach Boys et al.

70s...Stevie Wonder, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Eagles, Queen, Skynard, Deep Purple, Pink Floyd, Stones again, Clapton, Van Halen, Boston, Foreigner, Steely Dan, Doobie Brothers, et al

80s...Van Halen again, Tears For Fears, Aerosmith's resurrection, Metallica before they become tools, Madonna at her peak, Ozzy Osbourne at his peak, Queensryche, Bonnie Raitt, Def Leppard, Dio, Don Henley, Billy Joel, Elton John, U2, and so much more.

90s...Nirvana, STP, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, Toad The Wet Sprocket, Candlebox, Dream Theater, Live, Mariah Carey when she wasn't skanky and was still singing beautiful songs, Matchbox 20, Foo Fighters before they went corporate, Dave Matthews, Natalie Merchant.

What can you say about the 00s? Lady Gaga, Maroon 5, Taking Back Sunday, Nickelback, Justin Bieber, Kate Perry, Evanascence, Arvil Lavagne, Miley Cryus? Shall I go on?

For the aughts, good bands I like are: Erase Erratta, Lightning Bolt, Warhammer 48k, Liars, Need New Body, Noxagt, Neptune, Polka Madre, Goran Bregovic, Health, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Fintroll ... need I say more? Wall to wall weird stuff.

My taste in the 60s leans towards outlaw honky tonk, french yeye, motown and garage. I don't see any contradictions here, it all follows the pattern of people making honest music that's not a carbon copy ripoff. For every decent band that toured a lot, there are 300 bands imitating them, making you think the whole genre stinks.