I have never in my life liked the whole thing of saying “music was so much better XX years ago.” If you haven’t heard any good music in the past few years, in this year, you’re simply not trying.
Here’s a fucked up little thing making the rounds at the moment:
And it’s utter bullshit in so many ways. Of course whoever made that didn’t choose this section of Bohemian Rhapsody:
Bismilah! No, we will not let you go
(Let him go!) Bismilah! We will not let you go
(Let him go!) Bismilah! We will not let you go
(Let me go) Will not let you go
(Let me go)(Never) Never let you go
(Let me go) Never let you go (Let me go) Ah
No, no, no, no, no, no, no
Oh mama mia, mama mia, mama mia, let me go
and put it up against this section of Run the World (Girls):
I work my 9 to 5 betta cut my check
This goes out to all the women getting it in, you on your grind
To the other men that respect what I do
Please accept my shineBoy you know you love it
How we’re smart enough to make these millions
Strong enough to bare the children
Then get back to business
See, you better not play me
And besides, it’s not as if Beyonce is representative of all current music. Nor should anyone infer that Bohemian Rhapsody represented any sort of artistic pinnacle. Actually as far as I’m concerned, Bohemian Rhapsody sucks and Night at the Opera was when Queen went downhill.
You wanna hear some good music from 2012? Try a few of these:
- Alabama Shakes – Boys and Girls
- Alejandro Escovedo – Big Station
- The Blasters – Fun on Saturday Night
- Bobby Womack – The Bravest Man in the Universe
- Bonnie Raitt – Slipstream
- Bruce Springsteen – Wrecking Ball
- Clock Opera – Ways to Forget
- The dB’s – Falling Off the Sky
- Dexys – One Day I’m Going to Soar
- DIIV – Oshin
- Django Django – Django Django
- Dr. John – Locked Down
- Esperanza Spalding – Radio Music Society
- Father John Misty – Fear Fun
- Fiona Apple – The Idler Wheel is Wiser
- Flaming Lips – Flaming Lips and Heady Fwends
- Frank Ocean – Channel Orange
- Gotye – Making Mirrors
- Graham Coxon – A + E
- Jack White – Blunderbuss
- Joachim Cooder – Love on a Real Train
- Joe Bonamassa – Driving Towards the Daylight
- Joe Jackson – The Duke
- Joe Walsh – Analog Man
- Joseph Arthur – Redemption City
- Kimbra – Vows
- Leonard Cohen – Old Ideas
- Melody Gardot – The Absence
- Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Americana
- Neneh Cherry & The Thing – The Cherry Thing
- Norah Jones – Little Broken Hearts
- Patti Smith – Banga
- Paul Buchanan – Mid Air
- Paul Weller – Sonik Kicks
- Punch Brothers – Who’s Feeling Young Now?
- Richard Hawley – Standing at the Sky’s Edge
- Rufus Wainwright – Out of the Game
- Rumer – Boys Don’t Cry
- Saint Etienne – Words and Music
- Soulsavers – The Light the Dead See
- Spiritualized – Sweet Heart, Sweet Light
- Tedeschi Trucks Band – Everybody’s Talkin’
- Tom Jones – Spirit in the Room
- Warren Haynes Band – Live at the Moody Theater
This list should be a lot longer but there’s a ton of stuff from the past 6 months I haven’t gotten to yet. I’ll repeat: If you can’t find good current music, it’s not because it doesn’t exist, it’s because you’re not trying.
Spot on.
So much music and so little time!!
90% of those artists are 20 years past their primes
As Neil Young observed recently, there is still a lot of good music around, but the way it’s recorded and produced today makes much of it hard to listen to. But almost everyone thinks that the music they became attached to in their teens is better than anything that has come after it. If I was a little older, that would be Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard. For my generation it’s the Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Velvet Underground, The Who. For my middle brother, it’s solo Lou Reed, Bowie and Marc Bolan. For my youngest brother, the Buzzcocks. For my sister, the Waterboys and the Smiths. Others may cite the Clash and the Sex Pistols, depending on their age. Today’s kids think of Beyonce and Rihanna the same way. I’d guess your tastes were formed around the same time as mine – which is why many of the names in the above list also appeal to me.
There’s a book that came out a few years ago, can’t recall the title, about why we like the music we grow up with more, something about how at an early age it has an influence on how the paths in our brain are formed. For me, it’s more a matter of music that has stood the test of time, at least as far as my tastes are concerned. Which doesn’t mean I’m not open to new music though I realize that my tastes in current stuff skew heavily towards things that are reminiscent of older styles and genres.
I’ve been thinking more about this. Yes, there is still a lot of good music around, but when is the last time you heard something that didn’t sound like anything you’d ever heard before? Something that struck your ears with freshness and force because it was trying to expand the boundaries of what could be done in popular music? Something that broke the prevailing mould like Louis Armstrong did in the 1920s, Elvis did in the 50s, and a whole lot of people did in the 60s and 70s? There are a lot of worthy albums on your list, but they all fall into predictable formulas. Yes, I know I will probably like any new Patti Smith album, for instance, but is it going to sound as revolutionary as “Horses” did when we first heard it? I think that’s one big reason why people say music isn’t as good as it used to be.
There are two things that come to mind immediately to counter your comment.
The first is: does everything have to be ground-breaking or genre busting to be good or to be enjoyable?
The second is: Not one of the artists you cite on your list was truly original to the extent that what they were doing didn’t come from outer space, their music represented evolutionary leaps on top of what had come before and drew heavily upon their influences. And I think that’s still very true today. The question is, if these leaps are coming in genres that you personally don’t care for or listen to, are you going to recognize them, are you going to even hear them? The last time I heard something truly new was this past week when I listened to Frank Ocean’s album, to my ears it’s a big evolutionary step and instantly unmistakable for anything else. I would argue that Beyonce was a game changer, Lady Gaga was a game changer, Neutral Milk Hotel, The White Stripes, Norah Jones’ new album, Sigur Ros, Wilco, Kanye West, TV on the Radio, the Punch Brothers, Portico Quartet, LCD Soundsystem, Four Tet.
Music is not standing still. Some of it’s in genres that I might not follow, some of it hasn’t broken through commercially but will influence others who will, etc.
No, it doesn’t have to be groundbreaking to be enjoyable, but I would argue that the albums which really stand out as the all-time greatest tend to be those that did push the envelope. And your comment that these changes may come in genres I don’t listen to (or, I would add, in countries and languages I know nothing about) is of course valid.
To me, by the way, Lady Gaga is more of a performance artist than a musician – but then, so was David Bowie in his Ziggy days.
There’s another facet. How do you know that an album is an all-time greatest when you first hear it? Wouldn’t it be fair to say that those albums in your personal pantheon are there in no small part because they’ve stood your personal test of time? I don’t think I could go back to 18 year old me and have predicted with any great degree of accuracy which records would be my favorites 40 years later. There are some records that I absolutely hated back then that I now consider desert island discs. Not only do popular tastes change over time, so do our personal tastes!
I’m sure there are albums I once loved that I’ve forgotten. Some that I wasn’t too keen on initially – Abbey Road, for example – have grown on me. I’ve learned to appreciate people like Frank Sinatra who seemed hopelessly unhip back when I was young. And some albums I missed out on hearing at the time – like Linda Perhacs’ Parallelograms – I’ve picked up on later. But a treasured few – among them Astral Weeks, Forever Changes, Trout Mask Replica, Songs of Leonard Cohen, Blood on the Tracks – have remained personal favourites for 40 years. Personal is of course the key word – we all have different tastes, and that’s the way it should be.
A headline I saw about a week ago reported that, for the first time ever, old music outsold new music last month. Apparently the industry defines old music as anything over 18 months. This suggests that a lot of people don’t find much appeal in what’s coming out now. On the other hand, the industry is repackaging more and more oldies at cheaper prices, which may also affect the sales figures. Amazon is listing a lot of boxed sets of 5 or 6 past albums by a whole array of stars being sold with minimal packaging for about the price of one new CD, or even less – you can get 20 pre-Columbia Miles Davis CDs for about 10 pounds, or the price of a couple of drinks in a Hong Kong pub, for example. Those sort of prices are hard to resist.