inneedofgrace
Platinum Member
This morning I took my wife's car to work, and there were two of my teenage daughter's CDs in there with a mix of her favorite pop/hip-hop songs that she listens to. I was bored, so I popped them in the CD player and tried listening to the songs on both CDs. I could not get through more than about 30 seconds of any of the songs.
I am an older guy (almost 50), so I admit my opinion is going to be slanted. Certainly my parents had no clue about the rock music I listened to as a teenager, and I'm sure they hated it.
Here's my take on the songs:
1) There wasn't a lot of traditional singing going on here. It was a combination of talking, shouting back and forth, and chanting (usually ad nauseum).
2) All the vocals were heavily modified using echo, compression and whatever that program is that they use to modulate and alter the tone (Cher used it on Do You Believe in Love). The "computerized" voices grated on me after about 2 minutes.
3) The songs had no real structure to them. There was no intro, verse, chorus, middle eight, chorus, out, etc. Seemed like the repitiion goes on until the engineer decides to fade out the end of the song. I imagine this is because the primary reason for these songs is to dance to in a club or a party. The way we danced in the 70's/80's bears no resemblance to how you would dance to this music.
4) Out of about 20 songs, I only found one that sounded like it had real drums in it. The rest had clicks, snaps, and real loud bass booms that kept the beat. Some synthesizers (sampling, no doubt), no piano, no guitar.
Okay - rant over. I know this was only a small sampling of todays popular music. And I'm sure there is some good music out there that doesn't get much air time. Music companies and radio stations are not always the best judges of talent - only what they can sell.
I am an older guy (almost 50), so I admit my opinion is going to be slanted. Certainly my parents had no clue about the rock music I listened to as a teenager, and I'm sure they hated it.
Here's my take on the songs:
1) There wasn't a lot of traditional singing going on here. It was a combination of talking, shouting back and forth, and chanting (usually ad nauseum).
2) All the vocals were heavily modified using echo, compression and whatever that program is that they use to modulate and alter the tone (Cher used it on Do You Believe in Love). The "computerized" voices grated on me after about 2 minutes.
3) The songs had no real structure to them. There was no intro, verse, chorus, middle eight, chorus, out, etc. Seemed like the repitiion goes on until the engineer decides to fade out the end of the song. I imagine this is because the primary reason for these songs is to dance to in a club or a party. The way we danced in the 70's/80's bears no resemblance to how you would dance to this music.
4) Out of about 20 songs, I only found one that sounded like it had real drums in it. The rest had clicks, snaps, and real loud bass booms that kept the beat. Some synthesizers (sampling, no doubt), no piano, no guitar.
Okay - rant over. I know this was only a small sampling of todays popular music. And I'm sure there is some good music out there that doesn't get much air time. Music companies and radio stations are not always the best judges of talent - only what they can sell.