Music sounding "dated"

[LoathedVermin72]

"Hurt?" What on earth set this off, you weirdo?

[JuanHamm]

Do you...do you know what the word “dated” means?

I do as it happens.
Your entire mindset and posting.
It’s dated.

You’re right everyone else is wrong.


Go back to 1995 where you belong. Were you even born then? You have no idea what you’re talking about.
You have never been in a band.
You have never written a song.
You definitely do not understand music outside your shit little frame of reference.
You’re a loudmouth arsehole clearly hurt and projecting that on everyone you can. projecting poorly by the way.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. But you want to be heard.


Therapy. It’s right there. Go get it

Please calm down

[Blaine Ryan]

[epilogue]

As someone who just had an unfortunate misunderstanding with LV in a different thread, I just want to say...

What the actual fuck???

[Norah]

this is my new favorite thread

[dimejinky99]

Needy wankstain turns into pretentious obnoxious prick

Must be the internet

[LoathedVermin72]

i should listen to some glen hansard to expand my frame of reference

[dimejinky99]

i should listen to some glen hansard to expand my frame of reference

Please don’t. It’s way above your pay grade and you hate everything remember.

[LoathedVermin72]

hi dime...how are you feeling today?

[rick malone]

Sublime has a song titled "April 29, 1992".

I mean, that is really dated.

[Birds in Hell]

I have never understood “dated” as a criticism. Pretty much all art reflects the aesthetics of its era. To me, that’s a built-in positive, not a negative.

To answer your questions more specifically:

1. I think it generally takes about ten years. For example, pop music from 2010 now has a distinctly different sound from current pop music, but it took until about 2018 for that line to be clear for me. Of course, pop music isn't representative of all genres, and tends to move through aesthetic shifts more quickly than other genres. I mean, I don't know how much metal has advanced - if at all - since 2010, by comparison.

2. Not really, no. The only thing I can think of is I will sometimes try to find a specific type of music from a specific era because the production styles of that era for that kind of music are appealing to me (soft rock from the '70s and '80s, for example).

For what it's worth, I couldn't agree with LV more. I can't think of any music which I love which isn't "dated" in some respect and often I find those particularly aesthetic qualities quite appealing in their own right.

There's kind of two elements to it, I guess: technological and performance/writing. What people think of as music "sounding 80s" (for example) is hard to separate from the explosion and availability of digital music technology around that time, thinking in particular of synths like the Yamaha DX7 and digital reverbs and delays:



(I have a six year old who wants to watch YouTube, so I'll try to come back later to discuss this more.)

[daft twat]

What’s up, cuntz?

[bodysnatcher]

The production choices made on a song are the same thing as fashion choices made in a movie.

[Birds in Hell]

It's also not just music which we can perceive as being dated or of its time, you definitely see it in advertising (especially) or graphic design or films or clothes or any number of things which have visual or aural elements. I think it's impossible to escape this process; even if a band were to carefully cultivate writing songs in an authentic 50s style (for example), and recorded them using authentic 50s recording styles and technology, they can never genuinely adopt the same creative mindset as those who were originally recording or writing that style of music when it was contemporary and were (at the time) pushing the boundaries of technology - everything is created through the prism of its time whether the artist is conscious of that or not. It's one of the reasons retro garbage like Greta Van Fleet seems so patently ridiculous, as they'll never be a 70s hard rock band (or even close) - it's impossible.

1. How long does it take for something that sounds current in real time to eventually sound old, and what causes this to happen? Like, I distinctly remember when 90's rock began to sound like "'90's rock," rather than just the fresh, current thing that was happening. I only recently started feeling it with music from the early 2000's, though I struggle to articulate exactly what it is yet that's giving me that sense. I'm interested in hearing whether others experience this as well, or if stuff from certain time periods still feels timeless to some (with the understanding that some things feel this way anyway) despite distinct identifiers.

It definitely takes a while for those shifts to be apparent, as it does in those other fields I mentioned above. I remember I spent a lazy afternoon once scrolling through digitised 90s copies of SPIN and they were an incredible time capsule, though I distinctly remember when all of that stuff was unremarkably "current day". There's an odd "it just is" quality to the way we (or at least I) experience current music, writing, films when, in retrospect, they seem very much specifically of their time.

[Kevin Davis]

There's an odd "it just is" quality to the way we (or at least I) experience current music, writing, films when, in retrospect, they seem very much specifically of their time.

Yes, same here -- I would be interested to know if anyone feels as though they are or have been aware of these kinds of identifiers as they are occurring in real time. I remember thinking '90's rock felt so natural and unaffected in comparison to the music from the '80's, but I hear it now and it's clear that it is equally as aesthetically distinct. Same with the indie rock/pop/etc. of the early 2000's -- for some reason, I listened to a Shins album the other day and was stunned by how "2003" it sounded. "Sounding 2003" was not a concept that occurred to me in 2003.

[LoathedVermin72]

The only contemporary style of music I really listen to is rap and pop, and I think it’s “time sound” is already very apparent. Spacey synth, “Migos flow,” etc.

[bada]

I'd like to get back to Dime and LV. I felt like they were on the verge of a breakthrough.

[Birds in Hell]

There's an odd "it just is" quality to the way we (or at least I) experience current music, writing, films when, in retrospect, they seem very much specifically of their time.

Yes, same here -- I would be interested to know if anyone feels as though they are or have been aware of these kinds of identifiers as they are occurring in real time. I remember thinking '90's rock felt so natural and unaffected in comparison to the music from the '80's, but I hear it now and it's clear that it is equally as aesthetically distinct. Same with the indie rock/pop/etc. of the early 2000's -- for some reason, I listened to a Shins album the other day and was stunned by how "2003" it sounded. "Sounding 2003" was not a concept that occurred to me in 2003.

It definitely takes me some time to recognise the specific identifiers that tie something to a particular point in time.

I really enjoy that situational aspect, now I think about it. Given the choice of a new band or artist or discovering something from the 60s or 80s (or whenever) that I can place in a particular cultural context, I've usually found the latter more richly interesting and rewarding.

It's by no means a hard and fast rule but I think I can find contemporary art or music more misleading (in that it sounds good to me at the time and terrible in hindsight) in a way that never or rarely happens with something from an earlier period.

[Birds in Hell]

I'd like to get back to Dime and LV. I felt like they were on the verge of a breakthrough.

Please no.

[Kevin Davis]

The only contemporary style of music I really listen to is rap and pop, and I think it’s “time sound” is already very apparent. Spacey synth, “Migos flow,” etc.

Yeah, this makes a lot of sense. Come to think of it, there have been quite a few occasions (nu-metal and pop punk being just two examples that jump to mind) where the recurring tropes of a genre are readily apparent at the time, but I never think of them in those terms until well after the fact -- perhaps because it's impossible for something to remind you of a time that is currently happening? I don't know.

It's by no means a hard and fast rule but I think I can find contemporary art or music more misleading (in that it sounds good to me at the time and terrible in hindsight) in a way that never or rarely happens with something from an earlier period.

I would probably agree with this, percentagewise, though I have never thought of it in this way before. An obvious exception being my Doors phase of 1998-99.