Red Mosquito

LoathedVermin72 wrote:

Anders wrote:Modern pop, especially in the US, lots of bad stuff. I checked the entire billboard 100 last summer, and nearly every song was pure garbage. But Bruno Mars has an amazing talent. A class above the rest. He has some great singles as well, and a real presence, that few entertainers can match.

There’s tons of great pop music out there right now. I think it’s the only vital genre of music going right now. Mars has a couple songs that are okay but he bores me overall. “Uptown Funk” is one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard.

Couldn’t disagree more. Pop has probably never been worse, and sadly it’s drowning out all the great music being made. It was never this bad before. Cream used to rise to the top.

There's a certain thing going on with the production of a lot of modern pop that really feels like it borrows heavily from later Animal Collective, Atlas Sound, MGMT and Tame Impala. I'm talking about that looped reverb, analog but still very electronic sound. When it first came out in the late aughts, it felt pretty fresh and new and not on the radio yet. But who did those guys borrow from?

Inspired by The Police, that he grew up listening to.

bodysnatcher wrote:what do you mean by vital? as in, something being commoditized into lining the pockets of record industry peoples? or, the genre that is the best example of this era of human?

Vital as in innovative, evolving, exploratory, connected to the zeitgeist in a meaningful way.

Anders wrote:

LoathedVermin72 wrote:

Anders wrote:Modern pop, especially in the US, lots of bad stuff. I checked the entire billboard 100 last summer, and nearly every song was pure garbage. But Bruno Mars has an amazing talent. A class above the rest. He has some great singles as well, and a real presence, that few entertainers can match.

There’s tons of great pop music out there right now. I think it’s the only vital genre of music going right now. Mars has a couple songs that are okay but he bores me overall. “Uptown Funk” is one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard.

Couldn’t disagree more. Pop has probably never been worse, and sadly it’s drowning out all the great music being made. It was never this bad before. Cream used to rise to the top.

I have a feeling we have very different ideas about what constitutes “great music.”

LoathedVermin72 wrote:connected to the zeitgeist in a meaningful way.

This gets missed a lot. Well put.

Bruno Mars is a lizard person. No one is that handsome, talented, slick, etc. His music is what I imagine music created by AI will eventually sound like. All the humanity sucked right out.

LoathedVermin72 wrote:

Anders wrote:

LoathedVermin72 wrote:

Anders wrote:Modern pop, especially in the US, lots of bad stuff. I checked the entire billboard 100 last summer, and nearly every song was pure garbage. But Bruno Mars has an amazing talent. A class above the rest. He has some great singles as well, and a real presence, that few entertainers can match.

There’s tons of great pop music out there right now. I think it’s the only vital genre of music going right now. Mars has a couple songs that are okay but he bores me overall. “Uptown Funk” is one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard.

Couldn’t disagree more. Pop has probably never been worse, and sadly it’s drowning out all the great music being made. It was never this bad before. Cream used to rise to the top.

I have a feeling we have very different ideas about what constitutes “great music.”

Not unlikely.

Pop's in a good place. There is some unbearable garbage (like that gratingly schmaltzy Ed Sheeran and Andrea Bocelli song, or that eye-gougingly boring "Rockstar" song), but there's also some interesting, inventive and well-crafted stuff that blends genres together in cool ways. At the very least, the current pop landscape can't possibly be worse than when the Black Eyed Peas were active.

guestT wrote:Bruno Mars is a lizard person. No one is that handsome, talented, slick, etc. His music is what I imagine music created by AI will eventually sound like. All the humanity sucked right out.

Do we categorize Cardi B as pop? I really enjoy Cardi B's approach.

washing machine wrote:Do we categorize Cardi B as pop? I really enjoy Cardi B's approach.

Had to look her up. The first video I found:

That performance is so wholesome after hearing Bodak Yellow for the last year.

washing machine wrote:That performance is so wholesome after hearing Bodak Yellow for the last year.

That's family-friendly Cardi B

Bruno is too short to be a lizard person.

Please youtube post some of the great pop songs you are talking about. Let the music speak for itself.

Anders wrote:

See, this song was good right up until Bruno Mars started singing

theplatypus wrote:

washing machine wrote:That performance is so wholesome after hearing Bodak Yellow for the last year.

That's family-friendly Cardi B

I bet you'll see her at the Super Bowl half time show in the next three years. Easy money.

Anders wrote:

washing machine wrote:Do we categorize Cardi B as pop? I really enjoy Cardi B's approach.

Had to look her up. The first video I found:

I feel like I'm watching a crossover episode of Fresh Prince and In Living Color.

bune wrote:

Anders wrote:

washing machine wrote:Do we categorize Cardi B as pop? I really enjoy Cardi B's approach.

Had to look her up. The first video I found:

I feel like I'm watching a crossover episode of Fresh Prince and In Living Color.

I like this song okay, but it also hits on everything I dislike about pop music in 2018. This obsession with nineties style and references in an attempt to reconnect with the audience's childhood. I don't like how it just reinforces the millennial (sorry LV) tendency to avoid "adulting." Also, most of these artists and their primary audience were like six years old when the nineties ended.