brother pop music has been bullshit for decades.
There has always been bullshit that was popular, but at the same time there were pop artists who made wonderful, interesting music.
I don’t know how anyone can’t like at least ONE song by The Weeknd.
Maybe I’m old, but I think popular music peaked in the 90s. Everything has sounded the same since then.
Funny enough, they were playing 80s tunes at Dollar General today. Be hard to say you don’t like 80s music as there was plenty of variation.
The problem with this comparison is you’re always holding up the absolute best of a decade against what happens to be on the radio top ten right now. Same goes for people who think music hasn’t been good since the seventies, or sixties, or whatever. It’s one half nostalgia for the stuff that shaped and formed your music tastes, one half survivor bias.
There’s plenty of good, new music out there. Some of it is on the radio, some of it is in the streaming top ten, and some of it is in places where you’ll never find it. And by the same token, if you actually went back in a time machine and listened to the average radio station in the eighties, you’d hear some absolute dog-shit garbage. It wasn’t all Queen.
Problem being, the good stuff is buried under the formulaic stuff. Never said all music has sucked since the 90s, just that mainstream music all sounds the same.
There’s another comment here I came to make where that shows 6 modern country tunes all cut together. It sounds like an ensemble of popular singers, sounds like the same music.
Made another comment here that Nashville has nailed the algorithm on selling music. Back in the day, producers and promoters would throw everything at the wall to see what would stick. Now music is a formula, unless you actively seek otherwise.
Country, absolutely, has become a generic mess of slop. Or at least, chart country / bro country certainly has. That’s a very specific result of the kind of people who listen to bro country; soulless conservative zombies who will lap up anything that references their preferred cultural touchstones. There’s still amazing country music out there but you definitely have to dig deeper to find it.
But as with everything soulless conservative zombies do, you shouldn’t let it shape your view of the world as a whole. It doesn’t mean that popular music in its entirety, or pop music as a genre, have suddenly become creatively bankrupt. There are artists out there producing incredible tracks. Some of them toil in obscurity, some not only break into the mainstream, but define it.
Saying the good stuff is buried is sort of meaningless, in that its always been true. 90% of anything is crap. That’s exactly the point I was making in my previous comment; it’s easy to look back at the past and find the good stuff because we’ve had time to forget all the trash. The present always arrives unfiltered and undiscovered.
[Pop/rock] music has been a formula virtually since its inception. Respectfully, AC/DC put out some bangers but also all their songs kinda sound the same. Thriller was successful because it was written specifically to be the most commercially viable album of all time. Hell even in the '60s the formula was very simply “find out what’s topping the African-American charts and get white artists to copy it”. That’s how we got disco, which became so formulaic by the end that its “downfall” was a Worldwide Cultural Moment. If you think today’s music is bad, go listen to the top 100 disco hits of any random week in 1978… Probably not going to be a particularly great musical experience.
Every successful counter-cultural movement only lasts a few years before only the esthetic remains. Angry young artists “flame out” or sell out, corpos take over, make a safer formula out of it, and only then does the genre go mainstream.
I’d argue things are actually a lot better now than they were in the Disco era. The fragmentation of culture and slow downfall of linear media means that the formulaic stuff can be much more easily avoided, and it doesn’t reach nearly the same level of cultural saturation like it did when the radio was the main way to listen to music. The top charts are still relevant, but nowhere near what they were 20 years ago. Today anyone can pick up a DAW and be their own producer then self-publish to youtube, so who cares if the labels are led by uninspired fuckheads? They’re not in a position to bottleneck music production or audience reach anymore.
And Queen gave us “Radio Ga Ga”. 🤮 They can’t all be great.
Radio Goo Goo?
Yes you’re old, there is some really good pop music.
100% fast downhill after the 90s unless you look hard for quality music.
My local radio station Kiss FM used to cater to teens. I’m 30 now and they still play mostly the same music they did in 2008. Some new remixes, but – brb gonna check what they’re playing right now. It’s past midnight so this might be unfair but they’re playing Never Forget You - Zara Larson. 2015.
May be bullshit but at least it was made by humans
robotized humans
This just goes to show how bad country has become.
There’s a YouTube channel hosted by a guy that’s been a studio engineer for decades. He can’t tell AI from humans anymore- and it’s not just country.
the last video i watched about this clearly showed the channels blend poorly with ai so is ai production better in the last 3 months or are they doing a manual mix by human hand later?
LOL. As if it was ever good.
Johnny Cash would like a word.
Most people are fucking idiots. Thats why ai and corps will prevail.
the worst moment in my life so far is finally realizing that the dumbest person I personally know is only half as dumb as the fool I have yet to meet.
the recursive properties of this paradoxical knowledge almost killed me.
When all your art does is make people feel but without meaning, don’t be surprised when the machines get better at pressing the happy button.
Look, I’ve used a variety of toys throughout my life, but my hand still works better tha- oh you mean a different metaphorical “happy button.” Carry on, then.
Not only is it ai, its country. Honesty, coming from a heavy country family and town… I don’t get the appeal one bit.
I say while sipping tea and listening to Kong Stephen.
Odd that it’s on top of a sales chart when AI music can’t be copyrighted, so anyone could just get it for free. It makes me suspect it’s presence there might be inauthentic.
AI music can’t be copyrighted
That’s true (though it may depend on which country you are in). But if “a human contributes creatively to an AI-generated work, such as by writing lyrics or modifying melodies, that work may be eligible for copyright”.
You can guarantee that labels/authors will do enough to make sure they can get copyright.
Yep. This is the end of human culture.
My sister uses AI to gen music all the time and what annoys me most is how actually good it is at making country music.
But I mean… It’s probably more just because that’s a very low bar to pass in modern times because even human-made country music hasn’t been good since the 90s. 🤷♂️
It also isn’t too surprising since a lot of music, especially from certain classical musicians, was written algorithmically, too.
American pop country is musically extremely basic. Technically it’s music, but you’ll have no problems teaching someone that’s never touched music in their life how to do it within a couple days. So it’s no surprise genAI can mimic this genre and other simpler ones like all the kid’s music and nursery rhyme stuff too.
American pop music in general is pretty basic, generic, and devoid of ideas. I mean this was the work of SIX song-writers.
That doesn’t surprise me too much. Have you seen Bo Burnham’s Country Song, or SIX Song Country Mashup. All pop country sounds the same.
I was going to post one of those mashups. Nashville figured out the algorithms to selling music. Pop, country, Christian, all formulaic.
When a computer can just toss all your shit in a blender and spit it back out, and it satisfies fans of your genre to this extent, then frankly this is a badly needed wake up call to country music.
It’s not though. I don’t think many people are arguing it is impossible for a computer to produce “music” that sounds good and is not immediately recognizable as AI generated. Most people are arguing that AI generated music is soulless slop by nature due to the fact it is machine generated.
Country music has been slop long before AI.
It looks like pretty much every one of the commenters agree that if a machine can replace your art, you fucking deserve to be replaced. It’s been a long, long time coming for popular country music.
That’s … kinda pathetic for the industry, though not surprising for a genre that lost it’s heart ages ago.
Someone pointed out to me a while back the main draw of human made art is the effort put in and the genuine connection people make with the artist. When you actually engage with the art, it’s provocative and emotional and has that connection. Slop can’t do that. It’s like empty calories for the soul.
But that argument falls apart for commercial endeavors — plenty of human made slop also exists and while it may look pretty (or in this case, sound pretty), the artistry is lacking. It’s made to top charts, not build a connection. You lack the artist’s emotions, creativity, the imperfections that make it genuine, even the backstory behind the piece, etc. All that is art.
County (and other commercial pop) has lacked that for ages. There are genuine artists out there, but marketing and promotional strategies tend to drown them out with slop. No surprise that side is getting the AI overhaul.
A lot of people will happily consume anything if they enjoy it even a bit and it doesn’t take any effort to digest. Doesn’t need to be good nor offer meaning or anything, if it’s just easy and pleasurable enough to make passing time a little more bearable. Empty calories for the soul is a good way to put it, but to a lot of people that’s still plenty enough. Engaging with art requires at least some effort. Mentally, emotionally, sometimes physically…
But that’s why my analogy works; imagine if all you ever got to eat was potato chips. You’d survive, at least you a little bit, but your quality of life would be abysmal. On occasion they might not be too bad but in excess, or exclusively, you’d die young. Yes, it does take effort to consume something better, especially in a society incentivized to continue feeding you empty calories, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try getting a fresh vegetable in your system.
Oh yeah, I 100% agree with that. Just lamenting about how a lot of people are… well, dull.
Ironically that also works for the metaphor given just how many Americans have terrible fast food diets, either by choice or necessity. Lol.
I hate to say that my go-to streaming service Tidal also has this song. Hopefully they’ll kick out the AI.
Its good-ish. The replication of clapping isn’t good enough, so just sounds wrong. It’s missing vital frequencies. That goes for every aspect of this Sora slop.
Why is this site cancer? I keep getting errors and it forces a reload.
