retired_amaynirvana

name these musicians. use examples over the last 25 years. it's my contention that there were never as many of those musicians as most people think and that they're all from the last generation or earlier. they simply do not exist today. </BLOCKQUOTE>

I still don't really get your point so this will probably be meaningless, but off the top of my head artists who are over 30, who have been making albums for at least 10 years and who I believe can still write good songs:
PJ Harvey, Ryan Adams, Morrissey, Ron Sexsmith, Tom Petty, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Pearl Jam, Garbage, David Bowie, Paul Weller, Bob Mould, Neil Young, Radiohead.

retired_the gizmo

tom petty, david bowie, neil young all dq'd for being too old.

paul weller on the absolute cusp of not qualifying either.

personally, I consider sexsmith to be a folk act.

garbage put out exactly 2 decent albums.

I won't talk about ryan adams because I think he's a bst.

and what you're left with is pj harvey, morrissey/smiths, sonic youth, dinosaur jr, pearl jam, bob mould/husker du/sugar and radiohead.

not much to show for 25 years of music. and worse if you factor in that only radiohead and pearl jam ever really hit mainstream success.

and if I try to push my luck and claim alt as a subset, and therefore not part of the pop/rock world, you don't really have anything left.

retired_nashfine

25 years eh

pixies,david byrne,oasis (to a certain extent)

actually know what I cant be bothered going on and on I have work to do

retired_the gizmo

oasis is a joke

david byrne abandoned pop for luaka bop a long time ago

realistically, the pixies put out 3 great albums. great band, but not exactly prolific.

retired_nashfine

I really dont see your point.

Around the same amount of time the since the Pixies have started until now they have produced 3 great albums.

Are you suggesting people like Neil Young produced more great albums in the same amount of time?

retired_amaynirvana

Ok, now I don't have a clue what you were saying. I thought your point was that popular music was so shallow that there are only so many ways that a band can sing about love etc etc. Surely those artists and the many others previously mentioned prove that to be incorrect. Which will lead you to repeat...

I think it's just that we're using different terms here. I'd say that all those artists wrote popular music. As gavinkil says, they're singer songwriters. Of course they're going to be influenced by several genres, but they're still writing popular music (whether that be that rock etc). The term pop music seems to be used today as a synonym for manufactured pop.

Again, for me alternative music is just a sub-section of popular music. And I don't know what commercial success has anything to do with it. I thought we were talking about people losing the ability to write music when they get in their thirties? If you're taking record sales then...

I'd agree with you if you were saying that manufactured pop artists have short careers.

That's a whole different debate, which has got nothing to do with the genre, otherwise you wouldn't have placed that last 25 years restriction.

And I'd argue that Garbage made 3 decent albums, but that's just personal opinion.

retired_steevo93

I've completely lost track of what both of you are trying to say, and failed to goad Daaaaaaaave into responding to my point, so I declare this thread DEAD

retired_the gizmo

I'm saying that, by ceefax's uses of the words "good, enduring hit" and "cultural relevance" the pixies can claim..."debaser"? maybe? you're getting away from the "popular" part of pop music. being an indie darling and charting an album at #86 for 2 weeks isn't really part of the picture I'm talking about. if doolittle or surfer rosa were top 20 albums and were getting played on mainstream radio, that'd be something different.


oh, and yes, neil young put out after the gold rush, harvest, long may you run and on the beach in a scant 6 year period. there are not many people who can claim the same quality/longevity ratio as the godfather of grunge and virtually no one I can think of from our generation, which is, I think, at the heart of andrew's original post.

retired_the gizmo

Ok, now I don't have a clue what you were saying. I thought your point was that popular music was so shallow that there are only so many ways that a band can sing about love etc etc. Surely those artists and the many others previously mentioned prove that to be incorrect. Which will lead you to repeat...

I think it's just that we're using different terms here. I'd say that all those artists wrote popular music. As gavinkil says, they're singer songwriters. Of course they're going to be influenced by several genres, but they're still writing popular music (whether that be that rock etc). The term pop music seems to be used today as a synonym for manufactured pop.

Again, for me alternative music is just a sub-section of popular music. And I don't know what commercial success has anything to do with it. I thought we were talking about people losing the ability to write music when they get in their thirties? If you're taking record sales then...

I'd agree with you if you were saying that manufactured pop artists have short careers.

That's a whole different debate, which has got nothing to do with the genre, otherwise you wouldn't have placed that last 25 years restriction.

And I'd argue that Garbage made 3 decent albums, but that's just personal opinion. </BLOCKQUOTE>

commercial success is part and parcel of pop music.

"Pop is distributed by major record companies as part of a global music market through mass marketing through radio, television. In the recorded music era, the single (a single song) and the album (a collection of songs) are the usual methods of distributing pop music. Pop has been distributed in many formats included vinyl records, cassette tapes, compact discs, and Internet downloads. Pop music is arguably the world's biggest music genre."

and the 25 year window is not arbitrary. it was roughly 25 years ago when there was major music industry consolidation and the rise of mtv meant songwriting uggos like christopher cross were out and tv-friendly acts like duran duran were in. there was a seismic shift in how pop music is made, recorded and approached in that time period. a&r could no longer hold dozens of talented, but not as yet successful bands on their roster and wait for something to bloom. cultivating and sustaining artists was not only unfashionable, but downright discouraged. getting one hit (as cheaply as possible) was the focus. no one cared about the second or third hit because there was always another band down the line to provide that. barry gordy-style assembly line music. find the sound and the hook and worry about finding the band later.

alternative music is not only not part of pop music, it's the pure antithesis of it. you think pop music had a place for camper van beethoven and the buzzcocks in 1983? labels like irs records came into being to pick up all those acts pop music labels had sloughed off.


and so part of andrew's answer is that the artistic freedom and ability to define themselves is what made those bands good in the first place. then they sell out, cross over into real pop music and fall off completely.

perfect example: rhcp. a band basically everyone on otf considers a joke. because most people here aren't old enough to remember freaky styley, mother's milk and bssm released back-to-back-to-back. then after bssm became wildly successful, they signed a major label deal, got dave navarro in, and start producing 15 years of neutered radio-friendly pablum made for 17 year old girls who wanted to say that they listened to rhcp without having to actually listen to punk/funk or anything else remotely interesting.

retired_amaynirvana

For me:
Popular music: anything other than traditional or art musical forms (i.e. folk; jazz, classical)
Pop music: sub-genre of popular music based on commercial success, everything you've just said.

That's all fair enough then. I thought that by talking about rock music earlier in the thread, you were saying that songwriting in popular music has never been about music-making talent, which leads to lack of originality and longevity. In other words I thought you were writing off all music from the origin of blues that wasn't jazz or classical.

Pop music (or manufacted pop) the sub-genre as you say is driven by commercial success. As the majority of artists don't write their own songs, the longevity of the actual acts (not the songwriters) does depend almost solely on marketing. Therefore the artists themselves become a lot less important - it's more about the ability of the people behind the artist (the record company, the songwriters) where prolonged success is concerned. I think of this as a post-mtv creation and would never class bands such as the Beatles in the same category of 'pop music.' Alternative music is therefore another sub-genre of popular music, which as you say is the antithesis of the sub-genre of pop.

So basically all that last bit is in agreement with your post before. What I was disagreeing (or what I thought I was anyway, this is so confusing it's just one big head **** for me) was that songwriting in popular music (broad sense of term, including rock) had nothing to do with talent, and was more to do with marketing. Which instead is describing the state of the modern music industry and the sub-genre of pop for me. But whereas there is less emphasis on musicianship amongst the actual artists and more to do with the actual marketing of the group, as ceefax the cat says, the songwriters who can constantly churn out hit after hit are musically talented. And as I know absolutely zilch about modern pop music and its structure, I'll just leave it at 'what ctc said.' The change in the music industry means that the actual artists (the ones recreating the songs) have become less important, and that it's more the songwriters who are musically talented (which in some cases will be the band). Of course with marketing in the modern music industry it's a lot easier to achieve one-off commercial success with little talent, but you still have the musically talented ones, the great songwriters, who have the ability to write hit after hit.

To be honest I'd become so lost with all these sub-debates that I'd completely forgotten what the opening post said. All this time I'm meant to have been writing an essay on Isabel Allende, so the time I've wasted getting confused in this thread is indicative of the quality of her writing. My last post on the matter, I promise.