Hallelujah

[Golden Smoghead]

Actually after going on and on regarding this subject I think that I finally got to my point in a round about way. Again most of this is partially stolen from the book the Rise and Fall of Popular Music (the parts about how songs got to the market and how those avenues don't exist any longer), but specifically I doubt that today most people sit around playing guitar and singing, which was something that we did alot of back in the day. Things have simply changed and moved on so that experiencing music is more an individual experience, with more people listening to their own music via iPods and other ways rather than getting together to play and sing. So what people want out of their music experience is different than it used to be. I could be very wrong about this, since it has been quite a few years since I sat around with anyone, old or young and sang folk type material (that includes stuff like the Band, etc.). Do people still do this?

 

LouieB

Ah, now I see where you're going...

 

I have definitely been at parties, barbecues, etc where someone picked up a guitar and started playing pop music from when my peer group was in high school /college (the opening notes to "The Sweater Song" by Weezer, for example, always seem to crop up). But pop music from when I was in high school was frankly not that great... Sure, I'm OK with hearing "Hey Jealousy" every now and then, but really it's perceived as kinda douchebaggy to just start belting out some Counting Crows or something, by and large. Sublime comes up pretty often and that's OK for sure...

 

What this reminds me of, is that most of us musicians started out playing music when we were in our teens and twenties, and basically just learned songs we liked from off the radio. I'm not 100% sure, but I bet that's been a lot of the campfire-song effect all along (pop songs are easy to play, generally, and everybody knows the words).

 

I don't have any answers or anything, but I wonder if a factor could be that so much pop music these days doesn't really LEND itself to one-acoustic-guitar performances. Like I stated before, I'm a big fan of Kanye West, and yep I play acoustic guitar -- but I'm not likely to try to cover "Touch the Sky" at the next party. Some faux-hard-rock radio stuff is coverable, though, and I have heard my beginning-guitarist friends play that kind of thing ("Hate Me Today" or whatever is and example, also that one that goes "into the ocean, end it all" -- I am not a fan but it's pop and it's come up in my crowd)

 

However, you're right, those are perfect examples of how songwriting in pop music seems to have gone downhill... I get the impression the sentiment is that this is largely a factor of the music industry's current business models, and I agree. It's not that good songwriting isn't happening, if you ask me. It's that the music industry has moved away from being able to market and distribute those good songs. Maybe you're right, it's because bands are less willing to play songs written by others, but I'm really not sure. I think the genre-drift towards musical styles that emphasize production should be taken into account, though. Because the people inspired by the better parts of pop music today are probably trying to learn how to sample and mix, not pick up a guitar.

[LouieB]

Now if we can just get Barak and Hillary together we will be in business....

 

Well if I stopped writing bullshit on the fly it might be easy to see where I am coming from I suppose, but you do get the idea. I do think there are problems with what is on the radio, I think that goes without saying, but it is certainly a part of the problem. But as I began to think about it more it seems to have had more to do with the thing about playing something that seems to hold its own when played on an accoustic guitar, but also something with a tune that most people can carry and words that may mean something to someone, both artistically and culturally. I frankly don't know Kanye West except in passing, but you might want to try one of his songs on accoustic guitar, folk style and see what happens. It might turn out okay.

 

There could be a parallel between the fact that musicians are far more skilled at playing and could be more skilled at writing songs, but maybe it just isn't as important to have a song with a hook, a story, a riff, or even a point. I mean it isn't like every song ever written was any good back in the good old days....they weren't. But more songwriters were trying to actually "sell" a song in the good old days. Now no one thinks they need to sell anything. They just figure if it sounds really slick or original it will sell by itself. In some cases in the old days they wanted a song to sound just like another, now it appears that although people think they are being original, it sounds like the same new crap. I mean I don't even listen to rap, but a few years back every rap song had that insipid single finger keyboard thing going and everyone used it. Now much of popular music sounds like processed crap and even indie rock has this same old sheen that makes much of it sound alike, even with accoustic guitar in it.

 

Standing in line waiting for Wilco in front of the Riv (or maybe it was somewhere else, but telling the story like this sounds better...) someone was saying to me that they no longer use the radio to research what to listen to. But back in the day the radio was just about the only place to listen to up and coming music and everyone was trying to use it. Artists covered folk songs on rock albums because people knew them and knew they could sing along. (It came as a great shock to my Rosie when I explained that Sloop John B on Pet Sounds wasn't a Brian Wilson song, but an old folk song they stuck on there to get a hit single. It worked. It also turned out that a few other songs on it were hits too. Had at least some of Pet Sounds not showed up on the radio, Pet Sounds might not be the huge seller it is today. Sure it was hard to hear some music on the radio back in the 50s-80s, but a surprising amount DID make it, which is why we can have (kind of) intelligent conversations about the Beach Boys, the Kinks, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix, etc, because these guys (including Leonard Cohen, but through a slightly different mechanism) had songs on the radio....lots of them. (Not to mention Simon and Garfunkel, the Mamas and Papas, the Byrds, Mott the Hoople, etc. etc.) But I gotta tell ya....unless I occasionally run into a Weezer song on XRT, I couldn't pick them out of a line-up to save my life. I have heard the Sweater Song I am sure, but I couldn't sing the first line at all.

 

Actually the best place to listen to anything now is on the college stations. I hear more entertaining stuff on those channels than anywhere and frankly it doesn't matter if I know who they are or not. (The names of the groups and the names of the songs are entertaining enough.) The groups being promoted by individual DJs on those stations are throwing out their favs and then they go home....no one is trying to sell a thing and therefore I rarely remember what I heard, but it also doesn't suck most of the time. Asking for something that doesn't suck in popular music these days is about all one can really ask for.

 

LouieB