an excellant point!

This thread sort of reminds me of the sort of things people said back in the nineteenth and twentieth century when literacy levels rose and 'academic' readers thought that the 'common' reader has no sense of 'quality control'. It's not hurting you if someone listens to 'bad' music, is it?

Literature, music, playwriting etc. have been in decline since the fifteenth century if you're to believe anyone who says it.

Agreed.

Apologies if this has already been said, I haven't read the whole thread, but Shakespeare was considered low brow, common, popularist, repetetive by some back in the day.... each to their own.

If there is crap music out there, it doesn't stop good music existing, it doesn't erase all the good music, and I don't know about you guys, but I've listened to stuff in the past and thought it was terrible only to rediscover it years later and realise it's actually bloody brilliant, so too have I thought something was great only to realise later it's not.

One mans junk is another mans treasure and all that, just relax, music is meant to be entertainment.

My dad thinks The Beatles are rubbish, his parents called it "that terrible noise" yet they are considered by many the best band of all time, are critically acclaimed, studied etc etc

Apologies if you really disagree with what I'm about to say, I might be generalising, but I find a lot of people simply don't want to like current music, so they listen to it with prejudice and are looking to criticise, rather than taking it for what it is. They basically stop themselves from enjoying it because of their predisposition, I don't know why anyone would want to close themselves off like that.

Like I said it is subjective. Music has too many various perceptions to be able to put into a factual context good and bad music.
You cannot turn something which essentially is meant for enjoyment purposes into some complex thing of good & bad.

No matter how one might try to judge music to able to categorize it into good & bad music their own perceptions, bias and idea (which in essence is an opinion) of what good music is, would get in the way of judgement therefore making that judgement biased, unfair and unvalid.

It is simply impossible to make this judgemet because we all have different ideas, defintions and concepts as to what good music is.
How would we decide which opinion on what good music is, is right or wrong? Who would decide that? Our own musical bias would get in the way of that, making the opinion unvalid in factual terms already.

We would all not be able to then define if that opinion was right or wrong because we would all disagree on how valid its factual context was, and some would not respect it's factual context and simply see it as an opinion.

And if not enough people not only average joes, but music critics didn't apperciate it's validility then it would take away it's vadility and it would end up as a case of a different various views being claimed as fact with no one being able to truly define which one was fact.

The only thing which can judge music good or bad is not a person - it is time. Time judges if people still remember, or care about music years after its release and if that music can still effect people then it can be apperciated in a factual context.

All this right or wrong, good or bad deal ultimely distracts from music's real purpose - to make people feel good. AndI feel people should not try to judge a piece of music as good or bad in a factual way because what may be shite to them, will be great to another. Someone's responses to music should not be put into a factual context because there will always be varying responses and again how will you define which one is right or wrong?

Music apperciation is different is to trying to judge music.
Don't try to complicate music. It is this very attutide which takes away the real beauty of the art - the way it makes people feel.

Fine, then that's your opinion, which you've stated as a fact. Nothing wrong with that. You do acknowledge that this is your opinion and not some deeper truth right? If so, then we're all square. I don't agree with you but I'm interested to read your posts all the same.

BTW, I hope you're not suggesting that Ashkenazy, with his many years of study and experience, superior technical command of the piano, beautiful phrasing, articulation and attention to detail, huge depth of feeling, emotional range, rhythmic awareness and general all-round awesomeness, is no better then a beginner knocking out chopsticks.

I really did waste my life after all, damn it!

Yes.

A couple more moderrn songs I like

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKIM3SkR45I
"Upside Down" - Paloma Faith

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-vEHi2teUI
Raul Malo - "Moonlight Kiss"
This is the song that, to me, sounds like Frank Ifield around 1962. If you don't remember Frank Ifield, here are a couple of his hits -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RhMoC6kjMQ (I Remember You - 1962)
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwbMldf6KS8 (Wayward Wind 1963). I wonder why EMI released this through Vee-Jay not Capitol?

Can we keep this going with any good new songs that come along?

Mainstream music sucks these days, you have to make more of an effort.

/thread.

There are lots of great new bands, but unfortunately, you have to go looking for them. The kids today have to rely on the charts, which are 99% full of crap, especially the Top 10.

But if you have access to forums, blogs, Spotify, LastFM. etc., then you'll find that there is plenty of music out there for you to enjoy, regardless of taste.

Here's some modern recommendations for any fellow DSers who like old-school rock and metal:
- The Answer
- Wolfmother
- Lafaro
- Airbourne
- Black Label Society
- Bullet
- Widow
- Wolf
- The Gates Of Slumber
- Opeth
- Orphaned Land

Enjoy.

People shouting and swaring and rapping down microphones, and all this garage/house/funk/emo/all this kind of stuff ect is serously not music. I'm more keane, coldplay, u2, saturdays, sugar babes, katty perry, danile marryweather, don't mind a bit of r kelly, mika, light house, the fray, westlife/boyzone, mcfly lady gaga ect, not M&M. Jay-z (I do like biyonca though), chipmunk, dizy rascal, ushera ect.

The vast majority of those acts are useless. Try again.

And I bet you'd quote me of a list of people I'd feel the same about.

Oi! I used to listen to loads of emo stuff and I turned out alright!

And you spelt loads of the artists names wrong

"I don't like" does not equate to "Is not music".

The thing is, look at a lot of these songs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...the_1980s_(UK)

I think a lot of those songs are terrible. A lot of them have been completely forgotten by the general population.

But I don't go around whining about it. They were popular back then, so they topped the charts. That's it. It's the same today.

I totally agree with the first post on this thread! Times move on and u can't stay stuck in the past all ur life, ppl need to let the younger generations enjoy the music without others slagging most artists in the charts. Grow up!

So you're working on the assumption that it's an "older" vs "younger" generation thing are you?

Might interest you to know that there are plenty of "older generation" who thought a lot of the chart music in our own day was rubbish. However, at least most of it was ORIGINAL rubbish

Anyway I guess I can see both sides of the argument. There's plenty of good pop around (e.g. Lady Gaga, Rhianna) and plenty of what I personally consider to be repetetive rubbish around too. e.g. just about everything that involves a pitch-correction kit to give it the same sythesised quality else. I think most of this stuff comes under the blanket of "R&B".

But of course these are just my opinions. Since music is emotive, it is very difficult to be objective about it. An in-depth study of musical form and and content and mathematical relationships may lead one to be able to be "objective" about music, but then perhaps one would be missing a good deal of the beauty of music.

I believe that different types of music can affect people in different ways. I suspect Mozart stimulates the head, as does The Cure, Brahms the heart, Rory Gallagher the Passion, Scissor Sisters the feet, etc. An awful lot of music is an expression of anger.

Neil Young is a far cry from Dvorak, but can anyone say that Neil Young is better or worse than Dvorak? They are very different, not even comparable, but they both music forms.

If you like a certain type of music, you will think it is good. If I don't like it, I will think it is rubbish. For music to be good or rubbish, it merely has to be enjoyed or not, and of course the beauty is in ears and mind of the listener.

to kind prove there good recent music, varied too, i posted a thread in praise of 2003. as an oldie who loves the 60's, im not closed off to good recent music.

Examples of good modern music (2004-present) for me are;

Klaxons, Golden Skans the anthem of 2007 and arguably the decade. Funnily enough it probably wasn't even the best song off the Myths of the Near Future album (which for me was one of the best albums of the past decade)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-SJjFcnsGs

Arctic Monkeys, are one of the shining lights of modern day music. Favourite Worst Nightmare, Whatever People Say I Am... are superb albums, the third one (Humbug) isn't regarded that good but it's still a damn good album!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLaeOrDmWQ4

Kasabian, heirs to the Oasis throne and have developed over the years from rookies to a band genuine on the cusp of rock super stardom some may even argue that their already their.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz9siymKwGk

Elbow, for years they have been pounding away making very good record and they have started getting a lot more exposure and Seldom Seen Kid is one of my favourite albums.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL4mywCOJXA

Coldplay, love them or hate them, they are good at what they do and will probably go down as the U2 of this generation. There last album on which they worked with Brian Eno helped them shrug of the tag of being an accountants band to a certain extent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb9X5jMofEo

Editors, there newest record has seen them take a more electronic approach whilst previous albums have had a more melancholic feeling to them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6QMz0Um_kM

Bat For Lashes, both her albums take you places you can't describe. A heavenly voice with so much depth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00ZHah-c0hQ

Empire of the Sun, the kooky Australians are criticised by people for being too outlandish but that's the only slight critics seem to be able to find against them, because they make damn good music. The sonic atmosphere of all there songs is driven by the vocals of Luke Steel, who is more than just a face paint hat wearing showy front man.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a47Y1lCRHlM

The XX, whilst I'm slightly apprehensive in throwing too much praise on the XX, having come across them only a few months ago. I have to take my hat off to them. In a day and age where everything is big and brash, a pop group has the guts to strip away all the nonsense and create minimalistic pop music. Hopefully they will be around for years and years to come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANJb1dzNLXE

La Roux, if you run down my list you'll find there aren't many pop artists in their. It's not that I don't like pop music, at all. I just want pop music to blow me away and like her or not she does. Has the added appeal of being very good live and that is an achievement considering the vocal range she has. From the very first time I heard Quicksand, my faith in pop music was restored after it had waned for a while. Retro yet futuristic at the same time!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kErEUhlPoMU

Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavillion is a great inventive album that does things that other albums don't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGQjyGT1-mc

Delphic, just as last year I had adopted La Roux as my tip for 2009, this year I plumped for Delphic and they didn't disappoint. A very very good album. In fact the only criticism that people can lay at them seems to be that it's too much like New Order and Bloc Party and those comparisons are lazy. The songs are well layered and some of the song writing is mighty impressive for a bunch of no good young men.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6lzgY57s38

Bombay Bicycle Club, just class I had the Blues but shook them loose is a great album and at a very young age to be producing such mature music, one can only imagine what kind of music they'll be producing in years to come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8t2RIes-zKo

Florence and the Machine, what a debut album, such rich depth to her voice. People complain she's too shrill and can't sing, well just go listen to Cosmic Love where her vocal range goes from low to silence to a crescendo of euphoria. Spine tingling, her vocals carry all her songs and what songs they are!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EIeUlvHAiM

Goldfrapp, I think every single young child should be made to listen to a Goldfrapp album, it's educating. In fact Goldfrapp lessons should be put on the curriculum in schools. This is what is right with pop music!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VPyso87fZU

Friendly Fires, a very good and severely underrated first album in my opinion. You only have to listen to their singles Jump in the Pool and Kiss of Life. Energetic, vibrant pop songs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK0H3jEwUYc&feature=fvst

Archie Bronson Outfit, class band that many people have never even heard of them luckily I stumbled upon them a year or so ago. There latest album was just released in March entitled Coconut. Very good album.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chmaBWe7oqI

There are so many others that are worthy of a mention, Amy MacDonald for the way she has matured over two albums. KT Tunstall for her blend of Folk driven acoustic Pop. Then you have Bloc Party, Gorillaz, Killers, Razorlight and hundreds of others that I can't think of off the top of my head.

But my main problem is chart music. A lot of it is just pure drivel and hence why I've lost all interest in it. And what grates with me is that despite the fact that we live in the internet age. Where there is a wealth of options available to us people are still passive and persist on going out and buying what is heavily promoted ala X-factor!

But as far as I'm concerned today's music isn't bad it's just that the good stuff is usually hidden away like a diamond in a coalface and it's up to you to go and search it, instead of waiting to be injected by the Hypodermic Media Needle.

Have a look at this list of
"100 songs that defined the Noughties"
as selected by the Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/m...Noughties.html

huh... totally overlooked dance, there were some utter classics, ok i know eric prydz is in there but its hardly the best resprsentation of a whole genre.