indeed... but is that because us oldies havnt grown out of music and gives a market to old acts?

and why is music so bland? have the corporations smothered creativity? or are todays youth really dull?

I think that is partially true. Our generation gew up in the 60s and 70s listening to music continuously and never stopped. so whilst "our" music was alien to our parents in most cases that isn't true of music today.


I think a lot of it is driven by the corportations. They are run by accountants who are driven by short term profit. So if one major label finds an artist who delivers that, whether it is an Ed Sheeran, Adele, or Sam Smith, etc, the other labels fall over themselves to find similar acts to cash in.

Whereas in the past long-term acts such as Pink Floyd, Led Zepplin, The Rolling Stones, etc, were all signed to major labels, many rock acts today are on labels such as Nuclear Blast, Peaceville, KScope, etc, labels that stll believe in developing talent for the long term.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by me 'highlighting' the problem, all I said was I preferred older artists/music and as a 45 year old these were the artists I grew up listening to and I don't have a problem with them recording new music.

As for the 'younger' acts I find them rather bland and uninspiring so I tend to leave them to the young generation.

because pre 90's or so (there was no definite cut off point) pop music was created by the youth for the youth, oldies before then werent so much into pop music. what you/i/we have done is maintain the interest in music produced by our generation.

as such pop music has gone from being primarily a young persons thing, to an art form that all ages are now embracing. i was 20 in 1977, i had a variety of musical styles and fashions to embrace as my generation created or was part of, a vibrant and varied music scene. me/ my family and non of my mates had parents into pop music, the way there is today. my/our parents generations artists werent still going, werent packing sell out tours, and werent selling huge albums.

oldies are still listening to their artists, 20 or more years after 'their' heyday (when they were young and trendy), and why not i hear you cry... why not indeed... i still listen to modern music made by whoever, if i like it...i like it..

but isnt this the problem, the reason why theres no strong youth lead movements? because the parents are now part of the scene that was largely the preserve of the youngsters... ie oldies ruining pop.

So you're saying that you/me etc have ruined pop?

Well I don't agree because i've not got kids so haven't 'forced' them into listening to my music so it's not me personally who has ruined pop if that is the case and I don't have any problem at all with youngsters liking Madonna or whoever as it's great that they can appreciate older acts and if they prefer her to Miley then so be it!

We need to bear in mind that when we were younger there was no internet so it wasn't as easy as it is today to get access to acts other than stuff on TOTP or in the charts and times change don't they? It's totally different now to what it was like when we were young and if Madonna/PSB/Depeche Mode or whoever the oldie(s) might be want to keep making new music then all power to them!

Yep, thats the question i posed and i think ive explained why. Sorry if you disagree, but whether you have kids or not really isnt the point. Im suggesting that old people still following old acts might be responsible for the youth of the day having no identity, no style or fashions, because unlike our times in the past parents are still into music.

The reason parents - and grandparents these days - are still into music is that the music we listened to 40 years ago is still relevant in a way that 40 year-old music wasn't when we were young. No one their teens in the 60s or 70s listened to music from the 20s or 30s. More importantly, no 60s or 70s bands or artists made music that sounded like the music from 40 years earlier, but a lot of modern music is heavily influenced by the music of the past.

So the answer is that if you want parents to stop listening to contemporary music you have to make music that has no influences from the 60s and 70s: no tight harmonies like the Beach Boys, no power chords like the Who, no funky basslines like Motown or Stax, no blues influences, no acoustic guitars, no 4/4 beats...

To be fair there is modern music that doesn't rely on past influences so if you want to stop old people listening to music, that's what you should play. After all, young people shouldn't like music that takes its melodic and rhythmic forms from the pop of the past. They should like weird, atonal, futuristic stuff that makes their parents' ears bleed.

I think some of all generations look to the past for inspiration.

The Andrews Sisters of the forties were modeled on The Boswell Sisters of the Thirties.

The Beach Boys looked to this lot for their close harmonies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE_m...=RDNE_mRjvRr0I


Not sure about Punk. That might be down to listening to a broken washing machine.

Yes, I DO indeed disagree, in fact I STRONGLY disagree!

Why shouldn't I (or anyone else for that matter) listen to music we listened to growing up?There is no way on this earth i'm stopping listening to older music just to please other people.

If artists/bands still want to record new music then why shouldn't they? And why shouldn't they go on tour?

They shouldn't have to retire to please you or anyone else and there is absolutely NO WAY I am taking any responsibility for the music choices of today's youth whether I have kids or not and I say if the youngsters want to listen to older music then let them - by all means. The more the merrier as far as i'm concerned!

You did indeed explain and all I can say is...

Times change!

I've no problem with anyone wanting to listen to music of their own choice.

I do think it's sad that many young people will only listen to contemporary music, say, recorded in the last five years or so.
The problem is that if they want to find out about some fantastic recordings of all genres of all eras, they have to get off their backsides and find it, as no one is going to spoon-feed them with it.

Calm down dear, its only a discussion!

I didnt say you/we should stop, but that do our actions both as fans and the artists themselves by default take the wind out of da kidz motivation to create something new?

Do adults/oldies interest in music make any difference? I dont know why there are no more strong new fashions and styles from todays youth. Maybe its oldies, maybe its because its all been done, maybe they prefer old music, maybe they have just lost the x factor (sic) that inspires them to create.

From my pov, im glad im the age i am, at least i lived through, witnessed, and partook in the great evolution in pop music.

Yeah i agree with you... But im not on a mission to stop us oldies listening to modern music, im questioning whether we are responsible for the lack of strong new genres.

Of course its a chicken and egg scenario.... Is it the old artists who are fuelling oldies interest in music or are they merely responding to market forces? And are older artists still relevant because theres no strong youth culture, or is it the oldies that have smothered creativity just by being here?

Personally, id have thought that a vibrant, interested, creative youth culture could create something new regardless of what us old buggers are doing. So the question is why isnt there?

Sorry!

I'm not having a go at you personally it's just that I find a lot of today's stuff boring and maybe that's why some younger people prefer older acts.

I Feel Love by Donna Summer came on the radio today when I was driving and I got to thinking how amazing that song must have been when it first came out. It must have sounded so fresh, exciting, otherworldly. I honestly can't recall the last time any song came out that had that effect.

The Girl Can't Help It is a good film the first Rock & Roll film to be in colour, Fox was having a go at television etc. It made Jayne Mansfield a star...... but not for long I wish it would come out in Blu-ray at some point. Talk about sleaze funny though https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqz6Y9aHGIQ

Funnily enough it came on the radio about 3 weeks ago and I smiled remembering exactly where I was the first time I heard that song, it did sound very innovative and truly amazing, especially with a pair of headphones on! It was exciting and felt almost dangerous, very new and it seemed there was nothing quite like it at the time.

As an oldie (52) I am recently (last 5 years) discovering albums that I should have been into in the 70's but wasn't (albums like Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy and Bowie's Spiders from Mars album) as I was more into commercial pop after living abroad until 1975 where there was no Abba to be heard The music was more grown up than I was, even though it was .. IS... music of my time, I've just taken a while to appreciate it. For me there isn't much around these days that I would want to buy, although I love pop music, as commercial as it is, and think it has a place in this world, just that it shouldn't be the only place.

The last CD I bought (new release - at the time) was Hopes & Fears by Keane, and that was probably because it sounds very 80's, but also because it was interesting lyrically as well as being very electronic, a sound I do like.

I get excited when I ear songs like Take Me to Church by Hozier (pleased he was nominated for a BRIT) because I like a good lyric and, again, to me he has quite an old sound. I do find that a single or two that interest me by an particular artist is not enough anymore to persuade me to listen to a whole CD of theirs; if I do end up listening to it online, I'm unlikely to pay the money for it. That's probably to do with 2 factors - I'm old and tired and life gets in the way, plus I don't have a lot of spare cash

I do believe, though, and have always believed that there is room enough in the music world - especially now when there are so many ways of accessing music if you're truly interested in listening to something other than the mainstream - for everything and anything; the only people who seem keen on preventing that seem to sadly be the people working in the upper echelons of the music industry who churn out generic pop songs by pretty boy bands every other week. Heck, there's room for them, but save everybody else a seat!

Sorry, not sure that makes much sense, but that's my tuppence worth

I thought there was plenty of that in the 60s and 70s as well!

Maybe it is just possible that all bases have been covered and it's increasingly hard to come up with music that is not derivative and can gain an audience?

I thought Radiohead did some interesting stuff with Kid A, Amnesiac and King of Limbs but it doesn't seem to have caught on....

She was the "Queen of Disco" but I love this by her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3TH_NeASnc

Kids are into games and phones. Music won't be as important to a lot of the younger generation as it was to us. It's usually not even a tangible comodity, often being a download that was under a quid or possibly free and might not even get played on a hifi system - just on some mobile device via headphones. People don't necessarily see or know what you are buying or listening to.

What could you not separate a teen from? For me it would have been my record colllection but now it would likely be a phone or games console.

Doesn't a single track cost something like 79p to buy as an mp3? That's the price of a can of soup. In the late 70's as a kid, 7" singles were costing me 75p each. That was the price of half a dozen American comics. Now six comics would probably be £15+ and yet in 2015 I'm grumbling that a 7" will often set me back £6 upwards.

If a song costs anything from nothing at all to around a pound (downloaded) how can young people value music? It's a fraction of the price of a cup of coffee.

In the seventies, kids who didn't dress in their chosen youth cult style (punk, rocker, mod etc.) were square. We didn't wear designer gear then. We weren't that fashionable really. We had jeans with a fade line where they'd been 'let down' when we had a growth spurt. Now it's all about labels and being conspicuously fashionable is the norm for the young. Maybe we didn't have much in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and wanted something to identify with; to define us. Now people live on credit and have everything available and what seems to be cool now to many is the mainstream capitalist dream: expensive goods.

Rather immaturely, when I was young you tended to have to be in a camp and declare your dislike of everything else. Now that doesn't seem so much to be the case. Everything has sort of blended, from genres to people's tastes. It's easier to like a bit of everything. As a teen I'd have frowned on that but now I look at people who only like one narrow field of music with suspicion.

Where are great the songwriters now? There's only so far a 'vibe' will carry you. A fashionable production sound. Where is the substance? The numerous covers of recent compositions? I've been listening to mostly 60s and 70s Soul these last couple of months. The song-writing... The arrangements... The vocals...

What music genre that has existed for any length of time is in rude health right now? I don't believe we've been at a high point of any genre this century. What is there still to do? Much that is worth doing has (in my opinion) been done. No genres originated since the nineties are a patch on what we already had and those working within longer established genres are often trying to evoke the musical highs of earlier times.

Artists are influenced by what they hear, so those that are listening to the current mainstream can't be expected to produce much worth listening to.

Older people are still buying music - perhaps more than they did traditonally. They don't just give up when they hit thirty and just switch the radio on for that bit of noise. I'd say a great many current reissue labels (and I buy a lot of reissues of older music) are expecting to shift units to mature audiences. Many of the more serious collectors I know are fifty or older...



The singers and bands may often have been young but the composers, producers and managers were, and still are, older. Quite a lot of pop stars in the 70s would have struck me as being rather old and unfashionable/square (but I don't think it mattered - people bought on the strength of the music). Actually I think the reverse of what you are saying is true - now, far more than ever you don't get to be a pop act unless you're slim, trendy and under 25. People buy an image they see in a video.


Those who are listening and consuming are not part of the creative process so they aren't ruining anything. I doubt most of them are listening to contemporary pop anyway, they'll be listening to older or more genre-specific stuff mainly, I'd think.

Anyway, this idea of ruining pop: I'm fairly sure you were arguing not so long ago that contemporary pop is as good as pop ever was, whereas I consider it to be at an all time low. I do think that generally it is only the young who can tolerate it whereas older mainstream pop is more widely appreciated by people of all ages. I don't really 'do' pop but I can see why people would prefer a song they can hum afterwards, even a naff old cheesy one, than some modern production tour-de-force that you cant recall as soon as it's over.

Kids can go on Wiki or You Tube and check out anything from the past. It was much harder for us to do that in the seventies, so no wonder as youths, we didn't really listen to sounds from the past all that much.

Old stuff is cool. Cars, TV programmes, clothes, furniture, music. There is so much craft and style and authenticity to much of it compared to the cynical, priced-down, popped out product of today. We live in a throwaway age where little is valued and there is little to value. Very little of what is around now will become classic. It is largely shoddy or derivative or uninspired. It's been a fairly rubbish century for popular culture and will continue thus I believe.


Since, as you believe strong new genres etc. are always created by the very young (and I don't agree), us oldsters' ideas about music and what we listen to would be irrelevant to them. Besides, it's not my fault that the charts are full of crud! It appalls me.


Older people didn't recommence listening to music; they never stopped. If pop music can't cope with forty-somethings etc. being listeners then it is a very lame duck indeed. I don't see why artists should cease to be relevant or listened to if they have a fine body of work. Plenty of them are relevant because they were in the right place at the right time and captured many imaginations and sales. As I mentioned, people can find almost anything now via the web, previous generations couldn't. Why not listen to the artists from the genres you enjoy that appeal the most, rather than just whoever is contemporary? We're not in the middle of some great musical era at the moment for any style as far as I can hear.


Well let's start with what it's not: it's not our fault!

I listen to Hip Hop. Not always but sometimes. I love the genre but I also despise it. I'd have a stupid number of Hip Hop albums but most of the artists I like are over forty or rapidly approaching it. Plenty are older than me. I'm not hearing that many younger MCs I want to listen to - producers maybe but not MCs. Most of the young guys that get the big push are, nihilistic, moronic wannabe thugs.

I love Soul music. Modern R&B I enjoyed in the 90s. I can't find much that like from recent times (I do like Neo Soul however). Again, what R&B gets pushed is often nihilistic sex and party music.

When I was a kid I liked the Sex Pistols and The Stranglers. They could be explicit at times but they had good riffs and melodies and lyrics. Some Punk music was political, likewise Hip Hop, Soul, Reggae. Some of the Hip Hop I listen to is very explicit but not in a totally gratuitous, pointless way. The current R&B and Hip Hop that gets the airplay is just sexually explicit and materialistic so much of the time. There is no strong message - fall in love, sock it to the man, smash the state - whatever. Just explicit lyrics to the point of boredom, saying absolutely sweet FA. I watched Kanye West perform on the Brits, so much of the track's audio was dropped out due to swearing that they might as well have not played it. Between rappers swearing incessantly to R&B queens shaking their scantily-clad asses with the same frequency, it's just boring and cringe-worthy.

The reason I'm talking about black music because those are the genres I listen to and love. The black music that gets the hype now and pushed into the mainstream is unpleasant - and that pisses me off. There is very little love or social conscience, just the worse excesses of vulgarity and crassness. I don't see much culture in it.

She was so much more. A very good and versatile singer and quite underrated. I was very disappointed when she started working with Stock, Aitken & Waterman.

Donna's version of Lush Life for Quincy Jones:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xJBpVgj0cw

Dim All the Lights:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaaxld1ugu0

Bad Girls (Side C):
On My Honor (Summer, Faltermeyer, Bruce Sudano)
There Will Always Be a You (Summer)
All Through the Night (Summer, Bruce Roberts)
My Baby Understands (Summer)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVunQUu2f9E

'Pop Music' (The Top40) is pretty much irrelevant to most 15-25 year olds. Young people are still very much interested in making music and listening to music but it's all become a lot more personal. With apps/websites like Soundcloud, Spotify, Last Fm, 8tracks, IndieShuffle, the thousands of YouTube channels promoting new music etc. and the fact most young people have a smartphone with instant access to all music that has ever been made and is being made, young people are searching out and selecting their own music, playlists unique to their own very specific taste. Great music is definitely still being made, especially by young people but because of the way young people find their music and because of how personal it is now, these artists/producers are rarely going to build up a big enough fanbase to get big and be heard by everyone, unless the radio picks up on them. I can't believe that people here think young people have become disinterested in listening to and making music, when it's quite the opposite. With all these different ways of distributing music, I'd say that actually too many young people are making music and that's really part of the problem.

In 2011 the approx UK population was 63,182,000, obviously it's more than that now but the hugest selling album of 2014 (Ed Sheeran) sold 1,689,000 copies. Really, that is not a huge amount of people and I'm sure that it's buyers weren't just young people. Many young people despise the mainstream music industry of today, the evidence of that is all over YouTube and most of them only click on certain Music Videos, just to leave a comment about how disgusted they are with mainstream music and all these twerking videos. Because of this the big companies are playing it very safe with the music they put out. They don't want to lose the little fanbase they actually have left and fear taking risks might just do that and their videos have become increasingly more sexualised than ever, just to pull people in but it's not working. Yeah, they might visit the video but they sure as hell aren't buying the crappy music that accompanies it.

Things are just different today, they just are. Kids don't feel as though they need to fit in the same way anymore. The up and coming generation and the current youth are much more accepting of eachother than past generations and they mix with all kinds of people, with all kinds of music taste, sexuality, fashion, interests etc.

Errmm... Yeah I don't know where I'm going with this now, haven't slept all night so I'm just kind of rambling.

The days of good and original music being played on the radio and youth movements are gone and they're never coming back.

i agree, but why is todays stuff boring?


well like 'unique' stated earlier, maybe its all been done within the constraints of what musical instruments and chord progressions are available or suited to pop... so 'i feel love' cannot be rediscovered as that was a groundbreaking track...but the ground has been broken now.

I don't know!

I do like one or two songs and I think the current Mark Ronson album is decent but apart from that most of today's stuff just doesn't do it for me like the old stuff does so I prefer to stick to music by artists I grew up listening to, there is an actual reason I chose this username you know!

really? music isnt as important?.. oh ok... i take your point...


indeed, but i dont know why todays youth wouldnt want something to define them... music and fashion..



disagree... the trends and fashions were youth lead. producers and managers facilitated what the young popstars wanted to do. the genre defining tracks of any movement were composed by the young artists.


image has always been a big part player in any genre, although weight wasnt an issue, nor 'sexiness' , the cut of your hair, the clothes you wore were specific to the trendy music you were producing. you had to be 'cool' (although cool was different for different genres of music).


isnt that the problem though?.. that theres so much 'older' music being consumed by older generations, they do make an impact on mainstream... by doing so the young no longer see the charts as their domain. kids dont want to party with their parents.


two different things here..... yes i think that the 'pop' product is as good if not better then it ever was... but thats 'pop' as opposed to the broader term of 'pop' in which previously there were strong new genres. if you get what i mean...

theres always been twee non specific pop in the charts... historically there were also strong genres alongside ordinary pop... im trying to seperate ordinary pop (which id suggest is as good as its ever been) and strong trendy pop for the 'cool kids' , the trendies, the fashionable those who embraced the styles like merseybeat, psychodelia,glam, punk, new romantic etc etc etc... so from a simple pop pov, i do think its as strong as ever...but theres no generation definging pop fashions/trends/genres and from that pov, i agree, its at an all time low.



very young?..... id suggest 18-25 roughly... and yes i strongly assert fashions/genres were youth lead, youth created, . they were a rebellion lead idea kicking against adult authority.

what im suggesting might be the case now is that the adults have stolen (by sticking with pop music into old age) the young persons domain for rebellion...


think theres a mixture of both tbh... i think when people get married and have kids pop music becomes irrelevant as music and time moves on, personal circumstances change. then 'take that' or someone reunites and the fans return. others like depeche mode just carry on.


because as ive just said... the great genres were about rebellion, identity, something the generation of the day could call their own, and not the boring adult music mums n dads like... now thats not saying older musicians dont produce great music, but what does it say to the younger music fans?...

Gerry Marsden of Gerry and the Pacemakers once said that the reason music from the 60's has remained popular is because most of it is very different. No one knew what they were doing, nothing was manufactured hence all the variations. We then went through a manufacturing process that made most artists boring and bland. This year I hope is the start of a turnaround with singer songwriters such as Ed Sheeran, George Ezra, Paloma Faith etc leading the way.