April 24, 2002

2:19 PM

For the first time in forty years, there is not a single UK act on the Billboard top 100 singles chart. A lot of people argue that it's because manfactured crap is interchangable, so there's no need to import it, but plenty of American artists still make it in the UK, so I'm inclined to believe there's something else at work here. Any ideas as to what that something might be?
posted by aaron (71 comments total)

It's because the new Gomez album sucks so much. siiiiigh

(cries)
posted by Marquis at 2:33 PM on April 24, 2002

Hmm...I believe the Brits should be flattered by this news. Most of the Top 40, let alone 100, is fluff. Perhaps this is an indication of music to come. Or not.

Upon Preview, wow Marquis, you haven't heard the CD enough. The new record absolutely rocks, but you need to let it grow on you.
posted by BlueTrain at 2:34 PM on April 24, 2002

What about Cliff Richard?
posted by solistrato at 2:55 PM on April 24, 2002

when Barry Manillow's greatest hits, "ultimate manilow," is hanging steady at #41 (last week #35) there is a definate disturbance in the force.

this is what you get, music industry, when you do everything you can to dissuade rock and roll bands from playing rock and roll.

this is also what you get when theres no reason to buy instead of burning the music. look at the demographic of the top 100 this week: celine, shakira, neil young, and hip hop.

the baby boomers who dont have time to download and burn are represented, and the working class who either dont have burners or high speed access are buying up their favorites like crazy.

meanwhile the college kids who eat up the brit pop are downloading and burning in their dorms.
posted by tsarfan at 2:56 PM on April 24, 2002

"After all, why import rubbish from abroad when you have plenty of rubbish in your own backyard?"

Neil McCormick summed it up well there. I remember reading some interview where the point was made that popular music seems to go in almost 10 year cycles; with a period of really bad, derivitive music before something fresh and new breaks.

I don't remember enough specific details to go digging for a link. Maybe one of the more music-minded Mefiosi remembers this also??
posted by xena at 2:57 PM on April 24, 2002

I just composed a really long argument and the preview timed out. I'm fuming. Summary: US artists still get into the UK charts because of cultural dominance and MTV but it's all fluff like NSync and Britney. It's not as though superior American musicianship is at work here. But UK fluff has to be the fluffiest fluff possible (Spice Girls, Kylie - styled in the UK) in order to make it in the US. But who over the age of 16 actually cares?
posted by Summer at 2:57 PM on April 24, 2002

Excellent point Summer. Very well put.
posted by xena at 2:59 PM on April 24, 2002

I think it's because all the kids are discovering hot new tunes by Wilco!

Of course it's because all of that crap is interchangeable. You have one Destiny's Child, and suddenly you have 50. No Doubt and Pink are essentially the same thing. Then there are the Creedlifehousenickelbackjimmyeatworld and Blink182sum41greendayalienantfarm sounds that are just as stale today as they were when Pearl Jam and NOFX pioneered them with a rougher edge years ago. And all of these bands have a peer pressure knit audience of <18 year olds who would never listen to anything else their local alterative/pop station doesn't deem as cool.

The thing I can't explain is how the Oh Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack sticks in the top ten albums chart for a year and a half. Neither can the record industry. They usually have much tighter control over that. It's like a thorn in their side.
posted by eyeballkid at 3:03 PM on April 24, 2002

what about the divergence is styles? there some distinct differences in stuff like Starsailor, Coldplay, Travis, JJ72, etc.
I haven't done much searching in the charts, but it seems all the latest British music I've been hearing is a lot different stylistically than the punk/power pop/metal/rap we have over here.

(still waiting for a new Rialto album)
posted by black8 at 3:04 PM on April 24, 2002

Popular music has been going downhill since 1977.
posted by Settle at 3:33 PM on April 24, 2002

Celine Dion is No.1 in the UK albums. Barbara Streisand is near the top too. Fuck all the charts.
posted by boneybaloney at 3:37 PM on April 24, 2002

the UK top 40 is, if you have a look, is mostly crap too. I'm beggining to think that singles charts are losing their significance, as their contents are determined by who hypes most, not who plays best.
posted by iain at 3:39 PM on April 24, 2002

Popular music has been going downhill since 1977.

Yeah. But pop music is still going strong.
posted by lbergstr at 3:40 PM on April 24, 2002

That Marilyn Manson cover of 'Tainted Love' (#23 on the UK chart) is either totally ridiculous or unbelievably cool. I can't decide from that short of a preview.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 3:47 PM on April 24, 2002

Had I not been in England a couple of weeks ago, I wouldn't have heard of Gareth Gates. And I must say, his reign at number 1 lasted far too long. I heard his rendition of Unchained Melody on television twice, and the first time I thought he was pretty bad. When I heard it again, I couldn't control myself...I was yelling at him for butchering it and showing no emotion whatsoever.

If you're going to make a name for yourself, at least do it on a song that wasn't good originally and hasn't been redone a thousand times already.
posted by jacobw at 3:55 PM on April 24, 2002

If it was purely about the music, Marshall Crenshaw would be a household name by now...and Prefab Sprout.....and...XTC....and...(heavy sigh).
posted by davebush at 3:59 PM on April 24, 2002

I think there are things at work. 90% of the electoronic music that I listen to comes out of the UK. Drum and Bass, Garage, etc. It leads me to beleive that among some scenes, UK folks are focusing on the music, instead of the market. Not that they don't want money, but I know that a lot of these guys and girls are happy just making a living and having some core dedicated fans. Who knows though, if some company offered a million dollar contract they, probably wouldn't pass up.
posted by tru at 4:06 PM on April 24, 2002

So the idea of Random Moment is cast off?

Due to the disparity of population, size of recording industry in both countries, and every now and then the damn quarter lands on its edge, I am not that surprised. For example, has there every been a time where either Billboard has been only UK acts or vice versa? Christ, they say they could look alike; so why is this piece of Pop Coincidence surprising? It isn't like this record has been going on for years. So far, this is only a week/weak thing. I guess this makes me a Pop Pundit.

Still, I miss Blur.
posted by Dagobert at 4:09 PM on April 24, 2002

I don't think I've bought a US or Brit album yet this year... then again, the last four CDs I've bought have been by Ayumi Hamasaki - I guess I prefer my 'manufactured crap' to be Japanese. ^_-
posted by SenshiNeko at 4:29 PM on April 24, 2002

man, if you are gonna go with the manufactured j-pop, you gotta go with m-flo :)
posted by ejoey at 4:37 PM on April 24, 2002

SenshiNeko... The Last Cat? Watashi-wa wakarimasen.
posted by SweetJesus at 4:41 PM on April 24, 2002

It's funny that I was just looking at the CDs in my vehicle the other day, and noticed that 15 out of the 16 CDs were from British artists, with the only American artist being represented being the Indigo Girls.

Odd to me anyway.
posted by SentientAI at 5:16 PM on April 24, 2002

Let's keep in mind that the charts is 25% based on sales and 75% based on airplay. And thanks to TRL and Pop radio stations (and those supposed "alternative" stations) recycling the same crap hour after hour, it's no wonder why the Top 40 chart looks like this.
posted by jennak at 5:28 PM on April 24, 2002

re: Gomez thread hijack.

BlueTrain, you're wrong. "Shot Shot" is mad-fun, but the rest of the disc is innocuous mainstream humdrum. Doesn't hold a candle to Get Miles or Liquid Skin.
posted by Marquis at 5:29 PM on April 24, 2002

The music worlds about to take a turn for the better, I think. All those 12 year old Britney and Limp Biskit fans are going to grow from squeaky-clean teenyboppers to moody, discontented youth and some as yet unknown genius will become their Lennon/Plant&Page/Cobain. It's the cycle of things.
Remember all us early 90's grungers were probably listening to Duran Duran or Foriegner at age 12.

And that more than geography, explains the state of things right now, musically.
posted by jonmc at 5:43 PM on April 24, 2002

Popular music has been going downhill since 1977.

Actually, I'd put the date at around '73, but the rate of decline seems to be accelerating exponentially.

Pop music used to cut across all kinds of generational and social lines. Maybe it was product of the great musical shakeup of the late '60's and early '70's, but it seems that many of the really good pop songs of the era combined elements of different styles. Look at any top 40 chart from those years, it's not uncommon to see such diverse acts as Johnny Cash, Strawberry Alarm Clock and Dean Martin.

By the end of the '70's, everything was becoming fragmented. Radio stations began to specialize. You can have Disco, or you can have AOR, but you gotta choose, you can't have both.

What we have now is the result of 25 years of stylistic inbreeding. God help us.
posted by groundhog at 6:07 PM on April 24, 2002

Going through my music collection, I find most of my 'recent' music is from the mid-90s up to around 98-99. After 2000 everything went to crap. Then they next wave trend of music will hit, and will be followed by countless boy-bands.
posted by benjh at 6:25 PM on April 24, 2002

Oasis' "Stop Crying Your Heart Out" from the new CD will got top five in America when it comes out, so no worries from Brit pop fans. South's "I Know What It's Like" and Elbow's "Newborn" should be on radio soon, too.

jennak: Only the American chart is that way. The UK Top 40 is based solely on sales, since popular artists (like, for some unexplainable reason, Gareth Gates) routinely sell many hundreds of thousands of singles a week there. In America, popular songs often don't even have a single (partly because of mp3, partly because of the business model).

As a fan of a lot of British music (D&B, two-step, coldplay-style rock, electronica), the reasons for this blip are:

1) US market isn't too interested in electronica (though Minogue is decently big now, and since our pop charts have such a trend toward the good-looking, it wouldn't surprise me to hear acts like Kim Sozzi, Tempo or the new Stradinsky song come out here)
2) Nearly everything I want is out in Britain first, so I can get the songs off audiogalaxy four months before they even come out here (I had the fantastic new Freestylers album on mp3 way back in November).
posted by Kevs at 6:36 PM on April 24, 2002

Yeah, next up, manufactured Wilco-wannabes. I hope. I pray. For if you're going to have a bazillion derivative crappy bands, at least make the original stellar.

It's surprising to me that Oasis didn't make it in the top 100, I thought they had a decent following on our side of the ocean. Hindu Times has been getting airplay here.

Muchmusic just showed the British Music Awards here a few days ago, and all I can say is - the bands here are bad enough, we don't need the Eurodisco version.

As bad as UK fluff is, let's hear it for not having any Nina Hagens or Les Rita Mitsouko's appearing on the alternative periphery, shall we?
posted by Salmonberry at 6:37 PM on April 24, 2002

looking over what i've been listening to lately..... i find that i have been getting WAY too much into emo..

I guess I prefer my 'manufactured crap' to be Japanese.

same here. it's highly irrational, but i feel a lot less guilty listening to pizzicato 5 than that new n'sync/nelly song (which i like for some strange reason.. oh, the horrors!)
posted by lotsofno at 6:47 PM on April 24, 2002

i have been getting WAY too much into emo..

Lest ye forget the sad tale of Jimmy Eat World (Clarity --&gt; Bleed American), even good emo bands are but one CD away from "manufactured crap".

i feel a lot less guilty listening to pizzicato 5

From what I understand, P5 are nobodies in Japan, and it took their success on Matador in the States for anyone in Asia to pay even the slightest attention.
posted by Marquis at 7:21 PM on April 24, 2002

i find that i have been getting WAY too much into emo..

One of us... one of us...
posted by aaronetc at 7:23 PM on April 24, 2002

1. Minogue will only ever be popular in the US because of her ass.

2. There was high quality disco. It may have been stupid but it fulfilled a function quite well - that's why people love it. Although I'm rarely in the mood, I can enjoy Abba or Donna Summer.

Frankly I don't mind all the teen crap and angsty/angry bands out there - they don't merit discussion - the age group they target likes that stuff. What I can't stand are the HUNDREDS UPON THOUSANDS of indistinguishable whining (or whining about whining, or trying to avoid the issue, or more or less being consumed in a world of inescapable irrelevance) rock bands. Take Yo La Tengo. They're pretty good. There are a good 6400 bands who sound like that. This is true for radiohead/starsailor. I can only offer opinion of course, but I have not heard a piece of rock music that I didn't hate for a long time. The White Stripes seduced me with their video, but it wore off.

I hate nobody more than Pete Yorn, or Travis, all of that ilk. Morrissey can and one day will kick both their asses, if he hasn't already. I know a great many people who are really eager to find music that is totally sincere, uncontrived and enjoyable. There isn't very much, although if you're taking enough uppers "Drukqs" is seriously awesome. With that exception, most people settle for crap because it is there.

I think the turning point was seing that video of that song by some british band that decided to lift the cleverer bits of "Candy Says", demonstrating their incapability to write anything worthwhile.

The only answer that I have found to the nonexistance of listenable music being produced for my generation is to say "fuck it" and get very interested in stuff none of my peers can stand - like Japan. Yeah that's right. And I have a Michael Hutchence pinata.
posted by Settle at 8:00 PM on April 24, 2002

1. I AM A YOUNG AMERICAN AND I DECRY THE SORRY STATE OF POPULAR MUSIC HERE AND ABROAD!!!!11

2. I 'VE ONLY GOT ONE [testicle] AND I STILL GOT MY GIRLFRIEND PREGNANT
posted by Settle at 8:01 PM on April 24, 2002

Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Settle and Mr. HYDE. Um, congrats anyway there, Settle.

What I was going to say before I scrolled down to the end of the thread was that it's the quality of any individual work in any genre that's important, not the genre itself. That's why I and Settle can both appreciate some Abba - I'm guessing "Dancing Queen", because it really was a perfect disco song. Likewise, I still think Patsy Cline is a goddess and I still like some individual songs from both Hank Williams', Willie, Wayland and the others, even thought if asked, I'd say I don't like country and western. And why I can think of a few songs from each genre or era that have been mentioned that are still worth listening to today. Yes, the BODY of work produced by Foreigner and Duran Duran, not to mention REO Speedwagon, defined a "bad" musical era, but some of their individual songs were actually pretty darn good! Likewise for the early 90's grunge stuff and some of the later stuff - it's just that it seems right now, even though there's plenty of genres available, there just aren't any great SONGS coming out in any of them.

So, the music world either needs an entirely new genre (which may or may not be a combination/fusion/permutation of one or more that have come before), or an artist to produce the PERFECT song in an existing (but perceived to be lame) genre, or both. And no one, from Hillary Rosen down, will be able to predict what will happen. That's why we should keep listening, because we never know when we will be pleasantly surprised.
posted by yhbc at 8:17 PM on April 24, 2002

Settle's great white hope. btw, I too know a lot of people who "are really eager to find music that is totally sincere, uncontrived and enjoyable". By logical extension these people also revile morrisey
posted by dchase at 8:20 PM on April 24, 2002

From what I understand, P5 are nobodies in Japan, and it took their success on Matador in the States for anyone in Asia to pay even the slightest attention.

It depends who you ask, I guess . . . Just like there are really great bands in the US that I'm sure I've never heard of, most of Shibuya-kei passes under the Japanese national
radar.

But FWIW, my Japanese girlfriend had never heard of p5 until I introduced her to them here in the States.
posted by dogmatic at 8:21 PM on April 24, 2002

By logical extension these people also revile morrisey

Damn straight, dchase. Morrissey is basically a third rate imitation of Ray Davies without brother Dave's power chords behind him.
posted by jonmc at 8:47 PM on April 24, 2002

After reading this posts here, i sometimes get the feelings that people who like the "crap" that is out there on the radio are inferrior to those who don't listen to radio-music, and those people who find off the wall music come off as somewhat of elitest when it comes to what makes up good and crappy music. Sometimes, it appears that people get more into the fact that "Hey, I listen to music thats not on the radio and/or isn't pop" than the fact "Hey, i listen to good music." I listen to the new Nickelback, tantric, greenday, etc music. Does that make my music tastes any worse than another's? I have listened to some of the supossed "great" stuff that nobody hears of but has been mentioned in previoud MeFi posts, and in my humble (and maybe false) opinion, nobody hears it on the radio becase the people i play it for and me simply don't like the music. Somewhere in the midst of all this arguing, the fact that music is all in the eye (or ear) of the beholder, and some of us out there genuinally LIKE the radio music because we like how it sounds.
posted by jmd82 at 8:56 PM on April 24, 2002

That's absolutely true, jmd82. I'm of the opinion that there is no such thing as a "guilty pleasure" when it comes to music. Hell, I listen to some incredibly unhip stuff. And yeah, a lot of the obscure stuff that the MeFi Music Maven's flog is an acquired taste. Some of it, though is extremely commercial-and I mean that in the best sense of the word;hook-laden, catchy, entertaining-but noone plays it(for a variety of reasons) so nobody buys it, which is everyone's loss-which is of course why we promote it here.
posted by jonmc at 9:02 PM on April 24, 2002

You, jmd82, are clearly inferior. Now go out and buy Morrissey and the Smiths, and come back and give us your opinion: Marr or Morrissey, who was the real creative force?

We will also expect a full dissertation on the latest Gomez - smash or trash?
posted by Salmonberry at 9:02 PM on April 24, 2002

We will also expect a full dissertation on the latest Gomez

argh! don't bring it up again!

Marquis continues to cry as his stereo plays and replays the sweetness of 'make no sound', and he tries to ignore the ghastly blue spectre of In Our Gun that sits, grinning wickedly, in the rubbish corner.
posted by Marquis at 9:25 PM on April 24, 2002

I CAN'T believe you don't like that CD. So many great songs, I just wish they were a little longer. Detroit Swing and Ruff Stuff are my favs right now. Gomez could finally afford to buy the great equipment to make some original sounds. They did lay off the guitar a bit, but I consider that cool. The guitar's been done. Guitar mixed with a little electronica rocks hard.
posted by BlueTrain at 9:35 PM on April 24, 2002

What music is unhip?? I think in today's cultural climate, variety is a percieved virtue, and I have nothing against that.

Now, I stand by Andrew WK. Because I think people will like his music, and because he rocks. So you're not embarassing me, mister dchase.

Lastly, assuming Salmonberry wasn't joking:

I believe I am in a position to give my take on the Marr/Morrissey debate. I own two (2) albums by Electronic the band formed by Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner of New Order, around 1994 or so. They are not terribly good, and what is good can be attributed to Sumner or the guest musicians (Shep Pettiboner or whatever). The guitar playing on them is tres Manchester, and it's really well articulated - sort of like Oasis but good.

I believe the Smith's creative force is impossible to define, since their quality lay not solely in Moz's voice or Marr's composition, but in the interaction between the two. Both are very little without eachother - Moz still sells albums because he's the man, and because people love his lyrics, and Marr can basically do whatever he wants for himself or anyone, since he has a reputation as being the best rythm guitarist ever...etc.

But as far as the creative force is concerned, I would lean towards Moz simply because Marr didn't adapt to Bernard Sumner very well, which is pretty damning evidence, simply because Bernard Sumner is the guitarist and lead singer of the Greatest Band of All Time (New Order).

When people think of the Smiths they think of Moz first and Marr second, because the Smiths were very lyrical - one of the few bands I listen to the lyrics of. And when you look at the solo work, you see that it is Morrissey that is going strong - almost liberated in a way, he's more of singer/songwriter than a band's frontman, while Marr is just an excellent guitarist who probably won't ever find anyone as good as Moz to work with again.

LET'S TALK ABOUT AMIGA GFX MY NICKNAME WILL BE WOLFWINGS SHADOWFLIGHT
posted by Settle at 9:38 PM on April 24, 2002

I CRAP FOUR, MAYBE 5 TIMES A DAY
posted by Settle at 9:40 PM on April 24, 2002

I must say I really dislike Gomez. I always feel like a tool when they come up because all the "cool" people like them, but I really just can't stand that guy's voice. The whole way he sings just pisses me off. My musical context: Wilco (and pretty much all alt.country) bores the crap out of me, but I haven't heard the new album and I hear it is a bit of a departure. I like the Smiths, but dislike Morrissey, so I am going to vote for Johnny Marr. I love P5, and a lot of j-pop stuff(even Morning Musume and such), but I never really associated the two. P5 always struck me as an American phenomenon. I want Pete Yorn sliced into 1mm sections and then lit on fire. My favorite band of the moment: Si*se. I crap maybe once every four or five days. What the hell was this thread about anyway?
posted by donkeymon at 9:46 PM on April 24, 2002

Pete Yorn and other shits you have to listen to 4, maybe 5 times daily.

And you know girls like him too. You can just tell. He's like a white indie Usher with a dash of Brian Ferry.
posted by Settle at 9:54 PM on April 24, 2002

"Detrot Swing 66" on the CD is annoying. The live bootleg I've got from a few years ago is vastly superior.

Guitar mixed with a little electronica rocks hard.

Yeah, I agree - we saw touches of this on "Revolutionary Kind" and particularly "Machismo", but frankly, both of those tunes rocked, while the songwriting (musically and lyrically) of In Our Gun is wholly pedestrian. Gruh. Gone is the soul, the swamp, even (for the most part) the thick Tom Waits of Ian's (or is it Ollie's?) voice.

Prior to this release, Gomez were gods. Previous two full-lengths? Classics. Now? No.

(Jesus, what is it with disappointing albums lately? The Eels, Tortoise, Badly Drawn Boy, Mirah, Sloan, Belle and Sebastian, Damien Jurado, Pedro the Lion, REM... heck, even more dubious acts - DMB, JEW, Ben Folds, Lamb, Morcheeba... have all made me sigh in major ways over the past 18 months. God, please don't let the upcoming Sigur Ros, Beck and Coldplay albums follow the same trend... Thank goodness we've got Wilco...)

Oh, and speaking of Tom Waits... In case any of you want the goods on his 2002 albums:

Alice: Classic.
Blood Money: Dud.
posted by Marquis at 9:55 PM on April 24, 2002

It's probably too late in the discussion for this to be relevant any longer, but according to statistics that have been quoted to me, American music sales in the rest of the world are down too. Of course there is much more USA music on the UK charts than UK music on the USA charts, because of America's $$$ dominance, but it is a worldwide trend for more domestic music to sell, as opposed to imports. This is probably because the record companies have decided that more money can be made by exploiting all the local markets around the globe, than by trying to push American product everywhere.
posted by Rebis at 9:55 PM on April 24, 2002

You know I bet the new David Bowie album will suck too...*giggling uncontrolably*....but I give him the benefit of the doubt, 4 maybe 5 times a month.
posted by Settle at 9:57 PM on April 24, 2002

Yeah, i was talking to the girl in my office who forces us to listen to Pete Yawn all the time, ad she freely admitted that he is whiny and unskilled and crappy, but that she liked him because he is cute. He's such a fucking model. I swear some marketing guy drew a picture of the perfect indie-rocker, put an ad in the paper with the picture, and when they found him they slapped an album on him.
posted by donkeymon at 10:00 PM on April 24, 2002

Oh my God, what if the new Slipknot album sucks too?!?
posted by donkeymon at 10:02 PM on April 24, 2002

Dudes, dudes, what's wrong with Pete Yorn? Rolling Stone gave him 4 stars! And RS readers gave him...umm....wait a second, looks like everybody has been given 3 or 4 stars at Rolling Stone. Never mind.

You bastards have got his music going through my head now - "...cause it already isssSSSSSSSSSSSS....."

So what was it you were saying about the new Gomez? I missed that last bit. You hated it....no, wait....
posted by Salmonberry at 10:22 PM on April 24, 2002

Pete Yorn = lazy, less talented J. Mascis. Nuff said.
posted by Ufez Jones at 10:25 PM on April 24, 2002

I agree with the condemnations of Pete Yorn. His "A Girl Like You", however, is quite pretty.
posted by Marquis at 10:42 PM on April 24, 2002

How can anyone fail to adore Ben Folds' album, if only for its opening song, "Annie Waits"? Sure, the novelty fun of the title track wears off all too quickly, but rock solid pop songs like "Gone" and "Zak and Sara" keep the album truckin'. Rockin' the Suburbs literally didn't leave my CD player for a week.

As for artists who don't disappoint: Bjork has yet to let me down...
posted by poseur at 11:08 PM on April 24, 2002

donkeymon: I must say I really dislike Gomez. I always feel like a tool when they come up because all the "cool" people like them, but I really just can't stand that guy's voice.

But wait... they have three vocalists. Ben Ottewell is the sorta Waits-ian one, but Ian Ball and Tom Gray sound nothing like him. As far as the new album goes, I was disappointed--they went a bit overboard on the electronoise. Still, I hope there's a U.S. tour in the cards soon. I'd like to see Clinic in the states, too.
posted by disarray at 11:15 PM on April 24, 2002

i thought it was really interesting that bob dylan's new album won best album of the year in the 2001 Village Voice critics poll. not only did it win, but it won by A LOT.

It's not that I necessarily think that the Voice was way off base for picking Love and Theft, it's just that if a paper as hip and youth-oriented as the Voice is picking a guy who rose to fame in the early 60s as more or less the best pop musician of 2001, you've got to wonder about the quality of modern pop music.

for what it's worth, i see two main problems with pop music today:
1) there has been an anti-virtuoso ethic in pop music since the early 90s. a lot of this was a reaction to the hair bands, who admittedly undermined virtuosity by making it an end in itself (the "watch how fast i can play" syndrome). but virtuosity in combination with musical maturity opens all sorts of musical doors that are simply not available to a musician that only knows basic chords, no matter how good his musical intuition might be.

2) good songwriting is usually dependent on some understanding of functional harmony. unfortunately, music theory has such a bad rap these days that nobody even bothers with it anymore. it's not that you can't break the rules of harmony, but you ought to at least know when and why you're breaking them. most of the bands out their now just string chords together with no sense of overall musical structure and certainly no understanding of how to build a harmonic progression that actually propels the music forward. yes, there are some songwriters that are gifted enough to understand harmony intutively. but most aren't and the result is painfully boring.
posted by boltman at 11:16 PM on April 24, 2002

i thought it was really interesting that bob dylan's new album won best album of the year in the 2001 Village Voice critics poll. not only did it win, but it won by A LOT.

It's not that I necessarily think that the Voice was way off base for picking Love and Theft, it's just that if a paper as hip and youth-oriented as the Voice is picking a guy who rose to fame in the early 60s as more or less the best pop musician of 2001, you've got to wonder about the quality of modern pop music.

for what it's worth, i see two main problems with pop music today:
1) there has been an anti-virtuoso ethic in pop music since the early 90s. a lot of this was a reaction to the hair bands, who admittedly undermined virtuosity by making it an end in itself (the "watch how fast i can play" syndrome). but virtuosity in combination with musical maturity opens all sorts of musical doors that are simply not available to a musician that only knows basic chords, no matter how good his musical intuition might be.

2) good songwriting is usually dependent on some understanding of functional harmony. unfortunately, music theory has such a bad rap these days that nobody even bothers with it anymore. it's not that you can't break the rules of harmony, but you ought to at least know when and why you're breaking them. most of the bands out their now just string chords together with no sense of overall musical structure and certainly no understanding of how to build a harmonic progression that actually propels the music forward. yes, there are some songwriters that are gifted enough to understand harmony intutively. but most aren't and the result is painfully boring.
posted by boltman at 11:17 PM on April 24, 2002

Listen to y2karl's show. Everything in it is better than what you'll find in the top 100.
posted by pracowity at 11:35 PM on April 24, 2002

There's no acounting for taste, or the lack of it...
posted by Mack Twain at 11:36 PM on April 24, 2002

No Doubt was cool

Back when they were cool.
posted by delmoi at 12:34 AM on April 25, 2002

Re: the main topic

This is because a) the new Doves single hasn't been released in the US yet, and b) the new Oasis single hasn't been released in the US yet.

I don't really like the new Oasis single, but hey, it's #1 this week.
posted by wackybrit at 2:46 AM on April 25, 2002

Are they really going to be hits in the US?

The video for the Doves record is fantastic. I can't really say I noticed the song, though.
posted by Grangousier at 2:55 AM on April 25, 2002

jennak said it first: the US singles market is now completely dominated by the influence of radio airplay, which means that it's a long grinding progress up the charts. It makes listening to radio stations here in the US is a completely different experience from back home. It feels as if the same songs are played in a different order for months on end. The British singles chart is based entirely on sales, which means chart positions are squashed into the first couple of weeks, and it's very flash-bang, here today-gone tomorrow.

But the singles market means less and less about what's going on in the world of music. Who buys singles, anyway?
posted by quirkafleeg at 3:33 AM on April 25, 2002

I'll have nothing said against Jimmy Eat World. I saw them in Sheffield over here in the UK recently, and they rawked.

:P
posted by robzster1977 at 6:09 AM on April 25, 2002

Ulfez Jones: J Mascis would kick your ass for even considering that anyone could be lazier than he is.

The problem with all this is that even hated music, if played really well by talented people, is worthy of some notice. Streisand is a great example - I can't stand a single thing she's ever recorded. But take a listen to her then Celine, who many compare. Celine Dion sounds like a spoiled kid singing Happy Birthday off key compared to Streisand.

Likewise Sum41 or bands of that genre. Sum41 actually makes nice pop tunes. But when a supposed punk-ish band can't even play 1/10th as hard as Neil Young did with Crazy Horse, there's a problem there, there's something missing. Even if you can't stand Neil Young, you can admit that the marketing pitch is completely at odds with reality.
posted by mikel at 6:18 AM on April 25, 2002

It feels as if the same songs are played in a different order for months on end.

whatever. they don't change the order.
posted by tolkhan at 6:37 AM on April 25, 2002

Ah yes the Doves. If they could get big in the US, well that would be terrif.
posted by Settle at 10:33 AM on April 25, 2002

I've got it! I have figured it out.

None of the British acts are good enough for ClearChannel.
posted by Salmonberry at 10:37 AM on April 25, 2002

re: the Doves being big in America

Last time they toured here in Canada, the Strokes opened.

oh, how times do change.
posted by Marquis at 11:06 AM on April 25, 2002