Gaming World Forums
General Category => Entertainment and Media => Topic started by: ThugTears666 on September 14, 2008, 11:22:01 am
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Well I promised that we would start Topic of the Week discussions again so here is the first in the new series...
It seems like the media is constantly pushing the limit of moral values and what they will use to sell a product to a consumer. Music is one of these products and a multi-million dollar industry, recently I read in a survey it is the number one most important entertainment source to consumers. Obviously businesses want to capitalize on this interest and as the industry continues to grow they constantly need think of new ways to sell an item. Many people look back on previous years such as the 90's or 70's as the classic musicial era in which creativity and innovation were at an all time high.
So my question is: Do you think mainstream music is consistently becoming 'worse'?
New popular music has become worse???
or there will always be good and bad?
apologies if my writing isn't totally up to scratch, i am pretty tired
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The development of mass media and marketing are pretty much the reason why the presentation of some of it is so overstimulating to the point of being repulsive to anyone with any sort of appreciation for subtlety. The actual content basically amounts to simple melodies/rhythms with mediocre("accessible") lyrics about feelings/relationships, which has more-or-less always been the case for popular music.
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no, taste is just becoming worse
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no, taste is just becoming worse
There's a lot of shit on the radio these days and not a lot of good, but there aren't really any "good old days" of mainstream radio that we can look back on. There's always been more crap than good and a lot of people end up saying they like the crap because all they listen to is the radio and they think that's a good example. The music industry has realized that and are mass producing the garbage so there's a lot more variety of horrible shit, and it's probably going to keep on down that road. It's okay, because our option is to not listen to the popular radio stations for music. Let the masses without an ear listen to the garbage that is most Pop Rock and R&B. Most of them will grow out of it anyway.
But even if mainstream music was changed to be the BEST EXAMPLE of musical and lyrical writing, there would still be certain people who call it shit just because it's mainstream. There's never any pleasing people who will often disown a band they used to love because now everyone listens to it.
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There's always been more crap than good
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well obviously for every James Brown you're going to have 10 Chubby Checkers heh
granted I think that top40 music has gone way downhill... I mean at least in the 50s and 60s they used real instruments with real musicians 100% of the time heh. but thats just my perspective on it because its becoming harder and harder for actual musicians to make it in the music industry outside of niche/local markets heh
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well obviously for every James Brown you're going to have 10 Chubby Checkers heh
granted I think that top40 music has gone way downhill... I mean at least in the 50s and 60s they used real instruments with real musicians 100% of the time heh. but thats just my perspective on it because its becoming harder and harder for actual musicians to make it in the music industry outside of niche/local markets heh
If they could've, I bet they woulda sequenced everything. Its cheaper.
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nah its been this bad for a while now. seriously, do you remember the mid to late 90s? all i LISTENED to was terrible music
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hey bro you get that new orgy cd
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dont forget the millions of forgettable big band music groups in the 1920s or whenever the fuck.
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I think music goes through phases between decades and we're just in an off decade. I think in 20 years or whatever everyone is going to look at the music from the 2000's like we look at the music from the 80's.
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I'm just tired of hearing the same fucking song 100 times a day. I swear I heard Low like 20 times on the radio[/rant]
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i can't comment on this much because i hardly ever listen to radio. i'm serious about this!
though the current mainstream sound of rap is pretty horrible. seriously the synth sounds are horrible and sometimes theres barely any melody going on other than the minimalistic bass and the drum machine. eminem, destiny's child http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17BfDEwLyXc, timbaland (i might be wrong on this, you guys know this better than i do!) etc.
I want to add that i'm not like "timbaland *spits*", this is just a conclusion i have done by what he has done with justin timberlake and madonna
nirvana fucki*g rules!!
dont forget the millions of forgettable big band music groups in the 1920s or whenever the fuck.
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timberlake's album was pretty layered and ruled you chose the wrong name to drop!!!
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*explodes*
yeah i seriously haven't listened much to rap in general (some from the 80's but...) but i swear the rap in the radio sounds carbage SORRY STEE*explodes again*
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well yeah everyone knows that mainstream music has generally always sucked; the question is whether it's getting worse. I think it is.
The most obvious thing I can point to as an example would be rap music. In the 90s shit like Wu-Tang, Biggie, Tupac, Nas, etc. were mainstream and they were actually very good. Nowadays Soulja Boy and Lil Jon and Lil Wayne are the mainstream.
I'd have to agree with you here, maybe we are just having an "off decade". Literally everything I see on tv is rubbish.
timberlake's album was pretty layered and ruled you chose the wrong name to drop!!!
Haha yeah I'll be pretty controversial and agree with you there, it actually sounded pretty original whether you like the music or not.
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There is still good rap being made...it's just that unfortunately people would rather listen to T-Pain's computerized voice on the radio than someone like Nas or Lupe. :(
Though I do think it's funny that a lot of mainstream rap artists these days have #1 singles that go on for weeks (Flo Rida), yet their albums still struggle selling above 200,000k. Soulja Boy was surprisingly successful though. Never thought he would have another hit.
But since we're talking about mainstream pop too, I think Rihanna's music would be 100x better if they were sung by someone else (with the exception of Umbrella). Her voice can get hard on the ears when it comes to her ballads... *shudder*
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well i dunno. i like a lot of the 80's pop music stuff. the rnb and soul music from that time is great, it's what my parents and uncles/aunts all listen to so i guess i have it wrapped up with when i was little but listen to that stuff just fills me up with PURE JOY. i don't really know much about mainstream music, though i don't think it is getting worse. i think there are trends which are worse, more indulgent and more false, than others and right now we've got a lot of that. there are other ones which are just annoying as fuck like pop-punk or stuff like creed and nickelback.
basically i think all white mainstream music is pretty cringeworthy and only about half of black mainstream music is. i haven't put much thought into that conclusion.
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well yeah everyone knows that mainstream music has generally always sucked; the question is whether it's getting worse. I think it is.
The most obvious thing I can point to as an example would be rap music. In the 90s shit like Wu-Tang, Biggie, Tupac, Nas, etc. were mainstream and they were actually very good. Nowadays Soulja Boy and Lil Jon and Lil Wayne are the mainstream.
well, just because mainstream rap has gotten worse doesn't mean mainstream music as a whole is getting worse. fall out boy is a terrible band, but they're definitely not as bad as limp bizkit!
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well yeah everyone knows that mainstream music has generally always sucked; the question is whether it's getting worse. I think it is.
The most obvious thing I can point to as an example would be rap music. In the 90s shit like Wu-Tang, Biggie, Tupac, Nas, etc. were mainstream and they were actually very good. Nowadays Soulja Boy and Lil Jon and Lil Wayne are the mainstream.
this is true but i remember so much terrible rap music
like novelty rap and mc hammer and (i dont mean it i swear i actually love them) jock jams and whatever else
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I find it difficult to find mainstream music that I actually like. I'm not sure about America, but in Australia even stuff that is pretty much straight pop (i.e. R.E.M., who I like) really never get airplay and if they do, it's stuff like 'Losing My Religion'. Maybe the question should be 'are music videos getting worse', because all I see when I turn on to one of those music video shows is black guys wearing too-big clothes and black girls wearing too-small clothes. It disgusts me that the mainstream music industry has become so close to creating stupidly large amounts of sex appeal.
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black guys wearing too-big clothes
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see i wish music videos were more sexually appealing, what does this tell us?
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that ha ha ha you are big man withbig penis
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black guys wearing too-big clothes
what about this is noteworthy
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obviously i get what he is saying but...
a) sounds like the whitest thing ever written
b) i dont think hip hop fashion is really part of the problem!
those damned black folk and their baggy clothes!
its more the commercialization, baggy clothes have been around a while fyi
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yeah but i dont think he was saying baggy clothes are part of the problem, just that they are endemic to rap videos, which are almost universally terrible/one-dimensional/completely homogeneous
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i was using my third eye so i assumed he meant both, just the way it was written
black guys and baggy clothes
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lmao Blame it on the black folk.
Maybe the question should be 'are music videos getting worse', because all I see when I turn on to one of those music video shows is black guys wearing too-big clothes and black girls wearing too-small clothes.
Because no other genre of music sells sex right?
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have you seen an REM video?
those are like soft porn.
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http://www.complex.com/blogs/2008/09/15/who-is-soulja-boys-white-rapper/
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He looks like Simon Pegg.
Before going by White Tee, Taylor rapped under the name “Taylorachi.” Back in 2006, he released a few songs on the internet with a friend named Lil’ Weenus.
Oh my God.
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I don't think I'm old enough / have been listening to music long enough to know whether it's getting worse tbh. Possibly the fact that shitty bands/etc tend to be forgettable creates the impression that everything was better in the old days because we forget the terrible homogeneous mass of popular music that came along with what we collectively remember about decade xyz.
Mainstream music definitely has the capacity to get a lot more boring though imo. Someone was talking to me the other day about this 'great new iTunes 8 feature!' that goes through your music collection and makes you a playlist similar to song (x). It also happens to recommend you exciting new songs to buy from iTunes store and compile information about what you listen to and send it back to Apple. It occurs to me that because iTunes is so widespread, it pretty much allows them to watch exactly what is going on in terms of trends in mainstream music up to the minute and a) manipulate what people listen to b) pass this information on to producers of mainstream music so they know pretty much exactly what to produce to pacify the market and make lots of $$$ (by selling their songs on iTunes store!). Perhaps this is a paranoid computerconspiracy theorist tangent but if I had this kind of information/access at my fingertips, I'd love to abuse it to ruin music forever for my personal amusement sooo.
I also seem to remember that some company over in Japan made a virtual singer that was used to sing in some commercial Jpop songs or something so the idea of synthesizing large amounts of comfort music using statistics and the wide availability of peoples' innermost feelings via blogs etc appeals to me as a pretty funny idea, as a programmer. Perhaps if someone better equipped / funded / trained shares me sense of humour, computers producing untold amounts of statistically optimised for sale pop music will become a reality.
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I don't think it's getting progressively worse. I think it's just the effect of looking back through time, and the good stuff is all memorable while the shitty music is ultimately forgettable. You look back at badass bands like Led Zep, Pink Floyd, and The Beatles, but you forget about all the one-hit wonders that were churned out back then. Record companies were signing shallow, dime-a-dozen bands (the Monkees) to capitalize on whatever innovation was going on at the time. You look at every "good" band or artist, the ones that were deep and innovative, you'll find scores of mediocre or downright terrible followers. It's just we weren't there to be assaulted daily by the Top 40 of the time.
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in retrospect, led zeppelin was probably one of the worst things to happen to music.
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in retrospect, led zeppelin was probably one of the worst things to happen to music.
why
(i do not know anything about led zeppelin beyond CLASSIC ROCK and that i dont really like them but yeah)
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i love led zeppelin but i (think i) see what he's talking about. led zeppelin was the inspiration for a lot of the 80s hair bands and WHOO STADIUM ROCKERS!!! and shit, sort of like how nirvana was the inspiration for SEETHER and STAIND and all those other awful bands.
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in retrospect, led zeppelin was probably one of the worst things to happen to music.
whaaaaaaaaaaaat
I know they're not everybody's cup of tea, but I thought they were highly innovative. I listen to them today, and they still sound very fresh and unique, even though they're overplayed on classic rock stations. Sure, some shitty bands spawned in their wake (AC DC, and I guess you could say hair metal in general), but that can be said about anybody. They took the typical blues rock and roll of the day, and really rocked out with it, plus kept up their own eerie, fantastic quality all along the way.
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the good stuff is all memorable while the shitty music is ultimately forgettable.
Sure, but what's going to be memorable from say, the 2000s? (as in, 2000-2010)
lmao Blame it on the black folk.
Because no other genre of music sells sex right?
Just using hip hop/rap as an example because that's the main thing I see on music video shows.
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in retrospect, led zeppelin was probably one of the worst things to happen to music.
this is awesome
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They took the typical blues rock and roll of the day, and really rocked out with it, plus kept up their own eerie, fantastic quality all along the way.
So did about sixty million other bands in the sixties.
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aaaahahahahahahaha that was unexpected Chef!
*raises from a chair like a huge monstrous hurricane, thundering WHAT.
*cracks knuckle
but it's OK i see what you mean. I'll explain more myself:
Led Zeppelin did good music from wide variety of genres, mostly consisting of heavy/hard bluesrock and folk rock, with twists of blues, funk, ballads etc.
The thing is though that they influenced the future generations with their long epics and stage appearance (well, who didn't by then). This is especially the case with the 80's stadium/heavy metal bands. (thank god they didn't adopt the ridiculous, bloated mysticism of zeppelin urgh)
I'll list the most obvious.
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Stairway to Heaven - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mNjd-hnxbs
Now this is the most obvious. I can't imagine any other songs inspiring future songs such as Nothing Else Matters than this. If you haven't already heard of it then check it then. It's a long, dynamically ascending folkrock/rockballad - song.
No Quarter - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae-LDQVrDUY
No Quarter, a long dream-like epic, is one of the piano-driven songs - has a huge impact upon prog bands ever since.
Kashmir - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTaOvzZKRxA
The constant distort-drone, the hypnotically repeating gigariff (my own term, heh.... see: Blue Öyster Cult - Godzilla) - I think this song has definitely affected the heavy metal genre. One of the well-known songs, a long raga-drone-heavyrock song.
The next two songs are the most obvious, I'm sure you notice.
The Rover - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SihzNpiBPL8
aahahaha if this isn't heavy metal then i don't know what is! Don't get me wrong - this song is nice and the riff is very effective. It's been rumoured that Van Halen performed this song along with "Rock and Roll" and "Hots On For Nowhere" - if you are stupid but brave you can find van halen's rover from youtube........urgh
Achilles Last Stand - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6F5U_fgLOA
And this is pretty obvious metal ballad-epic of sort. A great song, nonetheless.
Note: In the Light is quite metal in some aspects, especially the bootleg version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRCJLcI2EhI&feature=related
Sooooooooooo, guys. These five songs are 6,25% of their total studio songs. Even if you add some more songs that has more indirect influence - Immigrant Song, Dazed & Confused, Sick Again, In My Time of Dying, For Your Life, In the Evening - the ratio still hangs around ~14% (YES I DID COUNT). That's like the very tip of the iceberg. Mostly they were about heavy bluesrock and folkrock. (the latter being my influence)
A ridiculously long, fan-like response yeah but i wanted to throw this out to demonstrate Chef's post (i guess? has yet to response) and to make sure you understand that Led Zeppelin isn't really about heavy metal/glam-stadium rock like Guns'n'Roses or Lef Deppard.
I really really hope this didn't came out like a stupid rant from a fan, i just happen to know everything (w/ pros and cons) of the band.
Yes, i was few years ago (and still am) a big Led Zeppelin fan. Nowdays i pretty much listen to quite variety of music. Right now, the big influences are Jeff Buckley and Elliott Smith.
Apologies for bad grammar.
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aahahah i already regret posting that, i'm sorry chef sorry guys jesus i hate my posts
nah, fuck all the haters! GET THE LED OUT 24/7, bro, ON 96.1 THE ROCKETTTTTT....
haha i think i understand all the references. let's not turn this topic into lz topic, ok buddy?
Let's just talk about the topic.
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nah, fuck all the haters! GET THE LED OUT 24/7, bro, ON 96.1 THE ROCKETTTTTT....
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Sure, but what's going to be memorable from say, the 2000s? (as in, 2000-2010)
...Umbrella?
But who knows, 2009 and 2010 could turn out to be really awesome, and there were several great material released during this decade. I mean, I doubt we'll have any legendary superstars from this era, but still, not every mainstream artist here is bad.
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why
(i do not know anything about led zeppelin beyond CLASSIC ROCK and that i dont really like them but yeah)
well led zeppelin is pretty tolerable! ramci posted a lot of reasons why led zeppelin is a band that i can appreciate in small doses. the problem is that led zeppelin spawned about a decade of stadium rock and hair metal.
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o. didn't they also influence a ton of other good shit, though? you gotta take the good with the bad!
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no there has never been a good band inspired by led zeppelin.
im pretty sure of this.
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i used to post on a metal forum that said immigrant song was the first viking metal song, so nope.
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allmusic lists the mars volta as a band they influenced......
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and tom morello lists jimmy page as a major influence too....
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:fogetbackflip: WELL DON'T WORRY GUYS I WILL PROVE YOU WRONG ON THAT ONE *hits the dong to the keyboard*
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no i don't think mainstream music has gotten worse. bands were just as shit in the old days. led zeppelin being a good example yeah.
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no i don't think mainstream music has gotten worse. bands were just as shit in the old days. led zeppelin being a good example yeah.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeswZaReE0I
i agree
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i used to post on a metal forum that said immigrant song was the first viking metal song, so nope.
arent you a stoner doom murder head???
i bet d. meadow blasts zeppelin in their free time
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people just tend to respect old stuff more because it's old and their dads listened to it. i'm sorry but your dad was a fan of the ne-yo of the 70s.
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Yeah, I agree with Holm. People who listen to oldies radio go "ah, the good old days" but that's because they play the good stuff from back then rather than the thousands upon thousands of tracks consisting of totally forgettable, disposable stuff that were around.
Mainstream music isn't great but I don't think it's getting worse. As someone (Headphonics I think) mentioned, much of the 90s was disgustingly bad in retrospect. Shoot me if you want but I'd take Soulja Boy and Lil Wayne over S Club 7 and the Vengaboyz anyday.
I think there's been some bright lights for pop music as of late, but a lot of the better stuff really blurs the lines and is only presented as pop because it's popular rather than because it fits that plastic, shiny bubblegum bullshit feel of most generic pop stuff. But hey pop is just popular music so fff. Stuff like Justin Timberlake (yes his album was really good fk u), Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse, M.I.A, LCD Soundsystem, The Presets and so on are all really popular (albeit some only among certain circles of mainstream music listeners, like the 'indie' crowd in Australia who listen to the same crap as everyone else who goes to uni but like to think they're better than the top 40 crowd, even if most of the songs they like are in the top 40, just not played on the bubblegum stations) groups who make some genuinely good music. It's different, sure, but I don't think it's necessarily way worse than it's ever been.
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i'd rather hear tpaine's autotuned voice a thousand times than a single reo speedwagon song, and if you have taste at all you agree with me...
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People argue that the auto-tune thing means LESS TALENT IN THE STUDIO and sure, in terms of raw vocals this is true. But T-Pain writes his own stuff which is more than I can say for most pop artists!
So yeah he can't really sing but he knows how to write a song which makes up for it imo
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what does it matter as long as it sounds good
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autotune rules because it reminds me of zapp and roger voiceboxing.
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i'd rather hear tpaine's autotuned voice a thousand times than a single reo speedwagon song, and if you have taste at all you agree with me...
i'm gonna keep on lovin you
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I think one of the main differences between mainstream music today and older music is that the older stuff has more natural melodic and chordal tendencies. This makes it sound more composed and thus more respectable... but not always better.
Most mainstream music fights these natural tendencies in an attempt to sound more fresh.
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Also, the other main difference is musicianship... both in style and quality.
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what is a T-Pain
also a while back I listened to some 70's-60's retro station on Winamp and there were a bunch of bands nobody would know like who the hell were THE ORANGUTANS and they all sounded like hey I Wanna Hold Your Hand was a really cool song let's make every single one of our songs like that
Also I don't think it's so much the music itself that's annoying it's that it's fucking everywhere and it INSISTS UPON ITSELF I know Peter from Family Guy made that up but I think I know what he means
Edit: Seriously wtf is a T-Pain at least Ice-T was a real thing and it was clever wordplay
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what is a T-Pain
a nickname. Who says all nicknames have to make sense or be some sort of 'clever' wordplay that everyone understands? It probably has something to do with the facts that he's from Tallahassee and at one point or another brought the pain.
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Man, remember "beach" rock bands from the 60's? They are always featured in terrible vintage beach horror movies. A classic is the Horror Of Party Beach. Just looked it up, it was the Del-Aires.
(http://gamingw.net/pubaccess/26026/hopb2.JPG)
Awful, awful stuff.
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a nickname. Who says all nicknames have to make sense or be some sort of 'clever' wordplay that everyone understands? It probably has something to do with the facts that he's from Tallahassee and at one point or another brought the pain.
no rappers should all have puns like 2pac...um...how about Notorious B.I.G. ....um...
VANILLA ICE?????THE ICE IS WHITE???
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Maybe it's just that those are the ones I remember (rappers with puns in their names)
but even with your explanation I think T-pain sounds like MAX PAYNE or something
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you said ICE-T what other rappers have pun names.
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heh Big als got a thing or two to say about todays music....
oh you forgot retards attempting poetry........
hope yall got enlightened im out
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That fat cunt is fucking awful
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big al is racist a fuck. he actually made a video IM NOT RACIST BUT _____
pretty suiting that he is like the leader of anime and games on youtube
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T-Pain's music is beyond awful. I don't know if his singles are just an incredibly poor representation of his albums [it ][/it], but...ughh...everything he's ever been apart of just sounds like shit to me.
But I have to give him some credit. The dude has drive. I thought for sure he was going to end up being some random one-hit-wonder with "I'm Sprung," which is the only halfway decent song I've heard from him.
He and Akon are the worst. They sound almost exactly alike.
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you said ICE-T what other rappers have pun names.
I dunno Snoop Doggy Dogg isn't really a pun but it's still a name that's sort of a joke and anybody will know the play on words right away
I was like 5 when rap came out ok
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heh Big als got a thing or two to say about todays music....
oh you forgot retards attempting poetry........
hope yall got enlightened im out
I love how he thought his "they are emo because when i am listening to them it makes me want to kill myself." was really really funny.
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Man, I am still watching it and he is such a terrible human.