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

no, taste is just becoming worse

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.

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

hey bro you get that new orgy cd

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]

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.

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*

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!