• trainsaresexy@lemmy.world
      153·
      14 hours ago

      That’s not the question. Do you think music nowadays puts more emphasis on the appearance of the artist than before? Idk what it is but I find reactions like this annoying. Like OP makes a good point and then we have to hear a lot of ‘well, actually’ bs.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        8 hours ago

        Do you think music nowadays puts more emphasis on the appearance of the artist than before?

        I think the question is backwards. What we have isn’t a prioritization of appearance but a reduction of advertised talent combined with a professionalization of cosmetics. When you’ve consecrated your industry around a bare handful of performers, you can pick out the fist full of people that check every box.

        Beyonce, Swift, Usher, and Bieber cover all the bases.

        But once you get outside that rarified niche of promoted talent? Do you really think Post Malone is famous for his good looks? Is Kishi Bashi just coasting on his pretty face?

        I don’t really think so.

  • Underwaterbob@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    19 hours ago

    I’d like to thank this thread for reminding me to check out some new music. Just today, I have discovered MJ Lenderman and Still House Plants who both seem to be doing some cool stuff that’s right up my alley. There’s a new Mogwai track released a few days back and Sumac just released an amazing sludge metal album, even though I’m not really into sludge, it might convert me. A quick few image searches shows me that none of them are particularly attractive. Music has always been, and always will be awesome regardless of the physical appeal of the lead singers.

  • SSJMarx@lemm.eeEnglish
    512·
    1 day ago

    Ugly people are still have always been making it, pop acts have just make a pretty person pretend to sing it it sells better.

    • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
      12·
      1 day ago

      I am convinced that producers go out with a company checkbook and standard boilerplate, find acts that have good songs, then buy the rights to those songs.

      They then give the songs to larger pop artists and never credit the original artist because there is no need. They likely pay well for a decent song.

      • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
        12·
        1 day ago

        They do.
        It’s extremely rare that people like Taylor Swift get as big as she is from writing her own songs.

        There are actual classes you can take on how to write pop songs, taught by people who made pop artists big.

  • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
    87·
    2 days ago

    Pop is just as manufactured and fake as it always was, with the exceptional trend setter or two doing their own thing, but what’s just below the surface is always just as good as it always was.

    As a fan of hardcore, electronica, folk, metal, and all of the genres that fall under them, I still get new bands. I still get new releases. I get cheap as fuck concerts and still get cool merch and awesome vinyls. I have zero to complain about. Hell, Primus, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer just made an album together, in 2024.

    Anyone who says music sucks now doesn’t really listen to that much music to start with. Music is just fine, man. Maybe look a little deeper than the pudding skin.

      • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
        3·
        1 day ago

        I have had a 50/50 success rates. The ones who are bad are REALLY bad. To make up for it, they crank the gain, volume, and distortion to 11 and just annihilate everyone’s eardrums.

    • MeatsOfRage@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 hour ago

      Exactly. I wish these types of posts would change “music these days” to “pop these days” because that’s what they’re talking about.

      It’s debatable when pop actually began but pop as we know it really codified in the 80s with dawn of MTV and acts like Madonna and Michael Jackson. The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Queen, etc were popular but I wouldn’t classify any of this as Pop. Pop has always been pretty people because it was by its nature tied to a visual medium.

      People need to stop using Pop as a stand in for all music. We have more access to music than ever before and a lot of the music I listen to regularly, I have no idea what they look like.

    • Bone@lemmy.world
      47·
      1 day ago

      I hear you and agree with much of that. I am a fan of multiple genres as well. But, as far as it goes for jazz, jazz is dead. Anyone still attempting to play it is often a sad version of what was once great in the 50s/60s/70s. So while there’s plenty of music in other genres I like, always more to find from those time periods, as well as still enjoying the classics, it’s a little upsetting good jazz is dead, modern jazz is trash, and people who think they know jazz these days actually refer to some other genre, like rock. Somewhat sad.

      • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
        7·
        1 day ago

        Jazz, to me, a layman to the genre comes off as anything from Miles Davis and Duke Ellington to soundtracks composed for animes, to progressive epics that span twenty minutes and spin into a free form improv that’s somewhere between art and math.

        But aside from it being a flavor other things come in, like a jazzy rock band, Mars Volta or a jazzy metal band, like Opeth, or a jazzy singer, like Michael Buble, I don’t know jazz.

        I don’t think as a normal person that I’m exposed to pure “jazz”, whatever it dilutes into, but I’m fascinated by the chance that there might be something I’m missing that you might mention.

        • Bone@lemmy.world
          21·
          1 day ago

          I suppose I don’t know a ton. My earliest entry was that of Buddy Rich, the drummer. As a drummer, I wanted to relate. Play fast and all. Haha. Though my playing has all but ceased (the stomach drum and desk drum will always live on!), my love for his often high tempo pieces lives on. He played songs I believe others played as well. His versions were just more upbeat!

          I’ll give you an example of a group I didn’t like all that much and that was the Glen Miller Orchestra. Even as a jazz fan I can hear the style of jazz people refer to when they talk about “music to put you to sleep.”

          But BR was just the beginning. It sounds like you know more than most believe it or not. Miles is great and I think I have more to discover there even.

          The latest artist I found, new to me, also from the 50s/60s I believe, is Bill Evans, a pianist. It was a YouTube comment I came across that mentioned Evans to now be their “piano daddy” and from what I’m hearing, I’d have to agree. 😁 But, again, I only know so much. (Talk as if I know it all though…)

          • TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            1·
            1 hour ago

            Buddy Rich was good for his time and influential and all that, but the instrument has evolved so far since then.

            Check out Matt Gartska and a band called Animals as Leaders for a great modern jazz drummer.

        • Bone@lemmy.world
          31·
          1 day ago

          I have not. Thank you.

          I definitely don’t know where to look these days. I believe I was previously recommended SmallsLIVE, also on YT, but admittedly haven’t spent much time there. https://youtube.com/@smallslive?si=b4mxAHP1xqxv7QNm

          I’ve also been listening to Avishai Cohen, a bassist, for the past many years, who has modern things and may still be active. Jazz is just not mainstream in any way anymore. And most people don’t know what it is.

      • A Phlaming Phoenix@lemm.ee
        6·
        1 day ago

        Awful take. Last weekend I saw Mike Dillon with Phunkadelick playing with Brian Haas on the Rhodes organ. They played a wild punk-jazz show that is one of the best shows I’ve ever attended. There was a mosh pit at a jazz concert where a primary instrument was a vibraphone.

        In recent years, I’ve greatly enjoyed things like AKU!'s album Blind Fury (drum/trumpet/baritone sax trio) and Ambrose Akinmusire’s Origami Harvest. A lot of modern jazz is blending in electronic influences, like Sungazer. Maybe you don’t like these things, but I can’t imagine calling jazz dead.

        • Bone@lemmy.world
          11·
          1 day ago

          I’m not sure that’s jazz anymore, but maybe I have more to learn. I wouldn’t go to a jazz concert with a mosh pit. The two don’t go together.

          • A Phlaming Phoenix@lemm.ee
            5·
            16 hours ago

            Isn’t the core of jazz improvisation and breaking the “rules” of music? If that’s what they’re doing, why would we disqualify it as jazz? A lot of folks had this opinion of Miles Davis doing jazz fusion in the 70s on Bitches Brew and Live/Evil with his squeaky, borderline abusive trumpeting, or of Herbie Hancock doing weird space synth stuff on Sextant and funk fusion on Headhunters. I don’t see how what you’re saying isn’t just gatekeeping that’s not really in the spirit of jazz.

    • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
      2·
      1 day ago

      I had a luthier tell me how much was much better before the record. How artists would perform live and have to do their best in these performances.

      Once records came around all the artists sold out and it has been downhill from there.

      “Ok, can I have my guitar back, please…”

    • Bone@lemmy.world
      52·
      1 day ago

      Nah, generally yes, but this particular follow up is hilarious. When ugly people made it haha

    • macrocarpa@lemmy.world
      31·
      24 hours ago

      tbh we are all just snapshots of ourselves at different stage of the same cycle. The Simpsons did a whole thing about lolapalooza which starts with homer looking for his favourite artists in a record store, and the record store dude, and being directed to the oldies section.

      The bands that feature in that episode are the smashing pumpkins, soundgarden , cypress Hill and Peter Frampton, all of whom appear in Spotify old school lists

      • inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world
        4·
        23 hours ago

        Oh sure, everything new becomes old eventually, that’s just how time works. I’m more poking fun at those who let their nostalgia determine what is worthwhile.

  • Graphy@lemmy.world
    911·
    2 days ago

    Ugly people make music all the time.

    You really gonna tell me Ed Sheeran is good looking? Post Malone?

    • swim@slrpnk.net
      2411·
      2 days ago

      But the contention is about music being better, and that’s some bad music.

      • Graphy@lemmy.world
        222·
        2 days ago

        Did we read the same post?

        Music was better when ugly people were allowed to make it

        I guess your comment makes sense if you find those two attractive.

        Like I get the boomer joke of music these days sucks but my comment was leaning into joke.

        • swim@slrpnk.net
          15·
          2 days ago

          Your comment makes sense in the frame of “ugly people are allowed to make music,” my comment refers to the “music was better” part of the post.

          The ugly people you mentioned don’t support your comment’s argument against the original assertion because their music is terrible, not “better.”

          Some music sucked in the boomer’s days, made by ugly and pretty people alike.

  • BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee
    24·
    2 days ago

    Not really related to that stupid boomer post, but ho crazy is it that that ugly british lady won music star or popstar or whatever and everyone was like: oh my god this is insane, ugly people can do things? They are almost like real people.

  • Xatolos@reddthat.com
    273·
    2 days ago

    I think music staring going downhill when music was no longer an audio only thing. Once bands were expected to make videos, posters, and “act” on stage, suddenly a lot of musicians had problems getting into the business. They want to make music, not become pseudo-actors.

  • saroh@lemmy.world
    16·
    2 days ago

    Indie labels still allow ugly people on stage!

    Pop / major label’s job is more on the money side than the music. We don’t see ugly people in adverts either.

  • TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee
    71·
    2 days ago

    Listen to ugly people music (or vtuber music, same thing (na, just kidding around with vtuber insecurities (help I’m trapped inside this nested parenthesis))) nevermind, got out.

      • TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee
        1·
        2 hours ago

        Oh no! You’ve got trapped in the first level of nested parenthesis! To get out, you need to go down two levels to where I was trapped, and here’s the tricky part, you have to make sure you leave with the correct number of parenthesis and then you are out ok.