Rock and roll is dead

August 21, 2013 • 4:44 am

This is the second installment in the “Hey kids, get off of my lawn!” series.

I woke up this morning and, during desultory browsing of the internet, found an announcement of Avril Lavigne’s latest song, “Rock”. Have a listen, if you can stand it.

Here’s what’s wrong with this song, and with many rock songs and videos these days:

  • Blatant product placement
  • No musicality: shouting
  • Song shows no signs of creativity; sounds like many other songs on the air. Tune (if there is one) is dull; words forgettable.
  • Attempt to cover up lack of creativity with shock value: cursing; girl-on-girl kiss featuring Danica McKellar (think Katy Perry); superheroes; and even a shark beheaded by a buzzsaw. Other recent music videos have covered up the lack of interesting music with unclad women.
  • AUTOTUNING (voices are adjusted electronically): the curse of modern rock.  Who had that bad idea, which is grossly overused?

When all these bells and whistles are used to gussy up what is essentially a mediocre song, you know there’s something wrong.  And the overweening thing wrong is that rock and roll is dead. It’s had its run and now it’s over. It is an ex-music form and sings with the choir invisible.

My theory, which is mine, is that eventually every art form, with the possible exception of movies and the novel, degenerates.  Modern art is execrable, most modern classical music lame, especially in comparison to the greats of the 16th-19th century, modern jazz has degenerated to a cult embracing but a few aficionados. Modern poetry can be okay, but I’d rather read Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, Wallace Stevens, or Yeats.

I know I will face pushback here. People will say, “Hey, there are still some great rock songs around,” or “Hey, what about this jazz musician?”  But really, those are the equivalent of anecdotes. I’m talking about a trend. Can modern jazz really compare to that of the 30s, 40s, and early 50s, when Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Django Reinhardt, and innumerable greats held sway? You’d be hard pressed to make the case, for jazz has largely exhausted itself.  The same holds for classical music. Do you believe that in 200 years symphony orchestras—if they still exist—will be playing largely the “classical” music composed today? I doubt it. It will be Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms.

And in 20 years, do you think the “oldies” rock stations will be playing the rock that is popular today? They should, because today’s kids will be tomorrow’s consumers, and presumably they’d want to conjure up their youth by listening to the music of their halcyon days.

But this is what they’d be hearing: stuff like this week’s top ten songs on Billboard:

  • “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke
  • “We Can’t Stop” by Miley Cyrus (gag)
  • “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons
  • “Get Lucky” by Daft Punk
  • “Holy Grail” by Jay Z (with Justin Timberlake
  • “Cups” by Anna Kendrick
  • “Treasure” by Bruno Mars
  • “Clarity” by Zedd
  • “Safe and Sound” by Capital Cities
  • “Love Somebody” by Maroon 5

Now not all modern rock songs are lame; there are some that I actually like. One of them, to use a band on the current charts, is Maroon 5’s “Sunday Morning,” but that’s already nine years old. Songs like that are thin on the ground.

No, the songs on the oldies stations in 20 years will be pretty much what they are now: the Beatles, the Stones, the great soul music of the 60s and early 70s, the Band, Joni Mitchell, Eric Clapton, Ray Charles, Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, and . . . well, I can go on forever.  Why will their music last? Because these people were artists, who produced interesting music, with lovely tunes and (often) meaningful lyrics.  That’s simply not on tap these days. What we have is a crop of overhyped, oversold, autotuned mediocrities.

I am Professor Ceiling Cat, and I endorse this message.

474 thoughts on “Rock and roll is dead”

  1. A few points:
    – I read a recent study that found that today’s music is less complex
    – Even many of my students think that the music of the 60’s is better than today
    – More importantly, I do too… ;-P
    – As noted in the graphic below, Rolling Stone agrees with me. But, the correlation with oil production is a tad puzzling…
    – Even today’s musicians rate The Beatles as the best rock band of all time.

    However, I will concede that the music of one’s early reproductive years will have special meaning throughout one’s life (especially whatever is playing while messin around together in the back seat)…

    Graph of rock music quality as rated by Rolling Stone:
    http://drmillslmu.com/peakoi95.jpg

    2. Interesting graph, but remember that at least the last 20-30 years is not enough time to really be considered in a historical perspective. I suspect if you look at that graph in 50 years it will have changed radically.

    4. Funny to say that todays music is less complex. It may be true for the most of it, but not for all.
      Even in the era of Baroque, Classique and Romantique there was less complex music, pieces for ‘insert instrument here’.
      And today there is complex music.
      But would you dare to give in?
      Check out the albums from a duo called Autechre.
      Mind you it is electronic music, but comes in multible layers. Some albums are softer, some are brutally harsh for untrained ears.

      Greetings

  2. Personally, I have a hard time producing criteria for good/bad music. Should we judge by creativity? What the hell does that even mean? Originality? At least this is somewhat quantifiable, but then all the 20th century music from Schoenberg forward would be “better” than the more slowly evolving Classical/Romantic traditions that came before. Talent? What does this mean? Is it something like technique (which basically boils down to how fast you can execute). Technique, like popularity is more or less measurable, but I don’t think it’s how we evaluate music.

    I suspect that most people judge music simply based on the emotions it conjures up within them. This can be highly variable from person to person and is often dependent on extra-musical associations (e.g. the soundtrack to one’s adolescence, concerts you’ve been to, etc.).

    I also think that you have to have a certain amount of exposure to a style of music to be able to appreciate it at all. Again, if you look back at the more conservative pre-20th century music, it evolved more slowly and people had a chance to listen and appreciate it within the context of what came before, but in the early 20th century everything exploded and new movements were popping up everywhere devoid of any pre-existing context (Serialism, Expressionism, Impressionism, etc). People’s ears simply weren’t prepared. If you listen to Stravinsky enough you may well learn to understand and enjoy it, but if it’s your first time, you’ll probably hate it.

    As for classical music today… I don’t know. The previous century effectively made it invisible to a popular audience and as a result it’s been trapped in cloistered academic circles for 100 years. There’s no money in it and it’s lost touch with the idea of producing music that people, er… you know, enjoy. Having said that, I think there is a tremendous amount of wonderful modern classical stuff out there, but because of the disconnect between art music and popular culture, it’s difficult for it to get the exposure necessary for acceptance on the same scale as Beethoven or Brahms. That doesn’t mean it’s “worse” though.

    The fact of the matter is, that in the 20th century the game changed. Artistic talent didn’t necessarily dry up, but how our culture related to music changed forever. And I think a similar thing can be said about the late-ish 60’s with pop music.

    What interests me isn’t the question of why/if (pop) music is so much “worse” today, but why music from the 60’s proved to have so much more stamina than that of the greats that preceded them. Why are the Beatles still culturally relevant, but Elvis’s role has been largely demoted to nostalgia, mostly only heard in niche demographics like the rock-a-billy scene?

    1. What actually happened to classical is that the far end of classical, the far end of rock and the far end of jazz converged, and it got really weird. Look in the back pages of The Wire for the sort of stuff I mean.

      1. Haha, that is very true. There is a lot of more extreme music (electronic and metal) that uses non-standard structure, extreme syncopation/polyrhythm/polymeter, and some of the chaos of free form jazz but in a tighter focus. The last time I wrote a song that had verse/chorus structure was in the 90s…

        As a listener to heavy metal since the mid-80s, and guitar-wielding practitioner thereof, one thing that has happened in the last few years is that it’s got weirder. A lot weirder, while the mainstream/top 40 has got more generic.

        Those people who would, historically, have been composers have picked up keyboards and guitars and are throwing it all down on digital home studios.

        Hell, I’m 41 and a Luddite when it comes to recording. The variety that I see now compared to 20 years ago is insane. We would not have got away with it then!

  5. Jerry, time to start listening to “world music” (if you don’t already). Ali Farka Toure for eg.

  6. It seems some people here are trying to equate this (Avril, Beiber, Pink, Gaga) sort of stuff with situations like the birth of rock and roll- that maybe if you’re not the right age group of course you probably won’t get it, it’s for the young uns -perhaps fearing that they’re too old. 
    You are not too old!
    This music is sh*t!
    It’s music made specifically to sell as much as possible, it’s the music equivalent of Mac Ds but worse- this isn’t what proper musicians are producing these days at all- there is a lot of great stuff being made now!
    It just doesn’t get the huge amounts of money thrown behind it like these pretenders (not the good Pretenders!), it’s like the film industry, the money gets put behind stuff that’s dull, cynically engineered to appeal to the masses -who are happy to be fed pablum because they don’t have to think about it and they’re not challenged by it.

    Ignore this cr*p ‘music’, Forget the idea you can be too old and listen to Good radio stations like BBC 6 Music!
    BBC 6 Music!
    BBC 6 Music!
    BBC 6 Music!

  7. Some of the bands I mentioned in an earlier post. These are audio only links, since that is how I prefer to listen to music.

    Alabama Shakes
    http://www.npr.org/event/music/156922926/alabama-shakes-live-in-concert-newport-folk-2012

    Black Keys
    http://kexp.org/live/liveperformance.aspx?rId=14251

    Michael Franti
    http://blog.kexp.org/2008/08/05/song-of-the-day-michael-franti-spearhead-say-hey-i-love-you/

    This is a Seattle station that has current bands come into the studio and play 3 or 4 songs. Search their site for some really excellent music.

    Damnit! http://www.archive.org is down for maintenance, but check it out for 1000s of live concert recordings from far in the past to current.

  8. Hate to break it to ya, but most stuff back then was crap, too. We just don’t remember the crap. I don’t remember the specific crap much, myself, but I remember that there was a lot of it that we used to complain about back then. So we’d wait for a good song to come on the radio and record it on our cassettes.

    1. You said it, brudder! And not just the stuff we listened to. Jerry talked about the great classical composers of the 16th-19th centuries, but how many great ones were there in that 300 year span? Most people can’t name ten of them, and I bet even a classical music scholar would be hard pressed to come up with 50. So, 50 decent composers in 300 years? Not exactly a landslide of creativity.

  9. Wow, thanks for the BBC 6 Music tip. An argument I use with workmates who listen to the same old classic rock dreck radio stations is that while you’re hearing the Beatles for the 300th time you might be missing out on something new that would completely blow your world apart. There is so much good stuff out there but you have to work for it. Good places to find stuff are Bandcamp, Soundcloud, and my fave KCRW.

  10. It was all going so well until JAC cites Maroon 5 as an example of an acceptable modern rock band. Methinks that Prof Ceiling Cat needs a vacation.

  12. Wow, 300+ comments. Prof Ceiling Cat seems to have clawed the communal knee of the Internet.
    I threw my music collection away nearly 20 years ago ; it wasn’t worth the effort then, and I haven’t heard anything worth remembering since.It makes the “Pop Music” round of the pub quiz really difficult.

  14. LOL 300 comments! Screw moral responsibility! I agree that most modern pop/rock/classical music makes me want to shove ice picks into my head. However, it does no good to dismiss most modern rock as bad and tasteless. There are jewels out there. Brian Jonestown Massacre for one. If you haven’t hear Anemone or It Girl, you are really missing out. I am doing what you said not to do, but you just have to know that there IS good music being made. It’s just not being promoted. It’s up to us to find it.
    And for the record, I love “Radioactive” and the video is kick ass. Because I guess I’m a 41 yo teenager.

  16. Professor Coyne;
    As a Canadian, I humbly apologize for Mrs. Nickelback. And I offer you the antidote.

  17. Lots of great comments here. I’m 56 years old, and have definitely noticed over the past few years that there are fewer pices of music, books or films that I can find so enjoyable as I used to. I think that in general, the more you’ve seen or listened to, there’s less that can hit you as new or thrilling. Just call me wrold-weary, I guess. The first time i listened to Patti Smith’s “Horses” I just played the first two tracks for about three hours until I ..ahem…came down.

    Mind you, just over the last year or so I’ve been re-listening to a lot of my Talking Heads albums and enjoy them a lot more than i did back in the day. But yeah, “rock” in general not so much. I prefer quieter stuff from genuine single talents these days – Richard Thompson, Ry Cooder. But still a lot of the Smiths and for some reason I’ve never lost a ridiculous soft spot for Marc Bolan.

    1. I’m very fond of Talking Heads, but also of some of the Brazilian collections compiled by David Byrne.

      I’m 54, and I hardly feel like bothering to chase down new music anymore. I have a lifetime of music I love. There is enough music in my collection to keep me happy until I die. If I stumble onto something, great, but I just don’t try to hunt down new and interesting music any more.

      Some I listened to today:

      Talking Heads
      David Lindley
      Michael Hedges
      Cafe Noir
      Sonny Rollins

      Yesterday:
      The Marriage of Figaro
      Bach’s Cello Suites
      Laurie Lewis
      Patsy Cline

      I don’t often listen to anything over and over, but there are enough emotions and memories in my collection that I never tire of rediscovering music I have loved in the past.

      I guess that means I’m over the hill, on the descent.

      1. I get as much pleasure from good Stones as good opera, not to mention Nina Simone, Jacques Brel, Joni, Neil Young, Chet Baker, John Lee Hooker, Steve Earle (before he got all wimpy), Van the Man and so many others, and you can never, ever, go wrong with Brahms. I do occasionally hear some
        OK new stuff when I listen to The Spectrum on satellite, but rarely get excited enough to buy any of it. I did, however, do a thorough google to find a CD by the haunting Emily Barker, who sings the theme music to the Kenneth Branaugh version of Wallander.
        http://tinyurl.com/mutspke

    2. Just adding: Fear of Music is my favorite Album. I’m reminded of a lyric from the track “Heaven”

      “Heaven, is a place, where nothing, nothing ever happens.”

      How can you beat that?

      1. How can you beat those lyrics from “Heaven”? How about with this:

        “Science won’t change you, looks like I can’t change you/ I try to talk to you to make things clear/ But you’re not even listening to me/ And it comes directly from my heart to you”

        From “Mind” from the same album. Could be the signature line for this website, perhaps…

        BTW, I’ve always thought that “Heaven” was David Byrne’s version of Wallace Stevens’ “Sunday Morning,” especially stanza VI where he writes “Is there no change of death in paradise?/Does ripe fruit never fall?” Both “Mind” and “Sunday Morning” convey the message that the concept of a heaven/perfection is illogical to humankind.

  18. I agree with the original article. Pop and rock are dead and are eating themselves.

    I had a brief discussion with my partner’s 13 year old daughter the other day. She loves Taylor Swift. I had to explain to her that my favourites were AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Johnny Winter, Jethro Tull, etc etc etc, and that there is no comparison.

    Taylor Swift to me is utterly derivative and bereft of any artistic creativity. She is an artistic dead end. All her music sounds the same. A triumph of hype over content.

    Am I an old fogey?

    1. I was trapped in a SUV with fans of Celine Dion and had the same reaction to her schtick, formulaic poppy and cliche. One long syrupy ballad from Toronto to Philly…

      1. I swear, when I read “trapped in a SUV with fans of Celine Dion”, my instant mental image had the vehicle on fire and you beating on the window in vain.

        The only song she ever performed that I liked reminded me of Meatloaf… and I found out later that he wrote it.

      2. The only good thing I can say about Celine is that she and hubby have apparently bought (and saved) the wonderful Montreal deli, Grossman’s, with it’s incredible Montreal smoked meat sandwiches.

        1. On the other hand… At the start of Celine Dion’s career, she did a preview gig in Birmingham, England, which my mate Andy, a journalist, attended. At the end of the show, Andy was opening up a bottle of lager, which fountained all over the woman next to him – Celine, herself. Her two bouncers – and they were mean looking coves – bore down on him; he fearfully had to explain that it was an accident, and not a comment.

      3. A long time ago I had neighbours in the downstairs flat who kept complaining to the landlord that they could ‘hear us walking around’ (I think they weren’t quite ‘all there’. So their revenge on our perfectly reasonable walking about (we always tried to be considerate, never jumping and leaping or running around or loud music or anything) was to go away for the entire weekend leaving Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You playing FULL BLAST over and over and over and over…

        Shudder….

        We stopped being reasonable and considerate after that and did retaliate by showing them they really had no idea who they were dealing with -they were no match if they wanted to mess with us…! We got a proper gig amp face down on the floor and played Alien Sex Fiend at full volume for a bit (not for the entire weekend though, only a few songs)…morons…

    2. “Am I an old fogey?”

      If you’re arguing music with a 13 year old Taylor Swift fan and expecting a serious conversation, then yes (not to say all 13 year olds have no musical taste, but they’re not particularly well known for it).

  19. Crowded House [nee Split Enz], 54-40, Radiohead, Massive Attack, Gotye, Fat Freddy’s Drop…n

    But musical taste is very subjective, ymmv

    I bought Thomas Dolby’s The Flat Earth because Joni Mitchell said it was her fave headphone CD. I spin it still.

  20. I’m going to exploit this opportunity to plug Concrete Blonde, IMO the most underrated band in my lifetime. No, they’re not modern Rock; I just adore them.

  21. Well the video is certainly nauseating. The song itself isnt as bad as I was expecting. It has that “bubble gum” production sound, but its pop, made to sell to teen-aged girls, so what do you expect? The “alternative rock” station in my town plays much worse “music” constantly. “I can ride my bike with no handlebars”, for example.

    1. But just because you’re a teenage girl it doesn’t mean you have to be a moron- when I was about 12 onwards I loved The Cure (still do) and Siouxsie and the Banshees (ditto) and Kate Bush (“)and Paul Simon(“).

      I simply cannot fathom why anyone older than maybe 10ish? who was fully compos mentis would listen to this (Lavigne) dross

      1. Amber, I saw The Cure, just after ‘Killing an Arab’ came out, in Barbarella’s – a toilet misleading promoted as a pop venue in Birmingham in oooh….1978, was it? Weirdest gig I ever went to. My friend Tom and I cowered in the corner as a posse of tanked-up skinheads who assumed the effete, flop-top pop combo, playing the quietest show I’ve ever heard, were the racist Messiah; the boneheads stood in mute confusion as the last note faded; no doubt the band was scuttling off to New Street Station, in relief, by that time.

        1. Wow, that sounds brilliant! Well, apart from the frightening prospect of the skinheads..! Poor Bob and the gang!
          I’ve seen them a few times in the 90s but I would’ve Loved to see them in their early days, my favourite stuff of their’s is the darker early stuff.
          Once when I saw them in London we had to leave early to get the last Tube but it turned out to be amazing because we left, running through the stadium, to the pounding strains of The Forest, done uber long for the encore- I’ll always remember that!

          Incidentally, if anyone’s reading this and is able to listen, there will be some of The Cure live in concert on BBC 6music in the next few minutes!

          3. Right. Peel thought our group Yeah Yeah Noh were the bee’s proverbials, after The Undertones. He presented a big indie show at the ICA in 1985, I think it was, using a strap-line from one of our lines, “Putting the fun back into being pretentious.”

            We appear on a BBC video of Peel’s fave groups, organised alphabetically – thank Elvis there aren’t many groups beginning with ‘Y’. Here’s a link.

            “http://thespace.org/items/e00018al?t=cqyjn”

          4. Oh how Fantastic! I will definitely check that link out tomorrow (in bed now and following that will wake up the bear!)
            That’s an awesome line, I love it ;D
            My big brother said I’m pretentious (he can’t talk!) and half of me always thinks oh you utter git! and the other half thinks something akin to your line ;D

  22. Having finally watched the video, I must agree that the music is (for me) almost unlistenable. In defense of the video, however, I will say that I suspect there is a lot of parody and inside humor there that might actually be clever if I was on the inside.

    This suspicion is based on the one reference I did get, which was the guitar solo (for lack of a better term): the shot is clearly a parody of/homage to a Guns and Roses video – can’t remember which one – where Slash is playing out in front of a church in the desert.

  23. Basically the cool music today is the stuff that very few people are listening to and virtually no one is buying but will influence a whole new generation of musicians in about 10 years or so.

    1. Like Public Image Limited’s “Second Edition,” known in the UK as “Metal Box.”

  25. Thanks for introducing me to this video and song. I found it particularly entertaining–especially the refs to Winnie’s first kiss (from the Wonder Years), Tank Girl, and to the Star Wars cantina.

    The job of many musicians is simply to be entertaining to their particular audience…not to create music that everyone, including men decades years removed, consider timeless classic art. By definition, 99.999%+ of all music will fail that test.

    IMHO, Avril did a great job with this video/song. Many, many people will enjoy it (including me, a 46 year old dude)…and the overall well-being in the universe will rise (given, of course, that if you don’t like this sort of stuff, you have a choice of not listening).

    This conversation actually reminds me of my young kids (7 & 10) who are sick of me playing the Heads, Bjork, Kanye, Clash, Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Minchin, INXS, etc. at home. To them, “dad music” sucks.

  26. Though I’m only 37 I feel I must agree with the good Prof that today’s goddamn punk kids can get the hell off my lawn, indeed all our lawns – even the ones that are my age or older. Dave Grohl can get off my damn lawn, that’s for sure (unless he and Josh and John Paul Jones want to do another Them Crooked Vultures record).

    I’m a musician myself and I’ve been in original rock bands since high school (way back in the time of Soundgarden and Faith No More – a band Prof Coyne should at least like for their name, if for no other reason). As the singer and lyricist in every project I’ve been involved with, I always prided myself on writing lyrics that while not always the most profound, were at least a little more advanced than “yeah baby” colourless party anthems or sappy boy-meets-girl bubblegum pop. I’ve also always hated products of the manufactured, mega-produced pop machine, of which Avril up there is merely a symptom and which has existed in some form or other since the advent of recorded music. Ghastly hyped-up pop sure isn’t a new thing (Glenn Miller was famously disdainful of the popular chart hits of his time, especially Little Brown Jug which, as as it turned out, he arranged a version of that was so brilliant that it became his signature tune), but it certainly doesn’t improve with each succeeding generation. Or maybe my patience with it decreases, making it relatively more annoying. Or maybe it is more annoying: at least when I was at high school we weren’t endlessly bombarded with one-minute wonders from the X-Factor or Pop Idol or The Voice or whatever other execrable karaoke contest is winning the ratings at the moment.

    I also think I have to agree with Prof Coyne on the jazz front too. My dad (a trombonist/mouth-organist/accordionist) was a big fan of legends like Satch and Duke as well as bluesmen like Hooker and Howlin Wolf and other genres like dixieland and early country blues, so I grew up with a great appreciation for the old masters and their roots. Even as a kid I could easily see their influences when listening to modern heroes from Buddy Holly to the Beatles, and now through to modern acts like Mutemath and The Black Keys.

    Then, when I discovered be-bop, Dizzy, Coltrane, Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan et al it was a revelation. I’d found El Dorado! But when I followed through to the 80s, 90s and today’s jazz, I discovered over-saturation and a lack of the edge that was crucial in the beginnings of be-bop. I much prefer to listen to albums that are 20, 30 years older than me when I want a jazz fix (they even sound better than many modern albums, even though much of the time it was a whole band just clustered around a single microphone doing one live take after another, then picking one for the record, as opposed to digitally cutting, pasting and compiling The Perfect Take which is SOP on today’s rock albums). Even the rare modern jazz I like inevitably turns out to be echoing the pioneers of the genre anyway!

    If I might plug my most recent band’s stuff, which we recorded on our own time and on our own dime (all free downloads!): http://fromtheashes9000.bandcamp.com/ – it’s not everyone’s cup of tea but, dammit, it’s honest.

    TL;DR

    YES. GET OFF JERRY’S LAWN.

        1. I do like it.

          The single and the earlier album are very, very good.

          These are well worth paying for. Maybe you could use the “no minimum payment” option rather than offering them as free downloads.

          Can we look forward to a second album?

          /@

          1. Thanks Ant!

            The thing is, the band’s as good as defunct thanks to half the band about to move interstate. Australia’s a large place and keeping a band together between Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane is no mean feat. We’re unlikely to be doing any more shows or recording – which kind of sucks – so we’re happy to let people have the music for nothing.

            So I guess that answers the question about a second album. A bit of a shame as there are a few good songs unrecorded that would have made a great set. Oh well. Sigh, etc.

            H

          3. I am indeed the Adelaide one (born n bred, about to end my decade of Melburnian exile) and I’d be more than happy to accept. And who knows, with all the musos I know in that town there’s every chance of a hoe-down of some sort, somewhere.

  30. IN this matter, I tend to agree with Stephen Jay Gould, who once put forward the hypothesis that the number of (really) different tunes that can be appreciated by a reasonably sophisticated audience is finite. I would add to that that the number is not “very big” – say in the order of 100,000 or 1 million.

    How can you explain otherwise that in a time when more musically competent people than ever are composing and making music, the output of new good music is as small as it is?

    Of course basically there are infinitely many tunes, but our hard wired ability to appreciate music is apparently limited to a subset of those (for example to certain tuens in certain scales).

  31. I don’t like most of what I hear of the latest pop songs either, preferring music of the 60’s to 80’s, but I think there’s a few things producing that preference.

    First, I’m most familiar with what I grew up with and like it best ’cause I know it and can sing along. Secondly, most of this modern pop/rock seems very repetitive with very little originality in either music or lyrics (at least those lyrics I can hear), but I’m not sure how much of this is that it really is very repetitive and it’s like all the artists are copying each other, or if it’s just that I don’t have an ear for the different styles and so it all sounds like ‘noise’ like our parents and grands said of rock and roll in it’s early days.

    Also I think the population growth and increase in prosperity may have a lot to do with it. With a much bigger market, many more bands and solo singers can get a market share big enough to survive and make their mark, and not just the best of the best. So it may be the average quality has fallen as less talented performers survive longer than previously and the very best are harder to pick out of the crowd.

  32. Jerry. Stick to what you are good at i.e. matters of science and not your totally subjective views on music.
    Evolution is fact whereas whether any one piece music is good or not depends upon personal taste. So much so that some people even like jazz.

    1. Of course my views on music are subjective, as are yours and everyone else’s. But if we agree on what standards characterize good music, then we can have a discussion. (By the way, I do like jazz, as I said in my post–just not modern jazz.)

      As for your rudeness and attempts to dictate what I should and should not write about (a violation of the rules), you have no idea how to be civil. I strongly suggest that you go to other websites where incivility is either tolerated or encouraged.

    2. Howdy Pilgrim,
      I was on my way here to comment, but I see Jerry beat me to it.

      I can just add that if you aren’t exactly clear on why your post is so rude, it is the way you phrased the first two sentences. Very direct, abrupt, and commanding. I’m guessing you might be fairly young, say in your twenties. You may talk to your friends with this kind of familiarity, but it’s really grating to be so assertively blunt and absolute with people you don’t know well.

      You could have easily expressed the same opinion more politely by saying “Jerry, I would really like to see you focus more on science. This is your area of expertise, whereas your views on music are less interesting because they are totally subjective.”

      And even then, there is something annoying about this kind of post, which happens when Jerry posts about philosophy, about free will, about education, about anything non-scientific. Somebody always offers a post arguing that it is not Jerry’s forte, and he should refrain from posting on it.

      But the counter argument is, you don’t have to read this post. There are obviously lots of people who have participated in this conversation with great pleasure and interest, while others have ignored it.

      For myself personally, I’m glad that Jerry’s posting isn’t exclusively scientific, but that he shares some of his unique personality with us. It’s a good thing, and shouldn’t be discouraged.

  33. I forwarded this post to a bunch of old friends from school days long past – we’re all the same age as Jerry. Most responses I received were in agreement with Jerry’s take on music. And I agree as well. But I did get one response from a very thoughtful lady I wanted to share. Here’s what Sandy had to say:
    “It was pretty clear when I got my degree in English Lit and Art History that, like all of life, the cycles of the flowering of creativity are just that: cycles. These things do not proceed along a line; they do not degenerate only. They lawfully regenerate, usually repeating/updating qualities of previous cycles.
    Even this guy names three writer/poets he likes from three different eras.
    The general sequence that occurs is:
    primitive/archaic/ > classic > baroque (mannered, less disciplined then the classic, etc…see Hellenistic sculpture). The transitions between can be distinct with their own labels or gradual, but this pattern is generally reliable (see rococo).
    When there is just bad derivative work being put out, this degeneration gives impetus eventually for the new…or the new version of the old! (Remember the ‘nothing new under the sun’ adage!) The seeds are there in the process, as nothing remains static.
    At least this is the take on it I learned, and it seems to apply if one stands back with perspective.”

  34. The last fifteen years in popular rock music is worse than at any time in the history of rock. The situation is more complex today than it was decades ago, largely due to the internet and free access to music. Popular music has usually been trite, but sometimes pleasurable. The archive of popular music only gets bigger so the competition for airtime becomes greater and consequently harder to accomplish the label, “a classic tune.”

    “Most of all the music I love was written before I was born.” This statement is likely to become true to more and more people on the earth as time goes on.

  35. I finally have to comment on one of these music posts! Some great points here even about jazz, although as a professional jazz pianist I have to take some exception here. If something was irrelevent or dying simply because the vast majority of the people don’t understand it, we could probably throw your field on the the bonfire as well. It just so happens that I’m in Chicago this weekend with my band playing two nights at Andy’s Jazz Club–Friday and Saturday from 9:30-1:30. We will be there alive and swinging, atheists all! (You might be surprised how many fans you have in the jazz community, professor–don’t kill us all off quite yet!)

  37. Rock is dead , but you can find nice “new” bands. I m thinking about WILCO (a Chicago band!) and MY MORNING JACKET.

  38. Just watched a Live at the White House show which we taped in April called something like Memphis Soul. It was fantastic, and even had Sam of Sam and Dave on it, plus Charlie Musselwhite, Booker T, Cyndia Lauper doing an incredible version of Try a Little Tenderness (Otis Redding style) and a stupendous (lots of superlatives here…) group I’d never ever heard of, but will be certain to look for now:

    Alabama Shakes

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le-3MIBxQTw

    The young woman’s got a powerful voice!

  40. Jerry – I agree with your assessment that most modern pop music is pure shit. I have some friends who “hate” the Beatles. My theory is that they’ve suffered oversaturation via the radio and/or parents and friends. There is also the possibility that liking the Beatles is seen obligatory “dogma” of sorts. I honestly don’t understand how anyone could not like the Beatles. All of their music was recorded before I was born, but I still love their stuff – mostly Revolver through Abbey Road (I could take or leave most of Let It Be).

    I would, however, like to point out a few modern or nearly modern bands who have produced incredible music, some of it on par with the Beatles. The first is the best band you’ve never heard of: XTC. They started out in the late 70s with hyperactive power-pop/post-punk, but eventually realized that they were a pop-rock band with Black Sea (1980) and English Settlement (1982). Their absolute peak is one of the greatest albums ever recorded, easily ranking as one of the top ten best albums of all time (right up there with most of late period Beatles), Skylarking, produced by Todd Rundgren and released in 1986. It sounds years ahead of it’s time and contains the atheist anthem “Dear God”. Great though that song is, it’s not the best track on the album. In fact, the album is so filled to the brim with excellent music and wonderful lyrics that it’s hard to pin down the best song on the album. It is a must have, but be sure to buy the 2001 remaster which features all of the original tracks in their proper order with “Dear God” (which was originally a b-side of a single because the songwriter, Andy Partridge, thought it was a failure…shows you what he knows) appended to the end of the CD. AS with some of the best albums from the 60s and 70s, it is a loose concept album with the first half focusing on summer, the weather, and the changing of seasons while the latter half focuses on a life cycle. It’s gorgeous, smart. emotional and a necessity. No other XTC album quite measures up to Skylarking, but Apple Venus Vol. 1 (1999) comes very close. Both albums have gorgeous, sweeping orchestral arrangements and excellent lyrics and melodies. I’d follow those two up with Nonsuch and Wasp Star (Apple Venus Vol.2). The also released two albums under the name The Dukes of Stratosphere, wherein they recreated the sound of 60s psychedelia, doing their best to use only instruments and effects that would have been around at that time. Both albums are pure genius and I doubt any other band could have pulled it off.

    Another excellent band with a somewhat similar, albeit still quite unique, style is the Divine Comedy. Unlike XTC, the Divine Comedy still exist as a band and thus are still recording new music. Their most recent CD, Bang Goes the Knighthood, and their best of, A Secret History are good places to start. They are both English bands and if there’s one thing we’ve learned from the Beatles, Stones, Pink Floyd, etc. is that the Brits do it better. An exception is the US band Animal Collective, whose Merriweather Post Pavilion is the best album of the naughties, and perhaps one of the best of all time.

    In the very least buy XTC’s Skylarking, but don’t listen to it until late spring/early summer or it will ruin the vibe of the music.

  41. I am 60 years old and the music I listen to most of the time is almost entirely contemporary, from the last 15 years or so. You won’t necessarily find it on the Billboard top 10, but there is a lot of good new music out there:
    Rammstein
    Che sudaka
    Manu Chao
    Serena Ryder
    Rich Aucoin
    Pink
    Pacifika
    Neko Case
    Mumford and Sons
    Metric
    Marie-Mai
    Lykke Li
    Joni Neh Rita
    Imogen Heap
    Florence & the Machine
    Elliot Brood
    Elin Ruth Sigvardsson
    Ane Brun
    Brandi Carlile
    Five Alarm Funk
    Joanna Newsom

    and many more. I discover a lot of new and interesting music by going to my favorite world music festival (Sunfest in London, Ontario) as well as other festivals. I don’t listen to pop radio, only CBC radio which plays a lot of new Canadian music.

  42. Someone (Colbert maybe?) recently said that there is an inverse correlation between the number of back-up dancers a band has and their musical talent. I think that can be expanded:

    There is an inverse relationship between the number of back-up dancers; the number of studio musicians used; the amount of voice-enhancing technology used; the frequency of profanity used; the violence displayed in the videos they are in and the musical talent of a band.

  43. I’m a 47-year old person who grew up during the 1970’s and agree wholeheartedly that Jimi Hendrix, The Band, The Who, Joni Mitchell, et al. were great.

    I love music and am passionate about finding new music to appreciate (and have found a great deal of new music worth listening to). So I find myself a little reactive when I hear someone like yourself say, “Rock music is dead. Rock music was so much better many years ago.”

    To find some common ground with you. I too hate autotuned singers and songs performed more “attitude” than talent. And, if you limit your inquiry of new music into what’s on the Billboard Top 100 chart or what they play on MTV (or any channel that actually plays videos) you are going to get hit with a massive dose of these types of songs.

    But there is so much more out there and those who make an effort to seek it out are rewarded.

    I love “Born To Run” by Bruce Springsteen, but I’ve been hearing this song for almost 40 years. I don’t need to hear it again. I feel most alive when I worthwhile brand new song. It makes my day.

    I’ve created a Facebook page strictly devoted to presenting noteworthy new music. It is called Larry’s New Music Cafe. Every day, I post a 25-song playlist and video. I welcome you to check it out and tell me what you think. I don’t promise that you’ll enjoy every artist or song selected, but I truly believe that if you give my site a fair chance, you will reevaluate your opinion on the state of modern music.

    You can find Larry’s New Music Cafe at http://www.facebook.com/Larrysnewmusiccafe.

  44. This is a great post! I mostly agree with what you said. And I know you were talking about a trend, but I also know you are a Beatles fan, so I think you absolutely need to check out one huge exception to that trend – a young Austrian female duo named the MonaLisa Twins.

    If you haven’t heard their stuff, this might sound incredible or even blasphemous to you, but I firmly believe they are as close as it comes to someone recreating the sound of The Beatles today and bringing back the joy of that *real* music from the ’60s.

    But the incredulity should be only *if you haven’t heard* them, so I suggest… well, that you simply listen to some of their music – on their YouTube channel ( http://www.youtube.com/user/MonaLisaTwins ) they already have videos for 4 of the 11 original songs from their brilliant debut album, with at least 3 more coming up soon…

    And this is their Facebook page – https://www.facebook.com/MonaLisaTwins

    I’m a random fan of theirs from Bulgaria, BTW; I’m not part of their project in any other way.

    And yes, I believe in 20 years time the “oldies” stations should be playing their music, but that can only happen if they become more famous. Their fan base does keep growing, but frustratingly slowly for my liking. :/ But if you happen to like their music, maybe you could help by writing a blog post about it? Let me know (or let them know), if you do. 🙂

    1. And now that I have seen/heard one of their live gigs in Person (I flew to Vienna specially for it), I am even more convinced that they deserve to be famous!

      The twins, together with the two young guys (a drummer and a bass player) supporting them for these gigs + a new backing vocalist/percussionist, are one of the few bands I’ve ever heard reproduce their studio-recorded material in a live setting so perfectly, that there is barely any difference at all between the sound on their CD of originals and the sound on stage. And, of course, their Beatles covers sounded great too (I hope you are not one of those people, who hate everyone that covers the stuff of their favorite bands, no matter how well? :P) and the other covers of 60s and 70s music were great too; I especially loved “The Last Time” (though I guess that’s a given for me, since I hate Mick’s voice and I tend to like any cover of a Stones song better than the original, if it is competently sung with a higher and brighter voice… let alone – by lovely female harmonies)…

  46. I think today music just doesn’t have the same direction as it did in decades past. The lines have blurred too much, to a point where rock music is confused and watered down. Bands lack originality in my opinion because they’re working from influences that have already exploited ideas. It’s like taking an already well painted piece of canvas and trying to paint a completely different picture. From the 50’s to the 90’s the formula was simple and the blues was like an empty canvas for artists to work off and develop their own unique sound.

    http://music4earsnoteyes.wordpress.com/2013/09/20/is-rock-really-dead/

    Since the early 90’s, rock and roll has slowly died because every band is trying to emulate Nirvana. Before Nirvana we had Dire Straits, Eric Clapton and Bruce Springsteen, who’s influences were simpler. Even Nirvana’s influences were simple. Yet today’s rock bands are trying to develop sounds too far from rock and roll’s golden age. Sure music will change over time, but I think certain bands from the 60’s to the 90’s had reached near perfection, and there’s just no emulating that. You don’t choose to make art, the inspiration finds you, and obviously the inspiration pissed off a long time ago.

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