Good Lord! I had no idea that there were so many songs about money these days. In this eight-minute segment from Bill Maher’s new show, he decries what the desire for goods and dosh has done to the younger generation and their music. He quotes a lot of old rock lyrics about being poor (I remember ’em all!), and compares them to modern ones extolling Gucci, Givency, Rolex, and so on.. Let’s just say that if I wrote this, I’d be called a “get off my lawn” geezer. But Maher is right, and as funny as usual.
Money quote: “Vomiting an inventory of your possessions doesn’t make you a poet.”
h/t: Enrico
This played on you tube right after I looked at the video of handsome Ozymandias. Funny but sad. Another reason why some of pop music is not a pleasure in addition to how it sounds.
Maybe a lot of this product mention is payed for. Like product placement in a movie.
It’s important to realize just how much more wealth there is today than when you (Jerry) and I were born: see https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-gdp-over-the-last-two-millennia Relative to today, in the 50s and 60s were still poor.
Money
Pink Floyd
… doesn’t even need a link to YouTube/Spotify – I know if the title/artist is read it plays in my head – probably anyone’s head!
That’s what great music is all about.
“Bling and money are two different things.”
~ Francisco d’Anconia
Contemporary music – Tuneless abuse!”
In my generation it was, “Is the root of all evil today”
I suggest a small correction to the title of this post:
“Bill Maher on the materialism pervading modern rock”
How about
“Bill Maher on the materialism pervading modern popular music” ?
Isn’t rock music pretty much dead?
Rock is still limping along, but it’s a mix of old stalwarts still going (if you’d told me when I was a teenager that the Rolling Stones would be releasing new material after my 60th birthday I wouldn’t have believed you!) and new bands playing unoriginal stuff that sounds like those old bands’ outtakes that weren’t good enough to make it onto their albums.
Back in the 50s Rock was Satan’s Music!
“Money (That’s What I Want)” by Barrett Strong.
Don’t forget survivorship bias – there was a lot of garbage made in the late 20th century, long thankfully forgotten. The quality stuff endures.
Recent music hasn’t been sorted yet. That said, I can’t stand any music post 2000.
I think brain changes effect our taste in music like language learning. Just my opinion.
A huge number of things are gotten completely WRONG by missing survivorship bias.
D.A.
NYC
I like how Gen X music could sound happy but it was a gruesome description of nuclear war like “Forever Young” or “Melt with You”. Yes. We are this way for a reason.
As far as I can recall, the older songs ostensibly singing the praises of money were tongue-in-cheek anyway. The two songs Maher cites (“Money” and “Material Girl”) are more satirical than serious, as least in my interpretation. Another great song in this vein is “First I Look at the Purse,” most famously covered by the J. Geils Band. This song is also too misogynistic to be taken seriously as actually promoting this view, with lines like “I don’t care if she talks with a lisp… as long as the dollar bills are crisp.”
There have been songs about money pretty much since there have been songs.
Like Larry said, I’m pretty sure that at least some, if not most, of these songs are satirizing or parodying bling and glamour, so that perhaps Maher is doing them a certain injustice.
So all of these boomer songs about not needing money led to a generation of boomers who rejected materialism and the constant striving for more stuff, and instead they led simple lives governed by altruism and rejection of material goods.
Oh wait….
A lot of these songs are catchy, though, even if they’re poorly written. I have to admit that I can’t get that stupid Bruno Mars song about gold jewelry and strawberry champagne (not one of the two mentioned in the video-I guess he specializes in songs about ostentatious displays of wealth) out of my head.
Best materialist song ever: 1953 — Eartha Kitt’s Santa Baby