Please see the reflection on this video here - kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ppaWn6eqzauXgnk.html Most people did not get that this video was about how various biases affect our perception of quality and indeed our own memories.

The difference really is that in the 70ties the good music was in the mainstream and heard by the masses (among some garbage, of course), whereas the mainstream music became entirely plastic pop-garbage these days, and one has to search hard for good music.

"Ninety percent of everything is crap" - Theodore Sturgeon

I had kids say to me the wish they were born in the 70s🤔

Pink floyd, Led zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix never get old..Fuck all the new sheep shit.

I'm just going to say this, Michael Jackson, Prince and David Bowie are no longer with us... yeah, doesn't say much for modern music.

The Masses have never been pressured to understand what makes something like Music, great. They simply follow the next blind follower for the Trend of the Day or Flavor of the Week, and go with that. No one seems to be honest with themselves when it comes to personal taste. It's almost like they have to seek approval whether they like something or not. It's a goddamn shame.

I get your point, there was always junk on mainstream .But you are forgetting that the amount of junk has been growing exponentially since 2000. I personally don´t remember the last time I´ve heard a good mainstream song. And if you surf through the 70´s to the 90´s you will find a tonne of them

To me, music, movies, and other media artists have lost creativity (for the most part). It seems hard for the mainstream industry to be original with new ideas, like in the 60's, 70's, & 80's, so, many do reboots, re-imaginings, and remakes. To us it seems to have all been done, but truly, many lack creativity. Moreover, to me it seems that talented musicians took a backseat to programmed electronics, and vocalists with a wide range took a back seat to monotone simplicity.

If you have a half dozen people given writing credit for your song (besides yourself), and you're a solo artist, you may not actually have much talent. We have R&B, Hip Hop and Pop songs that have like 20 people listed for contributing to the song. At this point you get the impression that a bunch of suits sat in a room and looked for a formula to make the most money off of, as long as it was paired with an "artist" with the right look. The song is no longer the focus, it's more like a glorified advertisement for a consumer product based on a meticulously designed persona/image. Pop music has always had a degree of commercial marketing to it, but if the performer had actual talent, then it didn't detract much from the product. Michael Jackson could team up with Pepsi or some other company, which made him look like a bit of a sellout, but his music and ability to perform were at a high enough level that we could overlook it.

it's my teenage daughters fault

As someone who grew up listening to Hip-Hop like Eminem, 2Pac and Biggie, I like all sorts of music aside from those three. I like Aerosmith, Metallica, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan as well as classical music. Even in the genres I like there is good music and bad music in them. It's all a matter of taste.

Your familiarity theory is not how I experienced music. I was a teenager in the 90ties but hate 90ties music. It was horrible - either depressing grunge, annyoing brit-pop or stupid techno music. I always liked 60ties, 70ties, and 70ties music (Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Pink Floyd, Santana, Hendrix etc.). Then again, some good music was released from the early 2000ths when electronic music became well developed (Infected Mushroom, Carbon-based Lifeforms, Solar Fields etc.).

At least Duran Duran wrote their own music and played their own instruments!!!

Today's music specially the mainstream rap just sets trends. The fucking dab, what ever rain drop and drop top mean, people just saying gang gang gang, people doing the whip. This is *CANCER*. Almost everybody at school just thinks that whenever you say rock you mean emo. They call metallica death metal, fucking *DEATH* metal. WTF

Well yeah there was always rubbish around in every decade but back in the sixties and seventies when I was growing up even the junk had something memorable about it. A catchy hook or a distinctive vocal that remained in your head, Today though none of the pop songs stay with you. The decline of melody is one of the saddest things about music of the last twenty years.

This is the industry's fault for not creating hardware in music. Something you can actually touch and feel is said to be of value, rather than something you artificially upload into a computer somewhere. Also, musicians nowadays are forced into an informal economy, an economy where there is no actual wealth creation, an economy where the artist has to sing for there meal. This is fine if you're young, but if you want time to grow old, to have a family, to generate wealth, you want royalties. This is where the screw up is, and also, this is why there is no new music nowadays. Before the 2000's according to the IRS, there were over 300,000 musicians making over 100,000 a year, when napster hit, this whole class went away and has been stagnant now for over a decade. It's flusted the music economy into a zipf curve, or in science called, a long tail, where there are few winners, and a vast sea of losers, where the winners benefit tremendously, and the losers earn nothing. Want you actually want, to sustain an industry, is a bell distribution, or a bell curve, where there is actually a strong number in the middle, this was true before the explosion of the internet among other things.

I disagree with the conservative bias point you made... I have an appreciation for 80's music... and 60's music... and those were both 1 and 3 decades before I was born... I also hated "old" music when I was younger, so I never catalogued it as being good. I mean the reality is that mainstream pop music back in the 80's were objectively better. Even by objectively measurable standards... such as musicians used to be, on average, much older than the average musician today who is typically in their late teens or early 20's... pop culture and music is being produced by children/young adults, promoted by children/young adults, being performed by children/young adults, targeted mainly at children/young adults... music and pop culture in general has been dumbed down and infantilized

"I listen to black metal all day, so of course I like Arnold Schoenberg." Instant like and sub.

I've realized that if I wanna hear good music these days, I hafta write it myself ;)

And it gets worse: The kids today don't even know anymore, what music COULD sound like. When they eventually start making music, they start out with a very limited musical vocabulary, which of course leads to even poorer music to emerge from the young generation. Just take young singers: They all sound the same, because there's only one singing style left, that's the R'n'B style, that everybody imitates these days. Since this music is so omnipresent, they neither get to hear anything different, nor will they be able to find their own unique way for constant bombardment with the same crap over and over again!

I guess you do have a point. Personally, I feel that music as a whole is moving in a direction that I wholeheartedly dislike, where most (if not all) of the instruments are being "played" by a computer program instead of a real person. Take Taylor Swift and Fall Out Boy for example -- their older stuff was pretty good because they had real people playing instruments on their tracks, but when you look at their most recent albums, the only real non-programmed instrument you hear is the vocals, and those are generally tweaked and layered to hell. Guitar has been replaced by electronic tones and strings, while the entire percussion track has been reduced to a standard bass note and ELECTRONIC CLAPS. Like, they can't even use real claps. As someone who actually plays music, it angers me on such an emotional level when I tell people that a newer Fall Out Boy / Taylor Swift song doesn't have any actual instruments in it, and they point me to the Wikipedia page like, "Look, here's the guitarist and bassist and drummer listed right here on the band page." Yeah, but that entire album is comprised of nothing but programmed keys and strings, electronic claps, a fake bass kick, and tons of vocal layering. No one sat down to play and record the guitar or drums for those tracks. And sure, they need touring instrumentalists, because no one would go see Fall Out Boy if it was just the dude singing while his laptop played the songs in the background. For the last century we've had popular musicians and bands that have inspired people to pick up instruments and learn them. You had The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Pink Floyd, AC/DC, Rush, Def Leppard, U2, Metallica, Iron Maiden, The Police, Pearl Jam, Oasis, etc, all very popular bands of the last half-century, all of which inspired generations of people to pick up instruments and learn to play them. You don't have that now. No one's going to listen to the latest One Direction track and think "Omg I've gotta learn that on guitar / drums!", and there aren't really any popular "bands" around anymore that actually play their instruments. I think Paramore and Fall Out Boy were the last real "rock" bands that fell. So now when people get inspired to learn an instrument, they're being inspired by music that's 20+ years old. So I think in that regard, yes, the quality of music has been decreasing, because it's becoming less about the physical playing of instruments, and as someone who actually plays an instrument, I think that sucks. However, if I didn't play any instruments and just generally had no idea about music at all, I admit that I'd probably enjoy today's pop music :P A question for you: if the technology had been there in the ~1960's, do you think music would have became as electronically influenced then as it is today?

Love Me Do may not have many sections but what it does have is a soulful performance, incredible harmonies, an epic harmonica section, and an incredible groove. Love Me Do is definitely on par with their later work. It would be incorrect to say that The Beatles progressed. Their r&b phase was just as groundbreaking and their psychedelic rock phase. I Wanna Hold Your hand is not pop, it's rhythm and blues. "The Way We Were, that sucked" If you seriously think Barbara is not a good singer and that the string arrangement was not good, you're insane. My Sharona is a great groove, lot's of cool rhythmic things happening between the guitars and the drums. George Michael is an amazing singer and Wham! was one of the best artists of 80s pop. I hate Ke$ha too but Alicia Keys is actually decent and The Black Eyed Peas are a great dance group. Usher is an incredible singer. The White Album is more like a 4 star album. "Spice Girls was the top album of 1997" Deservedly so, it's an amazing record with incredible vocal harmonies, they took what they learned from Wilson Phillips and En Vogue and brought it to a massive audience by combining it with the sounds of what was modern hip-hop at the time, brilliant work. "There are artists out there who can actually sing without autotune" Like SPICE GIRLS, there was no autotune on the first two records. 'That level of practice is missing from a lot of artists more recently" No argument there. Totally agree. I think the best composer of the Baroque was Jacquet de la Guerre and the worst was Jean-Baptiste Lully. The Galant style is just flat out boring, let's just keep it real. I love atonal music too. I don't like black metal but I love death metal. Ace of Base, while not as groundbreaking as Nirvana, knew how to make great dance songs. They were very well put together and a huge influence on later styles such as reggaeton. A lot of the music that you say is not very complex may not be so in a harmonic ,melodic, or lyrical way but are definitely so in a rhythmic way. A good example is disco, a lot of people like to give disco a lot of flack but the truth is that a lot of it had amazing drumming, bass work, and percussion. The syncopation and driving counter rhythms are what get you to the dance floor ( a lot of these rhythms have afro-cuban and columbian roots). In terms of the argument of new music getting worse. I look at the billboard charts of the 70s and 80s and I'd say about 70-80% of the songs are good. I look at the billboard charts from the 2000s and 2010s and I find only about 20-30% of it to be good. I was born in 1993.

One of the biggest problems of modern music I feel is over production, too much reliance on computer alternation.

What many don't realize regarding pop music, which on the surface appears simplistic, is that there is a great level of complexity to simplicity. In a way, it's the art of making something sound good out of very little. For example, music that is considered highly complexed uses many musical notes, and in that lies its appeal. But the appeal of simplistic pop music is that it is catchy, creating hooks out of very few notes. Ironically that isn't as simple as it sounds. That, in my opinion, is why pop music is perennially popular over most highly complexed styles of music, such as jazz or classical. It is melodic structure over rhythmic structure. The melodic structure of pop music is rhythmic, whilst more complexed styles rely on using all the notes available for its effectiveness. But, more isn't necessarily better. So we have to ask ourselves the question, if the music we criticise so much is that bad, why is it so popular? I think the more musically knowledgeable we are, the more we tend to look down on music that appears to operate on a musical skill level below what we perceive as highly skilled, and yet that is not what seems to attract most people musically speaking. It's a musical arrogance and snobbery of sorts, and this blinds us to the attractive and effective simplicity (which again isn't that simple) of pop music.

The same sequence also happens in architecture, and tbh, in many things in life. Architecture gets more and more complex then reverts to a very simple stage, that starts getting more elaborate again and the cycle keeps happening

I think modern music doesn't suck,but the good modern music has been overshadowed by mediocre pop singer's and overrated bands,some good modern bands are Bloc Party,The War On Drugs,MGMT,Tame Impala,Passion Pit,Klaxons,Two Door Cinema Club,Editors,Atlas Genius,The Killers,The Strokes,Mac Demarco,Kendrick Lamar,Tyler The Creator,and Childish Gambino

The problem is rock is pretty much dead.

There hasn't been anything good since the early 2000s

Don't you know about the new style honey? All you need are looks and a whole lotta money." It's the next phase, new wave, dance craze, anyways it's still rock and roll to me...

Some really near sighted and limited opinions applied on way too broad a base. Pop music and repetitive music "sucks" to intelligent people who require more complex music? While music today sucks, it has nothing to do with simplicity, or repetition, but rather a lack of any sort of relatable connection to life in the subject matter except for self indulgence and self destruction,whether it is money, drugs, or sex. Superficiality is much different than simplicity.There are people who only think of these simple things 24/7, and people who don't. There you go.

100%. Pop music has gotten so bad over the past 2 decades, it's a DISGRACE for real musicians, who die hard for the music, for their craft and musicianship. I myself am VERY ashamed of being a musician, a songwriter, producer because all these money grubbing douchebags ruin it all for us.

Good article! I’ll have to look for more of your stuff.

I've heard that by running an analysis of hits from last decades there were some significant finding about the quality of modern music. The tonal range is being narrowed, also volume stays flatter and is just overall louder.

The music has declined since 1990. 60's, 70's and 80's are the best.

Thank you. Appreciate your analysis.

It's funny, back then Michael Jackson was considered a dancing machine, now I look at all these popular brain dead dances and ask myself what happened!!??

The short answer is, *'NO.'* The great musicians haven't gone anywhere but it's far harder to get support. This is true for all performing arts (I'm a puppeteer and a lot of my friends are musicians) It's harder than ever to get audiences to turn out to your show and harder than ever to get paid to perform. Getting to be a great musician is a long process. Back in the 80's & 90's I remember how easy it was to pack a local music venue with a band you never heard of. Ten months later that band would be huge. (This happened for me with Green Day, No Doubt, Zebrahead, Smashmouth, etc--not that any of those bands were phenomenal but they got big through live performance) If you can't get traction within the first year, it becomes much harder to keep up the passion. One of my favorite bands (Remy Zero) couldn't find traction even after multiple hits and ultimately dissolved after three albums. I know at least six bands filled with great musicians who struggled for a couple years and then gave up on the third year. Art and music are free everywhere you go and that lowers the value of great art and music. No one can afford to split part time work and also be a musician. At some point you have to give up and get a 'real job' and that means great musicians are not making it to the big time. Just the corporate, studio crap put together by marketers. So, using The Beatles as an example; what if _Love Me, Do_ or _I Wanna Hold Your Hand_ never hit? They were good enough in the 60's to grab attention because there wasn't that much else. No competing entertainment. No Netflix or Internet. There was plenty of other great music at the time but not enough (And not free-enough) to drown out _I Wanna Hold Your Hand_ So, imagine a world with no big hit for The Beatles early on. No Rubber Soul afterwards and no Sgt. Pepper's. The Beatles just gave up after a few albums because they just couldn't get the traction. I think that's the way it is for _LOTS_ of great bands now. People with passion and talent who put in the work and time but aren't rewarded for it at all. It feels like throwing all that time and energy into an empty void. And then you see Drake. He gets huge and you can't even really consider it "music". That shit is demoralizing. I think those are the main problems.

I've been hearing people complaining about an imaginary decline in the quality of music since I was a kid. Times have changed. Tech has changed. The biggest difference is today there's a lot MORE music than ever before. Naturally, there's probably more bad (or in some cases maybe just incomplete) music than ever before, but there's probably also more good music than ever before--but you might have to look for it.

wow, good work, i've learned alot, sure will do thank you mr David

Do you make music yourself? I'd love to hear it. I used to write/record lots of songs but slid away with time.

And nowadays you can't select nothing because all is shit.

As others have said, whether music as a whole sucks now could be debatable..what isnt is that in comparison to the past, mainstream music does suck. I listen to alot of old Top 40 radios show from the 70s-to the 90-s and yeah, alot of it WAS garbage as well, however there is a decent amount of stuff in there as well...sure you had the Osmonds and ELO and a bunch of disco crap, but stuff like David bowie or the Stones or Pink Floyd did manage to make it into the mainstream, which isnnt the case any longer. Also, it's one think to check Top 40 singles, but if you check the top selling albums from the 60-80's you really do see quite a difference with the quality of music. Personally, I grew up in the 90s, and while I do think I may have a bias because I do think it was the last decent decade of music, it still wasnt nearly as good as the 60s or the 70s

Loved hearing your rant. I disagree with some of the music you consider not good, but we all have our preferences. I’m on the fence: is it ‘crap’ music if it’s mass produced?

At least you could understand what they were singing, nowadays I need subtitles plus slang dictionary to get a clue what they are on about.

The thing is. There's more "bad music" today then there was in the 1970s or whatever. I'm generally open to new music. I was into the whole pop music like rap and daft punk and stuff until I discovered Queen and Zeppelin and became a rock guy. I have to say pop music is pretty bad compare to most pop songs In the past. Music today lacks chord progressions, and is so lost built on a single catchy hook line. And repetition of verses to built up a "bass drop" to the hookline it's pretty dumb and simple. Music today lacks valuable meaning, and good messages. It's just empty bs. Infact a lot of pop music especially rap is negatively influencing pop culture.

Popular music: yes Music: no

Really enjoying your videos. Keep up the good work!

I like your analogy from listening to music to reading. Great video.

2000's pop was actually quite fun, and had some cool character. That decade as a whole was just freaky and odd, but definitely memorable. I've noticed how much more catchy those tunes are than the garbage made in the 2010's. There have been only a handful of records in this decade that I'll take along with me for the rest of my life. I sincerely hope the 20's are stellar, and that music becomes valuable again. Spotify needs to die

I find myself not liking what is currently popular but rediscovering gems years or decades later. I did not like the Beatles in the 60s but love some of their songs now. I agree that each year yields thousands of garbage releases. I have the luxury of a 60+ years to pick and chose MY best favorites.

Great video, David !

Best music of genre from each decade 1700-1800s-Baroque 1800-1900s-Romantic/Jazz/Blues 1900s-Jazz/Blues 1910s-Jazz/Ragtime/Blues 1920s-Ragtime/Jazz 1930s-Swing/Jazz/Boogie Woogie 1940s-Jazz/Country/Swing 1950s- Rock/Doo Wop/Folk/Jazz/Soul 1960s-Pop/Rock/R&B/Motown/Soul 1970s-Heavy Metal/Rock/Disco/Funk 1980s-Punk Rock/Hard Rock/New Wave/Synthpop 1990s-Hip Hop/Grunge/Rap/Alternative Rock 2000s-Nu Metal/Southern-Northern Hip Hop 2010-Rap/Pop

Give me anything from before the computer age and I can listen to it. I detest music of today and I finally figured out what is wrong with it. It is artificial and no one has to be a master at their instruments. It's all computerized. Good example is megadeth listen to their original albums then listen to the clean up that Dave did to all his albums. It's the same music but the perfection computerized clean up takes away from the flair of the original recordings.

I think BOTH the best AND the worst music ever comes out today !!

Hey David, I found this video after checking out your flamenco technique videos. You're the first youtuber I've seen who's a virtuoso guitarist, who also has many interesting general commentary videos. I've been developing my flamenco skills for many years now but I started in the worlds of rock and folk. Your description of how most music students believe they can become musicians or composers without investing any sweat or mental energy is priceless. (One point of correction, after having read almost all the comments below to see someone else didn't mention it...The Beatles played for 2 years in Hamburg, not Munich.) I have subscribed to your channel and I look forward to interesting things in the future. (I have a music channel too.)

As someone who is actively listening to new music coming out (a few new full length albums a week at the very least) i've found that this attitude has yet to hit me. Even though I shovel through just as much shit as ever, i'm also still struggling not to overflow my year end lists. By that measure, I propose that once people stop digesting as much music as they did when they were marinading in youth they tend to stunt their growth with new new styles that are out there.

Good topic. I think most commercially successful music thats any good falls in the alternative, adult alternative or adult contemporary charts on Billboard. Not saying that most of that music is good,, but if its good thats where it tends to get categorized. The mainstream billboard chart is almost exclusively hip hop, (hip hop inflected) r&B and house based EDM. The only exceptions I can think of in recent years is some of the girl pop made by Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift. What used to be considered "urban music" is now the mainstream music in the United States

I saw the title of this video and I just wanted to scream, "YES! The answer is YES!" There are always exceptions...main stream music sucks but there are great obscure musicians. ...Now I'll actually watch the video. ;-p

I'd like to start off saying I appreciate where you're coming and agree that we all have a bias towards things we are familiar with. I often hear a lot of criticism regarding modern music for not having real musicians being featured in tracks and that the music production featured in most of modern music requires no talent. I can tell you as a musician originally coming from the metal scene where I was sponsored by guitar companies and later moving to electronically driven music, they both required immense skill and dedication . Rock, metal and pop music from the 80s and 90s (and before) have such an amazing quality to them and as listeners we have come to appreciate the artists talent to play parts, construct great progressions and memorable melodies. What I've noticed when fans of music from those decades hear a lot of modern music are complaints for how simple the progressions are or how the music requires no real talent to make. I've often seen guitarists online play modern pop songs basically clowning on the songs to show the simplicity. But the skill set required to make modern sounding music is less about crazy progression and scales and more about sound design, which is an entirely different skill and one that isn't widely recognized by the public. A lot of people hear a synth or bass line in Deadmau5 song (for example) and think how simple the progression is and that the computer is doing all the work. When in reality Joel (Deadmau5) probably spent hours or sometimes days creating the sound of one of the synths from a simple wave form. There is no doubt a huge shift happening right now from modern music and the great music from the 60s,70s, 80s, 90s, 00s but there is a lot of skill to appreciate from electronic production. Any one who doubts that I encourage to get a DAW and some VST'S and try recreating some electronic songs. I'll stress again that it's less about recreating the notes and more about recreating the sound of the synths or the tightness of the drum mix. I will also add that I am not the biggest fan of modern radio pop music, just wanted to give a different perspective to people. If you're looking for some innovative modern guitar music check out Animals As Leader or CHON also if you're looking for modern pop music that isn't garbage check out Great Good Fine OK, Penguin Prison and Miami Horror to name a few.

Do you recommend any post romantic composers? I googled, and I didn't come up with much.

The only thing worse than a jazz or a classical snob is a metal snob. There is nothing wrong with simple music. Making music is like making food, it only takes a few of the right ingredients to make something sublime (think a salted steak). To continue the analogy, the problem with Top40 pop is like making a dish with all food substitutes. It is like cooking Tofurkey with cheap knock off margarine and Sweet 'n' Low. It has no soul. And some people will lazily consume whatever shit is shoveled in front of them. What makes music great is that same X factor that makes great food great. You know it when you experience it, but there is no way to explain it. Complexity in music can be great (Bach is a great example). Much like Indian food, you can add many ingredients and end up with art. But mindlessly complex music has the same effect of just throwing the whole pantry into a blender. To that effect, much of metal, while technically impressive, is just mindless guitar wanking. Not all of it of course, there is some great metal. But 9 times out of 10 when I hear a metalhead shitting on "simple music", they're all about guitar wanking. Pop, in and of itself, isn't bad. Most pop is bad because pop is catchy, and the accountants that run record companies want catchy to move their otherwise dull product. So it is less about most pop music being bad, and more about most soulless corporate music being pop.

"Music is just noise" - Frank Zappa

Great video, David. Tell me, what are your thoughts on Michael Jackson's music? I think his early stuff was good and innovative.

My brain is the opposite, bad things tend to stick out more and I better remember as a survival tactic. So I'm guessing there are others like myself. I thought it had something to do with genre and lyrics. What do you think about the the differences between 432 Hz and 440 Hz...and these types of changes in regards to frequency in general music?

people arent getting stupider, only teens

Well, music made by non-musicians is like paintings made by non-painters. If the output of a high school art class is all you've ever seen, you think that stuff is pretty good. And it bears various surface similarities to the older works - same size, same type of paints used, same subject matter etc. Therefore, we can conclude that little Brianna's art assignment is truly comparable to the works of Rembrandt and Picasso.

I think that the problem that we have now is that back in the 60's 70's and even in the 80's, the music industry worked by taking chances on artists. Artists would submit stuff and if someone liked their stuff, they invested some cash and gave them a shot. If they sold well, they invested more money. If not, they stopped. What's happened now is that they've dropped that model because it became too risky. They don't want to risk their cash on a potential failure any more. So what they do now, is manufacture their own artists. They bring in a studio guy who builds tracks on a computer with a drum machine and a sampler (That's why everything sounds the same. All these tunes are done by one small group of people.), and they just plug in their pretty artist. Then they ram the songs that they recorded down everyone's throats, paying for airtime in EVERY piece of media that they can get that one tune into. They tell the public who to like and who's songs to purchase instead of the other way around now. That's why music sucks now. Even finding good music on the internet now is difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. Most people use computers for everything and finding something raw, unprocessed and just.. more real, like it was back then, is excessively difficult today. Stuff exists, but a lot of the really pure music like it was in the 60's. 70's, and prior is really a dying art, and it's being replaced by this homogenized, scrubbed, computer cut-and-pasted crap.

I really appreciate your speech here... I have been a singer songwriter for 17 years and guitarist... I still am working on my first album but even at my age 30 I am not going to ever give up.... I just want to be more prepared for this uphill music industry battle... I am applying to nursing school too because I have a lot of hospital experience and come from a large family of nurses and doctors... But they hate my music career stuff. LOL.. However a lot of my songs are similar to Neil young/ Nirvana … But who cares.. lol. I just wanna do this for the love of my guitar and songs and not for any recognition... Thanks ! you taught me so much today ! Happy Holidays

There was no good music after 1760

Modern Music Is Awful

Very good video...I enjoyed it very much.

We need a sequel to this video

Popular music doesn't suck. What sucks is today's rap music

All forms of art started on the decline after about 1997, and after 2005 it COMPLETELY shot down the toilet. Not so much about time signatures or complexity. It has way more to do with good old fashioned INTEGRITY. Art has no more INTEGRITY, and every studio and "artist" is only out for the almighty dollar. Sure, some crap existed always, but at least it was EXPERIMENTAL crap. It tried to do something, even if it didn't work. Now it's all about selling out to stay relevant, corporately or even politically. Music, film, TV and even modern sculptural art have become a laughing stock.

Hey David, I recently engaged in a lecture about this. We brought up the idea of timelessness - pieces in music which seem to endure forever. I believe timelessness is possible, but only so when some level of complexity is achieved. For example, Mozart and Beethoven are timeless because of how their music is both accessible and complex. In a modern setting, there are less examples of these, but I could name Bohemian Rhapsody, Jesus Christ Superstar or some of the 1920s jazz numbers. What are your thoughts on this?

It's always a pleasure to have an insight by a pro.

I walked into a store that was playing pop music today and i literally wanted to rip my ears out i would rather listen to a chalkboard getting scraped than that stupid techno "Music" thats aparently so good. I love 70s rock like carry on wayward son and killer queen and so much more it just goes to show people threw their instruments out and started singing for money instead of for entertainment

teenagers. y

I recall a piece of trivia concerning Bach for his music was nearly lost and forgotten. Reams of his work were lost before one man discovered some of his sheet music which was used to wrap fish in the market. I recall that one “art authority” spoke of Rembrandt’s paintings as mud spattered on canvas.

I enjoy all music, both past and present. I don't know, but I just appreciate whatever I hear. Yeah, there are songs and music that I would enjoy more than others. However, there has never been a time when I listened to a song and cried out in anguish at how times has changed so much.

most radio music sucks if not all, in 2016 there was a lot of great music mostly metal, rock and prog

I think It's internet that ruined music because people dont buy CD's anymore and artists have 0 incentive to make good songs

Thanks for your insight, Mr Seger ..

Love this guy - I think he sums it up really well

I'd like to bring up some points you forgot or completely left out. First of I would just point out that you kind of got yourself trapped in your own cage by cherrypicking and decide yourself what is and what isn't good music. So how can one biased opinion discern and objectively speak about what is good and what is bad? Second of all your whole speak about "classical" music is kinda cliched by giving us a lesson of classical music and its complexity. I've heard that argument thousands of times already. Baroque music isn't somehow objectively superior to all other music. Complexity isn't the only factor to determine such a thing. So what is it? You talk about two things: Novelty and Originality. There's lots of original music out there but does that mean its good? Not really. I'd argue that time signature and melodic/harmonic variation and good mastering is the essential ingredients to good music. A memorable melody is maybe one of the most difficult things to come up with. If you put that melody into the right context you have good music. I rather listen to David Wise masterpiece from Donkey Kong Country (snes) "Aquatic Ambience" than a "complex" piece by Handel or Bach. Less is more. What modern pop music is missing is memorable melodies and chord progression. They miss that third thing called "magic" which is the third thing after originaly and novelty. Loudness wars and the dumbing down of pop music is to blame aswell.

Q: "Can something be called music if no musicians were involved in its creation?" A: No, but it can be called EDM.

Just subscribed to you. Preach brother preach! So true...who remembers such popular songs as "Disco Duck" or "My dingaling" among others. There has always been garbage music for each generation. What I find is that so many people stop listening to anything new once they hit their thirties and beyond. It is like a lot of folk are forever trapped in the music of their youth or high school days and they don't or won't budge from that. However, I do think a lot of current pop sounds exactly the same...so much of it sounds manufactured. The problem is what it has always been...popular does not always mean good. I stopped listening to the radio years ago. Even if you do find a new song that you like...the repetition of it on the radio will rapidly destroy any desire you originally had to listen. Love your commentary and I will definitely be back to hear more!

Curious, what is your take in RUSH?

"I hate Kesha - deeply" Lol!

I mostly agree that 90's music was the best so far. Rap was on top, rock was fresh with alt, the whole image was fun.

I was losing hope until I heard Nate James, Allen Stone, Jarle Bernhoft, Benny Sings, Eli "Paperboy" Wood, etc. Thanks. I'm going to go back to this video and also the reflection on this video listed below. Among the oldies besides, Smokey Robinson, Earth, Wind and Fire's "September", and the Brother Johnson's "Strawberry Letter 22". :D

I've always liked hearing peoples ideas and perspectives on this topic. Back in the 80s and 90s, if it was popular, I probably liked the song, no matter the genre, which is why I say it was better. There were so many different artists alternating the number1 spot back then. You could have 20+ different number1 songs in a year at times. It wasn't always the most popular artists either. You could have a one hit wonder like london beat with "I've been thinking about you," or Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley, then they would fall of the face of the earth and someone else would take their place. I think diversity has gotten a bit better over the past few years.

Liked for liberal use of air quotes while referring to pop culture

music is fucking dead p

I'm curious if you have or would consider expanding on your impressions\thoughts on Nirvana be they positive or negative. If not would you perhaps consider Alice in Chains? Thank you for your insightful and informative video!

I like your continuum of complexity and novelty if I understand what your saying. If one has a bias favoring either of the poles I imagine they can form opinions easily whereas those that relate to the total field may just enjoy it all and have to find out what they truly like idiosyncraticly thru something like applicability. As an aside, of the numerous other factors too long to consider in any one KZfaq video, I thought I might mention the diminishing relevance of music as a whole because of the rise of other media. And the effects are countless. The lack of people who might otherwise contribute source material. The collective importance of your music choice being less pronounced or known in daily life. Also the larger population and new technologies make the learning curve to educate or produce listenable music shorter and such. Another vector is poetics and aesthetics which would bump Kurt and those muses up a bit..or not. Lol....hey dude you have a good consistent teaching style. I enjoyed your breakdown of stated criteria regarding the evolution of classical music...a longer vid on that would be cool...not a clicky thing perhaps and also there are those classical cats potential comments to consider.

Are you implying there is anything "deep" about Led Zeppelin?

The Beatles are like Jesus; if you criticize them, you go to Hell.

You seem very knowledgable about music history and music itself. I am not english and I heard you mention different eras(?) of music, words like baroke? (high-baroke, german-baroke), "bach" (didn't he play piano or something?) and from barocke period to classical period. "galantis"? Atonal music? Do you have any video about these periods or types of music where you could explain them a bit? It sounds very interesting! :) I am born in the mid 90s and I like many types of music styles, mostly rock-typed music though. But also classical (instrumental), electronic (many different types), 90s pop, some 80s dance-music. Todays music that is played on the radio is a kind of music I would like to distance myself from. Perhaps its more for the younger generations.