I thought this was dead too so I missed it for a few days but-

This is probably dead, but I don't think you understand. ONE PERSON didn't pass it on to their friends. It has billions of hits, and millions of likes. One person didn't just pass it to their friends. Don't start a thread about YOUR distaste in a song when hundreds of millions of people love it.

Not only will I start a topic about my distaste for a song with millions (maybe billions—not going to go check since I might have to hear a few seconds of the song in order to do so) of hits (the higher the hits the more I have a right to make a hate thread—what would be the point in making a hate thread over a song with 3 views in 10 years?), I will even do you one better.

Last week I was on the set of an acting job, waiting waiting waiting for my character’s role with a few other actors.
I let one of them use my iPad and he stumbled upon my music collection on his own. He studied it for a while and then played a song of his choosing, after which everyone immediately rejoiced. “That is a good song,” they agreed unanimously. Encouraged he picked another until people started gathering around to take a look for themselves what all I had on my playlist.
They played Paint it Black, Jack & Diane, Californication, Another Brick in the Wall, Ring of Fire, Hollywood Nights, Sultans of Swing, Mary Jane’s Last Dance, The Logical Song, Tom’s Diner, Life’s Been Good, Song 2, Turning Japanese and more. Drained my iPad 3 to 10% battery!

Then one of them asked me, “Do you have anything from the 21st century?”
I stopped. Paused. Hesitated. I didn’t want to disappoint him, and I knew I had some, but I had to think for a moment.
I did have some and I played a few. LDN, New Soul, Hey There Delilah, Friday Night…


Then he confessed that it was really just a test.
Whenever he meets people who are really into music he asks the same question and he gets the same reaction every time. Everyone has to think about it for a moment.
“Good music from the 2000’s? Let me think…”

There certainly is some good stuff in there. But so much harder to find it when the number of terrible songs is rapidly increasing.
And if you think I am being picky or I have special taste or etc., you are dead wrong. I have about 50 songs on my list from the 21st century. I am definitely open-minded and unbiased when listening to new songs, and I have every genre—rap, metal, pop, classical, rock, techno, country, video-game, chip-tunes, foreign, etc.

The only problem is I have about 500 from the 20th century.


So I will do you one better and not only hate on this song, but the entire state of music in general. The overall quality of music these days is decreasing, not because the number of good songs is decreasing but because the number of bad songs is increasing.
This actually makes entire sense. The number of musicians there are is flat-out increasing.
More people are making bands or becoming solo artists and it is much easier to get recognized thanks to mass media. Where would Justin Bieber be without YouTube?
So the number of artists is provably higher than ever before.

If they were all getting famous the same way as in the past, we would likely have the same ratio of good and bad songs out there.


Unfortunately they aren’t getting famous the same way. It is much easier now because all you have to do is prove your worth to one specific market, for example teeny-bop girls.
Justin Bieber is the butt of many jokes and his music is notoriously bad, so why did he get famous? Because teeny-bop/pre-teen girls showed record companies that he had market value while the rest of us just ignored him, not showing anyone that there is a larger audience who dislikes his music. Then again they got their millions, so the fact that the majority of all people don’t like Justin Bieber doesn’t really matter to them.

And that essentially proves that the overall quality of the music industry is going down.
These days it is easy to show you have market value to one small group of consumers or another and the record companies will use that to get their millions at the lament of everyone else who has to listen to that crap.
Back in the day you had to get on the radio and be basically judged across the boards. People would pick a station based on genre but that was about it. You couldn’t target your songs so specifically so it was much harder to prove market value.


The end result is that more and more artists are emerging and the record companies no longer care how widespread the target audience is as long as it is enough to fill their pockets.
The same number of good songs still gets made, but the number of bad songs is so huge it is really tough to find those gems.


L. Spiro

I have nothing to say on the song itself other than that it spawned one of the best reddit AMAs I've ever read.

Sure, the music video is a bit silly, but the song is bad and you should feel bad. Repetitive, uninteresting, and above all, the synths were obnoxious...

People in this thread keep going on about how such and such music is bad. I agree on some counts, but I've yet to see a comprehensive definition of "bad", so I'm not totally sure that I'm agreeing with what I think I'm agreeing with. ITT what is our definition of "bad music," exactly?

Sure, the music video is a bit silly, but the song is bad and you should feel bad. Repetitive, uninteresting, and above all, the synths were obnoxious...

Yes, the music video is the only thing that makes the song interesting, but I find it interesting that you cite "repetitive" as a bad quality. Given that basically all music is repetitive to some degree, what degree of repetitiveness makes a song bad?

I've wondered a couple times if I would like, or at least respect, Bieber's music more had he gone the route of playing at events or pubs or wherever it is that struggling musicians start out doing before they're discovered. I got the sense the guy actually does have some talent, it's just that it was regretfully all directed to the teenie-bopper market.

I think that music quality is not that different from food quality. You have your 5 star restaurants with inspired creations, you have your chain restaurants with mass produced junk food, and everything in between. Personally, I have no taste for the 5 star class of foods but I do recognize the lower quality food it for the non-substantial guilty pleasure that it is that gets me by. Inevitably, I go looking for something better. Maybe parents should try actually exposing their kids to stuff that's a little better than junk culture, once and awhile. Not necessarily high end stuff, just anything that has a little more substance to it.

Of the songs on your pre-2000 playlist, is it that you heard that they were good songs and so you gave them a try or perhaps was it that they happened to be what was playing during a particularly notable time in your life? If the guy that posed his "test" is of the approximate same age as you it may be that being a generation in common with experiences in common may skew his results. At least, now that I'm settled into my life compared to when things were more up in the air I'm less likely to find the background music that is the soundtrack to my life to be as notable.

... but I find it interesting that you cite "repetitive" as a bad quality. Given that basically all music is repetitive to some degree, what degree of repetitiveness makes a song bad?

Good argument. As a rule of thumb: If the song is disproportionately longer than the number of distinct patterns (common measures) in the song, then the song is repetitive and uninteresting. There's only so many combinations you can make with only a few patterns -- how can you stretch them out to three minutes, let alone use them as a verse?

It's the same reason I dislike rap. A handful of patterns, mix them up enough to fill up three minutes, read some words. Word.
(Sure, the poetry can be beautiful, but I can't bring myself to like it if I can't also like the background music...)

Good argument. As a rule of thumb: If the song is disproportionately longer than the number of distinct patterns (common measures) in the song, then the song is repetitive and uninteresting. There's only so many combinations you can make with only a few patterns -- how can you stretch them out to three minutes, let alone use them as a verse?

What do you define as a "distinct pattern?" Unless I'm reading you wrong, your definition seems to rule out such things as canons and fugues (in which the same patterns are repeated in different voices). In which case, I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you're not a big fan of baroque music?

As for how to make a few patterns stretch out, I would say that you'd introduce variation in texture, either by changing which instrument plays which pattern (common in orchestral music), by changing the dynamics of the instruments so that different instruments are emphasized at different times, or by changing the physical sound of the instruments (common in electronic music). For example, have a look at minimalist music like

">Music for 18 Musicians; notice that there is a chord progression, but it is comparatively slow, at least at first, and the same pattern is repeated in those chords for the entire duration of the song, yet the song builds and releases tension nevertheless. Or, for another example take a look at a genre like

">Goa Trance, where the instruments themselves change their sound to introduce variation (main example starting at 1:40 or so in the previously link, though it's present throughout). Or you could make a kind of "meditativeness" the whole point of the song, as demonstrated

">here (I've knocked out many, many lines of code with this one playing in the background), or even some combination of the above as demonstrated

">here.

Personally, I happen like very repetitive music like the above examples because when I hear a sound I like, I want to hear more of it, and repetition is a way to draw out the sound so that I can get enough of it. I often hear snippets of sounds I like in songs, and, ignoring the rest, listen to that part of the song over and over again. In fact, I've bought entire albums because of short (~10-20s) parts of a single song on that album that I heard somewhere and liked! I used to hate listening to things on the radio because I could never play those specific parts of songs that I like.

Of the songs on your pre-2000 playlist, is it that you heard that they were good songs and so you gave them a try or perhaps was it that they happened to be what was playing during a particularly notable time in your life?

There are too many songs to give a single answer; it is all of the above and more.
For me it is more important to be able to recognize why you like certain songs—to be able to identify that you only like this song because it was in a cool movie or because it was playing when you first set your eyes upon your future spouse.
Gotta Knock a Little Harder would normally not catch my ear, but that was a really nice scene from a really nice movie (Cowboy Bebop: The Movie) (that is actually 2001 but this is just an example of knowing why you like a song).
Knowing why I like the songs on my playlist, I can say easily that the vast majority were just songs I heard on the radio and I simply liked them because I liked them. I remember hearing Pepper for the first time riding in the back of my friend’s car as the driver flipped through the stations. I heard only about 2 seconds before she went on to the next station but I was already in love. “Whoa that was awesome go back please!”

If the guy that posed his "test" is of the approximate same age as you it may be that being a generation in common with experiences in common may skew his results.

I am 30, he is about 70.
He was shocked to find songs on my playlist from the 1960’s.
I also have to give him credit for not being an old fuddy-duddy stuck in the super past. He enjoyed almost everything I played, even up to LDN.

At least, now that I'm settled into my life compared to when things were more up in the air I'm less likely to find the background music that is the soundtrack to my life to be as notable.

I have somewhat settled but nothing has changed in how I collect good songs.
I heard Friday Night at the same McDonald’s where I ate every day in Thailand and after the song I actually asked the staff what its name was. Same story behind New Soul, except that since the staff didn’t know the name of Friday Night I just listened really hard to the lyrics and did a search at home later.
I introduced myself to Ronald Jenkees one night when I was waiting for my Yamaha MOTIF XF8 to arrive and was searching YouTube for demos of it being played so I could bathe in its sound quality. I found

">Disorganized Fun randomly and was 1 second away from moving on to the next video when the full beat kicked in and I thought, “Wow.” Then I listened to

">Throwing Fire and was completely blown away.

... but I find it interesting that you cite "repetitive" as a bad quality. Given that basically all music is repetitive to some degree, what degree of repetitiveness makes a song bad?

Good argument. As a rule of thumb: If the song is disproportionately longer than the number of distinct patterns (common measures) in the song, then the song is repetitive and uninteresting. There's only so many combinations you can make with only a few patterns -- how can you stretch them out to three minutes, let alone use them as a verse?

I would be interested in your review of one of my songs. It is only 2 chords repeating back and forth.
Is it bad?
The Cat


L. Spiro

... but I find it interesting that you cite "repetitive" as a bad quality. Given that basically all music is repetitive to some degree, what degree of repetitiveness makes a song bad?

Good argument. As a rule of thumb: If the song is disproportionately longer than the number of distinct patterns (common measures) in the song, then the song is repetitive and uninteresting. There's only so many combinations you can make with only a few patterns -- how can you stretch them out to three minutes, let alone use them as a verse?

It's the same reason I dislike rap. A handful of patterns, mix them up enough to fill up three minutes, read some words. Word.
(Sure, the poetry can be beautiful, but I can't bring myself to like it if I can't also like the background music...)

Wow, then I guess you only like Frank Zappa, and dislike things like Bolero for example.

Personally, a very disappointing thing for me if a good theme never comes back. If a theme is good, than I don't give a damn about how repetitive is, in fact, I don't want t to end. I played music in a band, I was talented, and I quickly grew out of the "if a music is complex than it's good" thing. My music taste can be called at least "marginal", it was more than a year ago (after a 2-3 year no-new-music period) when I found a good-for-me music again, and it was from the '70s (my fav band is from the '80s '90s, so I'm not a retro guy).

So please, it's only YOUR opinion.

I iz disappointed. I thought this was a thread about Gundam

Godwin's law at its best :)