Entertainment For Lively Minds
When did pop music get so NOISY?
Last week, I listened to the entire Top 40 on Radio 1. I'm not about to denounce all modern pop music as rubbish; some of it was pretty good.
However, what was most striking was how NOISY everything was. Most songs had no semblance of dynamics and any trace of subtlety had been sledgehammered out of them. I was wondering why this is and came up with three possible reasons:
- the "loudness wars"; as covered by The Word before, now you can see songs represented as waveforms on ProTools, the temptation is always to "fill in" any gaps
- shorter attention spans; thanks to the internet and particularly social networking, people get easily distracted, songs no longer have time to "grow on you". They have to catch your interest right away otherwise... oh, look, a squirrel.
- competition; music is now often listened to on the move. Therefore, any song has got to compete with ambient traffic noise and sometimes other music leaking out from poor quality headphones.
So, any other suggestions as to why this is?
In case you're wondering, in the class of 2011, THIS is the worst offender (maybe NSFW due to fruity language).
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I think you've got most of it covered.
Most of it is just laziness, though. That song you just posted is just a cut and paste job of lazy "dirty pop" clichés: dispiritingly unerotic sexual content? Check! Swearing? Check! Using autotune as a deliberate effect? Check!
When you're assembling a song in committee, probably the last thing on your mind is whether or not there's any dynamic range or subtlety or - heaven forbid - songcraft in there. They've got a limited number of buttons to push, and they just mash them at random. And it works as a sales device, so why not do it all the time?
Jessie J
God! How I loathe this sort of 'music'.
See, I really don't.
I like pop, and particularly electro pop. I just think this is a bad example.
I think my epiphany came...
... when I was forced to listen to a lot of Capital Radio and the unbelievable horror of The Black Eyed Peas doing I've Had The Time Of My Life came on. It was my very first "But it's just a noise!" moment I've ever had. But I stand by it.
I may not like grime or dubstep very much but it's a crafted and created sound, just because I'm not a fan doesn't mean it's rubbish. But this tune was a cover, with all the nuance (of which there wasn't much of) removed, a thumpy beat, crap rapping and autotune everywhere. It was offensive because it was lazy. The elements were "take a well loved tune by many, add modern stuff, make it noisy" and it was awful. A lot of pop these days has at least two of these components and it's dull.
I don't like Black Eyed Peas but......
....it's a hard nose that doesn't recognise Will I Am's pop chops.
I don't know of anyone over the age of 11 who will admit to liking them but yet they sell (by today's standards) a humungous amount of records.
All the usual suspects are present and correct. Autotune, Vocoder, sample, compressed to within an inch of life and a skimpily clad singer.
Are these any different to the "formula's" to sell records introduced by the likes of Epstein, Chinnichap, Gordy, Moroder, and SAW?
Different times, different tools. Same pop demographic.
I think it's quite cool
Unusual, lot of full-on, attitude, cool sentiment, good tune.
It's a great calling card for her first single - and it's certainly done the trick
And she can really sing.
Another Jessie J fan here
I really like Price Tag.
"Price Tag" is better
I think, but I'd still say I very much don't like it. There's something quite funny though about the UK act who's had the most money thrown at them and promotional weight behind them all year singing about how bad capitalism is.
Ha!
I didn't know that about her promotional spend etc. That is rather amusing indeed.
Can I just point out
that my facts regarding money spent on her are completely made up. She's been very heavily promoted though.
Not as much as you'd think
'Do It Like A Dude' grew way beyond everyone's expectations very quickly. they haven't had time to spend as much as they'd like, they brought the album forward to cope with demand.
They haven't spent as much on it as say, Rumer.
It's about the production though...
... isn't it?
That's what I meant
...it's cool, full on and goes with the attitude of the song. It makes an impact by having loads going on which ties in with the attitude of the tune and the first line 'stomp stomp I've arrived'.
it's not just pop music
a lot of those emo rock bands fill every space of a record with noise. Completely drowning any song that might be under the layers of pro tools.
Hopefully it's a production fad like the over use of fairlights in the 80's and they'll eventually realise things sound better with out a noise on every track.
This is why many
modern albums are hard to sit and listen to from start to finish. It just becomes white noise that you tune out and you find yourself incapable of remembering anything afterwards.
I find the first two Muse albums and the first Arcade Fire album (Funeral) also suffer from too much crammed into too small a space. Hate U2 all you like, but at least a bit of space is always left which they could fill in but they don't. That Arcade Fire album sounds great on shuffle but put two of those songs back to back and I just blank out.
Absolution by Muse (album three) is by far their most consistantly heavy release but some space was left here and there and it is a pleasure to listen to (one of my fabvourite metal albums).
The 90s
This started back then, huge amounts of compression on every bloody track left right and centre making every part of the track loud. While on some things it sounds great, on others it removes any trace of subtlety.
20 years of it so far, it's more than just a fad...
Do It Like a Dude lyrics are
Do It Like a Dude lyrics are attacking mysogony, aren't they? Or am i reading too much into this? She sounds pissed off.
And I must say I admire her spiky black lipstick.
Not really My Bag
just to say albums from Paul Simon, Dutch Uncles and Michael Head And The Red Elastic Band coming up they will get alot more of my attention
Can we stop blaming Pro Tools for music please?
It's really just a computer programme, it's like blaming Microsoft Word because novels aren't as good these days as when people were typing them on typewriters (this isn't an opinion I hold, I just use it as an example).
It's just a set of tools for people to use however they wish (which is probably how they came up with the name).
It's entirely possible to create a song in Pro Tools that only uses 4 tracks (or less) and doesn't fill every single space with noise before being compressed and limited to buggery rather than mastered properly. That hardly anyone does that says more about the producers and record companies than the software. And it's entirely possible to make music that's just as bad-sounding using any of the other major audio applications.
I'm not explicitly blaming ProTools
In fact, I've never used it. My understanding was that common consensus was that since ProTools became widely used, people could "see" their tracks as a wave form. If you can see the tracks you can see the gaps and the temptation is there to "fill in" those gaps in order to make more of an impact.
Yes, a bad workman blames their tools. It's not the fault of ProTools per se, but its functionality has led to this trend.
It's all been noise since acid house was all the rage
All that shouting for attention. But just as well it's loud, as i can't hear a thing otherwise.
Blame it on radio.
The louder your song is recorded, the more it stands out, particularly when people are listening in cars, and the more it sells. Detailed in Greg Milner's excellent Perfecting Sound Forever.
Oasis records were mastered particularly loudly.
Partially because of the heroic intake of alcohol and marching powder and partly because Noel wanted them to sound good on the radio.
Making sure that....
your record sounds loud on radio has been going on for years. Motown records were mastered louder for radio and jukeboxes so that they would sound 'better' compared to quieter songs.