Worst Decade in Modern Music?

InkWeaver wrote:

Jenny Lewis, The Black Keys, Wolfmother, OK Go, Franz Ferdinand, The Donnas, E.S. Posthumus, Fleet Foxes, Flogging Molly, Jason Mraz, Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend, Pendulum, Mason Jennings, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Mika, moe., Neko Case, The Paper Raincoat, Scissor Sisters, and Supergrass.

I... I don't think I like a single one of those bands (though I haven't heard a couple of them). In fact, I would count Franz Ferdinand and Scissor Sisters as negative points towards this decade.

You care about my taste because I told you to.

InkWeaver wrote:

To all of you folks baggin' on the '00s era of music, I bring you:

Jenny Lewis, The Black Keys, Wolfmother, OK Go, Franz Ferdinand, The Donnas, E.S. Posthumus, Fleet Foxes, Flogging Molly, Jason Mraz, Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend, Pendulum, Mason Jennings, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Mika, moe., Neko Case, The Paper Raincoat, Scissor Sisters, and Supergrass.

And if you haven't heard of at LEAST one of these bands/people, it's no fuckin' wonder some of you hate the '00s music. I will weep.

(Disclaimer: *some of these people may have spawned in the 90s and run into the '00s, however.)

Don't forget Freezepop!

I have a love/hate relationship with the 00s. One on hand there are a heap of awesome bands that I could listen to for the rest of my life (and this includes J-rock), but on the other there have just been so many songs that make me run out of music shops in disgust.

The 90s was pretty average to me, it didn't seem like the bipolar roller coaster the 00s were. Also, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones played my all-time favourite song in the 90s, which is good too.

Sticking with the ones I'm most familiar with...

InkWeaver wrote:

Wolfmother,

Meh.

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Franz Ferdinand,

One-hit wonder.

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Flogging Molly,

Not bad, but overrated and inevitably overplayed by perpetually drunk college students, and Americans who think that the IRA are some pretty neat guys.

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Jason Mraz,

Maybe it's just because my tech school roommate would listen to nothing but him, Flogging Molly and The Lonely Island, but I just can't stand that guy anymore.

Worst decade in music = the decade just after the one you grew up in.

Penguin, did he listen to "I'm Yours" on repeat? I could level with you if you hated Jason Mraz after that.

(That is, in my opinion, his worst song, and for some reason, his biggest hit.)

As for Franz Ferdinand being a one hit wonder, I'm not speaking on how famous they are, just that I think their music is decent.

@Doc: Would that be because you don't like the genres they play in or because you honestly think they are bad bands?

why can't i learn to stay out of these music threads it always turns into me saying "well you're just judging it when you don't even like that genre" and no one caring WILL I EVER LEARN

InkWeaver wrote:

@Doc: Would that be because you don't like the genres they play in or because you honestly think they are bad bands?

Little bit of both. I can like music from any genre, even ones where I don't like most of the examples. I don't know much of Franz Ferdinand's catalogue outside of their hits, to be honest, but I think the Scissor Sisters are totally inane.

Dr. Professor Science wrote:

InkWeaver wrote:

@Doc: Would that be because you don't like the genres they play in or because you honestly think they are bad bands?

Little bit of both. I can like music from any genre, even ones where I don't like most of the examples. I don't know much of Franz Ferdinand's catalogue outside of their hits, to be honest, but I think the Scissor Sisters are totally inane.

Fair 'nough.

*cranks up Kiss You Off*

*jaw drops*

I... I think...

I like the Scissor Sisters.

Not everything they've done (wow, what a schizophrenic style they have), but still. I've never found a group from the 00's that I liked before. Usually I don't like much past the 70's.

InkWeaver wrote:

Penguin, did he listen to "I'm Yours" on repeat? I could level with you if you hated Jason Mraz after that.

(That is, in my opinion, his worst song, and for some reason, his biggest hit.)

That song became the theme for a tv series here. For about three months they played that song during every single commercial break. Add that to the repetition it got on the radio, and I almost began to hate Mraz - until I found his secret "Try Try Try" song with soundbites from the K-ON! anime, discovered what a huge nerd he was, and fell in love again. =_=

InkWeaver wrote:

To all of you folks baggin' on the '00s era of music, I bring you:

Jenny Lewis, The Black Keys, Wolfmother, OK Go, Franz Ferdinand, The Donnas, E.S. Posthumus, Fleet Foxes, Flogging Molly, Jason Mraz, Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend, Pendulum, Mason Jennings, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Mika, moe., Neko Case, The Paper Raincoat, Scissor Sisters, and Supergrass.

And if you haven't heard of at LEAST one of these bands/people, it's no fuckin' wonder some of you hate the '00s music. I will weep.

(Disclaimer: *some of these people may have spawned in the 90s and run into the '00s, however.)

To Wolfmother: Led Zeppelin cover bands don't count as antidotes. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

To The Donnas: I thought they stopped making music in the 80's. They have new stuff? Where? I love the Donnas!

To Supergrass: Supergrass is awesome, and I never thought I'd find another Supergrass fan anywhere.

Another antidote for the 00's: As someone who loves 80's hardcore acts like Black Flag or Bad Brains, I have to congratulate Gallows for making hardcore punk awesome again...

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few people I've spoke to seem to think the same way about them and I don't get it. How are they pretentious? [I find calling any form of music 'pretentious' to be utter bullshit simply because 99% of the time it's somebody saying "I don't like this band's music and I don't know why so I'll just call them pretentious"] I've asked each time somebody labels them like that and have gotten either no answer in return or just a half-assed "they're pretentious i don't like them" excuse.

Their last album may be over-rated, sure. Everything else has been solid gold, though, and Crack the Skye was still one of the better releases of 2009. :B

I'm not really big on the modern metal scene (70's metal is normally where I stop), so I admit I don't know much about Mastodon, so correct me if anything I say is inaccurate.

From what I gather, this is a typical heavy metal group as far as lyrical content goes, yes? Elves, dragons, the apocalypse, etc. I know their first big album was about Moby Dick, while the one after that, "Blood Mountain", was about a mythical mountain inhabited by dwarves, and their latest album "Crack the Skye", was a time-traveling tale about Rasputin. I don't have a problem with any of that. I like bands like Led Zeppelin and Danzig too much to object when lyrical content gets a bit silly. However, I was reading an interview with the band where the drummer claimed that despite the fact that the album was about Rasputin and magic, it was really about his abusive home life and how his sister was murdered (or some shit). All that stuff about time traveling and Russia? It's really just a metaphor for his unhappy home life. My pretentious bullshit detectors immediately went off. Correct me if I might have read the drummers statement wrong, or if the drummer isn't a good representation of the rest of the band, or if he was just probably high when he said that.

Not only that, but Bret Hinds is a jackass. He strikes me as someone trying waaay too hard to be a 'hardcore, edgy, br00tal, hard-drinking, metalhead hero', but just comes off as an alcoholic and a dumb dipshit.

But when it really comes down to it, my main problem is I'm not impressed with their music. Neither am I very impressed with the heavy metal scene in general. Like my dislike of Clapton, it's just really not my cup of tea.

Now, if you want a less biased opinion on Mastodon, my girlfriend is a metalhead and I could get her opinion on here (she's the one that got me into Opeth).

Mr.Doobie wrote:

InkWeaver wrote:

To all of you folks baggin' on the '00s era of music, I bring you:

Jenny Lewis, The Black Keys, Wolfmother, OK Go, Franz Ferdinand, The Donnas, E.S. Posthumus, Fleet Foxes, Flogging Molly, Jason Mraz, Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend, Pendulum, Mason Jennings, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Mika, moe., Neko Case, The Paper Raincoat, Scissor Sisters, and Supergrass.

And if you haven't heard of at LEAST one of these bands/people, it's no fuckin' wonder some of you hate the '00s music. I will weep.

(Disclaimer: *some of these people may have spawned in the 90s and run into the '00s, however.)

To Wolfmother: Led Zeppelin cover bands don't count as antidotes. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

To The Donnas: I thought they stopped making music in the 80's. They have new stuff? Where? I love the Donnas!

To Supergrass: Supergrass is awesome, and I never thought I'd find another Supergrass fan anywhere.

Wolfmother: HEY HEY HEY -- okay, yeah. BUT SHU'UP

The Donnas: They released the album "Bitchin'" in 2007. =D

And as for Supergrass: *tackle* CAN WE BE FRIENDS NAO

InkWeaver wrote:

And as for Supergrass: *tackle* CAN WE BE FRIENDS NAO

That depends. Can you hear us pumping on your stereo?

Mr.Doobie wrote:

InkWeaver wrote:

And as for Supergrass: *tackle* CAN WE BE FRIENDS NAO

That depends. Can you hear us pumping on your stereo?

Nightmare-inducing video aside, that's actually some really good music, if a little repetitive. Okay, a lot repetitive. Still, I'm going to have to look into them.

Also, it sounds like they're singing "humping" and I can't unhear it.

The 00's were the weakest decade, in my opinion. It had its highlights, sure, but most of it was just meh.

One of my musician friends made me read a paper about moden music a long time ago and it said that if you compared modern music with clasical music, a lot of modern music seemed dull. Not dull like "boring", dull like "without life", "without shine".

And I think that's what happened in the 00's. Most music seems so incredibly dull.

Mind you, I don't understand most clasical music and I grew up listening to modern music, so I cannot make that particular comparison, but I can sure as hell tell you that Lady GaGa doesn't hold a candle to The Doors and even Nirvana or Pearl Jam had more standards than the fucking Jonas Brothers.

Goat wrote:

Mind you, I don't understand most clasical music and I grew up listening to modern music, so I cannot make that particular comparison, but I can sure as hell tell you that Lady GaGa doesn't hold a candle to The Doors and even Nirvana or Pearl Jam had more standards than the fucking Jonas Brothers.

This is kind of funny, because Lady Gaga went to Julliard for a year.

There are a lot of 'modern' musicians with loads of classical training. Ben Folds and Elton John come to mind; they were classical musicians before they were pop song writers and in the end it did their music a lot of good.

That's nice, but since she's not playing Chopin or using any of her clasical education to drag her music out of mediocrity, it's also irrelevant.

ETA: Julliard? My respects. Doesn't make her any less boring.

>implying classical training makes a good musician

e: oh god i am the worst person

InkWeaver wrote:

To all of you folks baggin' on the '00s era of music, I bring you:

Jenny Lewis, The Black Keys, Wolfmother, OK Go, Franz Ferdinand, The Donnas, E.S. Posthumus, Fleet Foxes, Flogging Molly, Jason Mraz, Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend, Pendulum, Mason Jennings, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Mika, moe., Neko Case, The Paper Raincoat, Scissor Sisters, and Supergrass.

And if you haven't heard of at LEAST one of these bands/people, it's no fuckin' wonder some of you hate the '00s music. I will weep.

(Disclaimer: *some of these people may have spawned in the 90s and run into the '00s, however.)

At least half the names I know of, and of that half, at least 6 of them have had songs played that I've heard. ES Posthumus does the opening theme for my favourite show Cold Case, OK Go, love their song "Here it Goes Again" Franz Ferdinand, I've heard a couple of their songs, mostly "Take Me Out"(very Classic Rock sounding), Jason Mraz, hmm, not too fond of him. I only hear two of his songs "I'm Yours" and "Lucky" featuring Colbie Calliat. Mika, I only know of one song of his, "Grace Kelly", and that's about it. And finally the Scissor Sisters. At first I thought they were the Bee Gees("Don't Feel Like Dancing", very disco-esque), and there was one other song, can't put a name to it at the moment.

I voted the 00's because most of the music that gets too much radio play and marketing, it all belongs to one type of fad or another, which really eclipsed the uniqueness and talent of the groups mentioned above.

First there was the boy band and girl pop singer fad. Now this may have begun in the 90's, but it was only during the last three years of that decade. You had the Backstreet Boys, N'Sync and all of their ilk. And their was Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera(who later changed her sound and rose above the cheesy pop). This lasted until about 2002(although Justin Timberlake and stupid Britney still managed to last for reasons beyond all logic). 2002 to about 2005 didn't seem to yeild any fads(none I can recall). Then around 2006 and on, it seemed their were only two fads that got the most popularity . Over-manufactured hip-hop, and emo. Especially emo! And now to add to all that shit, you got these Disney stars with their mass-produced sugar-confected tripe(Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Jonas Brothers(Hanson carbon-copies!) and their ilk). Oh, and Taylor Swift who's a fad all her own.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

So yeah, not much of 00's has really ever impressed me.

Goat wrote:

One of my musician friends made me read a paper about moden music a long time ago and it said that if you compared modern music with clasical music, a lot of modern music seemed dull. Not dull like "boring", dull like "without life", "without shine".

That is such an odd comparison to make, though. I imagine that those two concepts - 'modern music' and 'classical music' - were properly defined in the paper in question, but even then... Modern music covers a whole gamut of different styles and it feels incredibly off to just lump everything - from basic bubblegum pop to trip hop to Celtic folk to ambient rock to ska to movie soundtracks etc. - together and just dismiss it as being 'more dull' than all classical music. Moreso, because classical music is also a pretty big genre - do you include Schönberg in there, by the way? What about early jazz? - and a pretty varied one at that.

Goat wrote:

And I think that's what happened in the 00's. Most music seems so incredibly dull.

Mind you, I don't understand most clasical music and I grew up listening to modern music, so I cannot make that particular comparison, but I can sure as hell tell you that Lady GaGa doesn't hold a candle to The Doors and even Nirvana or Pearl Jam had more standards than the fucking Jonas Brothers.

Yes, but, newsflash, in the previous decades? There was dull music as well. The passing of the time tends to have cut those from general air-play, so the boring songs have fallen by the wayside, while the more evergreen songs tend to endure.

And yeah, Lady GaGa doesn't compare to the Doors - because, uh, hello there genre dissonance - but I vastly prefer crazy, crazy GaGa over, say, Lulu or that awful Do You Know the Way to San José-song.
I'm not going to compare the Jonas Brothers to anything, but I'm willing to forgive the '00s those horrible transgressions, because the past years have also given us James Morrison, Michael Bublé, Nelly Furtado, Damien Rice, Snow Patrol, Ane Brun, Yann Tiersen, Ryan Adams, KT Tunstall, David Guetta, Amy MacDonald and the Arctic Monkeys. (Then again, I also like the Justin Timberlake revival and Arcade Fire, so maybe I'm just too much of an unpolished indie fad lover of vapid pop-music.)

Well, I hate The Doors. I can't stand his voice or the musical arrangement.

But I wouldn't compare them to Lady Gaga because she writes disco-pop and they wrote drug-induced metaphors set to guitars. Genre dissonance.

Gaga is fun though and doesn't try to be anything else. There is no deep meaning in the lyrics, they're just fun dance songs. That's it.

Not everything has to be "OMGdeep" and have "meaning". And it bothers the fuck out of me that nothing is allowed to be enjoyed in the music scene unless its pretentious enough.

Lapin wrote:

Not everything has to be "OMGdeep" and have "meaning". And it bothers the fuck out of me that nothing is allowed to be enjoyed in the music scene unless its pretentious enough.

True, but a lot of people use this to excuse complete shit like "I Got a Feelin'."

Lapin wrote:

Well, I hate The Doors. I can't stand his voice or the musical arrangement.

Eh's a pretty cool guy. Takes long baths and doesn't afraid of anything.

Mr.Doobie wrote:

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A few people I've spoke to seem to think the same way about them and I don't get it. How are they pretentious? [I find calling any form of music 'pretentious' to be utter bullshit simply because 99% of the time it's somebody saying "I don't like this band's music and I don't know why so I'll just call them pretentious"] I've asked each time somebody labels them like that and have gotten either no answer in return or just a half-assed "they're pretentious i don't like them" excuse.

Their last album may be over-rated, sure. Everything else has been solid gold, though, and Crack the Skye was still one of the better releases of 2009. :B

I'm not really big on the modern metal scene (70's metal is normally where I stop), so I admit I don't know much about Mastodon, so correct me if anything I say is inaccurate.

From what I gather, this is a typical heavy metal group as far as lyrical content goes, yes? Elves, dragons, the apocalypse, etc. I know their first big album was about Moby Dick, while the one after that, "Blood Mountain", was about a mythical mountain inhabited by dwarves, and their latest album "Crack the Skye", was a time-traveling tale about Rasputin. I don't have a problem with any of that. I like bands like Led Zeppelin and Danzig too much to object when lyrical content gets a bit silly.

I wouldn't exactly say they go for the whole "Elves/Dragons/Apocolypse" thing. That's more of a Power Metal thing. I'll admit I don't care for the lyrics in their songs [with an exception to Leviathan, because, well, this comic [though Neil Fallon of Clutch was guest vocalist for that section, IIRC]. I'm not that good at deciphering growling vocals though. Blood Mountain's concept seems pretty buried in the actual music, like their other albums actually [they're nothing like, say, Lamb Lies Down on Broadway/The Wall in how the concept is right in your face], you can ignore it and still enjoy their stuff. They work pretty well as stand-alone songs on each album, and the instrumentation/compostion is, like you said about LZ and Danzig, good enough to ignore whatever faults the lyrics may have.

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However, I was reading an interview with the band where the drummer claimed that despite the fact that the album was about Rasputin and magic, it was really about his abusive home life and how his sister was murdered (or some shit). All that stuff about time traveling and Russia? It's really just a metaphor for his unhappy home life. My pretentious bullshit detectors immediately went off. Correct me if I might have read the drummers statement wrong, or if the drummer isn't a good representation of the rest of the band, or if he was just probably high when he said that.

Well, they are all stoners. I dunno, again I never cared much for the lyrics in Crack the Skye.

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Not only that, but Bret Hinds is a jackass. He strikes me as someone trying waaay too hard to be a 'hardcore, edgy, br00tal, hard-drinking, metalhead hero', but just comes off as an alcoholic and a dumb dipshit.

He's just a Georgia Metalhead, I guess. In the interviews and making-of DVDs he comes across as a pretty nice guy, and even if he was a jackass I would still listen to their stuff if I enjoyed the music. I mean, I don't boycott Megadeth simply because Dave Mustaine was a junkie, or [is still?] an asshole; the guy made Rust in Peace for cryin' out loud.

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But when it really comes down to it, my main problem is I'm not impressed with their music. Neither am I very impressed with the heavy metal scene in general. Like my dislike of Clapton, it's just really not my cup of tea.

Now, if you want a less biased opinion on Mastodon, my girlfriend is a metalhead and I could get her opinion on here (she's the one that got me into Opeth).

That's fair. :B I'd really suggest Leviathan if you haven't listened to it in its entirety yet, though. Hearts Alive especially I feel is a perfect embodiment of the sound they were trying to achieve with that album.

And no, you don't need to worry about doing anything like that. :B Thanks for reminding me about Opeth too, by the way; another great band though I feel their best stuff was made in the 90's [what can I say? I'm a bassist, and Morningrise is one of the greatest metal album for bassists ever made].

Mafiosa wrote:

>implying classical training makes a good musician

e: oh god i am the worst person

I'm not saying classical music necessarily makes a good musician, but I am saying that a good musician with classical training will generally sound better than a good musician without. Generally speaking, there are naturally exceptions (Hendrix comes to mind). Regina Spektor summed this up well in an interview I saw recently: when asked about how she felt about her classical training she said she was extremely thankful for it because it 'gave her the tools she needed' to compose her music later. I have never taken a piano lesson in my life but I can play at least somewhat because I used what theory I knew to try and figure it out. Theory I learned through classical training on a different instrument. Similarly, when a couple friends of mine saw me struggling and taught me proper hand technique, it also became easier.

tl;dr you don't need to be classically trained to be a good musician, but it helps.

Goat wrote:

That's nice, but since she's not playing Chopin or using any of her clasical education to drag her music out of mediocrity, it's also irrelevant.

ETA: Julliard? My respects. Doesn't make her any less boring.

Haha, yeah, you make a good point. I'm not really one a fan either I just thought it was funny that you talked about the lack of complexity in modern music versus classical and then cited an ex-Julliard student as an example.

Oh, and Chopin ftw!

Yeah, all of what TheHedonist said. Having classical training doesn't automatically make someone a great musician, and conversely it is possible to be a great musician without classical training. However, being classically trained means being exposed to centuries worth of musical ideas -- not to say "do it like they did or you're wrong!" (although some folks will try to sell that bullshit), but to give you a foundation for musical thought, and a wide variety of concepts to mix and match and change and add to on your own. You don't have to be playing classical music to be employing the benefits of classical training. Know the rules before you break them, and all that.

Not that any of this necessarily applies to Lady Gaga, specifically.