David Guetta, Calvin Harris, Swedish House Mafia, Avicii, Skrillex… I swear EVERYONE from 2011 to early 2016 that was at the top of the charts was a DJ featuring a famous artist like Rihanna, Ellie Goulding, Justin Bieber, etc…
Dunno what kind of perfect storm happened for that trend to form but I want it back, kind of. I just can’t stand current music, especially if the music is getting shorter and the lyrics even dumber (I’m talking about popular music, not unknowns).
2010s were the years I kinda stopped just listening nu metal and metal and kinda went back to popular music for a while. 2020s music pushed me back to 2000s nu metal and Metallica.
Complaining about “songs getting dumber” is a story as old as recorded music. We tend to remember music positively if it’s important to our personality formation. Usually the music from our youth, although big jumps are possible later in life.
It’s not that new artists are worse or better than the old ones, you just don’t have an emotional connection to newer music.That being said I do dislike some trends in 2020s music - melancholic mood and more focus on introspective texts. And all of reggaeton subculture. Contrary to your point I think there’s more focus on lyrics now than in 2010s.
The Tiktokification of music is a measurable trend and I fucking hate it
Complaining about “songs getting dumber” is a story as old as recorded music.
You’re not wrong, but we’re also able to remember music made by actual humans, using “instruments” that they played with their hands.
The music industry, always corrupt but occasionally promoting something worthwhile, was completely razed by the industry’s inability to accept, acknowledge, or build useful digital formats.
What we have today is some kind of zombie replica of a music industry focused only on the cheapest sounds possible in order to maximize profits. Actual musicians go on of course, shuffling around bandcamp and apple music, and the like - you might hear one you like if you want to wade into the sea.
Yeah, they said the same thing 10 years ago, and 20, and thirty.
You don’t have to understand or like other kinds of music for them to be good. They can be good to some people and not others.
Saying it’s not good is just like grandpa saying Nirvana wasn’t as good as the Beatles. Saying you don’t like it is fair criticism, saying it’s just not as good is just generational bullshit. The kids like it, so who cares. It’s not good or bad, it’s just different.
Good or bad aside, it’s fundamentally different. Ok?
Synthesizers and drum machines changed everything for better and for worse.
Weren’t those synthesizers and drum machines huge in the 70’s, culminating in the game-changing TR-808 making its mark on basically huge swathes of music that followed?
Whatever it is we’re talking about, it certainly wasn’t invented by the current generation of musicians.
Lyrics are getting worse dude, at least Nirvana didn’t repeated the word “hoe” 20 times in their songs
Your opinion is that lyrics are getting worse. For every artist you think has bad lyrics there’s another that has great lyrics.
I’m talking about popular music
Pop music has always been crafted to appeal to as many people as people as people. It’s never great music. It’s just good enough in enough ways for it to not be hated.
It’s like American cheese or fast food. It’s not always garbage but there’s always better choices
Nirvana was the most popular shit ever dude, Metallica at one point was. And if we go the 2000s pop route, I know almost all Britney Spears songs (the famous ones) I don’t remember a single one as idiotic or offensive as “generic black ghetto chick twerking to a beat # 5”
Pet peeve: all the guys you listed are producers, not DJs. DJs generally play other people’s music, producers make their own. There are many producers who can DJ too as it’s a good way to perform their music without having to drag an entire studio around with them, but it’s usually a secondary skill of theirs. Likewise there are incredible DJs out there that don’t make any of their own music.
Back to the question—Things go in peaks and waves, we get a load of electronic music coming through to the forefront in popularity then everyone eventually gets bored of it and it’s replaced with a reaction from another kind of genre until people get bored of that. It kinda flip-flops like that every decade or so since the 70s.
They’re DJ. They know how to play their music live, David Guetta knows how to do his thing when he was younger with analogic stuff and same goes for the rest, minus probably Skrillex and Avicii but they’re DJs too
They’re producers that also DJ.
Instead of being a credit in the liner notes, they took the spotlight and called the singer a feature.
I hated the years where every time someone turned on the radio it sounded like a club. You can keep that lol
I hated it, when I went to the club and it sounded like radio.
I swear EVERYONE from 2011 to early 2016 that was at the top of the charts was a DJ featuring a famous artist like Rihanna, Ellie Goulding, Justin Bieber, etc… Dunno what kind of perfect storm happened for that trend to form but I want it back, kind of.
Perfect storm? What? That was manufactured garbage. By design.
The rise of the DJs was one saddest, least creative pop charts in music history.
It was well done, at least at the beginning
It was a cash grab.
check out Fred Again…
Dom Dolla too
They do this shit so much on the satellite radio channel I like most that I only ever hear them playing the genre they’re supposed to be playing like every 3rd time I happen to use it instead of my phone.
They should just give Tom Morello his own station to run instead of having him guest DJ Lithium so much.
Don’t think this is what you meant, but I needed to get that shit out.
“Dumbfication” of songs is part of the reason I started listening a lot to rock. Quite a few rock bands seem to at least try to make something thoughtful.
But also been finding some musics outside of this niche too. Like, after some 10 years, I found again a music I quite enjoyed back then, Stromae’s “House’Llelujah”. I don’t speak French so figuring the lyrics out is hard, but for this “DJ” type of music, besides the rhythm, it also appears to have a more thought out lyrics.
There’s a Chicane interview called “so, it’s 1995” where he struggles to not eviscerate some of those DJs, talking about times where the artists who made the music were making a fraction of the money the superstar DJs who were playing the music made.
