• SSJMarx@lemm.eeEnglish
    25·
    22 hours ago

    Ugly people are still making it, pop acts have just figured out that if you make a pretty person pretend to sing it it sells better.

    • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
      3·
      18 hours ago

      I am convinced that producers go out with a company checkbook and standard boilerplate, find acts that have good songs, then buy the rights to those songs.

      They then give the songs to larger pop artists and never credit the original artist because there is no need. They likely pay well for a decent song.

      • TachyonTele@lemm.ee
        2·
        17 hours ago

        They do.
        It’s extremely rare that people like Taylor Swift get as big as she is from writing her own songs.

        There are actual classes you can take on how to write pop songs, taught by people who made pop artists big.

    • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
      1·
      18 hours ago

      I had a luthier tell me how much was much better before the record. How artists would perform live and have to do their best in these performances.

      Once records came around all the artists sold out and it has been downhill from there.

      “Ok, can I have my guitar back, please…”

  • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
    60·
    1 day ago

    Pop is just as manufactured and fake as it always was, with the exceptional trend setter or two doing their own thing, but what’s just below the surface is always just as good as it always was.

    As a fan of hardcore, electronica, folk, metal, and all of the genres that fall under them, I still get new bands. I still get new releases. I get cheap as fuck concerts and still get cool merch and awesome vinyls. I have zero to complain about. Hell, Primus, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer just made an album together, in 2024.

    Anyone who says music sucks now doesn’t really listen to that much music to start with. Music is just fine, man. Maybe look a little deeper than the pudding skin.

      • Ragnarok314159@sopuli.xyz
        1·
        17 hours ago

        I have had a 50/50 success rates. The ones who are bad are REALLY bad. To make up for it, they crank the gain, volume, and distortion to 11 and just annihilate everyone’s eardrums.

    • Bonesince1997@lemmy.world
      23·
      22 hours ago

      I hear you and agree with much of that. I am a fan of multiple genres as well. But, as far as it goes for jazz, jazz is dead. Anyone still attempting to play it is often a sad version of what was once great in the 50s/60s/70s. So while there’s plenty of music in other genres I like, always more to find from those time periods, as well as still enjoying the classics, it’s a little upsetting good jazz is dead, modern jazz is trash, and people who think they know jazz these days actually refer to some other genre, like rock. Somewhat sad.

      • GHiLA@sh.itjust.works
        4·
        18 hours ago

        Jazz, to me, a layman to the genre comes off as anything from Miles Davis and Duke Ellington to soundtracks composed for animes, to progressive epics that span twenty minutes and spin into a free form improv that’s somewhere between art and math.

        But aside from it being a flavor other things come in, like a jazzy rock band, Mars Volta or a jazzy metal band, like Opeth, or a jazzy singer, like Michael Buble, I don’t know jazz.

        I don’t think as a normal person that I’m exposed to pure “jazz”, whatever it dilutes into, but I’m fascinated by the chance that there might be something I’m missing that you might mention.

        • Bonesince1997@lemmy.world
          1·
          17 hours ago

          I suppose I don’t know a ton. My earliest entry was that of Buddy Rich, the drummer. As a drummer, I wanted to relate. Play fast and all. Haha. Though my playing has all but ceased (the stomach drum and desk drum will always live on!), my love for his often high tempo pieces lives on. He played songs I believe others played as well. His versions were just more upbeat!

          I’ll give you an example of a group I didn’t like all that much and that was the Glen Miller Orchestra. Even as a jazz fan I can hear the style of jazz people refer to when they talk about “music to put you to sleep.”

          But BR was just the beginning. It sounds like you know more than most believe it or not. Miles is great and I think I have more to discover there even.

          The latest artist I found, new to me, also from the 50s/60s I believe, is Bill Evans, a pianist. It was a YouTube comment I came across that mentioned Evans to now be their “piano daddy” and from what I’m hearing, I’d have to agree. 😁 But, again, I only know so much. (Talk as if I know it all though…)

        • Bonesince1997@lemmy.world
          2·
          20 hours ago

          I have not. Thank you.

          I definitely don’t know where to look these days. I believe I was previously recommended SmallsLIVE, also on YT, but admittedly haven’t spent much time there. https://youtube.com/@smallslive?si=b4mxAHP1xqxv7QNm

          I’ve also been listening to Avishai Cohen, a bassist, for the past many years, who has modern things and may still be active. Jazz is just not mainstream in any way anymore. And most people don’t know what it is.

  • synae[he/him]@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    631·
    1 day ago

    Yea that’s why metal fuckin rules. We got the ugliest guys ever altogether in one room and said “what you got?” and they became legends

    And for anyone that might say that doesn’t happen anymore, I ask: how many open mic nights or $20 shows have you been to lately? The scene is doing great in my area, but it doesn’t happen by magic. Ya gotta support it, spread the word, bring your friends.

    • arefx@lemmy.ml
      17·
      1 day ago

      More of a hardcore guy myself but we’re equally as ugly so I stand in solidarity

    • Mbourgon everywhere@lemmy.world
      9·
      1 day ago

      Yeah, no kidding. I just bought tickets for a $15 show that has multiple bands and included a overseas band. I mentioned to them that they should’ve upped the prices to $20.

      Also: Sturgeon‘s law still applies: “90% of everything is crap“. Music is so amazingly easy to make these days you can do it on your phone (and I believe a Grammy nominated/winning album did so). Which means that there are literally thousands of albums every year, And so there will be a lot of crap. But between Bandcamp and Spotify and SoundCloud (and so on, even self-hosting), this is the freaking plutonium age if you like new music. There is literally so much that you can’t possibly keep up with it, even in sub genres. And there are some amazing gems coming out daily

    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      3·
      1 day ago

      Most of my favorite artists are beautiful tho… Mikael Akerfeldt, Alexi Laiho (RIP), Devin Townsend, Shagrath…

  • BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee
    19·
    1 day ago

    Not really related to that stupid boomer post, but ho crazy is it that that ugly british lady won music star or popstar or whatever and everyone was like: oh my god this is insane, ugly people can do things? They are almost like real people.