Following on from the What Grinds Your Gears thread in the guitar section, I wondering what grinds your gears in music.
For me it's got to be the ubiquitous full-tone lift (usually plus strings/choir) on the last verse of just about anything on X Factor type programs.
A distant second is songs that fade out at the end. Come on - if you can come up with an interesting or imaginative beginning, you should be able to come up with an imaginative or interesting ending.
I play guitar because I enjoy it rather than because I’m any good at it
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As for "when am I ready?" You'll never be ready. It works in reverse, you become ready by doing it. - pmbomb
It also has to be performed in a fragile, whispery, whiney, singer-songwritery way, with minimalist accompaniment.
Instant John Lewis Christmas advert.
A weak folky cover version of “Blue Monday” in the coffee bar? NOOOoo! Make it stop!!!!
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I don't care about your feelings. I care as much about your thoughts on love as I do about your thoughts on non-ferrous welding. And I have no desire to dance, no matter how much you may implore me with your sub-juvenile rhyming and over-emoting.
Either read a bit to inspire you, grab an instrument or shut up.
I said maybe.....
For me it's the stuff that Mrs A likes - Stock Aitken and Waterman, everything that they ever produced.
Edit; turns out Toploader covered it too (bastards!)
I don't even care if it's a cover or an original. The whole genre should disappear. I've almost given up coffee because of it!
OK, this is a bit unkind and it's a phenomenon that's been somewhat forced by dire circumstances, but...
...."Lockdown songs" recorded in people's bedrooms with acoustic guitars. Yes, we're back in whiney singer-songwriter territory again.
Just because you're stuck in your bedroom doesn't mean you can't plug something in, program some drums and make a fucking racket, you wishy-washy bastards.
Ian
Lowering my expectations has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.
Ed Sheehan ..... has literally used the same boring formula now for 10 years.
Supportact said: [my style is] probably more an accumulation of limitations and bad habits than a 'style'.
Fade outs are a perfectly valid way to end a studio track. Handled well they're an evocative and tasteful way of handling the fact that the music is being presented to the listener on a particular medium. It can be used to imply that your time with the song is at an end, but the song will go on after you've gone. It can be used to give a little glimpse into a band starting to loosen up during the fade, when you don't want that vibe to be the focus of the track. In complex arrangements, quite often different elements will be faded at different speeds, to re-frame the mix as the fades go on. It's far from a lazy cop out.
Then there are the variations on the theme - when the main body of the song comes to an end but some elements carry on into a fade out. Or where the song is gradually faded into rising noise (R.E.M. "Hope", Elbow "Newborn"). Do you draw a line where some forms of fade are acceptable to you? How about the end of Holst's the Planets or other arrangements of choir music, where the singers physically leave the venue, taking their voices with them and creating the effect of the music fading away?
And what about the fade in?
And also, where are these incredible endings? There are millions of tracks that don't fade out. And I'd say 95% of them end with either "and stop on the one after this repetition of the riff" or "have a bit of a rit" or "and do a drum fill now". Yeah, fades can be lazy but when done badly, they are no more lazy than any other form of ending that took 5 seconds to decide on, if it was explicitly planned at all
I'd really like people who hate fadeouts to put their money where their mouth is and write a better ending for a famous track that fades out.
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Spotify, Apple et al