Music - What grinds your gears?

UnclePsychosis

Rocker said:

I don't understand the problem some members have with the band Queen.  Brilliant shows, amazing front man, music that has lasted and still sounds good.  What is there not to like?  Or at least not to hate?

Queen are like the musical version of Eastenders. Just because its got a massive audience, your granny likes it, and its been popular for a long time doesn't mean its any good. You say they "sound good", I say they sound "pompous, overblown, and yet somehow completely bland at the same time". 

nocasternoproblem

Coldplay

scrumhalf

What really anoys is the assumption by way too many people that music consists of a vocalist and a beat, and everything else is literally noise in the background.

pigface

Plagiarism, and then denying it. Sam Smith, I'm writing about you.

Rocker

UnclePsychosis said:

Rocker said:

I don't understand the problem some members have with the band Queen.  Brilliant shows, amazing front man, music that has lasted and still sounds good.  What is there not to like?  Or at least not to hate?

Queen are like the musical version of Eastenders. Just because its got a massive audience, your granny likes it, and its been popular for a long time doesn't mean its any good. You say they "sound good", I say they sound "pompous, overblown, and yet somehow completely bland at the same time". 

Not liking the music because 'your granny likes it' is not a good enough reason for not liking it  

Queen probably sold more records and CDs than most music genres did.  Which means that while you don't like them, a large number of people did and still do.  I respect your right to not like them but there are many unpalatable aspects to music that are far worse than not liking Queen.

UnclePsychosis

Rocker said:

UnclePsychosis said:

Rocker said:

I don't understand the problem some members have with the band Queen.  Brilliant shows, amazing front man, music that has lasted and still sounds good.  What is there not to like?  Or at least not to hate?

Queen are like the musical version of Eastenders. Just because its got a massive audience, your granny likes it, and its been popular for a long time doesn't mean its any good. You say they "sound good", I say they sound "pompous, overblown, and yet somehow completely bland at the same time". 

Not liking the music because 'your granny likes it' is not a good enough reason for not liking it  

Queen probably sold more records and CDs than most music genres did.  Which means that while you don't like them, a large number of people did and still do. 

Gangnam Style got so many hits that it literally broke the view counter on YouTube. Popularity does not and has never equated to quality. Tongue in cheek here, but I'm not surprised that a Queen fan doesn't have the imagination to understand that  

thecolourbox

- repeated notes to fit the rhythm of the shit lyrics (they're always shit when this happens), when they should just rewrite the lyrics to have a better rhythm with less repeats. The chorus of "we've got nothing to be guilty of" for example, but commonplace in the writing of Barry Gibb (Google tells me he wrote that one)

- how shit music sounds on radio. Trebly compressed shite. Hate the radio

- piano playing in pop music. I'm a pianist predominantly, but because of this I know there is very little modern music that can be played on it that doesn't sound awful. I'm looking at Coldplay, muse, Keane, and all those wet John Lewis adverts in particular

I'll have more tomorrow when I've worked out how to word them

FarleyUK

Singers who sound like they're constantly being violently shaken whilst sinking (Beyonce, Shakira etc.)

Singers that sing in a 'breathy' manner. Seems an easy way to avoid having to put any power into your vocals and sounds like you can't be arse. Lacks emotion IMO.

Guitarists who don't trim their string ends.

Keiko

thecolourbox said:

- repeated notes to fit the rhythm of the shit lyrics (they're always shit when this happens), when they should just rewrite the lyrics to have a better rhythm with less repeats. The chorus of "we've got nothing to be guilty of" for example, but commonplace in the writing of Barry Gibb (Google tells me he wrote that one)

Also, use of the word "baby" just to fill a gap in the lyrics. Instantly adds a big slab of cheese to any song.

We've got nothing to be guilty of - baby.

Its always pronounced babe-eh, too. Not babe-ee, how you are supposed to say it. It sounds cooler the other way huh?

lasermonkey

Ah yes, the most commonly sung about animal of them all- the Bay Bear.

fretmeister

Jonathangus said:

Singers who demonstrate their incredible vocal control by embellishing every single note instead of singing me a goddamn tune.

Tex Mexico

1. YouTube stock (I assume) music. This is a thing, where if you want a review of a product or an instructional video or basically anything that might have been uploaded by anyone who unironically refers to themselves as an "influencer", it will be backed with by-numbers euphoric pop dance which would be bad enough if it didn't also have pitch-shifted vocal samples all over it. I don't know or care why anyone would want to listen to what sounds like Alvin and the Chipmunks having a gang-bang, but it needs to stop.


2. The most recent strain of hip-hop, which as far as I can tell is guys mumbling through zero-transient autotune over an extremely basic beat. The only intelligible lyrics, and I mean that in the loosest possible sense of the term, are "yuh" and "ayy" and "n****r" and "bitches". There might be some kind of tonal sample in the background, but any commitment to it being music is at this point barely audible.

With the strong caveat that I'm a 40-year-old white British man, the appeal of most hip-hop has been completely opaque to me for at least the past 15 years. I thought that the point was these guys were supposed to be amazing rhythmic vocalists and lyrical geniuses. I encourage you to google lyrics by someone called "Young Thug", who according to Wikipedia is supposed to be the most influential rapper of his generation, and tell me if you can detect any strong themes, powerful imagery or engaging narratives there. Then I encourage you to put his name into YouTube and tell me if you come across any performances that don't make him sound like he's just been shaken awake in a shop doorway.

Tex Mexico

So, because I put "Young Thug" into YouTube, the website now thinks I'd like to hear more of This Kind Of Thing. Accordingly it suggested this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfHNIPXTxy0

I'm honestly not sure what to make of it.

Jonathangus

Precisely, @fretmeister ;

hollywoodrox

Grumpyrocker said:

• Fadeouts. There's a reason Sorrow live is better, it ends properly.
• Guest vocalists whose sole contribution is to go "oh yeah" "uha" "that's right" etc.
• The millennial whoop
• Eight/nine-string metal riffing. Leave some space for your bass player please. If your riff isn't heavy on a standard tuned 6-string, it's probably a shit riff.
• Metal where you can't hear the bass guitar
• That bit in metal videos where the screen shakes like Saving Private Ryan just because someone plays a heavy riff
• The assumption (often by the BBC) that Glasto covers "all" music. 
• Pop singers who cram as many notes as possible and at great length into just one word
• The crappy backing tracks some guitar instrumentalists create instead of writing complete songs. Love Satch, but his early work is very guilty of this. 
• Queen
• Yes I'll join everyone else with songs that have been John Lewissed
• Metal gatekeeping - yes the singer is a girl, no that doesn't mean it's "just" pop music, fuck off
• The lack of widespread recognition of the brilliance of Adrian Smith.  
• The shouty bloke from the B52s. What's that about?
• That Ronnie James Dio is dead

Adrian Smith is freakin ace , His ASAP album is amazing

hollywoodrox

Tex Mexico said:

So, because I put "Young Thug" into YouTube, the website now thinks I'd like to hear more of This Kind Of Thing. Accordingly it suggested this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfHNIPXTxy0

I'm honestly not sure what to make of it.

I’m not a fan of rap being a rocker , but I wonder what old school hip hop people like sugar hill Gang, grandmaster flash,run dmc , newcleus etc think of stuff like this? Their output even if not to your taste was clever rhythmic and engaging , some of the stuff on those electro albums was very clever and sounded immense and a lot even carried some sort of message . This new stuff seems to rely on technology ,ass and the gangster lifestyle to sell it .

Tex Mexico

hollywoodrox said:

Tex Mexico said:

So, because I put "Young Thug" into YouTube, the website now thinks I'd like to hear more of This Kind Of Thing. Accordingly it suggested this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfHNIPXTxy0

I'm honestly not sure what to make of it.

I’m not a fan of rap being a rocker , but I wonder what old school hip hop people like sugar hill Gang, grandmaster flash,run dmc , newcleus etc think of stuff like this? Their output even if not to your taste was clever rhythmic and engaging , some of the stuff on those electro albums was very clever and sounded immense and a lot even carried some sort of message . This new stuff seems to rely on technology ,ass and the gangster lifestyle to sell it .

So, I just googled the lyrics of this particular masterpiece. It's as you would expect a seemingly random assemblage of bragging about cars, money, criminal status and treating women like shit. Interesting, though, is this:

"Songwriters: Bill Kapri / C. Gandy-Rogers / David Doman / Dieuson Octave / J. Thomas / Jacques Webster / Kiari Cephus / M. Prince"

That's fully eight guys it apparently took to come up with it. What the fuck is going on there?

Creed_Clicks

There seems to be this trend of singing nowadays where the singer makes two words out of one. Drags out words. Seems to be very much the pop, singer songwriter, bedwetter type of music (blokes and women are guilty of it). A lot of it follows the Em, C, G, D over and over. Annoys the shite out of me. Makes me want to play Carcass right after hearing it!

scrumhalf

It's not new. Whitney Houston did this when singing "and I-E-I-E-I will always love you".

It's often clever to quote from other songs but why she chose to quote from Old Macdonald Had A Farm is lost on me. 

Grumpyrocker

Creed_Clicks said:

There seems to be this trend of singing nowadays where the singer makes two words out of one. Drags out words. Seems to be very much the pop, singer songwriter, bedwetter type of music (blokes and women are guilty of it). A lot of it follows the Em, C, G, D over and over. Annoys the shite out of me. Makes me want to play Carcass right after hearing it!

And. Short. Clipped. Words. Over. Drum. And. Ac. Oust. Ic. Like. A. Crap. John. Lew. Is. March. Ing. Band.