Good music should never be popular.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOld-kvQYm0
jessica
good music can't become popular. in order to become popular, it must reflect the status quo and cease to be good. now, there's a grey area where it can be quasi-good and manage to sell. and you can manage to sell quite a few records without becoming popular. but, it's ultimately a contradiction in terms.
fm
that's not true man. There's plenty great bands in the underground that are popular in their own ways. Sometimes we get so Into the whole idea of things staying under ground that we kinda in.a way never want them to get popular but through the years they do. Look at the Jesus lizard for example... a d they're still Indy...
jessica
we're defining "popular" rather differently - you're talking about bulk album sales and picking some arbitrary number, while i'm talking about tapping into the public consciousness in a way that represents mainstream attitudes. the truth is that you can sell hundreds of thousands of records without ever tapping into the mainstream and becoming "popular".
a good example of that is ministry. they play stadiums. they're not popular.
cm-2
good music ought to be popular. because if everyone were in to good music of all genres, we'd get far more exposure to that quality of content than we do in our lesser numbers. i believe in the right to ones personal view. opinion is freedom. but when you go left or right, id say crack a window. allow possibilities an opportunity to expand u. not to get so fucking deep, but we can all agree that existence is in infinite motion. "ever changing," 'cause if something moves, its not at its former place. consider a world where every person had the opinion that music is a standard, and speaks volumes about the individual. the latter is fact. or is it? manson enjoyed the beatles.. lol embrace the maybes', like i just did, mid sentence. we can all be wrong and right, depending on where we're positioned. original thought was simply: a world full of dope music would surround you with the shit. imagine an existence where every song you heard was impactful, so much so that it constantly opened you up. ah, such a place is a dream. thusly, in my "opinion" (just another assclown on this tele tube, to someone, hopefully!) i beg to differ with you, and those who can't see the possibilities. if all the good fucking music (there is INFINITY of it...) was POPULAR, we wouldn't form the jaded views you have. friend, you have validity. but you are disenchanted because popular music sucks lengthy, sturdy, pulsing-... i'll stop there. ~_~ <3 peace, bruhskee.
cm
If it's popular, it starts to suck. If it needs lengthy explanation, it starts to suck. Ya dig?
jr
so what are you implying that the general population has bad taste in music.
cm
No I'm stating my opinion. But yes the general population does have bad taste in music or Nickleback would not exist.
jessica
it's a statistical necessity. the exceptional cannot be the mainstream, or it ceases to be exceptional. it should follow a bell curve, with most people interested in stuff that's unoffensive and bland and minorities into the extremes of talent and garbage.
it doesn't really matter what metrics you're using. creativity cannot be the norm, or it ceases to be creative. technical proficiency cannot be the norm, or it ceases to be such. exceptional taste cannot be the norm, or it loses it's exceptional nature.
that's why critics have no choice but to rail against the fashions. otherwise, they wouldn't be critics.
jr
so the people the listen to it will continue to be labeled hipsters or edgy
jessica
but, by the same logic, that's driven by their conformity - and that upholds the status quo that rejects innovation.
attitudes change over time. that which was labeled as "hipster" becomes interpreted as "visionary". sometimes the artists are lucky enough to live long enough to see that shift and get acknowledgement; often, they're not.
we don't have to be silly and talk about beethoven. syd barrett was kicked out of pink floyd because they thought he was killing their marketability. examples are endless.
la
Im not a music expert or less, but, have you ever thought thats a very subjective matter? Whats supossed to be "good music" and "the message behind the music that lesser intuitive generations cant get"?
cm
I don't want to see lesser generations turn the music and bands I like and consider good, Into fashion statements. There is no message to get anymore! anytime music tries to make a point its lost in the fray of popularity. Popular music sucks because it's made for mass consumption. Designed to suite a wide variety of people but ends up only alienating the people who loved them for what they were to begin with. So fuck the lesser generation, If they cant find interest unless MTV tells them it's cool. Just fuck em!
jr
I'm into this type of music. And I'm from the 90s generation
jessica
activists tend to look at music through a marxist filter of propaganda of the deed and agitprop - this idea that music can play a role in pushing social awareness and changing the status quo. but, i think it's worth looking at what socrates had to say: he said that when you see musicians start to gather, you know a change has already happened. it reverses the causality. it suggests that art is not a driver of change, but a reaction to it.
what you're getting at is probably correct. man or astroman are aesthetically a punk band, but they're not a political one. but, when you do look at political music that has built a following in the post-war era, what you see is the following pattern:
1) a community begins to develop that expresses a certain kind of ideals. this was true of the beatniks, the hippies, the punks, the ravers, hip-hop, etc.
2) as that community grows, people with status quo ideas enter into it.
3) they slowly begin to ostracize the people that held the ideals, as they co-opt the aesthetic qualities of the music into the status quo.
4) business people take notice and market the aesthetic qualities of the music, completely stripped of the ideals that initially generated the community.
5) the idealists scatter, and have to rebuild.
it happens consistently. and, it's not a function of corporatism, or capitalism or any kind of financial motives - those only come in at the last stage. it's just a function of norms asserting themselves. it's an entirely social phenomenon.
as i stated: it's virtually an impossibility. it's so unusual, that the rare really good band that builds a mainstream audience becomes elevated to the status of icon, which in large part misses the point [kurt cobain would be disgusted at the cottage industry built up around him]. even when future generations look back on these movements, they tend to overlook the founding principles. the textbooks will remember vivienne westwood, not jello biafra or crass - that will be left to specialized scholarship.
bking87
Yes, because as we all know, the Beatles turn to absolute sh*t after they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show... NOTHING of cultural significance came from them after that. Pink Floyd was TERRIBLE after they released Saucerful of Secrets... I can't think of a single song that I've liked since. Rolling Stones has to be the worst bunch of sell-outs ever... except for maybe Led Zeppelin. Bob Marley bringing reggae to the attention of the world population is akin to audible genocide and all of his albums should be burned. Beethoven has gone down in history as the worst sell-out based on his popularity back in the day.
Good music speaks to the individual and the state of mind that they are in at the time they are listening to it. Should it grab the attention of more than a handful of people and gain exposure to the general populace, it doesn't suddenly lose authenticity. Rage Against the Machine is an example of this (although there are those who do take the whole "they don't live in a van down by the river, so they're sell-outs!" approach to them).
Popular music isn't always good (and I will admit has grown increasingly bad in recent years), and in many cases where they are studio-driven, it is indeed very bad, but flipping that statement around to "good music can't be popular" doesn't doesn't fit as a logical conclusion.
Personally, I take a song/singer/musician and say "if they looked more like Mama Cass or Jerry Garcia but still had the equal talent that they have right now, would they remain equally popular?" If the answer is "sure", then their music is judged on their talent, but if the answer is "no", then their popularity is based more on physical attractiveness and advertising and indeed, THAT music is sh*t.
jessica
that's all counter-culture, though. even late beatles. some of it might have sold, but none of it was popular.
bking87
and just for giggles, go ahead and do an internet search for "top selling bands of all time" and look at the various lists that you'll find. Sure, there will be some in there that will make you gag (for me Celine Dion comes to mind), but if you're going to say that these bands as a group don't make "good music", then you are just a hater, and haters don't hate others... haters hate themselves because they're jealous of the success of others.
jessica
even with a best-selling bands of all time list, you need to be careful. the beatles wouldn't be on that list if it wasn't for their early success; you can't start talking about them as an artistic force until revolver, and it's very unlikely that their later material would have sold nearly as well if it wasn't for the beatlemania that preceded it. it's hard to analyze them on that level. then you have a collection of mostly 70s stuff like queen, zeppelin, floyd, the who, the rolling stones, genesis - this was never really mainstream, it was just representative of a large counter-culture. you also have to factor in format conversion for everything released in the lp era - and the fact that these acts stand out and others don't speaks more to their ability to transcend short term fashion trends than it does for their popularity in their own periods (excepting the beatles, where the issue is beyond question). there's then a collection of 80s and 90s bands (u2, rem, chili peppers, nirvana) that were a different counter-culture - still not mainstream. and, there's not much left, after that.
we've never really exited a singles culture. if you take any of these bands that have sold a lot of records over multiple generations, few of them will have ever dominated any kind of singles charts for any length of time. what is popular tends to not persevere, though, because popularity is fashion.
one example is to compare the saturday night fever soundtrack to the dark side of the moon. at the time of it's release, the saturday night fever soundtrack quickly became the greatest selling record of all time. but, dark side has outsold it by more than a factor of 10 since 1980. it actually snuck back into the billboard 100 a few years ago, amazingly, almost forty years after it's release. it's now sold far, far more units. and, in fact, it's been outselling thriller as well for years, by a good margin, and could very well catch it in the upcoming years. but it's longevity doesn't imply it's popularity. it implies it's status as a counter-cultural milestone, and it's ability to appeal to generation after generation of people outside of the mainstream. if waters lives long enough, he could see this happen.
again: you can sell huge amounts of records without being popular because there's a giant space to exist within outside of the norm. and, as time goes on, what is less popular often catches up in terms of sales. nobody would argue that radiohead were more popular than britney spears. but, 50 years from now, they may very well have more units moved.
cm
Everything your saying is nonsense. It sounds like your just regurgitating things you learned from Wikipedia. 5 year olds know every band you listed here because they all are or were at some time popular. Or just plain sucked like U2. Listen, My statement was that good bands should not be popular or they get watered down. I'm not saying good bands haven't been popular. But when a good band starts to draw a watered down crowd, I wash my hands of them. You can spout crap about the Beatles or Led Zeppelin until you pass out, There before my time and I have no opinion on them say that I don't like either of them. Underground music is what I'm about. While these bands your on about were considered counter culture, That doesn't make them good in my book. I like metal, but I don't like Metallica. I like jazz and blues, But I don't like Pink Floyed. The bands and musicians I'm into don't fall under any of the categories you have laid out here, because they were against the norm from the get go and never changed. I'll give you one example, and only one. The Dickies are a great band that you would have trouble putting in a category because they are unique. They aren't trying to start a trend, and you'll be hard pressed to find to many people who listen to them. Not because they suck or because they don't play radio friendly music. But because they live and breath for the music. They don't have an agenda to make more money or to gain more popularity. They simply are. I hate going on like this.
jessica
i don't really care what you're saying. i care what i'm saying. i'm saying this is impossible - good music cannot be the mainstream, by definition.
and, go ahead and ask even a twenty-five year old nowadays what they know about pink floyd or led zeppelin or, yes, even the beatles. they might know a bit more about queen due to the special interest story around freddie mercury's sexuality. these people grew up in an entirely different reality, with an entirely different counter-culture. it's ancient history, to them. they know nothing of this.
let's focus on zeppelin - but it's as applicable to the rest of them (excluding the beatles, and to a lesser extent floyd). zeppelin never had a hit single. they had a large following of hippies and outcasts, and it often put their albums at the top of the charts at the time of their releases, but they were never mainstream, never popular. and, you can cut their album sales in at least half due to the fact that they sold everything two or three times to the same people. they also released several records over a long period. a moderately sized, dedicated counter-cultural audience can add up over twenty records (including compilations and live discs) when you sell it to them multiple times. ((140/20))/2 = 3.5. that's an average, so it's a little lower than a few and a little higher than a few others. but, in contemporary terms, that puts them on par with a successful alternative rock band. the white stripes. green day. or, of the aforementioned bands, only zeppelin could be compared to the foofighters. that's a long ways away from the kind of mainstream popularity that actual pop music enjoys - it is not popular, nor is it mainstream.
i don't like zeppelin, either. but i realize it has greater value than the pop of the period. and that is the reason people bought those discs on cd.
but, looking at the list all these years later badly skews the reality of it.
jr
it can't because radio won't ever play it.
bking87
So what happens if The Dickies suddenly gain enough popularity that you hear one of their songs on a Kia commercial (and don't think that will never happen as I'm sure any Ramons fan from back in the day would say the same thing)... does their work, or that particular song that you love today magically and immediately become rubbish? And if any listing sounds like something from Wikipedia, it's because it's a list of good bands that 5 year olds have heard of because they are/were popular.
Sorry, but your original statement was "good music should never be popular", not "man, it sucks that some bands lose their vision and focus once they start gaining some monetary success. I'm happy that Man or Astro-Man? never became one of those bands." And then you double-downed with a statement about how poverty improves talent or something to that effect, which is completely insane. Will I suggest that success doesn't change people... of course not and there's a myriad of examples of this out there. But I also won't make a blanket statement that all musicians lose their creative vision once they are in a space of relative comfort.
The issue for me with folks that carry this feeling is that it creates a Catch-22 scenario for the artist because all musicians change over time. If they don't, if they produce the same thing, the same sound, over and over and over again, they are labelled as stale. If their music shifts, they are selling out. There is no winning. The fact of the matter is that, in order to support yourself as an artist, you must be able to make a living with your art. This doesn't necessarily mean selling out and indeed, if you purposely change your artistic focus to meet the needs of a record company, that's selling out. But if you ARE successful and you are producing music for 10, 20, 30, 40 years, well, as is the case with ALL artistic avenues out there, your sound, your voice, your direction will take on new directions. Picasso didn't have just one phase... do we call him a sell-out because he moved past his "blue stage"? The written word of Hunter S Thompson definitely took shifts from his earlier to later works, but I don't think many people question his integrity as a writer. So why can't a musician grow as their life experiences grow?
I realize it's another "before your time" reference, but 50 years ago, Bob Dylan walked onto stage and plugged in his guitar, practically inciting a riot amongst the counter-culture people of the day... there was a LOT of "sell out" chants and gnashing-of-teeth from the underground movement at the time, but it turned out to be one of the most important moments in rock-n-roll history. What you're basically saying is that you'd be on of those in the crowd demanding his head for "turning his back to the cause" and history would be looking back at you and just shaking it's head.
Is there a LOT of sh*t music out there that is corporate driven? You betcha. Are there people who sell their musical integrity in the name of fame and money? Happens all the time. Are there people who are able to reach a cord in the general public and become popular without sacrificing their artistic integrity... yup, and that's why I challenged the original statement.
And to deathtokoalas, indeed, your points are all valid and I'm not trying to suggest that any of the bands that I listed (other than the Beatles) were the top performer in their day... I'm sure any search for "Top Billboard" in any particular year back then will reveal a lot of "who the f*ck are THEY!?!" results. They might not have been the "most popular", but they were popular and selling out stadiums wherever they went and their sustained popularity all these decades later can demonstrate how quality isn't necessarily diminished by cultural acceptance.
cm
If the Dickies sell out, I stop listening to them, because I no longer identify with them. Maybe I should clarify. In my opinion, because there is no way I can speak for anyone but myself. Good music, What I consider good music should never be popular. I'm not saying they shouldn't make money or have fans. I'm not saying that good bands that started underground haven't become popular. When a band begins to get to big I, Me, Myself loose interest. And when they become a product of Hollywood like so many of the bands you have listed I loose interest completely. I don't like the underground because of its exclusivity or its ability to keep trendies out. I like it because that's often the purest message you'll get from the artist, Un tainted by to much fame or fan base. They're often still grounded. you don't get songs or ideas tailored for the vast majority. Like all the movies that have come out over the last 10 years. Made for everybody but satisfies only the most watered down. I wouldn't even say all popular bands are bad, I just wont call myself a fan of theirs. I don't want to see the music that inspired me to play, be turned into the next generations Hot Topic fashion trend. There are still some bands out there who are great and haven't become to big. Man or Astro-man is one of them, and for that I am thankful.
jessica
you know that the dickies suck, right?
cm
I'm glad you think so.
jessica
utterly vapid. and, intentionally so. seems like a very strange band to hold up as an example of holding their credibility. they're basically doing a clown routine.
cm
lol, ok kid. You must know allot about music. I guess I'll just go enjoy my vapid clown show. Way to look up a few vids on YouTube to prove nothing.
jessica
i'm a lot older than i look. i still get carded. the kid upstairs seems to think i'm his age; i don't have the heart to tell him i'm probably literally twice it. but, hey, you don't deny this. i just think it's somewhat comical.
"i consider the absolute high point of art music to be goatwhore."
cm
Manny, Moe and Jack
Pretty Please Me
Toxic Avenger
Caligula
Road Kill
All great songs. Most of which pre date you, I'm willing to bet. Unless your 40. I can't tell from your pic.
cm
No, I believe your allot older then I think.
jessica
i'm not 40.
it's silly, fluffy pop music. i have no objection to you enjoying that. but i would expect a certain ironic distance, as in "i like this because it sucks!". it has to be in the guilty pleasure pile, or not listened to at all.
cm
I've seen Goatwhore open for Gwar maybe 3 times. There the band everyone stands real still for, right?
jessica
i really don't know much about goatwhore, their name is just particularly well suited for punchlines.
lucidloon
So what's your opinion on Motown? The Temptations and such. That was very much pop music, but I would argue it's damn good too.
jessica
to be frank, i have very little opinion of it. i haven't heard much of it. it's something that peaked 20 years before i was born and has little cultural connection or relevance to the things i'm interested in.
i have somewhat of an opinion on what you could call 60s girl groups, but it's from a feminist perspective and is broadly negative.
i've recently moved to the canadian side of detroit, so i might be expected to. but, i really don't.
and, i guess if i were to take a walk through dearborn and randomly ask around about opinions on stockhausen, i wouldn't get much of a response, either. that's understandable. it's just not culturally relevant.
most of the shows i've been to since i've been here are broadly categorized as punk shows, so the audience is broadly white. but, i mean, i'm white. a little native, a little jewish, a little italian, but white. that's not that weird, really.
i'd like to hit a good jazz show, but i haven't come across one yet. the billy cobham show a while back was a bit steep, price wise. i'd be more interested in the fusion of the period.
and, if i could trace motown forwards to something i could connect with, i'd have more interest in it. but, my understanding is that motown became disco, which became hip-hop. and it's just not a lineage i've delved into.
so, when i say i don't have an opinion, i really mean that: i'm approaching it largely from a point of ignorance, brought on by the fact that it really has no relevance to me, culturally.
but, regarding the girl groups, specifically?
i find most of it is coming from a very repressed place. the lyrics are broadly horrible. it's all upholding demure stereotypes of women. a lot of it was written by men, and most of the profits went to men. i find it really offsetting on that level, and don't see a lot of value in it.
i think that does tie in to what i'm saying, because it was upholding a concept of femininity that the counter-culture was railing against pretty hard at the time.
lucidloon
I was thinking more in terms of musicality than the social impact of lyrical content to be perfectly honest. I think that's two different conversations.
jessica
see, i can't honestly have this discussion; i'm not well enough informed.
lucidloon
Fair enough!