Friday OT #2 - S****y Music You Can’t Quit
- Thread starter Angie
- Start date
Haha, I dislike her music but really like Toxic and Slave 4 U (or however it was stylized). Caroline Rose does a pretty good cover of Toxic at her live shows.
That's my go-to when I'm cleaning the house or garage. Crank up the bluetooth speaker and go. Love the swing music from that time frame as well.
I like this but I'm not unbiased being that it really hits home with my high school glory years in 1985.
Not sure how you can call any of these "terrible". All three were great in their own right and all largely wrote, composed, and produced their own music. Supremely talented musicians.
I guess it's subjective but "terrible" really implies the music sucks, the artist can't sing, the artist has no discernable musical talent, and/or the artist was a by-product of produced garbage.
Someone through out Kylie Minogue but she's a great example (especially the early iteration). She had marginal singing talent, scored a hit with ripping off Locomotion (Little Eva), and was basically a product of the S-A-W (Stock, Aitken, Waterman) production team that churned out overproduced, HiNRG garbage in the late 80s. I can see where people could like it but at the same time, if one were being honest, you could readily admit it was garbage.
I always liked "This Time I KNow it's For Real" by Donna Summer. It's another S-A-W hit, basically the same hi-tempo overproduced structure, but I always liked how Summer sang it, especially one of the bridges. I know it's crap but I like it all the same.
I do enjoy Toxic. I don't know any of the lyrics except "toxic" but I will catch myself grooving to it if it comes on.
Duran Duran made some good stuff, even if LeBon is weak as a singer. A View to a Kill is a superbly arranged song (thanks in part to John Barry).
I like all the bands I listed. I mean, that's the point of the thread. You aren't saying "I don't like this music", you're saying I like it but I recognize that it's not exactly an artistic expression.
I'll attempt to define how one can call music they enjoy "sh*tty" and still enjoy it, while differentiating from music that isn't in that category.
1) It's trapped in a specific era. If the music sounds exactly like it was made in a certain date range due to the production tricks (this is most prevalent with 80's stuff), that's a mark against it. You can listen to albums from the 70's, 90's, and 10's and they all sound recorded in a similar fashion. Stuff from the 80's absolutely screams a different sound.
2) It's really specifically targeted at a certain demographic. This is the hitch with pop punk for me. That music is explicitly created for people who were between 12-19 years old in the late 90's or early 00's. Almost nobody outside of that demographic has ever really connected with it. By the same token, there are lots of artists who's fanbases cross multiple generations. Go to a Stones concert and you'll see 70 year old boomers and 23 year olds too.
3) It's really targeted at a specific age. Again, by the time I was probably 21 I felt almost creepy listening to pop punk because it seemed so specifically designed for teenagers. I almost immediately became aware that it was weird as hell that guys in their late 20's and early 30's were "teen idols". When you get older, you generally don't (or at least shouldn't) feel the same way you did as a kid, and it gets harder to relate to music specifically made for kids, outside of a nostalgic reconnection.
4) Novelty/phony aspects. Pop punk was notorious for "affected" vocals. Tom Delonge from blink 182 sang in infamous nasally sneer that drew words out in a weird way (many lesser pop punk artists ripped this off completely). Tim Armstrong from Rancid sang like a mush mouthed Jamacian, despite being a white guy from San Fran. Billy Joe Armstrong from Green Day tried to sound British. There's a blatant phoniness to all of that, but it became part of the charm.
At the end of the day, there's something inherently silly about all of that I don't take seriously as great art, even if I really ******* enjoyed it and still frequently enjoy it. I know Coca Cola isn't good for you, and if I drink more than 8 ounces of it, I'd feel like ****, but they're always delicious and sometimes it just hits the spot.
I'll attempt to define how one can call music they enjoy "sh*tty" and still enjoy it, while differentiating from music that isn't in that category.
1) It's trapped in a specific era. If the music sounds exactly like it was made in a certain date range due to the production tricks (this is most prevalent with 80's stuff), that's a mark against it. You can listen to albums from the 70's, 90's, and 10's and they all sound recorded in a similar fashion. Stuff from the 80's absolutely screams a different sound.
2) It's really specifically targeted at a certain demographic. This is the hitch with pop punk for me. That music is explicitly created for people who were between 12-19 years old in the late 90's or early 00's. Almost nobody outside of that demographic has ever really connected with it. By the same token, there are lots of artists who's fanbases cross multiple generations. Go to a Stones concert and you'll see 70 year old boomers and 23 year olds too.
3) It's really targeted at a specific age. Again, by the time I was probably 21 I felt almost creepy listening to pop punk because it seemed so specifically designed for teenagers. I almost immediately became aware that it was weird as hell that guys in their late 20's and early 30's were "teen idols". When you get older, you generally don't (or at least shouldn't) feel the same way you did as a kid, and it gets harder to relate to music specifically made for kids, outside of a nostalgic reconnection.
4) Novelty/phony aspects. Pop punk was notorious for "affected" vocals. Tom Delonge from blink 182 sang in infamous nasally sneer that drew words out in a weird way (many lesser pop punk artists ripped this off completely). Tim Armstrong from Rancid sang like a mush mouthed Jamacian, despite being a white guy from San Fran. Billy Joe Armstrong from Green Day tried to sound British. There's a blatant phoniness to all of that, but it became part of the charm.
At the end of the day, there's something inherently silly about all of that I don't take seriously as great art, even if I really ******* enjoyed it and still frequently enjoy it. I know Coca Cola isn't good for you, and if I drink more than 8 ounces of it, I'd feel like ****, but they're always delicious and sometimes it just hits the spot.
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I wasn’t around during their heyday, but I remember catching Saturday Night Fever on HBO while in high school and really finding it to be a great movie (despite society’s general mockery of disco). The music is fantastic!
Ok. Lol - I guess my point with the thread (the “guilty pleasures” part) is that these bands are not taken seriously today by many. There isn’t a lot of universal love given to the Bee Gees in artsy circles, for example. But that is cool, everyone can interpret how they want.
I should have just waited for you to respond! This is way better than my response. Totally tongue in cheek!
Songs that I have not turned off in the last week:
Tubthumpin' by Chumbawumba
Eternal Flame by the Bangles
All Out of Love by Air Supply
Tubthumpin' by Chumbawumba
Eternal Flame by the Bangles
All Out of Love by Air Supply
I love Party in the USA. I car dance to it and it used to really embarrass my sons.
Also love RHCP although maybe 80% of their stuff has the exact same tempo and they mostly are about sex, drugs, and California. May be the fact that Flea was pretty nice when my son met him.
And I still listen to John Mayer’s Continuum frequently. Not sure, is that bad?
Also Juicy Wiggle is not exactly Grammy material. Also love music from Disney animated films. One of my favorites, Mulan, is probably now forbidden.
I unironically enjoy the majority of their catalog. No one wrote a bigger hook than Noel Gallagher.
