Pop is making me feel old

[jackbox]

RJF, it's not that we have trouble finding good new music - thanks to spotify - it's more that we feel we aren't connecting to it as we once did. It's difficult to explain.

[vasilios]

If you can't find exciting new music, then you're not looking hard enough.

I agree. Especially now with the internet.
So much good music around, even from unsigned acts!

[ibelieveinsantogold]

I can kind of relate. I wouldn't say pop makes me feel old, but I'll be 22 soon and I have noticed that I can't get as obsessive or excited over pop as I have done in the past 10 years. Marina and Lana Del Rey are the only new artists I've been really invested in since 2010. My favourite album of 2011 was Beyonce and I'm not even a huge Beyonce fan really. Since my laptop died last year I haven't even bothered getting iTunes again, and I used to be so religious about my iTunes library... now I just go on Spotify and listen to 'old' music. I'm not sure if it's a nostalgia thing or whether I'm just too lazy to discover new music. Even my idols Britney and Madonna can't get me excited at the moment.

I think it also has a lot to do with music 'soundtracking' your teen years. I started clubbing in 2007 when my favourite music was Kala, Tangled Up and Blackout and when I'd go clubbing I'd actually be able to dance to that music... whereas now 95% of the music played is just whatever's in the charts i.e. a pile of crap. So yeah, you are not alone. I'm stuck in the mid 2000s too!

[Eric Generic]

I liked it when the record labels and radio sifted out the wheat from the chaff. But now they just play the chaff anyway! I try to see what others see in modern pop, but I'm just not getting it. Why would anyone waste their time with highly compressed, autotuned, generic pop with relentless lyrics about screw you, I'm this, I'm that, blah blah...like the new Cheryl album (I've heard it in HMV, so I'm not just making empty statements)? I don't even mind her, I'd love to like new stuff. But pop went badly wrong in about 2008, and it hasn't found its way back yet.

[Baby Clyde]

As usual Eric Speaks the truth, although things are certainly getting better.

[euphorial]

I guess the way music is put out, with the whole digital thing, makes it feel a bit different. You used to get big album campaigns with one single at a time and get to know a song on the radio, now there's 'buzz singles' and you get to hear stuff straight away with lyric videos on youtube.
There's still loads of great pop music out there though!

[shitshoveller]

Pop never used to make me feel old because, well, I'm not.

However, since explaining to my child:
a) what a tape is
b) that I used to record songs off the radio onto aforementioned tapes and receiving a bemused look off her "why didn't you just download them off iTunes?" proceeded by a look of horror when I explained iTunes didn't exist when I was her age.

So, since then I've began to feel really old especially since of late I've been stuck in a late 90's/early 00's musical timewarp.

Don't have children, people. One day they'll just remind you they wasn't around when Britney first came out with Baby One More Time.

[Eric Generic]

I guess the way music is put out, with the whole digital thing, makes it feel a bit different. You used to get big album campaigns with one single at a time and get to know a song on the radio, now there's 'buzz singles' and you get to hear stuff straight away with lyric videos on youtube

It's such a fundamental change, I don't know if I'll ever get my head around it. Change/progress is fine, as long as what replaces the things you had before is an improvement. Digital music/iTunes is fine (320kps Mp3s sound fine, playlists rock) but in jettisoning so much about the old traditional physical formats, strategies and associations we build up and around the music we love, I think we've lost more than we'll ultimately gain. But that's just a pre-iTunes era person talking. I know it's not like that for a lot of people!

[shitshoveller]

It's such a fundamental change, I don't know if I'll ever get my head around it. Change/progress is fine, as long as what replaces the things you had before is an improvement. Digital music/iTunes is fine (320kps Mp3s sound fine, playlists rock) but in jettisoning so much about the old traditional physical formats, strategies and associations we build up and around the music we love, I think we've lost more than we'll ultimately gain. But that's just a pre-iTunes era person talking. I know it's not like that for a lot of people!

I think that's a very valid point. I am a sort of pre-Itunes person (I'm 24) but I didn't get my own income and therefore the ability to freely buy music until the iTunes era (in fact with my very first wage, at 16, I bought an iPod mini). However my boyfriend is a lot older than me and he remembers when singles would have to sell hundreds of thousands to get to number 1. He remembers in the days before the internet people would listen to the radio all day in the hope to hear the latest single of their favourite band being played.

I don't think people really do that anymore. I hate the radio and haven't listened to it (by choice) since I was a kid and used to record songs off it during the chart show on a Sunday. If I want to hear an artists latest single I go on youtube. While I like the easy accessibility of music nowadays I miss the excitement of campaign's. Between the ages of 8 and 12 I pretty much lived to see a Spice Girls video on the music channels or waiting all morning for a performance of my favourite band on CD:UK/Live and Kicking. I used to be so excited on a Friday night to go shopping with my Mam or Grandma the following morning (after setting the kids Saturday morning shows to record) to buy Britney's or Steps latest single.

In some ways it makes me sad my kid doesn't have that kind of excitement or anticipation. If she likes a song, she watches it on youtube a thousand times a day and when it's available to buy she just logs onto my iTunes and is listening to it on her iPod within minutes.

My generation - and subsequent ones - are the instant gratification kids - Hear it. Want it. Have it.

[MissGranolaSuicide]

I think that's a very valid point. I am a sort of pre-Itunes person (I'm 24) but I didn't get my own income and therefore the ability to freely buy music until the iTunes era (in fact with my very first wage, at 16, I bought an iPod mini). However my boyfriend is a lot older than me and he remembers when singles would have to sell hundreds of thousands to get to number 1. He remembers in the days before the internet people would listen to the radio all day in the hope to hear the latest single of their favourite band being played.

I don't think people really do that anymore. I hate the radio and haven't listened to it (by choice) since I was a kid and used to record songs off it during the chart show on a Sunday. If I want to hear an artists latest single I go on youtube. While I like the easy accessibility of music nowadays I miss the excitement of campaign's. Between the ages of 8 and 12 I pretty much lived to see a Spice Girls video on the music channels or waiting all morning for a performance of my favourite band on CD:UK/Live and Kicking. I used to be so excited on a Friday night to go shopping with my Mam or Grandma the following morning (after setting the kids Saturday morning shows to record) to buy Britney's or Steps latest single.

In some ways it makes me sad my kid doesn't have that kind of excitement or anticipation. If she likes a song, she watches it on youtube a thousand times a day and when it's available to buy she just logs onto my iTunes and is listening to it on her iPod within minutes.

My generation - and subsequent ones - are the instant gratification kids - Hear it. Want it. Have it.

That's true but it's kind of an odd argument for it being a bad thing. It's like saying food tastes better when you are hungry so people shouldn't be allowed to eat whenever they want..

I'm very much pre-iTunes generation (35) but I love the speed that things move at now and the ease of access to music that I have. I remember when I was a teenager having to take a 20 minute bus ride into the next town just to order a record that I had read about in NME and didn't even know if it would be any good. I can't say I miss that approach to music because as romantic as it sounds through a haze of nostalgia it's exactly why I felt lonely and isolated as a teenager. The way that kids connect globally over music these days is incredible and I would have so loved to have that available to me when I was younger.

It's understandable that a lot of people lose interest in current music, and in particular fandom as they get older and their focus shifts to other things and I'm sure feeling out of step with current technologies and approaches adds to that but I think it's wrong to assume that kids don't still get pant-wettingly excited about new artists and releases the way we did 'back in the day'. It's just the old 'uns that feel ennui about the importance of YouTube play counts or whatever..

[letuinmybackdoor]

Oh God, I'm 41 and fucking LOVE instant gratification of music. I remember when Girls Aloud's 'Sexy! No, no, no...' leaked on a Saturday when I was having a big night out and playing it loads really loud before I went out and then in the club I went to the DJ played it! And that was 5 years ago when really you still had to wait to buy the CD single. In the dark days of the 90s you'd request a song and the DJ wouldn't either have until until the week it was out or on a promo a couple of weeks before if you had a bang up to date DJ. I don't miss the dark old days at all. The only difference is kids today won't remember a time when they couldn't get something there and then. Eee, they don't know they're born!

[Eric Generic]

It's understandable that a lot of people lose interest in current music, and in particular fandom as they get older and their focus shifts to other things and I'm sure feeling out of step with current technologies and approaches adds to that but I think it's wrong to assume that kids don't still get pant-wettingly excited about new artists and releases the way we did 'back in the day'. It's just the old 'uns that feel ennui about the importance of YouTube play counts or whatever..

That's what I was alluding to, that I expect there is a very similar kind of excitement and buzz towards pop for anyone getting into music now, just in a very different way (or rather, through different methods and within a different environment).

I get the point about delayed gratification though....at some stage, the way you feel about something which is so immediately and freely available will lead to a different relationship with it, compared to having to wait for it, and go through a more laborious system to have it.

Ultimately though, a great pop record is a great pop record. For whatever reason, I just don't hear as many of those being made anymore. But the last point is a purely personal view!

[letuinmybackdoor]

But there was a kind of instant gratification even in the old days. Our generation taped songs off the radio and as such we got a temporary fix until we could actually buy the record. That's no different to illegally downloading it until it's available to buy , just that you don't have a snippet of Bruno Brookes going 'the new single by...'. I guess it's people in the 60s and 70's who really did have no choice but to wait until the record came out.

[Mvnl]

I do miss the old days of buying about 5 albums a year, going to record stores week after week to just listen to them, so I was able to sing along to the entire thing by the time I was able to purchase it, being excited to go on a holiday just because that would mean I'd be able to buy (or even hear) foreign releases, burning a new edition of an album each time I had a new b-side to add (still pre-download days, I had a shoddy Phillips recorder), sitting through hours of pointless saturday morning tv to catch a new video premiere, then, a few years later, spending 3 hours to download the video as a rm.-file, just to be able to see it once.. searching the internet for hours just to find pictures and wallpapers of artists..
Instant gratification definitely isn't the best, if only because gratification's only 3 seconds a way from wanting to desire something else again.

[jackbox]

This year I've been making a point of actually waiting for the physical release of an album, listening to no more than one or two singles and reading a few reviews, and turning the release into a personal event even if the artist didn't make such an effort. And you know what? It really has felt more special, travelling into town to a proper old record shop to buy an album. I feel like I've recaptured some of the excitement. I dislike the itunes store for various reasons and while I support filesharing (am I allowed to say that here?), it certainly cheapens the music somewhat*. Having paid £7-10 for an album is an incentive to give it more time than if you'd downloaded it from Isohunt.

As a little aside, I'm probably quite unusual in that I'm a 22 year old who still buys vinyl, both a mix of new releases and early 80s synthpop. With the early 80s stuff, I feel that I've created my own tailor-made, time-warped universe: because I wasn't there I can make it what I want. It sounds odd to explain and doesn't make much sense but listening to Dare, The Lexicon Of Love or The Hurting feels like a safety net.



*For me, the biggest advantage of filesharing is being able to access an artists bonus tracks or b-sides that you probably wouldn't have had access to through a CD release. I think of my favourite non-album tracks by an artist and can't imagine living in era where they existed only on a mind-blowingly expensive Japanese import version of an album.

[Jóga]

It's funny because you all talk about the iTunes era, but it hasn't even arrived here (Spain). Actually, I don't feel any old (I'm 16 so I will hardly feel old) but I do feel different. I've been a Kylie and Björk fan for years (Kylie arrived in my life with Fever and has stayed as my favourite singer since, Björk came later with Volta) and I like a lot of ''old'' artists - the PSB, Alanis, No Doubt, Shania, the pre Hard Candy Madonna... - and the others I like are considered either gay artists (Spain may be forward but we still tag everything) - Beyoncé, Scissor Sisters, Gaga or Janet - or they are just unknown - Azealia, the Sats, Girls Aloud, Mylène or Electric Lady Lab.

Here, the people of my age listen to reaggeton, bachata, and general South American songs, or the songs that are played on the radio (mediocre house songs and some late pop hits). Also, I buy CDs and sometimes use iTunes. That's just unthinkable for someone of my age. I just don't fit anywhere, the teenage gays are either Little Monsters, Rihanna fans or Madonna fans.

Sorry if I bored anyone. It depresses me.

[invertedbutterfly]

This year I've been making a point of actually waiting for the physical release of an album, listening to no more than one or two singles and reading a few reviews, and turning the release into a personal event even if the artist didn't make such an effort.

Yes, I've always been of the delayed gratification bent. I never listen to album leaks, and don't stream, so I never hear albums until I buy them physically - which often isn't until months after they're released, so the anticpation often has a looong time to build.

Conversely, this sometimes means that I've lost all enthusiasm for something by the time I get it (or end up not getting it at all), but I don't really have any interest in changing how I do things at this point.

One thing I've tried to train myself into is previewing things by an artist I'm not familiar with before I plonk down my cash, but I must say I'm still not very good at it. For me, nothing beats the excitement of putting on a CD you've just bought and you have no idea what it's going to sound like, especially when it turns out to be the most amazing thing ever. (I think this only works as I very, very rarely end up buying something I don't like - if the strike-rate wasn't so good, I'd soon get pissed off with this methodology).

[euphorial]

It's such a fundamental change, I don't know if I'll ever get my head around it. Change/progress is fine, as long as what replaces the things you had before is an improvement. Digital music/iTunes is fine (320kps Mp3s sound fine, playlists rock) but in jettisoning so much about the old traditional physical formats, strategies and associations we build up and around the music we love, I think we've lost more than we'll ultimately gain. But that's just a pre-iTunes era person talking. I know it's not like that for a lot of people!

It's funny cos I remember when the whole iTunes/digital singles thing was about to be introduced in the UK charts, and I remember hating the idea and thinking I'd never buy a single unless it was a physical release. Weirdly, it all feels normal and acceptable now! Guess it's just grown on me.
I do still miss the old, structured way singles used to be released though.

[Eric Generic]

I feel that I've created my own tailor-made, time-warped universe: because I wasn't there I can make it what I want. It sounds odd to explain and doesn't make much sense but listening to Dare, The Lexicon Of Love or The Hurting feels like a safety net.

I totally understand this. The only difference with me is that I was actually there at the time, so I re-create it. I'll stay time-warped in a complete year for a while, building up the complete picture now that I have most of the stuff I want from that era. It's interesting you mention the problem with non-album stuff in the physical format....this often holds me up and frustrates my attempts to complete a year, an act's discography or whatever! I just can't abide paying 40 or 50 quid for an import/deleted CD, so it's a case of waiting for any reissues or odd compilations to contain those elusive tracks. Or getting lucky in a collector's shop!

[euphorial]

I have respect for artists/labels that still cater for the physical fans. I've noticed a lot of Fascination's releases still come with CDs (Nicola Roberts, Bananarama, etc). Must be a pop thing.

[Mvnl]

I'm not sure it's a pop thing. On one hand pop can be more about the superficial/materialistic/collecting/owning stuff, but on the other it's demographic exists more of younger people who don't care about cds than more alternative genres..

[SophiaSophia]

I don't feel old (I'm 24) because of how music has changed but I do miss the big promo campaigns of when I was a kid, watching Saturday morning Kids TV to see a premiere of a video and most of the time it would only be half the video, watching Top of The Pops every Friday, later CD:UK and Popworld. It was more exciting I don't get the same thrill these days from watching pop acts go just on daytime TV and X Factor (especially X Factor as it always the same ones every year). Even the Sunday chart shows on radio don't get me excited like they used to but that's more of a reflection of my musical tastes now if anything.

However there are pros and cons to instant gratification I dislike how impatient it makes people before I had my own money I had to wait until I had pocket money or it was my birthday or Christmas. I'm not a huge fan of itunes and buying mp3 as I'm an audiophile but it's useful for the odd song I've forgotten and I don't want to buy a compilation just for one song and it's useful for EPs by new acts I've found. I would be rather lost if the CD was obsolete because I love the feeling of reading the booklet and reading the production credits but I fear this will happen eventually it's already kind of in the singles market which doesn't bother me that much. As the b-side has sort of died as well but I appreciate those acts who still do them and release physically. However I like that I can listen to an album either previews and on spotify and I know for certain I will like a new album and purchase it the week of release rather than wait two or three singles later like I used to because of feeling unsure. However I like how the internet makes it more easy to access new unsigned acts I guess that's where I get my dose of excitement from now as it's fascinating watching an undiscovered act grow.

But these days I find get more tired of pop acts more quickly more so the younger acts who bring out a new album every year and it also feels more throwaway to me I liked the excitement of the big pop comeback with the exception of The Spice Girls, Steps or S Club 7 who released something every year. However they got it right by not being over saturated in the media all the time and the albums didn't feel rushed either. Nowadays comebacks rarely happens unless it's a reunion of some sort.

[Eric Generic]

Something I meant to say earlier about the instant gratification; in the 80s, yes we'd sit with the tape recorded primed for Singled Out and the sunday Top 40 show - it's the main reason why personal charts managed to get started, without being able to afford more than a couple of 7"s a week - but having a badly-recorded MW Radio recording still meant the official 7" (or CD) edition was desirable and necessary for the full experience. Getting a leaked mp3 in either the same or slightly lower bit-rate is pretty much what you're going to get with any official digital release, especially if you can find the HQ artwork online to put into iTunes.

So there's not really much, if any, kind of step-up from that initial hearing/discovery, and what you get with the final sanctioned version. No glossy sleeve, no credits, no trip to the store, no anticipation at what its chart career might be, because everything just comes out all over the place now, without any structure or pattern (contrived as the old system was).

[Charley]

I used to never listen to full albums before I actually owned them, but Spotify has definitely changed that for me, partly at least.

There's still albums that I know I'm going to buy anyway (be it because of the artist, the singles, the general feel of the campaign, etc.) and with those I wait till I actually have my copy of the album in my hands. (On the downside, this means there's still some major releases I still haven't heard because, sometimes even after years, I still haven't gotten round to obtaining a physical copy one way or another)

However, with albums where I'm only partly interested and that I know I'd never just buy like that I've now taken to dragging them into a specific playlist on Spotify where I collect all albums I should check out one day to see if they're worth investigating further / buying a physical copy of.

[marie_05]

As the b-side has sort of died as well

This depresses me. Don't you just miss the days when artists had two B-sides on a single, sometimes even three? Fact is that many artists continuously make the wrong choices when it comes to picking tracks for an album and with the death of the B-side many great songs will probably never see the light of day. In fact, many of my favourite songs ever are B-sides.