Slightly Depressing Facts About Popular Music
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at 5:44 pm
First, the world’s population has grown exponentially since the 60′s. I don’t think these stats are scaled by population? Second, generally speaking, the world’s population has no brains, sophistication, or taste whatsoever, and that means less than it had in the 60′s.
at 7:57 pm
j richview – You pretty much covered the discrepancies here. Number 12, however, is just a glaring example of poor taste due to lack of real music exposure.
at 3:26 pm
Even more important is that the disposable income for teens is so much higher than in the sixties, even after allowing for inflation.
at 5:12 am
dont forget the fancy thing called the internet which lets people buy tracks with a finger twitch compared to being forced to walk down to the local record store (if you had one)
at 7:33 pm
Boo f#@king hoo. All the bands mentioned had great careers and are household names. Plus the fact that most of them where, or are, rich as all hell from touring. Album sales mean even less today with digital sales and if you are under contract you might not even be seeing a fraction of those profits. Who cares about the comparison for taste that you are blindly making as well. People who write articles like this with an air of superiority because their music is “better” they yours is the reason that music is seen as a divide between cultures.
at 8:00 am
Well done matey. The only non-prejudicial thing said on this page.
Comparing musical practitioners, whatever their style is, is like comparing apples and potatoes. Musicality is in the ear of the listener. Maybe if people spent less time judging and dismissing, they would see that all music has something to offer, however narrow your perceptions may be.
So chill out people………. it’s ALL good.
at 2:32 am
Hey Barbara’s awesome.
But yeah, everyone else brought up the points I would. Not to mention a lot of that money heads to the record companies anyways.
..and no Nickleback reference? Internet I am disappoint.
at 4:51 am
@Learn the Business…
You are too shallow to get it…
The depressing aspect is that this article is a comparison of musicians that are actually ARTISTS…
What they “earned” comparatively to modern NONARTISTS…
Saying Katy Perry or The Black eyed Peas create ART, is like giving michelin stars to McDo for a McRib…
at 12:39 pm
……. but one can still eat it. And is that not the point of art. You may prefer to dine in ‘starred eateries’, others a quite happy with McDo. The fact that you do not approve does not remove it’s status as art, whatever the definition of that actually is!
Again, chill out, it’s only music and it’s ALL good.
at 7:56 am
Let’s see: who touches more people’s lives, Katy Perry or Bob Marley? Because, as a musician, I’d like to point out that Bob sucks. His music is stupid. He has some beautiful meanings and lyrics, but that’s poetry, not music.
at 11:36 pm
As others have said – this article only show that the world is a better place now. In 70′s Western (say, American music) was extremely difficult to come by in Warsaw Pact countries or in China due to economical ramifications of the Cold War. Now they can be bought there with few clicks of the mouse. Digital distribution, Internet stores, music TV, worldwide advertisement, instant wire transfers… No such things were available in 60′s and 70′s.
And the discussion about music itself misses one point, i.e. ‘arte’-'techne’ disambiguation that was commented on by Aristotle, so we can assume it is a pretty old subject. Music, painting, writing or any so-called creative activity may be an _art_, but it also may be a _craft_. Good craft may be unoriginal but is still pretty sound, well-made, influential etc. Poor art may be original but may be poorly executed. It is not a qualitative difference.
By the way, what is that Justin Bieber thing? I’ve seen load of similar teen music stars since 70′s. He’s one of many, is not even remarkable yet you can stumble upon his likeness everywhere on the Internet. Pretty clever marketing campaign, I would say
at 1:32 pm
Pop is fleeting, flash in the pan crap. I don’t care how many teenagers by the s**t. 20 years from now, no one will remember Rhianna, but someone will always be listening to Led Zeppelin, Marley, etc.
http://bit.ly/GFYtn0
at 7:59 am
Well, Rihanna has been pumping out number ones for like 8 years now, and is only 24. Bad example, yeah?
Also, Zeppelin released a bunch of crap music. Some of it’s solid, but it’s not *entertaining*. This has been studied time and again. Also, Marley is HORRIBLE. The music is bad. Pretty lyrics don’t make a good band. Unless, you know, you are equally impressed by Owl City.
at 1:31 pm
“As a musician”
Nothing has ever sounded more pompous. You’d probably be shocked to hear that tons of people are “entertained” by Led Zeppelin, myself included. I don’t why you have such a hard-on for Marley-hating but his songs are also gorgeous. Just like Jim Morrisons lyrics are literally just his poetry, and that’s awesome.
Rihanna may be pumping out number ones, but she’s only co-written a few of them. Most pop stars today have their number one hits spoon fed to them by record company writers. There’s no soul in that.
at 8:54 am
Justin… is that you?
at 2:05 pm
The last time that someone directly told me that a certain generation’s music sucked was my mom. During the 80s. Apparently we’re never going to hear that music again because it’s just not like the music of the 60s.
Looks like history is repeating itself in more ways than one.
at 3:19 pm
This isn’t about music, but about the people listening it. As a few have already mentioned – no one bit of music is the best song ever. Personally I don’t think Justin Beiber is that good – but that doesn’t mean I’m right – it’s my ears and tastes that made that decision not how many albums or Number 1′s an artist has had. Don’t build a wall and others won’t need to break it down.
at 6:00 am
All fairly irrelevant, too much has changed with digital music, developing economies, growing populations for true comparisons.
And regardless they don’t even correlate to ‘quality’/memorability in a generation, ‘More of the Monkeys’ sold umpty million copies, reached #1, the next year Van Morrison released Astral Weeks which never charted and only reached gold status 30+ years later.
All about marketability.
at 10:46 am
so whats the problem with illegal downloads?
at 6:17 pm
In the 60′s there wasn’t itunes or the internet
at 6:35 pm
This is mostly dependent on what your musical taste consists of.
at 7:13 pm
40 years from now will stores sell-out a re-release of a Flo Rida album as happened with a re-release of the Beatles. Will they stand the test of time. Sales are dependent upon the economy and population. Lets see, new beatles album, every kid that had enough bought it. Of course there were only 1000 kids in town, now its 10000 so to be equal in sales one would have to have 10X the number of a previous artist.
What this demonstrates is: A fool and his money are soon parted. LOL
at 1:17 pm
Music like beauty is in the ear(eye) of the beholder. It is impossible to compare one artist to another it’s like trying to compare Picasso to Michelangelo they both put out great masterpieces, and some people appreciate one some the other and then there are those who say neither is as good as Toulouse-Lautrec as stated above ….apples to potatoes, (or squash). One mans meat is another mans poison.
at 1:30 pm
And RTFM, NO, Bob Marley isn’t bad he’s just different (look at his photo and then at Justin Bieber’s) Do you see the difference, is one pretty and the other ugly? Or does it depend on who’s doing the looking? Now with that state of mind ask yourself who in the hell made you the expert to say someone’s music is bad.
at 3:01 pm
While ke$sha may have more singles sold than the beatles, she is worth 8.5 million. Paul McCartney is worth 750 million.
she’s a stupid slag anyways.
at 2:39 pm
Joining the party late here, but Led Zeppelin did not have a number one single as they did not release singles. So the comparison is misleading.
RTFM wtf?! ‘Solid’ music from them? You should give your music listening license back. I understand if you don’t like it and call it ‘crap’. But to label era defining music (either defining it as good or bad) as ‘solid’ indicates you have no ear for music.
As for the other comparisons, well they make little sense. They are like comparing apples and wheelbarrows.
at 3:43 am
The population of the earth has about doubled since the 60′s. That’s twice as many people available to buy albums. But yeah, #12 definitely sucks.
at 7:39 am
the last one was epic
at 6:04 pm
Well, in my day, our Bieber was David Soul, David Cassidy, Davy Jones, The Monkees, amoung others. The Bieber will go away. I agree that marketing has changed and the internet, and itunes etc. has changed things. And, we didn’t have hip hop, or rap, or other forms of music back then that we have today.
at 5:26 am
Lol looking through this all i was thinking to myself was “Music piracy is killing the industry!!” I guess there wasn’t an industry in the 60s
at 10:44 pm
I don’t see how #9 is depressing… and it doesn’t really fit into this list at all. Barbara deserves just as much respect as Tom Petty, Johnny Cash, and, well maybe not Pearl Jam, but you get the idea.
at 8:18 am
All of the best selling albums are those popular with young girls. These are also generally the same albums most hated by everyone else on the planet. Case in point, girls fucking suck at appreciating anything.
at 2:05 am
This is depressing shit
at 8:50 am
Led Zeppelin never released a single. So get that fact straight.
Posterity will tell the real facts. Creed is a joke now and always will be. Most of the others will become jokes too in a few years.
Beatles played together for 5 years, the Doors for 4.5 years and Led Zep for 10 years. All this was 40-50 years ago, and here we are still validating current artists by those standards. I think it’s a WIN!
at 9:20 am
I’m not attempting to make comparisons on what music is good or bad. However, I would like to point out a key difference between the “depressing” artists and the legends of years past. All the post-pop era artists are either good at singing, Internet sensations, or just had the right things fall in to place for them to make it big. All the music is digital (although I respect the fact that it is a skill in itself) and with half the “artists” using lyrics they didn’t even write, their only real skill is the ability to sing, and some can’t even do that very well. Classic musicians had the same story in part surely, but all of their music took a very particular skill set and originality that is hard to make comparisons to. Even more than that, they had to combine their unique styles with the unique styles of 3 or 4 likely outrageously different artists. The ability to combine such motley combinations of skill sets in to the harmony that was produced is something that can not be overlooked when you assess the greatness of given musical talents. Still I agree, to each his own, but you have to be able to acknowledge the difference between good entertainers and incredible talents.
at 12:11 am
It seems pretty obvious to me that there is just way more people now then there were back in the day, there for….more things sell.