Does time matter more than genre?

What do you listen to?

Does time matter more than genre?

Postby cmsellers » Thu Feb 26, 2015 4:14 am

Thus far I've refused to post in JamesT's "Indie and Folk" thread, because I've been kind of pissed that anybody could see any similarity between indie and folk music, beyond the fact that they both tend to contain both instruments and vocals.

Hear the difference
The folkiest of folk: The Queen of Folk singing a traditional ballad


Indie music: Our Adult Album Alternative station loves this song, and it's gotten good reviews. I hate it.


I love folk music and most of its immediate derivatives: folk rock, roots rock, electric folk. The best I can say about indie is that I can name more examples that I don't dislike than I can for modern pop, modern "rock", and modern "country."

I still dislike the vast majority of indie music for the same reasons I dislike modern pop music (too much instrumentation, too polished, no silence, and the singer always sounds tired) and a few more besides (indie music is more likely to have nonsensical and irritating lyrics, and there's a whole subgenre of "low fi" indie music dedicated to making it sound scratchy).

On the other hand, I've realized that a lot of genres themselves contain sounds nearly as disparate as indie and folk music. It's bad enough that I put "rock" and "country" in quotes when referring to the modern genres in writing, and sneer when referring to them in speaking. In my music tastes, I'm essentially a grumpy old man I pretty much never like music from after I was born; I feel that the eighties and nineties pretty much ruined mainstream music of all genres.

To demonstrate, here are old hit songs I like from the 50s, paired with a song from half a century later nominally in the same genre. In each case, I listened to all the number 1s which had spent at least a month at top spot that year and selected the one I found least objectionable. In every case, I don't feel an immediate dislike for the modern song I chose, but definitely didn't like it either, and stopped listening to each of them less than half way through.

Rock
1956: Chuck Berry

2006: Red Hot Chili Peppers

Country
1952: Hank Thompson

2002: Brooks and Dunn

R+B
1956: Fats Domino

2006: T.I.


Even new acts that I like generally keep the features of older music: they're energetic, relatively unpolished, have simple instrumentation, and generally have periods of silence.

New acts I like
Poor Old Shine (now Parsonfield): "Weeds and Wildflowers"


Spuyten Duyvil: "Bitter" (sadly, as with most of their songs on YouTube, the audio is suboptimal)


Roosevelt Dime: "Oh To Be"


The point is, I came to the conclusion awhile ago that there's generally a far bigger difference between songs in the same "genre" across the decades than there is between "genres" of the same time and place. Now I've finally decided to ask you guys: has anybody else had the same impression?
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Last edited by Marcuse on Thu Feb 26, 2015 2:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Does time matter more than genre?

Postby jbobsully11 » Sun Mar 01, 2015 12:14 am

I definitely tend to like older music (mostly 1960s-80s, as far as pop and rock), but I can't say I dislike everything from after that, either (I listen to at least some mainstream music that came out fairly recently [though not always proudly], and a lot more more from other genres). Within each genre, I do tend to think of music in terms of when it came out ('80s heavy metal, '60s pop, '90s alt rock, etc.), but I wouldn't say that the era is more important than the genre (for instance, I don't think anyone would confuse Blondie and Metallica, even though they were both around at the same time). If anything, they're about equal, as genres naturally develop over time (and of course some entire genres arose almost exclusively as a reaction against what was popular at a given time, like punk rock vs. almost everything that was big in the '70s).
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Re: Does time matter more than genre?

Postby AboveGL » Sun Mar 01, 2015 12:22 am

A couple of disconnected points:

* When I used to be dead into certain bands, I usually preferred their older music. Exactly why I couldn't pinpoint exactly, but I guess they were more in their prime back in the days.

* I definitely lean towards more modern music but time is generally not an essential factor in whether or not I'll like a song.
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Re: Does time matter more than genre?

Postby cmsellers » Sun Mar 01, 2015 1:07 am

jbobsully11 wrote:I definitely tend to like older music (mostly 1960s-80s, as far as pop and rock), but I can't say I dislike everything from after that, either

For me, it's more that I dislike the innovations that came about in the 80s and afterwards. Everything that I do like follows styles and conventions that were developed before then.

jbobsully11 wrote:I wouldn't say that the era is more important than the genre (for instance, I don't think anyone would confuse Blondie and Metallica, even though they were both around at the same time). If anything, they're about equal, as genres naturally develop over time

I guess that the point I was trying to make isn't that genre is always irrelevant. Some genres, such as metal, have very distinct sounds. But metal is a genre that has always been somewhat fringe. With mainstream genres, you've always essentially had popular music targeted at Southern whites (country), northern whites (pop), and blacks (R&B). And with those genres, time usually seems to matter more than the nominal genre.

In the 50's rock and roll bridged the gap between northern whites, Southern whites, and blacks, but it started out as just R&B music, with "rock and roll" being a rebranding to make it more acceptable to white people. Both genres sounded very similar to the country music of the same time period, and there was a lot of cross-pollination, with rock and roll quickly taking on a rockabilly sound.

The three genres diverged as R&B took on influence from soul and funk, while country adopted the Nashville Sound under influence from contemporary pop, and rock aped the Beatles. The genres continued to diverge with the development of hard rock/psychadelic rock/progressive rock, outlaw country, and presumably similar changes in R&B. Then in the 80s rock began to merge with pop, which had until then maintained a separate sound.

The music industry had already been treating rock and pop as "music non-Southern white people like," and in the 80s, as mainstream rock became a lot smoother and more polished the sounds began to converge, seemingly justifying this decision. Today there aren't any separate rock charts or non-classic rock stations, and music stores usually seem to have a single "rock/pop" section.

Later still, the popularity of Garth Brooks lead country down the same path, to the point that modern "country" is almost indistinguishable from modern pop. I used to be unable to tell them apart, until I realized that "pop/rock" songs use rock instrumentation and are pretty much always about loving a girl/boy, while "country" music contains a steel guitar and is sometimes about loving beer and/or trucks.
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