Stuff You Just Don't Get.

[Hot Pepsi]

I think I agree with you in principle more than I do in experience. Most 'rock' (if that still exists) sounds just like a rehash of old ideas. When, say, Pearl Jam or Foo Fighters came along, it sounded like new ideas. Now it just sounds like more riffs on old ideas. It's like trying to find new ideas in ska or the blues. You don't...you just get tired riffs on the same theme. It's dead.

Pop...yeah, maybe. I hear some good stuff, but what does a breakout pop band even look like anymore? Sadly, maybe it looks like Ed Sheeran. Or Bruno Fucking Mars.

I like listening to jazz in the car, but god knows how you'd start to get really into it. I also like jazz for the fact that you're listening to guys named Art and Pat and Norman.

Never been taken with folk (which tends to make my teeth hurt) or classical (which just doesn't engage me).

Yeah, the “new” ideas stopped around 20 years ago, perhaps. It has been suggested that My Bloody Valentine marked the final frontier.

In the 20th century, electric and then electronic instruments and production technology really opened up a lot of options that were never available before, but that’s all been pretty well mined now so even EDM and hip-hop artists are mostly just remixing ideas that have been done before. Any sound audible to humans can be created fairly inexpensively now, so there’s nowhere else to go except write new songs using the “old sounds.”

The “end of the new” may have even begun long before MBV. There were critics saying rock was exhausted as early as the 70s and Pearl Jam and Nirvana etc were mostly just repurposing and remixing ideas from the 60s-80s.

But that’s ok. There’re still zillions of hours of good music out there - more than most of us could ever get around to listening to. And for new acts, since they can’t really invent a new sound, the onus is on their songwriting and the vitality of their performance, especially live, which is probably for the better.

Besides, we’re old now and what we really long for isn’t the music of our youth but the feeling we had the first time we heard it, and there’s no way to bring that back. But there are experiences available to old people that aren’t available to the young, so it balances out.

[Bored Of Education]

Foo Fighters and Pearl Jam sounded exactly like a lot of what's gone before - as did Nirvana and so much around that time. I am not criticising them for that necessarily but they weren't original. Funnily enough, with the mention of them, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers (as well as Nomeansno, Faith No More, Fishbone and Bad Brains) were real breaths of fresh air when they came out - only to spawn horrendous copyists such as Mindfunk and Clawfinger and whatnot. On the other side of the guitar rock spectrum, the last original bands I can think of were Shellac and, to a lesser degree, Fugazi and "Holy Bible"-era Manics. Since then, unless my memory is playing tricks on me, the most original guitar band that I have seen have been Public Service Broadcasting but, even then, that is more in delivery and presentation than actually truly original song-writing.

[WOM]

My wife listens to John Hiatt a lot. Now, John Hiatt has written some killer fucking tunes over the years, but each new John Hiatt album sounds - to me - just like another John Hiatt album. She put his new one on the other day and all I could think of was "It's just another bunch of songs". Which sounds stupid, but I don't mean it to. They're all the same fucking song. All guitar and vocals. Roughly the same tempo. Generally some nice sentiments and nothing to upset you. Gah. Seriously, I fucking hate singer/songwriter stuff.

[Simon G]

And Coldplay. Why anyone owns a Coldplay album is beyond me.

I'm not ashamed (though I probably should be) to say that I own their first three albums, the first two I bloody love, and the third completely turned me off them.

I'm the wrong person to discuss modern music though, I gave up on Radio One when Moyles left and I realised I didn't like a single thing on there anymore. I probably only own a handful of albums released since 2008 (I buy albums and not singles).

As for what I don't get - I like to think I have an eclectic taste in music, my Iphone goes from The Dead South to Streetlight Manifesto to Arctic Monkeys to Oasis to 2pac to Norah Jones to Boyz II Men to N*Sync, and so on and so on... However one group I've never got, or understood the clamour for are Abba. There are one or two songs I can probably sing along to when drunk, but I just can't abide any of their other songs at all. My wife wanted to watch the Mamma Mia films and, not being necessarily a downer on "chick flicks" or musicals (which having not read up on it, I assume the films are), I simply had to put my foot down and refuse because I simply cannot bring myself to listen to Abba songs, regardless of who is singing them.

[caja-dglh]

So, partner to the other thread today - Fucked Up. Don't get it at all.

[San Bernardhinault]

WOM's post upthread reminds me that what I really struggle to get the point of is modern hiphop. Your Chances and Drakes and Kendricks. I struggle to see any value in it.

I don't think I'm meant to get Ed Sheeran. It's like not getting Dido or Chris de Burgh. Someone I associate with Sheeran is Sam Smith, and I'm told sometimes that I should get Sam Smith because of his great soul voice or something. Which just makes no sense to me at all.

[Amor de Cosmos]

However one group I've never got, or understood the clamour for are Abba.

I'm with you there. Just a shrug and a meh for me. Moreover they're now forever married to the image of a boogying Theresa May, which is not all good.

[WOM]

WOM's post upthread reminds me that what I really struggle to get the point of is modern hiphop. Your Chances and Drakes and Kendricks. I struggle to see any value in it.

Right, but for me that's like saying "Your Led Zeppelins and Coldplays and Eagles." They're as different as chalk and cheese. Drake is auto-tuned dreck where Kendrick is winning Pulitzers.

[WOM]

I'm with you there. Just a shrug and a meh for me. Moreover they're now forever married to the image of a boogying Theresa May, which is not all good.

Excellent stuff. Even Abba that didn't make the cut for Abba Gold is usually pretty good.

[WOM]

So, partner to the other thread today - Fucked Up. Don't get it at all.

And I totally get that.

[adams house cat]

Always liked Cheap Trick. Good fun live too. Couldn't stand Asia and can't stand Coldplay.

I don't get Patti Smith.

[WOM]

I don't get Radiohead. At all. Nothing. Nada. And this whole 'OK Computer' being one of the greatest albums of all time stuff....

[3 Colours Red]

I don't get Radiohead. At all. Nothing. Nada. And this whole 'OK Computer' being one of the greatest albums of all time stuff....

And here I was thinking it was just me.

[Wouter D]

I own several Coldplay and Radiohead albums.

[WOM]

Were they gifts?

[San Bernardhinault]

Right, but for me that's like saying "Your Led Zeppelins and Coldplays and Eagles." They're as different as chalk and cheese. Drake is auto-tuned dreck where Kendrick is winning Pulitzers.

Drake and Kendrick sound different, sure. But I don't "get" either of them. I don't really understand why Kendrick is winning Pulitzers. I'm sure the problem lies with me, and I am turning into a comedy version of my dad complaining about young peoples' music.

[Hot Pepsi]

I'm with you there. Just a shrug and a meh for me. Moreover they're now forever married to the image of a boogying Theresa May, which is not all good.

I find ABBA grating. Not 100% sure why.

[Hot Pepsi]

I don't get Radiohead. At all. Nothing. Nada. And this whole 'OK Computer' being one of the greatest albums of all time stuff....

It’s pretty good. But I like the Bends better, whereas I’ve heard hardcore Radiohead fans who seem to think the Bends and their earlier stuff is the same as Coldplay and nowhere near as good as their later stuff.

Apparently, Radiohead don’t play Creep live. It’s their best song.

[Jah Womble]

I was never a massive fan of OK Computer. The best Radiohead album for me was/is Kid A, but I don't think it had enough obvious hits on it for a lot of their fanbase, let alone those who were indifferent. But I'm unapologetic in still liking what they do. (And The Bends is a squillion light years more original than anything Coldplay have ever done.)

I'm the wrong person to discuss modern music though, I gave up on Radio One when Moyles left and I realised I didn't like a single thing on there anymore. I probably only own a handful of albums released since 2008 (I buy albums and not singles).

If you were relying on Radio One for 'modern music' then I'm not surprised you gave up.

[WOM]

I was never a massive fan of OK Computer. The best Radiohead album for me was/is Kid A, but I don't think it had enough obvious hits on it for a lot of their fanbase, let alone those who were indifferent. But I'm unapologetic in still liking what they do. (And The Bends is a squillion light years more original than anything Coldplay have ever done.)

You're one of those people whose word I, respectfully, just have to take that there's something wonderful there and I just can't hear it.

[Hot Pepsi]

I actually do understand, I think, why people like Coldplay. I just don’t think most of it is
really all that interesting. It all feels a bit obvious and therefore dull. Like a mediocre sitcom.

[Hot Pepsi]

Drake and Kendrick sound different, sure. But I don't "get" either of them. I don't really understand why Kendrick is winning Pulitzers. I'm sure the problem lies with me, and I am turning into a comedy version of my dad complaining about young peoples' music.

My thought was that Kendrick is simply making a kind of art so different than the music I’m into that it’s just an apples and oranges sort of thing and so I should approach it more like I would some kind of weird modern art or poetry without looking for the hooks or the groove that I would normally hope for in pop music.

But then I hear an interview with Chris Thille, the mandolin virtuoso and host of the show that replaced Prarie Home Companion, in which he mentioned a few times how much he thinks of Kendrick Lamar. If a bluegrass guy can “get it” then I suppose I can. Perhaps.

[WOM]

Buy it and try it. That's pretty much all I did.

[Hot Pepsi]

I’ve heard it on Spotify. It’s interesting.

[Simon G]

If you were relying on Radio One for 'modern music' then I'm not surprised you gave up.

You make a good point, I used Radio 1 as my example of not being down with the "yoof" so to speak.

Whilst on practical gardening leave before my redundancy I started listening to some Youtube playlists sand heard some stuff I'd never heard before - I'd look it up and realise these songs are 10-15 years old which practically shows how out of touch I am.

I also could never get on the Radiohead bandwagon and Lord knows I've tried. I've bought about 4 of their albums including OK Computer and The Bends after an old teacher (who was still young but my point is there) telling me that Muse were very similar to them and me loving Origin of Symmetry at the time, but I just couldn't get into them at all.