I went to see Iron Maiden and thought, “how weird would it be if they played nothing but Fleetwood Mac covers.” Or if Megadeth (who was opening) played Iron Maiden songs. Or if Bieber decided to sing Beatles songs a capella at Coachella.

I’m not talking bands like GWAR, who are known for their crazy performances. I’m talking about instances of a band or performer completely breaking audience expectations (either negatively or positively) by playing an all cover set and leaving the audience scratching their heads. Has anything like that happened before?

Listening to this again, in full, for the second time in my life. This should be just as impactful as London Calling, but this album is kind of like a huge Hollywood flop in musical form. If you condensed this to a single album it would be incredible. As a double album it would be compelling but maybe have a couple skippable tracks. But as a triple album, this is a challenge. There is legit garbage tracks on here like Mensforth Hill, a track I'm hearing now. The tragedy is that this comes right after Charlie Don't Surf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFYLCj-hCsc a fantastic Clash song.

This album also has a super interesting idea of combining dub and punk, and adds some dance elements that work. It's basically a subgenre that only exists on this album. One More Time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu5D0STdIcg and The Equaliser https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bw00AWplAQ are pretty unique. The Call Up, is another really cool way to mix disco into a very punkish song about not joining the military. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ScaGjwkg2Y

But many of the tracks on this just don't work at all. And, in light of their recent success, The Clash wasn't listening to anyone about what worked and what didn't. They actually took a pay cut on royalties to ensure a triple album would be released because the idea was to give their fans the most bang for their buck because a triple album was sold cheaper than three separate albums. Great idea if you have a triple album worth of all new bangers, but that's not typical of any band. Plus, the experimental nature of this album means that not every idea landed. It's why we have editing. Keep what works, ditch what doesn't.

Anyway, my thoughts on this album are pretty clear. This could have been as treasured as London Calling. Instead this is one of the most frustrating listening exercises you can do. When it works, it's unlike anything else. When it doesn't work you wonder what drugs they had access to.

besides the most obvious "we've lost the art of the concept album" (or listening to albums as a whole/in full), what, if anything, in your opinion, have we lost since the rise of streaming?

seeing this post yesterday is what prompted the question in my mind.

ultimately, one shouldn't get into music as a vocation, imo, if the aim is wealth and success, but the above kind of paints a "what's the point at all" picture, because you should be able to at least get by or have your primary income supplemented a bit if you've opted to pursue it as a real thing, imo. it's just an incredibly doomy, gloomy, but i guess maybe real stance.

and in my brain, i conjured up the correlation with streaming because that's (most likely) the reason behind this idea that putting your new music out there is like throwing your fancy water into the ocean.

do it for the love of it, don't expect any reward or even recognition- that's always been the primary mo, but seems so especially now.

• Heavy emphasis on atmosphere, the aim is to immerse and lose oneself in the song
• Short melodies repeating for a long time, barely changing for minutes
• Steady, constantly driving, somewhat fast drumlines with the sole task of providing a steady pulse
• Both are more melancholic and emotional rather than euphoric
• "Simple" but moving, no complex chord progressions

Recently, I started listening to some of trance biggest hits. After a while I noticed I listen to trance the same way I listen to black metal. When I started to compare the two, a lot of similiarities came up. I'm very curious about your opinion.

Sometimes an album just clicks immediately, while other times it takes a few listens before you really start to appreciate it. I'm curious about what usually changes for you when that happens. Is it that you start paying more attention to the lyrics, become more familiar with the sound and production, or hear it in a different setting that changes how you experience it? Maybe certain songs begin to stand out that you didn't notice at first. I'd love to hear an example of an album that grew on you over time and what made you eventually connect with it.

I remember when Imagine Dragons got overplayed to death in the mid to late 2010s and were popular and seen as the next "Nickelback" but it seemed like they never got the same amount of hate as Nickelback. I mean they got mildly teased by some people but I feel like it was never on the same level. I mean people talked about Nickelback with so much more anger than they ever did Imagine Dragons.

Explain to me, a 2001 baby. Why was Nickelback THE WORST MUSIC EVER and if you liked them you had bad taste whereas Imagine Dragons was just some popular band that s overplayed but nobody really cared to bash them?

Also, was the last time people REALLY hated some music artist just for the music, not for controversies with Justin Bieber in 2010-2012? There's people who hate Taylor Swift and Drake now but the JB and Nickelback hate from this time was on another level I feel like.

If Imagine Dragons got less hate than Nickelback are they objectively a better band?

I’ve been on a massive Field Music binge lately and I’m just blown away by how underrated they are. The way David and Peter Brewis construct melodies, use modular time signatures, and handle their own production is inspiring. It’s like high concept art rock disguised as catchy pop songs.
Are there any other fans in here? I’d love to know what your favorite era of the band is, or if there are any similar bands with that level of meticulous like arrangement that I might be missing out on. It’s a pretty niche pull, so really hoping to see other fans here.

If you're the kind of weirdo who thinks classical music would never sully itself with any kind of popular culture... well, it's probably because you don't hear much classical music.

One only has to hear movie and video game soundtracks to appreciate how classical music impacts modern culture.

But what about something as abrasive and low brow as punk rock?

Well, one day, I was listening to the Velvet Underground. "The Black Angel's Death Song" came on. And my immediate thought was, "Wait a minute. This sounds more like an experimental classical song than a rock song."

Turns out I was right.

This particular song was deeply influenced by the classical composer La Monte Young. One only has to hear Young's composition "The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer" to see the connection. And if that doesn't convince you, VU member John Cale performed in Young's Theatre of Eternal Music before joining the Velvet Underground.

Consequently, La Monte Young is probably the most consequential composer in any genre upon the evolution of punk rock since his signature drones, sustained tones, dissonance, and repetition can still be heard in the genre now.

So is La Monte Young just a one-off, a rare classical guy who accidentally impacted the most unclassical of rock music?

Well, no. There's another source of classical, and that's through Karlheinz Stockhausen. He was an early experimenter who pioneered tape manipulation, feedback, and electronically generated sound.

Almost every punk band that engaged with synths, such as Cabaret Voltaire, were impacted by Stockhausen. Now some people might object and call Cabaret Voltaire post-punk rather than punk. But since they formed in 1973, if anything, they are a pre-punk band who had a seminal influence on punk itself, and you can hear that on their compilation "1974-1976".

Finally, the classical composers who are the most blatantly punk in ethos: Steve Reich and Philip Glass. These composers were an inspiration to artists as diverse as Brian Eno and David Byrne. But their most direct connection is with another classical composer, Glenn Branca. You see, Branca was a full participant in the seminal no wave scene, and it was Branca who imported Reich and Glass's minimalist techniques that became essential to bands like Sonic Youth.

Indeed, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth played in his guitar ensembles, as did musicians associated with Swans.

So while at first glance it seems punk rock has nothing to do with classical music, it seems to have everything to do with classical music.

But what's your opinion?

I've been listening to John Legend's new album Muse, produced by Pharrell, and it's honestly one of the most interesting things I've heard from him in years.

John has always had an amazing voice, but I feel like some of his recent music was missing something. On Muse, Pharrell brings a completely different energy. There's a beautiful mix of soul, R&B, jazz influences, gospel and even some hip-hop.

What I love most is how rich the music sounds without losing the emotion. Songs like "Get Back" feel almost cinematic, with those horns and strings, while John's voice still feels very personal.

It makes me wonder how much a great producer can change an artist's direction, especially someone who's been making music for over 20 years.

Do you think Pharrell helped John Legend find a new sound, or was this always a side of him we just hadn't heard enough of? Or it is so much John Legend, you don't see much difference?

Every so often, I’ll feel the urge to re-explore more melodic music and refresh my brain on those traditions of music such as classical, traditional pop, jazz, Broadway, etc.

But I’ve also wondered about the typical question of “What makes a good melody?” I see qualities like being “singable“ or “hummable”. But it can feel like a fine line between being memorable and being annoyingly repetitive or stuck in your head.

And that also got me thinking more about melody’s role in music. Melody has traditionally been considered one of the most defining elements of music, at least when you look at textbook definitions. But music has evolved in so many different ways that its role has changed.

Something I’ve speculated about is how the connotation of “being melodic” varies based on the genre. For some artists, being melodic is one of the greatest goals of their art form. It allows artists to have memorable, appealing, and harmonically rich music. For other artists, being melodic is something to shy away from because it situates the artist in the pop world or makes them too accessible. That the artist wants to challenge or deconstruct the traditional expectations of music.

For instance, artists in the punk and post-punk lineage would emphasize different qualities like atmosphere, tone, and aggression. But there’d also be subgenres that would bring melody back to the forefront like Indie Pop or Pop punk.

Basic questions:

• What makes a good melody?
• How has melody’s role in music changed depending on the genre?
• What is melody’s current role in music discourse? Is it something you personally value, or does it depend on the kind of music?

I’m trying to understand what makes a song tolerable enough that someone wouldn’t immediately skip it, even if they’re not into that genre.
For example, if an elderly person who doesn’t listen to underground rap heard an underground rapper’s song, what would make them willing to keep listening for at least a little while instead of instantly turning it off?
Is it mainly the audio quality? Clear vocals? A balanced mix? Or is it more about the actual performance — the voice, cadence, energy, melody, and how the artist delivers the song?
Can a song have a rough mix and still be listenable if the performance is engaging? And can a perfectly mixed song still be unbearable if the delivery is boring?
I’m trying to separate the minimum technical requirements for audio to be listenable from the qualities that make a performance engaging.
What are the things that make you immediately want to turn a song off, regardless of genre?

If you could put together a band with any musicians, living or dead, regardless of genre, who would you choose? And more importantly, what do you imagine the resulting music would sound like?

My dream lineup would be:

• Chester Bennington – Vocals
• Mike Patton – Vocals
• Devin Townsend – Guitar / Vocals
• Les Claypool – Bass
• Travis Barker – Drums

What fascinates me about this combination is how different their musical approaches are, yet how well I could imagine certain aspects of their styles complementing each other.

Chester's emotional intensity and melodic vocals contrasted with Mike Patton's incredible versatility and unpredictability could make for some fascinating vocal arrangements. Throw Devin Townsend into that mix, with his massive, atmospheric guitar sound and equally impressive vocal range, and I can imagine everything from beautiful harmonies to absolute chaos.

Les Claypool would add an entirely different dimension with his unconventional bass playing. Rather than simply following the guitars, I could imagine him creating unusual rhythms and melodies that push the music in unexpected directions.

And with Travis Barker on drums, I'd be curious to hear how his energetic, intricate playing would interact with Claypool's bass lines and Townsend's arrangements.

I have no idea what genre this band would fall into, and that's part of what makes the idea so interesting to me. I could imagine them creating something incredibly melodic one moment and completely experimental the next.

I'm curious what everyone else's dream lineup would be, especially combinations of musicians who have never worked together or come from completely different musical backgrounds.

Who would you choose, and what do you think their music would actually sound like?

Hot take that I will defend until my last breath: The Unforgettable Fire is a better album than The Joshua Tree.

Don't get me wrong, Joshua Tree is a monster. But it's also U2 locked in as the biggest band on the planet, with every song built to fill a stadium. Unforgettable Fire is the weird, atmospheric, slightly unfinished version of that band, with Eno and Lanois fogging up the windows. "Bad" and "Promenade" have a looseness the big hits never recaptured. They were still figuring out who they were, and you can hear it.

It got me thinking about how often this happens. A band makes a great, strange album, then the next one is the polished, radio-ready, single-factory record that makes them rich and the first one gets treated like a footnote.

A few others that come to mind:

-Bruce Springsteen: Nebraska vs. Born in the U.S.A. (one album, seven Top 10 singles, a lot of synths)

-Billy Joel: Turnstiles vs. The Stranger

-Metallica: Master of Puppets vs. The Black Album

-Nirvana: Bleach vs. Nevermind

-Green Day: Kerplunk vs. Dookie

-Red Hot Chili Peppers: Mother's Milk vs. Blood Sugar Sex Magik

To be clear, I'm not saying the breakthrough albums are bad. Plenty are classics. I just think the pre-fame album often has something the big one can't fake: hunger, risk, a little mess.

What's your pick? Which "before they blew up" album do you think beats the one that made them famous?

I’m new to this thread but I felt compelled…

I’m sitting enjoying my afternoon coffee by a river I live next to and I decided to put Heavier Things on like, “I remember loving this album front to back, does it hold up?”

I would argue it really really does primarily because of his unique guitar playing and song writing. Sure, his mediations are simple and arguably a little immature, but they’re still deep in a way that resonates today.

The incorporation of soulful horns and organ in a few of the songs are delicious and the mixing is really layered in a way that modern music can lack. It’s rich. Plus his electric licks are really singular- true rhythm and blues style, but with trippy repetition. It makes sense that he’s a dead head and I’m glad he’s moved that way in performing for his own desire. What a privilege!

My struggle is trying to sit with him being kind of a tool over the course of his career. I know he said he was allowed to say the n word at one point in time and he hasn’t treated women with the most respect. Do we know if he’s like figured all that bullshit out? Immaturity grown past or remains douche bag? I just remember walking away from the early 2000s with a bad taste in my mouth.

A singer can hit every note perfectly and still make a lyric sound like something they're reciting, while a rougher voice can make an ordinary line feel completely believable.

That difference often gets described as "emotion versus technique," but phrasing, timing, and the way a word is delivered seem like skills too, even when there's nothing flashy about them.

Are those really separate qualities, or do we just recognize high notes and vocal runs more easily than the technique behind a convincing performance?

idk if this isthe right place to talk about this seeing as I don't see a lot of fantano related posts on here but I feel his vids have gotten considerably worse with time and now its hard to ignore. like I've noticed with his vids recently that they're weirdly inflammatory and kindof rage-inducing than before. Like it started from him making points and takes that range from misinformed to just incredibly narrow-minded that feel more in-line with grifting media content farms like the critical drinker or Alex Meyers than a self-proclaimed "internet's busiest music nerd" (e.g. describing genesis by deftones as political centrism, describing abc by polyphia (a song that has a cutesy/kawaii feel) as a song that's representative of TikTok brainrot/short attention spans, missing the whole point of hypochondriac by brakence by not noticing the overarching themes of ego death and manoeuvring fame in a highly internet world, his Marty supreme review (why tf was he reviewing films though?), his recent review of the new lil uzi ep where he says that uzi's music has aged poorly (ignoring how ug/semi-ug artists like Lucy bedroque, slayr, prettifun and confetti use uzi's playbook of incorporating nerd culture and rap culture in seamless and authentic manner)). also his fanbase that ive seen in his recent vids' comments feel more and more like an echo chamber than I had realised before and it feels really isolating to see, especially in a medium like music which is the most subjective piece of media out there.

and then Ive noticed this pattern where his reviews have this sense that his language and tone comes off as him trying to be annoyed and critical but ive noticed that recently it causes him to use it to make him sound like a cunt like his review of post human next gen where he complains bmth switching sounds is indicative of modern rock's waning popularity and similar to hair metal bands trying to stay relevant when alt rock/grunge became popular (even tho bmth are some of the most popular rock bands currently who have stayed popular and has a large majority of fans even when switching from metal core to nu metal and even to pop rock/electronic while still staying popular) and describing the underoath featured song as "deftones for christian youth pastors" which I get what he was trying to say but the wording is very ironic especially when bmth has a song called house of wolves and oli sykes is an outspoken atheist + the first track of post human survival horror has the lyrics "god is a shithead and we're his rejects". idk it seems like he's using his tone and language to incite rage-infused discussion rather than to properly critique albums. and then there's the Halsey great impersonator review which has been mentioned a million times from what ive read but even as someone who liked the album but wasn't a massive super fan of it, it was a bold example to me of fantano's tone and language backfiring immensely and causing him to be seen as misogynistic. to me, discussing personal topics in an album doesn't automatically make the album good but I feel like fantano should at least have a slight bit of empathy in his review like he said in his xxxtentacion 17 review where he put a disclaimer near the end where he wasn't making fun nor assuming x never went through any problems or struggles but criticising how those problems are portrayed and written which is what he has a problem with or how in his review of speeding bullet 2 heaven (which I think has aged badly knowing that kid cudi was in a very bad mental state during the making of the album so jokes that fantano made of cudi "losing his mind" and going "off the deep end" feels really insidious looking back) he acknowledges that the album goes over topics of mental health but is critical of how they are written and translated into the songwriting process. that Halsey review made me lose trust in his reviews. I am aware of the response video he made but I'm quite mixed on that with the second half being very strange (I do think Halsey kissing her fans is bad and disgusting presence of abuse of power but from what ive heard she has stopped doing that and the last time she did that was before closer dropped but idk on that so if anyone can fact check that, that would be great) even with the intent being "ppl call me out on shit I do but not what their fav artists have done" which I agree on but the implementation feels really off-putting + there was one thing he says before going into that topic that pissed me off the most. there was a part where he "apologised" to losing his integrity in his reviews and destroying the trust that his fans had him as an influencer/reviewer and he sounds like he doesn't care or put much thought into him being an influencer whose reviews have an impact in some way and it felt like a slap in the face from someone who introduced a lot of music I was never aware of and made me more aware of why I liked something or disliked something and how to articulate that. the fact that he doesn't seem to care or pay attention to that made me realise that he just doesn't care about the quality of his vids even if he has a good review or puts me on new artists/genres. there's his twitter posts which makes him look really bad and looks like he's in desperate need of therapy + there was a reply I saw in his Halsey response vid that he made on a comment of a user saying how fantano's personality in his yt vids is drastically different compared to his twitter posts and criticising him and fantano's response was that dictating his personality from his tweets makes no sense when he has 1,000+ yt vids. I don't think he realises that his yt vids is a personality that's far different than who he is outside of the needle drop. there's a philosophy/saying about 3 faces where the first face is one you show the world, the second only to close friends/family and third being one you show to yourself with it being the true reflection of who you are. fantano doesn't take into account that his needle drop vids is a personality he shows to the world whilst his tweets are closer to his true reflection of himself like I don't who he is personally but his tweets feel far more authentic to himself that he shows on streams (which are also bad and act like a detriment to his reviewing style than as a positive) than on his thousands of needle drop vids where he's more of a professional.

also other things like how cal chuchesta in his recent vids feel more like a stand in for annoying fans/haters rather than a separate character to the point where I think cal in the recent vid is cal chuchesta in name only or his weirdly aggressive tendency to call people stupid or dumb in his reviews (e.g. saying in his review of atavista by childish Gambino where fans of Gambino fans were trying to "gaslight" him into thinking that 3.15.20 (older, unfinished version of atavista that dropped during the covid pandemic) was good) and his streams having takes that feel vitriolic (barely listening to brakence's ready or not all the way through, turning it off, saying his singing was bad for the whole song and moving on or saying that those who like vices by Weiland have not a lot of experience in synth pop which just feels really cruel and negative even if there's a bit of truth to it)

its such a shame cuz a lotta ppl whenever they call out fantano do so by saying "he gave an album I like a bad score" or vice versa but that's not even nowhere close to the problems ive seen + I do want to watch more music reviewers that are similar to fantano but from what ive seen he's basically the only type of YouTuber in this genre outside of maybe brad's taste (whose leagues worde than fantano imo) so if there's any other yt music reviewers outside of fantano who are better than him, let me know in the comments cuz fantano's vids feel more and more like a content farm than a genuine approach to music discussion from someone who loves music a lot

sorry if this came off more of a rant but its just more of my complaints ive seen as a viewer of his since mid-late 2016 and a lot of what ive mentioned has stopped me being a fan of his videos now.

You all know the classic "mainstream co-opts the underground" story, it's basically Hebdige's "incorporation" from Subculture (1979): a real scene builds up on its own (punk in the late 70s, Seattle in the early 90s, SoundCloud rap in the mid 2010s, etc.), a major label shows up and signs whoever's at the center of it, and turns all that underground clout into a product for the masses. The scene comes first and the labels swoop in to commodify it once it's proven able to stand on its own.

I don't think scenes get the chance to prove themselves anymore, and the death of the monoculture is why. Somebody on here says "there's no monoculture anymore" pretty much daily, and they're right, but the same algorithmic siloing that killed it also makes it really hard for a big, self-sustaining underground to form. You can't co-opt a scene that never gets off the ground. So the order flips. Instead of waiting for one, you fake the signs that a scene exists and let the algorithm do the rest. Call it a simulculture: a scene that exists as a simulation first and only becomes real once actual people show up.

Sounds like tinfoil hat stuff, but there are companies that sell this as a service. Chaotic Good Projects, the firm that got Geese dragged into the "psyop" thing earlier this year, literally called what they do "trend simulation": networks of accounts posing as regular users, posting clips and flooding comment sections so an artist looks like they're blowing up. Their client list reportedly ran from Coldplay and Dua Lipa to Bieber and Reneé Rapp. Forget fake streams, this is closer to payola, except worse, because payola at least didn't pretend to be your fellow fans.

What gets me is what they're faking. It's the texture of a scene: the inside jokes, the "is this guy overrated" arguments, the feeling that you found something first. And the flavor of "authentic" changes depending on who's being sold to.

Indie: the mystery guy. Barely online, music that just appears, hazy aesthetic, respected musicians vouching for you. Mk.gee is the go-to example, which is funny, because his name reportedly showed up on Chaotic Good's client list right alongside Geese before they scrubbed their site. Being a client doesn't tell us what they did for him, but the guy whose whole appeal is "you found him, nobody sold him to you" being on a trend simulation roster at all is kind of the point.

Pop: the sleeper hit. The bedroom kid who posts a song and the internet just finds it. Sombr is the textbook case: a song goes viral within hours, labels come calling. Also reportedly a Chaotic Good client. Again, no idea what they did for him, but "kid posts a song, TikTok finds it" is exactly the story this stuff is built to look like. (The "Sombr hate" meme this year is a perfect example of the friction a scene needs, engineered or not.)

Rap: skip the scene, go straight to Paris. Put a guy in avant-garde clothes and sit him front row in Paris or Milan, and he looks like a star before he's had a hit. Kanye did a version of this twenty years ago. Anyone who was on fashion forums in the mid 2000s knows he was stealing fits straight off actual tastemakers on SuperFuture. His "fashion genius" era came out of WAYWT threads, not his own head (Pastelle, anyone?). But Kanye used that to reinvent a career he already had. Now the fashion co-sign creates the career (Nettspend, anyone?).

Here's the part that messes with me. It doesn't even need to work that well. There's an old Columbia study (Salganik & Watts, "Leading the Herd Astray") where they ran a fake music download site and flipped which songs looked popular, and for most songs the fake popularity turned real over time. A 2013 study in Science (Muchnik, Aral & Taylor) found that one artificial upvote made the next person 32% more likely to upvote too. Fake the map of a scene and real people wander in, pick up the jokes, buy the vinyl, go to the shows. Geese said "come to a show and count the bots," and fair enough, the people in the room are real. That's Baudrillard's map preceding the territory, and it turns Hebdige upside down: incorporation used to be how a subculture died, now it's how one gets born.

Before anyone says it: yes, labels have always manufactured hype (payola, street teams, boy bands built in a conference room, Sub Pop selling grunge as a brand). And no, nobody has proven Chaotic Good specifically moved the needle for Geese. Garbage Day dug up some of their accounts and they were embarrassingly bad, and even Billboard's Kristin Robinson says these campaigns usually don't work unless the song is already good. But that actually supports my point. In the Columbia study the very best songs eventually clawed their way back up, but most of the songs in the middle ended up wherever the fake rankings put them. And most music lives in that middle. There's way more good-enough music out there than there is attention to go around, so the simulation doesn't have to make bad music popular. It just has to decide which of the good-enough artists get noticed. And whether any single campaign works or not, the industry is clearly paying for it.

Questions:

1. Does "industry plant" mean anything anymore if faking a scene is just part of a normal rollout?
2. Can a big, genuinely organic underground still form, or is everything too fractured now? Counterexamples welcome (but metal/hardcore don't count, those scenes had their infrastructure built decades before the algorithm ate everything).
3. Why does learning the discourse was engineered feel worse than learning a pop star uses ghostwriters?
4. If a simulculture goes nowhere until real people show up, who actually made the scene?

Every now and then, I go through a phase where I listen to the Beatles almost obsessively. And the same thing happens every time: after spending weeks or even months listening to songs that barely make it past the two-minute mark, going back to a five-minute song feels like a chore. Suddenly, everything seems way too long.

One of the things I find most fascinating about the Beatles is how much they manage to pack into so little time. They can squeeze an intro, three verses, a few choruses, a bridge, and an outro into barely two and a half minutes, and somehow nothing feels rushed or incomplete. Everything is exactly where it needs to be, and there's not a second wasted. Of course, we're talking about the Beatles here, but I still think that kind of songwriting economy is a seriously underrated quality in music.

As the years went by, pop and rock songs generally started getting longer. I'm not entirely sure how much of that had to do with LPs, changes in radio, or simply shifting musical trends, but I get the feeling that at some point people started assuming a song needed more time to properly develop.

And it's not that I have anything against long songs. There are plenty of six, seven or eight-minute tracks that I absolutely love. But there are also loads of songs that, in my opinion, would be much better if they were half as long. Sometimes I feel like a great two-and-a-half-minute song can accomplish more than a five-minute one.

So I'm curious: what do you think is the ideal length for a pop/rock song? Or do you think length is completely irrelevant as long as the song is good?

Every time I'm scrolling IG or TikTok, it feels like every hip hop/R&B page is running the exact same playbook: New Music Friday roundups, first-week sales debates, album anniversaries, or low-effort "Who had the better verse?" engagement bait.

​None of my friends really follow the scene closely, so I'm curious what other people think from a pure listener perspective: what is actually missing right now?

​Do you want more deep dives into sample breakdowns and production? Scene/regional spotlights? Honest critiques? Or has short-form music content just made everything feel generic?

I'm really ​Curious what kind of posts or creators you actually stop and watch vs just scroll past because I'm getting sick of seeing the same things

If you were to ask the average music s̶n̶o̶b̶ listener about mainstream music back in the 2000s, they would have said it sucked.​ That's not to say it wasn't popular but i feel like back then it wasn't highly regarded. A lot of people got into music from the 60s, 70s and 80s and largely seemed to shun new music.

But now you see people praise a lot of the new music that's popular, and I feel like the consensus is that mainstream today is better than it was in the 2000s. People nowadays say "today's music is so much better", nobody seemed to say that 20 years ago. Usually you're supposed to think music from the past is better but I guess it's different today.

I literally see millennials wish they could grow up in THIS time instead of the 2000s because the mainstream music is better.

What do you think?

Which is better? For a little background to this topic I used to do different tribute/cover bands in high school for artist and No Doubt was a tribute band I did twice. I was at dinner with my mom earlier when I told her there was 2 bands I wish I did a tribute band for, The Beatles and Paramore. My mom said Paramore probably wouldn’t have been an option as they are too niche compared to No Doubt, which I disagreed with and said Paramore was far more popular. I searched up their monthly listeners on Spotify and surely enough Paramore has about 2x as many listeners, 35 million compared to 17 million if you are curious. I want to test something tho, based off random sample pool, do you prefer No Doubt or Paramore and why?

Consider this I got Rhythm version by the YellowJackets. It starts instrumentals-only, but at 3:11, some vocals come in. Would you still count it as an instrumental?

My friend says, as long as there's even a single word spoken or sung, it is by definition vocal music. Calling I got Rhythm an instrumental is wrong by definition. If anything, you'd have to say "the song is an instrumental until 3:11 and then vocal elements are introduced", but calling the whole song an instrumental would be wrong.

I say, a song is an instrumental as long as the instrumental aspect is more present/prevalent. Even if there are vocals present in I got Rhythm, they play a secondary role, so for me the song is still an instrumental.

Who is right?

Like I always prefer this song over any other version, and I am amazed at the fact that she is able to sing these songs in different languages. She did live to see her song become more popular in recent times at least, but whenever I hear this song I'm always thinking I wish it was the Spanish version. I just love it too much that it really is just a song I will pick over the English, I just think the Spanish is better probably for it's more upbeat lyrics.