Corpsey

bandz ahoy
My friend just sent me this


Got me thinking about a quality of modern pop music that I don't think there was so much of in the past -

I'll now struggle to describe it but it would include qualities like

"darkness"
atmospherics
filtered chords, hinting at barely suppressed emotions
minimalist drums
big build ups, explosions of hi-hats
"EPIC"-ness (but married to sultriness)

I suppose this is to do with dance music merging with pop music to some extent.

Is this a zeitgeist thing? Do people need heightened, portentuous music?

A tune like "Happy" by Pharrell stuck out a mile, with its faux-innocence.
 

luka

Well-known member
This is why Barty says travis Scott is the new meatloaf. It's also part of the strange time-lock between now and the 1980s. My mate reckons it's the result of a 30 year Saturn cycle Senescent power spasm
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Yeah, good example - prog rap.

Stadium rap.

It's all tied in (in my head) with 4k cameras, super slo-mo, the perfection of CGI. (Dangerously close to dematerialisation here but it's more performative than textural.)
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Perhaps it's also about fighting for attention - in the era where everybody can access all media all the time your song has to be EPIC to stick out
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
one aspect of dematerialisation is the narrativisation of your life.

facebook or instagram or something does 'stories'. if you're broadcasting your life then there's the expectation it has to be broadcast-worthy, which would tempt you to make it like a fiction.

reality tv turns ostensible everyday lives into soap opera. contest shows like the x factor build in these character arcs into the contestants.

certain strands of therapy do this.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
9/11, 7/7, syrian civil war, etc. make everyday cities all of a sudden (very literally) explode with excitement.

 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
video games might have something to do with it. ever day people are getting home from work and school and very much engaging in high-stakes, high-energy worlds of explosions and warfare and so forth. its everyday grandiosity.

 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
our computer/smartphone interfaces aren't situated in space; they're free floating. they're also not physically communal, you're may be speaking with people but not with them.

reverb on the other hand is all about something situated within a space; sound reverberating off of boundaries. its also something you might associate with communal environments like churches and stadiums.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
thinking of that ariana song, this might connect with that 80's pop poignance thread. it's trying to replicate the emotional potency of that era in music. given there's an emotional vacuity to this newer stuff, this bigness is a desperate- near hysterical- attempt to impose emotion into the music. it signifies emotions rather than actually evoking them.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
'the drop' in dubstep (of the skrillex variety) is another central thing in all this. the fetishisation of the climax. of impact. a cultural ritual centred around the audience's widespread understanding of the songs's structure. an explicit call to arms based around tension and release.
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
The overuse of superlatives to describe the relatively mundane. American style. The use of the word epic for example. This sandwich is epic.

Epicness is a cheap way to make us actually feel shit.
 
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