I was and still am a big hipster, back in the day I listened to a bunch of indie artists that are big now back when they were only on SoundCloud/bandcamp/etc. I've been a metal head and used to follow my local emo scene very closely. These days I still listen to a lot of that stuff from time to time, but the most interesting thing that's been happening musically lately from a production standpoint has been hyperpop and kpop. And songwriting-wise there is actually a lot of merit to really good pop. I'm actually really big on pop music fussing and the evolution of indie music as it's taken on more mainstream pop and production elements — the progression of Bon Iver's discography is a really interesting snapshot of that phenomenon over time.
I'm also a natural hater so I really enjoy getting to dissect a really well-written pop song followed by eviscerating an exceptionally terrible one.
There's merits to just about every genre of music — the main caveat here is that I stay away from chud pop-country but there are still some good modern country tracks.
I think my top 5 artists this year are gonna be Sufjan Stevens, Taylor Swift, Mamamoo, Lucy Dacus, and Whitney Houston which doesn't all have much in common apart from vague pop and/or indie musical lineage, unless homoeroticism is a genre. I'm on a tangent here but I think dismissing pop music as trash means you're missing out on a lot of stellar songwriting
The way most pop music is made is what I'm referring to when I say trash. This style of music production is applied to other genres as well, but in pop it's the default. The artificial vocals, the weird way midi and or looped instruments are used, the 12 producers for the one song, the way the music is entirely disconnected from any physical thing and becomes this floating sound that comes from nowhere. Nothing sounds like it has a place. Nothing sounds like an actual person made it.
I hear so many edits and awkward cuts and pitch shifts in this style of music it sounds like a meme that uses sentence mixing. You know, like those videos that use TF2 voice lines to make the characters say stupid things.
I was and still am a big hipster, back in the day I listened to a bunch of indie artists that are big now back when they were only on SoundCloud/bandcamp/etc. I've been a metal head and used to follow my local emo scene very closely. These days I still listen to a lot of that stuff from time to time, but the most interesting thing that's been happening musically lately from a production standpoint has been hyperpop and kpop. And songwriting-wise there is actually a lot of merit to really good pop. I'm actually really big on pop music fussing and the evolution of indie music as it's taken on more mainstream pop and production elements — the progression of Bon Iver's discography is a really interesting snapshot of that phenomenon over time.
I'm also a natural hater so I really enjoy getting to dissect a really well-written pop song followed by eviscerating an exceptionally terrible one.
There's merits to just about every genre of music — the main caveat here is that I stay away from chud pop-country but there are still some good modern country tracks.
I think my top 5 artists this year are gonna be Sufjan Stevens, Taylor Swift, Mamamoo, Lucy Dacus, and Whitney Houston which doesn't all have much in common apart from vague pop and/or indie musical lineage, unless homoeroticism is a genre. I'm on a tangent here but I think dismissing pop music as trash means you're missing out on a lot of stellar songwriting
The way most pop music is made is what I'm referring to when I say trash. This style of music production is applied to other genres as well, but in pop it's the default. The artificial vocals, the weird way midi and or looped instruments are used, the 12 producers for the one song, the way the music is entirely disconnected from any physical thing and becomes this floating sound that comes from nowhere. Nothing sounds like it has a place. Nothing sounds like an actual person made it.
I hear so many edits and awkward cuts and pitch shifts in this style of music it sounds like a meme that uses sentence mixing. You know, like those videos that use TF2 voice lines to make the characters say stupid things.