Modern Music Is Rubbish (It Isn't)

Modern Music Is Rubbish , how often do we hear that? The old songs are the best , You could hear every word , He / She can sing properly , and so on and so on .

The thing is all the old songs were new songs , part of the modern music scene , once.

I do tell people that , in my opinion , at any given time 95% is rubbish and it's your task to find that 5% , sometimes not the easiest of tasks. There is lots of music that leaves me cold but seems to have a great commercial audience. I am still berated for not listening to the stuff from X-Factor , Pop Idol and Britain’s Got Talent.

Most of the time that is no better than elevator or lift music depending if they are in the USA or UK.

I have known people whose only listening is British Heavy Metal between 1974 and 1976. For that genre you can substitute almost anything. It’s almost like reading a single book or watching a single film or TV program.

Like reading , theatre , film and TV you need to dig around to find things that are worth listening to in music. So the jazz of Django Reinhardt and Glenn Miller and Stefan Grappeli and the blues of Memphis Minnie , Billie Holliday and Robert Johnson and the folk and protest of Woodie Guthrie and Pete Seeger were all cutting edge when they came out and would be championed by listeners but the corporate media blanketed the airwaves with safe sanitized muzak although rebels such as pirae radio and certain BBC DJs would champion alternates to the mainstream.

They say your musical tastes are formed between the ages of 14 and 16 , though apparently I was an Elvis fan by three , and Pink Floyd fan at the age of ten , though I also liked “Little White Bull” by Tommy Steele , a record far worse than David Bowie’s “Laughing Gnome”,

In the early sixties The Who same “I hope I die before I get old” , depending on your definition of getting old I think that is a great mission statement. There is nothing I can do about my body aging but my mind is stuck at age 15.

So in my formative years I picked up on Pink Floyd , Hawkwind and The Bonzo Dog Band, but because my mind is stuck , I have grown into soul , reggae , classical , virtually every music genre you can think of.which means I listen to a lot of music.

The point of this post is to pick out some great music that is being made now. I know established artists are making records one of which is the excellent Sam Fender’s “Hypersonic Missiles” debut was released last year , and Public Service Broadcasting (see my article here) released “Bright Magic” was released this week and I have been struggling to find anything by new artists.

I like Stormzy, Nadine Shah and Janelle Monae and admittedly these are the jewels in an ocean of dross.

This is the art of finding the five percent , the music that is worth listening too,

I love Fleetwood Mac, The Beatles and The Beach Boys but I am continually looking for new music , and I do find it. I do not want my musical tastes to stagnate, however I often speak to people and realise that theirs already has.

So I will go with “The Borders” by Sam Fender,who was born in 1994 which reminds me a lot of Bruce Springsteen, as proof that you can find great new music if you look for it properly..

You may be happy with your Spotify playlist which will regurgitate the same old same old, but I will always search out the new or at least newish stuff,

Even the Vocal music decade genres are very limited , the music I like spans from 1066 to today.