This is awesome! I’ll take it on my head!!!
Turning poems into songs is fairly common. A good source of such poems is Rudyard Kipling; Leslie Fish is a pretty good filker who has a number of those tunes.
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Also, this seems relevant, since one of the articles starts with the age-old question the Stones v. Beatles (apparently, now it 7 languages? Also, John’s on my committee):
this analysis suggests other apparent novelties, such as the punk of the 1970s, were not the revolutions that their fans might like to believe.
I think it might have been a different kind of revolution, not necessarily in genre and sound, but more in mode of production? A shift back to independence of production perhaps?
I am ever so thankful to be able to get KEXP over the air… Fun fact I learned from a friend in my hometown who works for a modern rock station that they listen to the live stream from KEXP in the break room.
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As hinted in the commentary,
1976. Prog+Punk+Reggae+World Music+Disco
Mid 80s. Chicago+Detroit+New Wave
Early 90s. HipHop+Rave+AcEED+Indy+Grunge+Trip Hop+Electro+Boy Bands+Girl Bands+DnB+R&B+Trance+etc, etc etc
But then. 2000-2010 was just a lot of consolidation of the 'nuum with the possible exception of the appearance of Dubstep and Footwork.
The big question is when it all changes again. And not just in music, because there are strong parallel revolutions that happened in the other arts.
Nonsense. It’s pure opinion, hidden under several layers of scientificish jargon. How exactly do you quantify musical style? From the paper: “…we carried out expert annotations…” Again, they have categories like “‘drums, aggressive, percussive’, ‘female voice, melodic, vocal’” This is completely subjective category-picking.
There is no known algorithm for detecting jazz. There is no formula for distinguishing punk from poseur. That’s why they missed several really important developments, like punk and hip-hop: their “expert annotations” weren’t looking for them, probably because the “researchers” don’t care for them. I’ll betcha a dollar they’re in their 30’s - they’re a little too old for hip-hop and a little too young for disco.
EDIT: Oops, it looks like they mentioned hip-hop after all. I thought it was post-punk they were “detecting” in 1991, but their “expert annotations” seem to think Nirvana was nothing new.
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I agree. While it’s certainly interesting, music production is a social and economic process. What gets categorized as what can be completely subjective and is often created by the industry in order to more effectively market popular music to the masses. The kind of music people make are influenced by what they and their peers listen to. They are also looking at the billboard hot 100, which is shot through with the biases of the industry. Hip-hop “broke” in 1991, but had been around for quite a while before that - even MTV had Yo! MTV Raps for a few years prior to 1991. As for Nirvana… I’m not sure that Cobain would have thought of his music as wholly novel, either. He quite proudly wore his influences on his sleeve, in fact, and was constantly gesturing to his musical influences.
Cobain also hated nevermind and thought bleach was their best album (citation… Err… What are those?).
Secondly, it must have been '90, my brother wrote Yo MTV Raps on every surface he could find.
As an aside, I tend to believe Smells Like Teen Spirit and Van Halens Jump are more alike than different. (To borrow a Paul F Tomkin’s word, they are both Jaunty)
Suuurre there is! Does the listener or performer look like this?
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We’re all vaguely aware that the “identifiable decade” era of popular music is over and nothing ever changes now. And we’re also aware that kids eventually get too old no notice evolving styles in music and think musical progress ended at about the time of their own graduation.
Is this deliberate irony? I can never tell with Boing Boing.
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You can disagree with the scientific methods employed. The writers of the study even suggest others might try another method or methods. But it’s not just “perception” as the OP claims. Why do people get so upset when it’s pointed out that most pop music is pretty unoriginal?
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How can you write a book on that?
Stones. Next!
I’ve always thought Blues Travelers ‘the hook’ was a great example.
Random person: this song is so fresh and original, why do I like it Sooo much.
Me: dude, its pachabels canon.
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Troll monocle activated: the only original music of the last two decades is Tenacious D.
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“the British are usually somehow responsible and nothing’s happened in music in the 1990s.”
I think should be:
“the British are usually somehow responsible and nothing’s happened in music SINCE the 1990s.”
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Thanks for that link - WRAS now has a new listener!
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It’s still sitting on my to be read very soon shelf (bad form, I know), but from interviews I’ve heard with John, it’s based not on who is empirically the better band, but it’s about the manufacturing of the conflict in the first place.
I wrote a whole article about the hostile take over of the station by Georgia Public Broadcasting last year. It was a fucking tragedy that the thing that made my university stand out was essentially eliminated by the President of the school.
ETA - the station inspired this Replacements song:
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