Originally published at: How would "Stairway to Heaven" be received if it was released today? | Boing Boing
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Fundamentally it’s just a fairly bad prog rock song. It was popular because it came out at a time when mainstream rock was experimenting with prog ideas, but I think that was a pretty short window that closed pretty shortly afterwards. Even the prog rock elements it has - length, dynamics, fantasy theme - were not really the prog elements that later made it into mainstream music.
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Tell me you’re old without telling me your age
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Everything everybody else listens to is shit.
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Objectively correct, but this was specifically "kids today"ing
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her other points are valid, but “no autotune”? oh, my heart. children have no idea what they are missing out on.
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Kids today, music critics tomorrow.
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I have a group of friends that enjoys 70s rock music occasionally. We are millennials so we are not children but the music is still before our time. My friends have a bad habit of putting on a longer song like Stairway to Heaven, listening to a couple minutes of it and then changing the song. These are songs they ostensibly enjoy but I guess they only have patience for a couple of minutes of it. I was enjoying the song before they decided to change it.
Younger people tend to like trendy things and have their tastes more influenced by what’s popular but I think as most people grow older they gain a little perspective and let their tastes open up. So at some point your daughter might “discover” music she likes from your era, but how are you going to react when it’s different from the music you liked?
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It seems that, based on the research, most people continue to like whatever they were listening to in their teens
This is just one analysis (NYT based 
) but the same thing has been found over and over.
It’s why Tim Cook just assumed the entire world wanted a U2 album, and Steve Jobs was obsessed with having the Beatles on iTunes. Neither of these were rational things
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Somehow I’ve managed to mostly avoided that trap, I think at least partially by not listening to the radio. Niche genres sliced up into market segments only encourage this thinking by playing the same songs ad nauseam and cutting off exposure to new music except as something to disparage. I may not be aware of the newest artists out there, but I’m open to new music and don’t put down what other people like, even when it’s not to my taste.
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HOW DO I FIND MUSIC!?
I’d like to listen to nice songs with good instrumentals, some harmony in the vocals. A range of instruments.
The problem is I’m not a huge music person. I don’t want to spend all my time searching out songs. I find the ‘noise to message’ ratio to be so large, I just don’t bother.
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Music discovery is super hard these days but fortunately part of the reason is that there are a LOT more people making music now!
I actually really like Apple Music. They do a great job of making recommendations based on what you listen to (I usually get a solid “keeper” every week, usually from a band I have never heard of). They also have a lot of well curated playlist of bands that were influence by a particular band, or all of the bands that influenced a particular band. So, say you like Joy Division you can find a playlist of 20 current bands that were influenced by them.
If you want to really dig in you can find a band you like and start going down a rabbit hole of “similar artists”
These days I seldom listen to anything over 5 or ten years old. I have heard every Depeche Mode (or whoever from my youth) song hundreds or thousands of times, but Nation of Language (or whoever is influence by another old band I loved) has taken their influence and sounds familiar yet fresh!
You can also always check out the Da Musicz thread here at boing boing - it is all over the place since it’s people posting stuff they like, but there are often jewels in there
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Ok, don’t use Spotify directly, but tools like Spotalike can still be useful for finding new music without too much culture shock. (Pandora and other music services also have something similar, but without the stink of Joe Rogan.) Start with an artist or even a single track you like then look for similar music you haven’t heard. Rinse and repeat until you expand your horizons as much as you’re comfortable.
Or just follow the podcast “That Darling DJ Duo” (aka the Clockwork Cabaret) by the wonderful Emmet Davenport and Lady Attercop, on Mixcloud. They play a lovely range of music and are very entertaining, or at least I find them so.
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I really enjoyed that post Gareth, thank you. I’ve never played Stairway live because I always preferred to play the lesser known songs from famous bands. Our band would make songs our own between original stuff. Enjoyed watching this.
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Now I want to hear an autotuned version of Stairway to Heaven - one must exist
Plus autotune is not just a tool to fix vocals, it’s an aesthetic choice too. I have heard similar comments to hers before, and they are valid - autotune lets performers do things they could not otherwise (in some cases things no one could do). I would hope that Peter Frampton agrees in concept…
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there are people who are rigid in their musical tastes and those who embrace any kind of style as long as it moves them. there is room for everyone as long as you don’t try and browbeat someone into your own point of view.
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I’ve mostly gotten hip to new music (over the last coupla decades or so) by way of falling down rabbit holes in blogs what post music I’m into. I’ll be looking for something/someone specific, like the description of something I’d never heard of, and check it out. Sometimes it’s horrid, but often it’s something I really like. Yr chances are best on blogs featuring lotsa stuff you love, of course.
That’s actually how I got hip to the Hauntology genre. Finding a whole new genre to listen to while laid up w/a badly broken leg was sheer heaven. Hunting down & listening to a buncha new bands was a perfect activity for someone who was stuck seeing a total of two rooms for most of two months!
My BF is a musician who also hips me to cool stuff; he hipped me to The Soft Moon, which is obvs influenced by old school industrial (i.e. not computerized), Joy Division, and old Cure. Anyone into that sort of thing will enjoy The Soft Moon.
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/begins frantically Googling
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