The Hurdy Gurdy is the best instrument ever.
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Coldplay sound like they only have one song that they keep repeating.
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I think âcatchy and niceâ is what makes most music terrible!
What are you hoping to be convinced of? It is usually a headscratcher for me when I hear about âconvincingâ in an artistic context.
I completely agree. Taking it further, I think itâs better to run several different tempi simultaneously, as well as changing those over time. Most music tends to be oddly temporally static. Especially musics which are supposedly rhythm-based, such as electronica and so-called dance music.
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I think itâs because most lyricists just use it as a reason to whinge and complain.
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I was equally surprised when discovered this. Does explain how they were able to release several albums, though.
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That isnât fair criticism. At least half of their album overs have other color schemes. BRUTE! is awesome, so itâs ok they use the same illustrator for all but a few albums.
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Overall, I donât have enough <3âs for this comment. 
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Thats just true.
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'Twas ever thus. Itâs the repetitive rhythms that induce the trance. Itâs the harmonies tend to play to the mind.
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Iâm not sure this is an unpopular opinion, I think a lot of people just really like that song.
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Disliking Coldplay is unpopular?
I thought these days admitting you liked them was like admitting you had herpes?
(TBH, they might be okay now, I havenât listened to any of their music since their second album. It did all get a bit samey but like U2 I got more fed up with the frontman than anything, although the bland music didnât help)
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I had this boss who had to listen to Bob Dylan, John Hiatt, Leonard Cohen, Cat Stevens, etc. all the time, and I started out thinking they were bad. IMHO theyâre popular with boorish Boomers who want to seem deep. Ditto for most Pink Floyd; itâs just self-indulgent shoe-gazing stoner philosophy that could have been cleared up by them moving to a country that had sunshine.
The end of their musical career is just awful. Same boss who was mentioned before would have to play âThe Long And Winding Roadâ at full volume, and those old Mirrored Drive Doors G4s were loud enough to drown out all conversation. My God, what a self-indulgent piece of crap.
And on a similar note, I donât like any Led Zeppelin outside of II and III. Toward the end of their career, they cratered as spectacularly as The Beatles.
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and @daneel
Is it supposed to be unpopular with the public at large or unpopular with happy mutants?
'Cause I got one for the latter.
I fucken love the Pixies. Theyâre a lovely clatter and their lyrics are almost Dr Seussian.
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That is much of the problem, as I hear it. But not the only one. Even those who donât complain are still usually using song to add a semantic component for people to relate to. This yields work which seems to have a cohesive instrumental / sonic layer with a separate layer of story or crooning crudely bolted onto it. It is a surprisingly rare thing for artists to have something both worth singing about, and also which effectively uses the voice as an instrument integral to the other sonics.
I disagree with both statements. There isnât anything about rhythms repeating which requires them to be temporally static or metrically simple. I am not a big fan of harmony either. Most rhythms and harmonies alike are made to be predictable instead of interesting.
Ha! I rest my case
âŚalthough, to be fair, that wasnât really music.
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Radiohead peaked at The Bends.
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I like some of Dylanâs protest music, if only the people who grew up listening to it would realize that they are now the ones the songs are complaining about.
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I donât want to talk about âperformance theoryâ which is definitely a thing, but a thing in which Iâm not versed or studied, but Iâll offer an explanation by way of example and Iâll see if it clears things up a bit. Iâve mentioned before on this BBS one important thing I learned while anchoring a community radio news show for a little bit: Itâs performance, and to perform convincingly you had to âactâ like you were reading the news. Something about speaking normally comes across as incredibly unnatural to people listening on the radio. To sound normal, you have to act a little. The same seems to apply in theater, where the old saw is âall acting is overactingâ because a convincing performance is often a lot more effort than just doing what you would do when placed in the same situation. At least thatâs what it feels like. Thereâs something very similar in music.where a performance is really more than just hitting all the notes in the right order at the right time. You can hear when an artist misses notes sometimes in live music, but you donât always care when the performance is good. Iâm not sure if the explanation makes sense here, but itâs one of those elusive concepts that is difficult to describe, and the word âconvincingâ is really just a recycle of a related concept to refer to a concept for which there is no other word.
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Counterpoint:
Singing only adds to music when:
a) the singer is telling a story, and
b) the singer is good at singing, acting, and storytelling
So, for musicals, opera, and the really good singers who can actually put their emotions into their voice, singing adds to the music.
For most music on the radio, the singers arenât particularly talented at singing, acting, or storytelling, which is why it doesnât add much.
