Minor Annoyances (Vol 2)

[Keith Houchen]

1 hour ago, air_raid said:

With music, the lyrics ARE the song, so (example) All Summer Long is "Kid Rock bastardizes Sweet Home Alabama" from start to finish.

That’s a shit song to begin with, it’s poor Warren Zevon I feel sorry for. 

[BomberPat]

I read something recently about how the way we - and particularly younger people - consume pop culture now has changed to the point that time isn't really relevant; to a kid who's basically never watched linear TV, never rented a movie, never bought an album, there's just no distinction between something released today and something released twenty years ago, because they're all available in the same places at the same time, at the press of a button. There's little to no sense that there's been a progression between those two points.

The post I read was talking about it in terms of why things like Roald Dahl's books are being rewritten, or why certain TV shows might be edited or given trigger warnings - because if everything seems in some way contemporary, without the framing of instinctively knowing "oh yes, this old show is a repeat, it's been on ITV every Sunday for decades", if everything feels now, you don't have the experience to allow you to intellectualise, "this was made a long time ago, so it will be slightly problematic", because "this is here now, just like the show I watched five minutes ago that came out today".

I don't know how much I agree with in that sense of values and problematic content and so on, but I definitely think it plays a huge part in the nostalgia contingent on old media, especially music. "Running Up That Hill" may as well have been a brand new sing when it was on Stranger Things, for how Gen Z seized upon it as a bit on anthem - to the point that I got thoroughly annoyed at lots of "maybe you're not ready for this, but your kids are going to love it" memes about Kate Bush, as if she was some obscure '80s relic, and not one of the biggest stars of the decade. But when you can just pluck an incredible song out of the past and, through its inclusion in other media, or even just a TikTok trend or savvy social media, get it back in the charts, what hope does a new release have? 

This has probably always been somewhat the case (I'm thinking '50s revival stuff in the '70s and '80s), but think of the TV and cinema that's come out over the past twenty years, and how much of that has been soundtracked by contemporary music? Most Marvel movies - and especially Guardians Of The Galaxy - have consciously "retro" soundtracks, and any time I see a kids/family movie, it seems to be soundtracked by stuff from the '80s or '90s. In Red Rose, a series about teenagers finishing their GCSEs in the present day, they all listen to Sandstorm by Darude at their end-of-term party. Between all that, no Top Of The Pops, and I doubt many kids are listening to the radio or watching Kerrang! or Kiss TV or whatever, and most music festivals are headlined by bands that have been around for decades. There's no coherent cultural moment around which a new song, artist, or genre can feel like it's definably of its time. Not enough people are all listening to something all at once for there to be any solid sense of 2010s nostalgia in a decade's time, in my opinion, because it wasn't a decade defined in any way by its music - and I don't think that's me getting old. 

It always amazes me when I see covers bands in pubs, and while there's usually a few idiosyncrasies, you can generally predict the entire setlist. You're going to get Mr. Brightside, you're going to get Sex Is On Fire, you're going to get Seven Nation Army. You might get the odd "ironic" cover of a more recent pop song, but aside from that, if these were the only bands you ever saw, you'd be forgiven for thinking that no new songs had been released since 2008.

 

EDIT: that's not touching on the whole "songs referencing songs" thing, just the "are we just getting old?" part. 

Songs that reference other songs have been around for as long as music, the crime is doing it badly, or lazily. There used to be something of a golden rule in cinema - "don't mention a film better than the one you're making"; you don't want to remind the viewer that they could be watching something better. It's the same thing with music, really - is mentioning or sampling another song additive, or reductive? If all it serves to do is remind people that there's another song better than the one they're currently listening to, you've failed, if you've taken part of that song and repositioned it in a new context that works, it's all good.

There's a few songs that do it well - PJ Harvey's "Memphis" references Jeff Buckley's "Morning Theft" and, as a tribute to Buckley, it works, and never feels derivative. Emmy The Great's "First Love" references Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", but never feels lazy for doing so, because it fits the story of the song. I don't think Billy Bragg's "I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs Last Night" is a weaker song for not being "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night", because the comparison is part of the point. 

Edited March 17, 2023 by BomberPat

[Guest]

I'd have possibly formed an opinion if I hadn't, for years, misheard the lyric as "Ben Franklin said I did it my way," which was more of a confusing non sequitur than a grating song reference.

[King Coconut]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

If all it serves to do is remind people that there's another song better than the one they're currently listening to, you've failed

Bon Jovi even reference their own biggest hit in It's My Life, thus amplifying the failure. It's an absolute anthem to the Germans though, obviously.

Edited March 17, 2023 by King Coconut

[BomberPat]

it's maybe one for the TIL thread, but I didn't know until very recently that It's My Life was co-written by Max Martin, the producer/songwriter that wrote for Britney Spears, N'Sync, the Backstreet Boys, Katy Perry, Celine Dion, and so on. 

I only found out because (and, again, I didn't know this) the West End show "& Juliet" is a jukebox musical using his songs - a friend had the soundtrack on in the car recently, and hearing this arrangement of It's My Life makes that a lot clearer, and hearing it as a big bombastic X-Factor winner style pop song in a musical theatre context makes it a bit more palatable to me than those same lyrics being in a po-faced stadium rock anthem.

 

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

3 hours ago, air_raid said:

Kid Rock bastardizes Sweet Home Alabama" from start to finish.

For me it's a minor annoyance that Kid Rock was obviously only fucking about when he talked about running for the Senate. Rob Ritchie is the real name of Kid Rock and Rob Ritchie is the name of the intellectually malnourished governor of Florida who runs to be President in The West Wing. The missed opportunity of life imitating art is a really minor annoyance for me. 

[Sphinx]

23 hours ago, BomberPat said:

Not enough people are all listening to something all at once for there to be any solid sense of 2010s nostalgia in a decade's time, in my opinion, because it wasn't a decade defined in any way by its music - and I don't think that's me getting old.

The X Factor/EDM party pop era seems about the last defining time to me. Being in college and starting to go out for the first time whilst that dross was on, jeez. Naff indie during high school before that too. A lot of people will look at their younger years with nostalgia and say music was better back then. I can say without doubt music is better now than my teens.

[wordsfromlee]

23 minutes ago, Sphinx said:

The X Factor/EDM party pop era seems about the last defining time to me. Being in college and starting to go out for the first time whilst that dross was on, jeez. Naff indie during high school before that too. A lot of people will look at their younger years with nostalgia and say music was better back then. I can say without doubt music is better now than my teens.

There was a lot more than just X Factor contestants and landfill Indie around that time. Sure, the stuff filling the charts may have been shite, but you could say the same thing about now too. There were loads of amazing records released around then when you take a second to look.

[Arch Stanton]

Back on topic with the minor annoyances, when I'm listening to music whilst driving, I nominate any song with a background noise or sound effect that makes me think there's something going wrong with my car, or the emergency services are approaching. I find this to be more common than you might think, with sounds like beeps, rattles, scratches, shuffles, shakes and sirens.

Doesn't say much for my motor that I'm constantly worried that something could just fall off at any given moment.

[Sphinx]

1 hour ago, wordsfromlee said:

There was a lot more than just X Factor contestants and landfill Indie around that time. Sure, the stuff filling the charts may have been shite, but you could say the same thing about now too. There were loads of amazing records released around then when you take a second to look.

I'd say the stuff filling the charts now is less shite than then and that's my point. Go back and check that X Factor peak. It's not just the contestants and naff Brit grime-to-pop, it's the 3Oh!3s, LMFAOs and Ke$has. 

More interesting music is happening now and broadly more interesting in the subjects they address.

 

[Carbomb]

On 3/17/2023 at 9:50 AM, BomberPat said:

I don't know how much I agree with in that sense of values and problematic content and so on, but I definitely think it plays a huge part in the nostalgia contingent on old media, especially music. "Running Up That Hill" may as well have been a brand new sing when it was on Stranger Things, for how Gen Z seized upon it as a bit on anthem - to the point that I got thoroughly annoyed at lots of "maybe you're not ready for this, but your kids are going to love it" memes about Kate Bush, as if she was some obscure '80s relic, and not one of the biggest stars of the decade. But when you can just pluck an incredible song out of the past and, through its inclusion in other media, or even just a TikTok trend or savvy social media, get it back in the charts, what hope does a new release have? 

This has probably always been somewhat the case (I'm thinking '50s revival stuff in the '70s and '80s), but think of the TV and cinema that's come out over the past twenty years, and how much of that has been soundtracked by contemporary music? Most Marvel movies - and especially Guardians Of The Galaxy - have consciously "retro" soundtracks, and any time I see a kids/family movie, it seems to be soundtracked by stuff from the '80s or '90s. In Red Rose, a series about teenagers finishing their GCSEs in the present day, they all listen to Sandstorm by Darude at their end-of-term party. Between all that, no Top Of The Pops, and I doubt many kids are listening to the radio or watching Kerrang! or Kiss TV or whatever, and most music festivals are headlined by bands that have been around for decades. There's no coherent cultural moment around which a new song, artist, or genre can feel like it's definably of its time. Not enough people are all listening to something all at once for there to be any solid sense of 2010s nostalgia in a decade's time, in my opinion, because it wasn't a decade defined in any way by its music - and I don't think that's me getting old. 

It always amazes me when I see covers bands in pubs, and while there's usually a few idiosyncrasies, you can generally predict the entire setlist. You're going to get Mr. Brightside, you're going to get Sex Is On Fire, you're going to get Seven Nation Army. You might get the odd "ironic" cover of a more recent pop song, but aside from that, if these were the only bands you ever saw, you'd be forgiven for thinking that no new songs had been released since 2008.

This whole post is truly excellent, typical BomberPat fare. 

One of the first things that came to mind about the first part of this section is that (and I'm aware that this is playing right into the "YOU'RE OLD" discussion), having set my radio alarm to one of the more mainstream stations (I don't want to wake up to stuff I like and eventually come to hate it by association), if the selection played by the DJs is anything to go by, it would seem that a lot of what is considered modern mainstream music is very samey. Similar chord progressions, similar vocal style, similar production as well. And it's often mixed in with a lot higher proportion of much older music, possibly 50-50, than I remember it being on the same stations when I was younger. 

Obviously, there are people who stand out and have become big stars in the last several years, but it strikes me that maybe, with this access to older music, and being less reliant on cultural gatekeepers like the radio and the record companies, it's probably more difficult to make it as a cookie-cutter artist, because you're not just up against contemporary competition, you're now competing with established greats from the last 60+ years.

The other thing that came to mind was your point about the 2010s not being identifiable by its music - to be honest, I think that's across the board. Not as a criticism, but just as a general observation, and I think a big part of it is because the internet has, to a certain degree, democratised culture, and, as such, people now tend to consume and immerse themselves in cultures that they choose, leading to much more diversity and less of a singular or monolithic aesthetic. 

What made me think of that initially was the idea that, if a film or TV programme is set in the past, it's easily identifiable by the fashion, the music, the design. But I do wonder how a film-maker will go about making a film set in the 2010s onwards, in future decades.

[Tamura]

CD spines that use small fonts and/or stupid colours like white text on a cyan background, making browsing a frustrating experience at charity shops. I don't know why anyone would deliberately choose to make essential information like the artist and album title less visible to a potential buyer.

[gmoney]

Another music related one - records that don't make it obvious which side is which. Fuck off. 

[Tommy!]

There's an advert for fabric softener where a woman is singing about how she can't dry her daughters top because of the rain and the dirty cunt next doors walking around nude because he can't get his pants dry because of the rain.

Then it cuts to the woman over the road who's drying indoors because she uses Lenor or what ever. Bollocks, she's just had the forethought to tie a bit of string across her kitchen. Now if the advert said they all dried inside but hers smelt of "outdoor fresh" that fine, but this says without Lenor you CAN'T dry clothes indoors and might as well sit there naked.

 

[Keith Houchen]

25 minutes ago, Tommy! said:

There's an advert for fabric softener where a woman is singing about how she can't dry her daughters top because of the rain and the dirty cunt next doors walking around nude because he can't get his pants dry because of the rain.

Then it cuts to the woman over the road who's drying indoors because she uses Lenor or what ever. Bollocks, she's just had the forethought to tie a bit of string across her kitchen. Now if the advert said they all dried inside but hers smelt of "outdoor fresh" that fine, but this says without Lenor you CAN'T dry clothes indoors and might as well sit there naked.

 

Aye but at least the bloke who air grabs the “Where is the sun” bit looks like Butch will in ten years.