This is my frequent response to music these days.
It doesn’t mean I don’t like it.
It doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s good.
It just means – I don’t need to hear it again.
I think I may have mentioned this in the Hackney Diamonds post – referring to David Hepworth’s comment about the new Stones album on the WIYE podcast. I realised I’ve been thinking that for a while about new music I listen to.
Anyone else?
That is my response to most new (or new to me) music these days. I read a review, think “that sounds good” , do the streaming try before you buy and then forget about it after one play.
It’s why I could only come up with three entries for the end of year chart. I think that, for me, it’s an age thing and I already have too many CDs and LPs to listen to. I rarely listen to the radio these days either.
Def an age thing!
Me too Mr D. I’ve read too many rave reviews over the years about some ‘new thang’ or other only to come away every single time with a meh and a shrug. There may well be ‘good’ and ‘interesting’ stuff out there but I’m not that bothered about finding it. I’ve got enough pop music now thank you very much. I’ll still buy new stuff from artists I’ve loved since my teens like Macca, Morrissey or Ian Hunter but I really don’t need to hear any new artists.
Yeah totally. It’s not that new music sounds particularly bad (although a lot of it does😁), but it just sounds… redundant. I don’t really need it in my life, and I find it hard to muster up the enthusiasm when I still feel the pull of all the old music I love.
A lot of music always sounded bad. Have you seen the singles charts in 1973? What a lot of bilge. The odd chink of light from Bowie or Jimmy Cliff but then it’s the Thousand Year Reich of Der Osmonds.
Yebbut the advantage I have is being able to cherry pick the good stuff!
Breaking this down, there are two arguments the “pop music is as good as it ever was” people:
(1) The proportion of rubbish vs good music is the same (or at least not worse) than it was back in the day. Now that I have no way to dispute. I’d need a spreadsheet and the time and inclination to use it, and I don’t have either. 🙂
(2) The other is to say that the best pop music back in the day isn’t any better than the best pop music today. Well, that I’m afraid no one is ever going to be able to convince me of. I’m now passed the half century so I’m mature and pessimistic enough to admit that my days of seeking out exciting new music are basically behind me. Those that still have the energy for it, and the nous to tell good music from bad when there’s just so much of it… I salute you, but that’s not me.
1973 was a very good year for funk… Isley Brothers, Ohio Players, Kool & The Gang, Sly Stone… and in soul you had Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Al Green etc.
The Osmonds ‘Crazy Horses’ album still sounds great to me.
I have literally not heard a note of new music this year (as in of 2023). This is not a matter of preference. I have a permanent backlog of about 500 to-do albums, mostly from the late 20th century, which I’ll probably be labouring through for the rest of my life. Modern music? I have no idea. The mellow sounds of the Tibetan noseflute could be top of the hit parade for all I know.
‘snot.
Bogey nights?
How on earth did you guess about the extraordinary rise in popularity of the nose flute, Moose? It made not have made much impact in the AW Ivory Tower, but out there on the streets Noseflutemania rules!
Ukeleles, noseflutes, one of Toto’s most loved songs and a stylish look that is reminiscent of Hannibal Lector. All the ingredients needed for a Xmas Number One!
What’s not to like?
How about God Only Nose?
Admit it @Mousey! You want to hear this again and again and again.
No Pain! No Again!!
Me and my big nose… er, mouth.
Sometimes you just need to see the content of a post to know who is responsible for it.
The moment I typed “noseflute”I knew what was going to happen. What a bizarre place this is
For the more traditionally minded have some more plauta sa ilong.
Pasteurised and homogenised seems to me to describe the vast majority of what’s out there these days, heard on the telly and the radio. But I prefer flavour, roughage and heft. I have to search for those ingredients if I want to taste them in current music. The hunt seems to have become harder, but it’s no less satisfying when I find what I’m looking for. The impression that I have to look harder is likely an illusion – there always was a sea of mediocrity and formula to wade through, it’s just that I’ve forgotten the waist deep piles of aural shit from my youth, and my shelves attest to the wealth of good stuff I’ve accumulated over the years. Sadly for my bank balance, I still keep finding things that deserve to sit alongside the treasure.
Simple Mousey. You’re old.
Most people don’t change their music listening after about 30, maybe earlier. Something like that. For you, me and a bunch of Afterworders that took until our sixties.
Maybe we have less mental data storage available to us these days so we have to be more pragmatic.
I trick myself into listening ‘new’. (My ‘new’, so maybe an old artists latest, or something approved by my peers). When drinking or cooking, I have my music on shuffle, so old and new are mixed up itnormalises the unfamiliar.
This is the way. I’m currently mixing up an old National album, the new Peter Gabriel and Olivia Rodrigo. Three tracks apiece so my attention doesn’t wander.
Came to the same conclusion myself about listening to new music. I’ve got around 50 years of active engagement with music under my belt – that’s a lot of stuff to immerse myself in. I prefer to listen to music laterally rather than following a linear progression – exploring tangenital links etc and just going wherever my interest takes me. It was liberating to finally let go of that urge to keep up.
While don’t listen to much new “new” music, I still buy an inordinate amount of albums/CDs – many of them from old artists who are new to me.
Doubt very much if I’m the only AWer ploughing that particular furrow
Seconded.
Exactly this
Just added a thread where those of us who are so inclined can namecheck the test “new” old record or artist from ye olden days we finally caught up with this last year
Tangenital links? Have a care, this is a family site.
This is what we want.
Where you follow your gonads’ instincts.
A terrible idea in my experience. There’s a line in Jeffrey Barnard is Unwell where he regrets that “I merely followed in whatever direction my erection was indicating”
People telling me why or how they don’t listen to new music.
It’s really something that’s changed for me over time.
When I was a teenager the people telling me they didn’t listen to new music were so glamorous, vibrant and exciting. They experimented with their moaning, deploying wild sentence structures, and really honing their craft. They would play around with fonts, make roguish use of italics and mix metaphors like a barman mixes a fine cocktail.
These people were innovators; they were out to change the world with their aural conservatism. And they could be heard everywhere, booming loudly from the many coffee houses, malt shops, penny farthing drive ins and gramophone emporia which in that more exalted time chequered our green and pleasant land.
And they didn’t just flatly tell you they disliked modern music – oh no, far from it. No half baked proclamations of disinterest from them. They went the extra mile, gatecrashing all available public forums to bellow from the very rooftops that they would rather die than sully their ears with what they contemptuously referred to as “the contemporary”.
I was in utter thrall to them, listening night and day. I still regularly dig out the old moans just to feel their force, to have my soul shaken once again by the unmatched clarity and depth of their stated aversions.
Maybe I got old, or maybe the complainants changed, but nowadays it’s not the same, is it? The voices ranged against new music have become stale, repetitive… maybe even a little shrill? Not something I thought I would ever write of this fabled movement, but there we go.
Where once an anti-new music missive might begin with a full throated roar of defiance, an impassioned “sir, I would sooner embrace the perils of hell’s grim tyrant than suffer for one moment the infernal cacophony of this week’s hit parade”, what are we left with now? Meek, ill thought through expressions of disinterest in the music of Taylor Swift? A perfunctory “I’m sorry, but I’ve never heard a note of Central Cee”? Thin gruel indeed, compared to the banquet upon which we once feasted. And so many of the comments auto-tuned to boot.
Where’s the commitment? Where’s the heart? In the good old days you’d see critics take it to the next level; whether that meant publicly destroying one’s own stereo or vandalising the local HMV. I still recall with great pleasure the night a large group stood outside Kentish Town Forum at kicking out time and hacked off their own ears with bread knives, proclaiming aloud as they did so that they had no need of said appendages, for they already possessed in their memories every note of music they would ever need to hear. What’s the equivalent today? A quick, reflexive one off the wrist in a thread about Hip Hop before heading directly to the Afterword albums of the year post to log your fifteen new faves? Please.
No, not for me these ersatz curmudgeons. I eschew their writings and – you know what – I really don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything at all. Not when I’m strewn here on my favourite beanbag, cans on head and an original NME letter page in hand, drinking in the sweet sweet music of written contempt all over again. Except music is the wrong analogy here, because the golden age of criticism is so much better than actual music, and did I ever tell you I don’t really like that stuff anyway?
Wonderfully written I like the idea of penny farthing drive- ins however when I read “I’m sorry, but I’ve never heard a note of Central Cee” I have to ask the question “who is Central Cee?”
I had to look him up.
Fancy seeing you here 😉
😁
Taylor Swift klaxon!
Meekly, I offer my ill thought out observation that I am thoroughly disinterested in her. There you go. 🙂
You mean uninterested.
Or do you?
I don’t care either way.
I thought Arthur said he’d dysentery
Not this week, no.
Old people don’t like new music. It’s hardly world shattering news.
If you have a teenager in your family you may find he or she is discovering new music on a daily basis. Not all of it is brand new (there’s way more “old” than when I was that age) but much of it is.
My daughter tends to control the car stereo via Bluetooth and I hear new music on an almost daily basis when I am driving her to school. Doesn’t necessarily make me rush out and buy the albums (pop music is for young people), but here’s a shock for you, there is loads of great stuff around. Pop music is probably at least as good as it ever was or maybe even better. It’s just (generally) not for us
Speaking of children, do you ever find yourself having to hold yourself back from foisting your tastes on them?
My son is quite interested in music and is learning a couple of instruments at school, but I’m so conscious of the fact that it would be the kiss of death for old dad to start trying to suggest good music to him! So I make a conscious effort to hold back! He’s infuriatingly slow at getting “into” anything in particular at the moment (apart from a brief interest in a couple of things like Aerosmith and Royal Blood), and I got him a Spotify subscription when he asked, but I’m biting my tongue so much at just stepping back and giving him the freedom to explore when he feels ready.
When I did the school run I had control of the car stereo but it was by common consent, so we did all the abums by (say) Dexys or R.E.M. as well as new stuff they thought I might like.
A big part of being a parent is to support your kids when they need help.
When Offspring the Elder got into The 1975 and asked me “have you heard of The Cure? The 1975 mentioned them as an influence” I was able to point her in the direction of my Cure LPs and say “here you go, where do you want to start?”
Yeah, I run my son to school and I currently have control, but he’s barely interested. I mean, this last week alone we’ve had Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma, The Beach Boys’ Smile, Jon Anderson’s Olias of Sunhillow and a Beatles random selection. I mean, what’s wrong with the boy????!!! 😀
Anybody got the number for Social Services?
I may suggest some things but generally she finds things on her own. To my pleasure they sometimes match with my taste *.
As I have written of elsewhere I have bought her a ticket to see The Stones with me, not something she was clamouring for, but she will hopefully enjoy it.
* 2 of her top 20 most played songs of the year were from George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass album, she also loves The Smiths. I never played her any of that stuff.
I think it’s different nowadays. The generation gap isn’t what it was. Everybody wants to stay young. Pop music is for young people? Yes but pop now has a lot in common with pop then so why wouldn’t you like both? The new is derived from the old. We just can’t be bothered to take the time, we don’t have the time.
I’m fifty two, I still seem to have the urge to hear newly released stuff but I haven’t been very thorough with the various end of year lists.
I’m pretty much just glancing and only going for artists names or artwork that grabs me.
I do like to think I’d listen to a 2023 album a few times but I’ve definitely been enjoying “old” lately.
Hard to say what I’ll be listening to in my sixties but I’m guessing I will choose silence more often than not.
I think at 51 my brain is full up of pop music. Still listen to loads, but no real interest in adding new to the already existing (new albums by artists I like excepted).
New to me I mostly get these days from classical, jazz and world music.
With the greatest respect etc etc etc, bollox! I love new music, new new and new to me. Sure, as a proportion of what is produced, it becomes ever smaller, but still more than enough for my ears and pockets. It isn’t unusual for my regular monthly reads of Unshod and Meho to produce only a handful of “that sounds interesting” between them, but my tastes are, anyway, somewhat niche.
@retropath2 at last a voice of reason.
A music forum (mostly) where the contributors seem to have a problem with new music.
Whatever next. My personal view is the industry as never thrown out so much new and interesting stuff. It’s healthier than 1971 or whatever year Hepworth keeps banging on about.
I don’t have a problem with new music, I have a problem with having enough time to listen to any music.
Everybody else on the AW seems to be able to do that Hermione Granger Time Turner trick to allow them to listen to about 12 hours of music followed by three or four films, a Netflix series, a gig and a trip to the cinema every single day without fail whilst having a family and a full-time job. I get about an hour a day, tops. Maybe two on a Saturday.
And then there’s the music, oho!
Oho indeed but I do wonder how anyone manages to find the time what with life getting in the way and all.
Life? Don’t talk to me about life…
It’s a music forum, not a new music forum. That’s what the Quietus is for.
There’s a lot of old on the Quietus as well. Their anniversary articles are often extremely good.
…like there’s usually plenty of “new” on here…
Most of the “new” on here sounds pretty much the same as the “old”.
Some of the newly-discovered “old” can sound surprisingly “new”.
Well yes..,every month when Mojo and Uncut drop into Readly I dutifully listen to lots of new stuff, and I rarely hear anything that I might not have heard 10, 20, 30 years ago. Is there anything that’s genuinely new, something that’s never been heard before? (And yes, I know those mags aren’t cutting edge…)
Whilst there is indeed an avalanche of new exciting music out there, it is almost inevitable when hearing it I proclaim “Early Who” or “Sounds like Laurel Canyon to me”. The perils of old age – why did nobody tell us?
They did. You just weren’t listening.
Mojo and Uncut are primarily nostalgia magazines (particularly the former). They cover music that was either released decades ago, or sounds like it was released decades ago. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
There’s tons of innovation happening in music all the time, it’s just that you might not enjoy listening to it. But then, that’s the nature of innovation.
As a 50 year old bloke I want, and indeed expect, young people to be making and listening to music which makes me scared to leave the house. And I grew up listening to J**n P**l playing gnarly punk and those techno records that sounded like the Battlestar Galactica crash-landing in Bladerunner, causing a waiter to drop a tray of Babychams… onto a Roland TR808 drum machine.
You know, lounge shit.
Up to a point, Lord Copper (aka Mike H):
much of the “new”, posted by (for example, but not limited to) Bingo sounds nothing like the “old” that I listen to…
This site is not exclusively “old”, any more than The Quietus is exclusively “new”.
Thumbs up. Music is music, old and new.
And as the great philosopher Richard Ashcroft remarked, Music is Power. And if Knowledge is Power, Music is Knowledge. And Kool Moe Dee said Knowledge is King.
So Music is King.
That’s what my heart yearns for now.
I’m starting to wonder if coming back here was such a good idea…
Course it was, Moose – you love all this! And we do love you madly!
Oh, you.
Funnily enough I’m debating about including Take The A Train in my 30. I’m not big on jazz from that era but that tune just makes me go YYYYYYISSS!
Olivia Rodrigo’s Cuts album is an absolute firecracker of a Pop album, better than most Pop album of the seventies. Gabriels’ Angel & Queens is as good a Soul album as anything Al Green did at his peak.
My taste has changed over time but I listen to a whole load of new, especially Jazz and Electronica, plus the occasional album packed with bangers. There is an awful lot more high quality music of every kind of genre available today. Way more than when I was a teenager. If none of it resonates with you, that’s not because it is not as good as it used to be.
Listen to what you love and just enjoy it. No need to fret or overthink it.
I’m sorry sir, you seem to have wondered into the wrong forum. Security!
This kind of live-and-let-live approach; it’s not going to end well.
Having spent some time recently in the company of a bunch of ‘younsgters’ (average age 25) and accepting this is hardly a scientific poll, it is clear that music is no longer split into strict genres or “if I like x I can’t possibly like y.”
One minute it’s Fleetwood Mac, the next it’s somebody I’ve never heard of. It’s all out there, available and “who cares what my friends or critics say, I like it.” Good on them I say, now off to listen to Little Feat. I’ll probably fall asleep but a nice cup of tea will soon perk me up.
“No need to overthink it” – right on!
*Spends 8 weeks compiling and recompiling his 30 favourite songs*
Down with this kind of stuff! We won’t stand for it, I tell you.
You have real Guts to mention that OR album, Tiggs. 😉
Why are bringing John Cale into this?
I’m sorry, I seem to have become “Johnny Foreigner”. I wanna know love is please thank you!
Shhh! No-one else noticed.
Bloody predictive spelling!
Thanks for the tips about Olivia and Gabriels, Tígger. I’m with completely with you about going with the flow and listening to stuff you enjoy, be it ancient or modern.
I don’t have the time, cash or energy to go to several gigs a week, but mercifully manage to find a few things a month that hit the spot. It might a gnarled, wrinkled old rocker who has seen better days. Or perhaps a fresh-faced, exuberant, young lass vigorously fingering her kantele. Pleasure has many forms.
This (i.e. what @Tiggerlion said) is the correct answer.
I do the opposite – I don’t listen to old music. I’ve heard that already , “I don’t need to hear that again”. All new albums get six to twelve months in rotation (if it’s any good) before new stuff take over my playlist. I wouldn’t have time to listen to new CDs if I went back to old familiar albums in the short amount of time I have to listen to music in a week. It would also be very dull, just listening to stuff I know inside out.
(And no; I don’t have children.)
My down time is spent partly on here and also following a thought process based on a nostalgic post somewhere (e.g.Likely Lads). Or sport. Or politics. Anything funny. Basically scroll scroll scroll, following whatever is in me noggmeister. Like watching TV, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this.
However, I do feel the need to be “present” so I will not put AirPods on while in the house with other people around. I listen to music while commuting or travelling.
Me and all. Can’t listen to music on headphones if someone else is in
I listen to old and new depending upon my mood, mostly new or new to me on the whole. The only aspect of my listening habits as regards to what or who I listen to that has altered as I’ve aged is some bands/musicians/genres are rarely if ever listened to anymore mostly due to my overfamiliarity with their shtick or my tastes have changed. I tend to fall down musical rabbit holes on a regular basis which often leads me to unfamiliar music. I enjoy that I still like to be challenged. I’m not ready for the musical equivalent of pipe & slippers. I hope I never am.
I find that I align with Mr Pencil’s first sentence above – with the provision that “new to me” also includes the very old, ie, classical.
@fitterstoke I’ve been listening to the works of Lotta Wennäkoski a lot of late and I think you may find her music interesting. Try Soie or Sigla both recordings are on the Ondine label from The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and soloists. Nadolig Llawen.
I shall investigate – thanks, Mr P.
Ms. Wennäkoski is hardly “old” though. She was born in 1970 I trust you will not hold her youthfulness against her. 😉
I’m three years younger than that and my knees protest vehemently at the idea of youthfulness. And everything else, come to that.
“A man’s only as old as the woman he feels.” – Groucho Marx.
Thanks for the tip, @Pencilsqueezer.
A dynamic, youngish Finnish composer at the Proms! I’m very curious.
Why would I, Mr P? People get the wrong impression of me, probably my own fault. Just because I’m not a Swifty doesn’t mean that I reject all “new”!
Just riffing on your comment about classical being inherently “very old”. Nothing of a derogatory nature meant.
This place is often far more combative than needs be. It’s why I disappe…
No offence was taken – I know you better than that!
I did state in another thread that I’d only just recently started to get the hang of JS Bach!
Trevor Pinnock…. the Brandenburg jams …. tha brotha be illin’!
I just bought the Pablo Casals J. S. Bach cello concertos. New to me, and bloody astonishing.
I am not a completist. When an act shows some decline, I’m happy to move on. I’ve heard a lot of past styles. I’m not expecting to hear some old that will surprise me in a radical way. I want to keep my hand in, hear what everyone’s talking about, feel that I live today. Revamps and reissues don’t cut it. New though seems to become old before I blink if I’m not careful. New is 2000s right? I’ve come late to Steely Dan, Roxy Music, Porcupine Tree and Santana. I discoved Lana Del Rey a bit late too. It’s good to find new old. New is Romy, Alison Goldfrapp, War On Drugs, Steven Wilson, Wet Leg, among others. It’s good to be connected to now.
I think that the issue is the sheer quantity of pop/rock music available. This creates a situation where there is so much excellent/superb music available (from all eras) that there is no need/time to listen to the good/very good let alone the OK. We are moving more into the Classical music phase with pop/rock music where era becomes less relevant and there is a huge gulf between first and second division.
I see a similar thing in my other hobbies: guitars and board games. 20 years ago all boardgame fans played everything available, because releases were reasonably limited. People were tolerant of design and production issues because the available pool was pretty small. Now, thousands of games are released each year and the quality is generally very good, however it’s only the 1% of superb games that get much attention and players are less tolerant of design or production issues. Just like with music, you also get the grognards who loudly insist that the older stuff is better.
While there’s never been a better time to enjoy new new and new old and new genre what has changed for me is my attitude to quality.
For instance I’ve decided I’m not going to listen again to what I’ve heard this century from Elvis Costello, Madness, Soft Cell – favourite artists of mine but I’d prefer to hear the new Dot Allison or Vanishing Twin, something v good new new, not something new not as good as before. Life’s too short.
(No need to recommend any of what I’ve mentioned, I’ve heard them, I get it.)
Wel you are on a roll this week @Tiggerlion.
Today I’ve listened to your two suggestions:
Olivia Rodrigo’s Cuts
Gabriels’ Angel & Queens
Both superb!
What a wonderful song about the complexities of romantic feelings.
And what a fine artist Gabriels is!
Don’t get me wrong @Mousey! I do understand your feelings of not wanting any more.
(I found a book in the tvättstuga book swap library yesterday: 1001 Films to see Before you Die. Just what I don’t need. I took it home of course.)
But just when I think I am satiated, that trend-setting tormentor, Tiggerlion, tantalises me with fresh temptations.
In the house and given time to listen I’ll invariably go to my vinyl collection, which is 99% 60s and 70s, 0.9% 80s and 90s and 0.1% 21st C. In the car, it’s a different matter because I keep all my new music on the phone, compiled from other people’s best of the year lists (I thang you).
I can still get that thrill from discovering a new artist. Most recently it was Rosie Frater-Taylor. She has an album coming out in the new year. Saw her live a couple of years ago by chance as the support act for Snarky Puppy’s Mark Lettieri. There are various clips of her on YT, including this showcase at Ronnie Scott’s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2TkKG0-UWM
Thanks for the tip @nickduvet. Rosie sounds very promising.
My other current favourite act is Sons of Townhall, a marvellously fun acoustic duo with some of the sweetest songs I’ve heard for ages.
100th post! A hamper full of sour grapes to the man at the joanna!! 😉
@retropath2 Woop woop!