What is this generations Nirvana, Limp Bizkit, Tupac, or Rage against the machine?
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I feel global political oppression or global wars usually produce great music but Macklemore might be the peak.
Nothing against him, some of his songs are good, but I expected real rage inducing stuff with everything going on. Or is this just the state of music as a whole?
It's king gizzard y'all sleeping
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Reading all of this and not seeing Visgra Boys or Mannequin Pussy is weird. Shout out to Lamborghini Girls too.
I'm 40 so idk what the kids like.
I have never even read those names before, and I think this illustrates the issue.
Protest songs used to reach world wide top charts because that's what people bought.
This was ruined by commercialization, so that charts now only show what labels want to sell.
People who actually choose what music to consume will scatter out into online bubbles that are completely detached from the mainstream and public view.This makes it almost impossible to reach as big an audience as done by RATM and others did in previous decades.
Perhaps young people ought to do protest TikToks instead of protest songs.
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You're exactly right.
WTF algorithm was there to serve us on demand copying mix and demo tapes? We had to touch physical media to get the songs. It took effort, sometimes $5 in gas money, a stack of blank tapes at home, and working two-deck stereo.
Not just for Rage-type alt music and punk, but the entire early hip-hop and rap scenes were almost exclusively bootlegged and home-made.
This isn't about "kids today have it so easy" - this is about good songs overcoming massive headwinds to get popular and simply heard. Music discovery was word of mouth, rumors, and who had what on hand. The thrill of the hunt got you amazing results.
Right now there's probably someone making killer music and posting to YT or peertube with like 3 views because everyone just accepts the algo slop and no one looks for the gems.
Right now there’s probably someone making killer music and posting to YT or peertube with like 3 views because everyone just accepts the algo slop and no one looks for the gems
Respectfully, i think this is the wrong conclusion. There are more sophisticated listeners today than there have ever been and sub-genre communities are great at spotting new gems. But while the number of listeners grew linearly, the number of bands has grown exponentially, making discoverability very difficult to achieve. That's not anyone's fault unless you consider musicians are at fault for creating so many good bands.
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You're exactly right.
WTF algorithm was there to serve us on demand copying mix and demo tapes? We had to touch physical media to get the songs. It took effort, sometimes $5 in gas money, a stack of blank tapes at home, and working two-deck stereo.
Not just for Rage-type alt music and punk, but the entire early hip-hop and rap scenes were almost exclusively bootlegged and home-made.
This isn't about "kids today have it so easy" - this is about good songs overcoming massive headwinds to get popular and simply heard. Music discovery was word of mouth, rumors, and who had what on hand. The thrill of the hunt got you amazing results.
Right now there's probably someone making killer music and posting to YT or peertube with like 3 views because everyone just accepts the algo slop and no one looks for the gems.
Right now there's probably someone making killer music and posting to YT or peertube with like 3 views because everyone just accepts the algo slop and no one looks for the gems.
Oh hey look, it's me!
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I feel global political oppression or global wars usually produce great music but Macklemore might be the peak.
Nothing against him, some of his songs are good, but I expected real rage inducing stuff with everything going on. Or is this just the state of music as a whole?
Grandson has some pretty good ones
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I feel global political oppression or global wars usually produce great music but Macklemore might be the peak.
Nothing against him, some of his songs are good, but I expected real rage inducing stuff with everything going on. Or is this just the state of music as a whole?
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Lolwut.
Artists like Bob Vylan, Lambrini Girls, Narcissist Cookbook, Cheap Perfume, The Oozes, Problem Patterns and even Lil Darkie and many more are ones I'd never have found without Spotify suggestions. That and discovering some classics like Anti-Flag, Bad Religion, Dead Kennedys, Against Me!, Crass, ZSK would never have happened without algo suggestions.
Generic bullshit doesn't even get clicks, the most outraging things get clicks, protest songs and politically charged shit does, just like the above, it just happens to be leftist music. Also check out Refused.
It's crazy we live in a time where there is music that isn't some poetic wishy washy love song top 40 studio bullshit which is all you would've known about before, but there's music that actually references material current events that happen, and then there's old classics that are so much easier to find thanks to discoverability via streaming.
There's obviously a problem with the inherent wealth transfer where both indie musicians and listeners pay Spotify, and now they want to cut out the middleman (the musician) entirely, but we absolutely must not go back to monoculture offline bs mandated by some fat cat studio exec Epstein list member looking ass.
Edit: I posted in another comment, but if anyone is interested in leftist, political, anti-capitalist and progressive music more generally I maintain a playlist here and I'd love suggestions: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5rYZABdJf5H8XmliZ9ZTIW?pi=KIskSDh8T--mY
wrote last edited by [email protected]top 40 studio bullshit which is all you would’ve known about before
While I agree with you overall, this just isn't true.
We had university radio which would play whatever the DJ was into, because it wasn't programmed.
We had local record stores, which while stocked a lot of top 40, would also bring in albums from small and indie bands that would never get played on radio. They would play it in the store, and have listening stations with headphones so you could listen to an album before you bought it, because you would not have heard it on the radio.
We had clubs that would book bands from everywhere. The club I hung out at had a band every night of the week, and no matter when you went, you would hear someone new.
The music was out there. You just had to get your ass out of the house to find it.
Edit: Also, top 40 stations played what was selling. They were not the problem, it was the stations that were not top 40 that were playing the pablum for the masses, and when it would sell, then it would appear on a top 40 station. By definition, a top 40 station played the 40 biggest selling singles of the previous week. They didn't pick what was sold.
I often heard great bands show up in top 40 because they somehow managed to break through to the masses. I remember when Pink Floyd released an album in the 90s, and the first single on the album got played on the top 40 station because it was selling. This being a time when groups like Ace of Bass, Salt-n-Pepa and Boyz II Men were popular and what a lot of people were listening to. Right there nestled in the hip-hop and dance music was Pink Floyd. Again, because it was selling.
Edit 2: I picked Pink Floyd because it stood out. At that time, in the 90s, it was not a band that young people listened to much of unless they were really into prog rock, classic rock or blazed all the time.
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Hell yeah! The whole "For the People" album just released is fantastic and just what op is looking for I bet. I was just at a show with them, Bad Religion, and the Mainliners, all three kicked ass
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It's king gizzard y'all sleeping
wrote last edited by [email protected]They're basically the Pink Floyd of our generation. Too bad they'll never have the same reach as PF or older bands due to the heavy current cultural fragmentation.
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I feel global political oppression or global wars usually produce great music but Macklemore might be the peak.
Nothing against him, some of his songs are good, but I expected real rage inducing stuff with everything going on. Or is this just the state of music as a whole?
wrote last edited by [email protected]They're not so prolific or relevant now but I feel Rise Against deserves a mention. I did my senior essay on their work in high school and honestly it changed a lot of my political opinions doing research/listening for that.
I almost forgot, rise against and Tom Morello did this song live together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5hLetyUToI
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I feel global political oppression or global wars usually produce great music but Macklemore might be the peak.
Nothing against him, some of his songs are good, but I expected real rage inducing stuff with everything going on. Or is this just the state of music as a whole?
wrote last edited by [email protected]Billie Eillish seems like the biggest star with anti establishment messaging in their music right now
Maybe some rappers, i don't listen to rap tho
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Good protest music is coming out now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZYB5v69n7w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpNDaMc02Eg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlIREcAu0PI
More mainstream artists like Macklemore, Bob Vylan, Kneecap are also out there fighting the good fight.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Check out Jesse Welles for more folky protest music.
He also has non-protest music too, but some good recent protest and political songs include:
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I hadn't heard of those two, loving them both already! I love brass mixed into other music but I've never been much of a ska fan, which is the first place you usually expect to get that. It's hard to know where to look and I'm always delighted to find it.
Stuff like Gwar's Saddam A-Go-Go (even when Brockie was poking fun at ska he did it well) and N.A.S.A.'s Spacious Thoughts where the brass takes an already heavy sound and makes it soar - it gives me life every time.
Haven't heard Spacious Thoughts, sounds like a fun time, I'll blare some while working today!
Oddly, I dug ska growing up but my more recent delve into brass bands are no doubt the result of my buddy watching Treme and getting really into New Orleans brass! So, if you're looking for more, for me that was a great jumping off point to the likes of the Dirty Dozen Brass band and the Rebirth Brass band.
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I am pretty old and I barely knew the top 40 wishy washy back then... If you are interested in different it was there, streaming helps some, and true a lot is at your finger tips, but most people will still drop into a top 40.
Spotify doesn't even have much of the music I listen to, I find it mostly useless so there is that.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I agree, but that's on the users and their choices. Most people just dgaf about music anymore, it's been "surpassed" by tiktoks in their mind. Video killed the radio star etc etc.
The paternalistic studio system limited both discoverability and the potential creativity and integrity of artists, and I'm glad it's gone, most music I listen to either would not have existed, or I would've never found it without streaming.
It's funny, I find a good chunk of music I listen to is just plain unavailable anywhere else for purchase, piracy or streaming.
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Right now there’s probably someone making killer music and posting to YT or peertube with like 3 views because everyone just accepts the algo slop and no one looks for the gems
Respectfully, i think this is the wrong conclusion. There are more sophisticated listeners today than there have ever been and sub-genre communities are great at spotting new gems. But while the number of listeners grew linearly, the number of bands has grown exponentially, making discoverability very difficult to achieve. That's not anyone's fault unless you consider musicians are at fault for creating so many good bands.
Absolutely fair point, and I agree with you to some degree. I imagine that it's somewhere in the middle, where bands have flooded the space so that if no technical means exists for discovery, we've traded off friction points. Instead of the 90's version where people would drive 40 minutes to the cool reord store in the next town over, now discerning listeners looking for gems have to wade through more and more bands they don't like. It's no one's fault, it's just how it is.
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Right now there's probably someone making killer music and posting to YT or peertube with like 3 views because everyone just accepts the algo slop and no one looks for the gems.
Oh hey look, it's me!
Are you looking for the gems? Or making the gems? Either way, you're doing the Lord's work.
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top 40 studio bullshit which is all you would’ve known about before
While I agree with you overall, this just isn't true.
We had university radio which would play whatever the DJ was into, because it wasn't programmed.
We had local record stores, which while stocked a lot of top 40, would also bring in albums from small and indie bands that would never get played on radio. They would play it in the store, and have listening stations with headphones so you could listen to an album before you bought it, because you would not have heard it on the radio.
We had clubs that would book bands from everywhere. The club I hung out at had a band every night of the week, and no matter when you went, you would hear someone new.
The music was out there. You just had to get your ass out of the house to find it.
Edit: Also, top 40 stations played what was selling. They were not the problem, it was the stations that were not top 40 that were playing the pablum for the masses, and when it would sell, then it would appear on a top 40 station. By definition, a top 40 station played the 40 biggest selling singles of the previous week. They didn't pick what was sold.
I often heard great bands show up in top 40 because they somehow managed to break through to the masses. I remember when Pink Floyd released an album in the 90s, and the first single on the album got played on the top 40 station because it was selling. This being a time when groups like Ace of Bass, Salt-n-Pepa and Boyz II Men were popular and what a lot of people were listening to. Right there nestled in the hip-hop and dance music was Pink Floyd. Again, because it was selling.
Edit 2: I picked Pink Floyd because it stood out. At that time, in the 90s, it was not a band that young people listened to much of unless they were really into prog rock, classic rock or blazed all the time.
wrote last edited by [email protected]We had local record stores
Keyword being "local". We had no record stores. Which ones were there stocked mostly overpriced Beatles represses. They still do to this day.
We had university radio which would play whatever the DJ was into, because it wasn't programmed.
We too, and the DJ had dogshit taste and played random generic autotune rap.
would also bring in albums from small and indie bands
Ah yes, the small and indie bands that could afford to checks notes - press on actual honest to god vinyl.
We had clubs that would book bands from everywhere. The club I hung out at had a band every night of the week, and no matter when you went, you would hear someone new.
No, you had clubs. We had fuckall and a half and what was there was for the bourgeoisie cisheteronormative folks to listen to bland dance music in and fry out their brains on molly that was 90% caffeine and 10% undiscovered synthetic that will kill you.
None of it was about the music, and of course it wasn't - it was a place for cliques to flex fashion.
If you lived in some kind of fantastical Life Is Strange-esque world - I'm happy for you, really, truly, and I'd like to hear more stories, but most of us didn't, at least not those of us born after '97.
Nowadays discovering music is really quite a lot simpler, there's no one you gotta know, there's no place you have to know to go to, there's no subcultures you gotta be part of, there's nowhere you have to be to know specific artists.
You're completely unbound by your immediate geography, whether you're in Pakistan or one of those places 'Jesus of Suburbia' was about or a dense European city, all you need is an internet connection, which even in extreme poverty is much more affordable than going much of anywhere IRL.
Even if I lived in ye olden times, there's no way in hell I would've known about even bands from the time like Cleaners from Venus or like 13th Floor Elevators, and in my own time I wouldn't have known about Sweet Trip or Cats Millionaire, and I love how much there is and how much more is left to discover, all without needing to be part of something or being somewhere, it's more democratic, and more fitting for a global world.
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Hell yeah! The whole "For the People" album just released is fantastic and just what op is looking for I bet. I was just at a show with them, Bad Religion, and the Mainliners, all three kicked ass
Cool. They did a free show in my city a few weeks ago. Right downtown. Fun stuff!
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Haven't heard Spacious Thoughts, sounds like a fun time, I'll blare some while working today!
Oddly, I dug ska growing up but my more recent delve into brass bands are no doubt the result of my buddy watching Treme and getting really into New Orleans brass! So, if you're looking for more, for me that was a great jumping off point to the likes of the Dirty Dozen Brass band and the Rebirth Brass band.
It's just one track from an otherwise great album. Still can't recommend it enough - it's a Kool Keith and Tom Waits collab.
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Are you looking for the gems? Or making the gems? Either way, you're doing the Lord's work.
Making them! https://jimmyhalliday.bandcamp.com/
