Research: Music- 90's to Present Day

Although some great bands have come since the 80's, personally I don't think music has much to say anymore.


Probably the best band from the 90's was Nirvana (who actually began 1989). Nirvana was one of the biggest grunge metal bands to come from that particular scene, playing a mixture of slow and fast paced rhythms. Their popularity sprung from their truthful lyrics, reaching out to the underdogs and the insignificant people, troubles in school and modern life and the likes.
This has grown into a form of indie music which exists today, still ever-changing, but built on the same disciplines.

Nirvana

Pop music reigned over the 90's, throwing Dance and RNB at youth culture as it became more popular for the young generation to go to night clubs until the early hours.
It all began from advances in technology available to musicians. Music now is much more digitally manipulated than ever before. Even live albums are put through software on computers to remove sounds which make them artist sound too 'human'. The likes of the Suicide Demo's of Guns N' Roses, which is purely a recording of the band playing live, no editing involved, is not heard of anymore.
Due to the software being easily available online, there are new artists emerging all the time, and many are found online on sites such as YouTube. This could be a good thing. Take Journey for example, when they needed a new lead singer due to Steve Augeri suffering throat infection, they found footage of Arnel Pidena singing with his band The Zoo on YouTube, covering Journey songs, as well as other bands such as Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin. They got in contact and they are becoming as popular as they were in the golden ages again.
However, and this is a BIG however, positivity is not always the case. A lot of music that the youth of today listen to stems from the 'High School Musical' and 'Glee' genre of happy, colourful dance/vocal acts.
Rebecca Black. Yeah I know right, makes you sick doesn't it? She pops up online singing a ridiculously terrible song through AutoTune, and over night she is a star. Seriously? What happened the the years of playing gigs to empty rooms, the nights crashed out on a strangers couch because you couldn't afford a room, the rejection from record companies until one day your song is played on the radio because you blackmailed the radio show host and they all come throwing contracts at you?


There's no drama in music anymore. There's also little talent, and very limited skills in songwriting.

Justin Beiber. Unfortunately.

Take Justin Beiber for example. Fits the current musical situation perfectly. Lets do the checklist for what makes a superstar now: Do little girls find him attractive? Yes. Does he have ridiculous hair? Yes. Does he wear ridiculous clothes? Yes. Can he dance? Possibly. Can he sing? A little bit. Does that matter? Nope, he can just use music software!

One of his hit songs, 'Baby' (no, its not about himself), goes as follows:

'Baby, baby, baby, ooooh' Repeat x 4.

And who wrote that song? 5 artists! It took 5 artists to write that!

'Bohemian Rhapsody', a fantastic song performed by Queen.

"Is this the real life? Or is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality".

How many people wrote that? 1: Freddie Mercury, the singer.

'Stairway To Heaven', beautifully constructed song and lyrics. 

"There's a feeling I get when I look to the west, and my spirit is crying for leaving. In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees, and the voices of those who stand looking."

How many wrote that? 2: Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, the singer and guitarist.

Like I said, songwriting is only getting worse.

But why is that?

Our culture is changing with the technology available to us. We all own mobile phones, and the majority of us use a smartphone. We are starting the day checking our text messages, our emails, Facebook and the likes, and it is breeding us into a digitally reliant race.

LMFAO, a newly emerged duo have popped into the new music scene, and are becoming increasingly popular. The fact that 'LMFAO' is text abbreviation for 'laughing my f*****g ass off' proves that our digital culture is invading the music scene too (although in this case LMFAO stands for 'Loving my Friends and Others. Yeah, right....)

LMFAO

The appearance of new musicians is changing with the culture also. There are no bands wearing make-up, leather and zebra skin tights anymore (other than the surviving acts of the 80's, keep on rocking!)

Most artists now brandish bright colours, colourful glasses and other gimmicks to grab attention. And nearly all of them, as I have already mentioned, use computers to create their music and/or manipulate it.

This begs a new question? What defines an instrument? Before keyboards and synthesisers, music was created from the physical act of making sounds with musical objects. If we can create these new techno beats on a computer, does that mean a computer is an instrument? How far can that go? What if i use the app on my iPad to mix music, does that mean my iPad is an instrument?

I'll leave it at that for now before I go on a rant about dub-step sounding like my old dial-up internet connection.