Worst song you have ever heard?

There are thousands of terrible songs. Call me an old man, but 99% of music in the charts today is dreadful.

The worst song I've heard from a respected artist is "Bitch, I'm Madonna", which also features Nikki Minaj.

There's always been good and bad music. It doesn't matter if 1967, 1987 or 2017 - that's the truth whether you like it or not.

The difference between then and now however, is that people forget the bad music of past decades and instead tend to remember mostly what was good. This creates a biased against music of the present day, where you can clearly see both the good and the bad. That's literally how it has always been and unfortunately it's going to continue that way.

Unfortunately society always ends up in a cycle where the music of the present day is often criticised by the older generations. In the 1960s you literally hear John Lennon joke and point this out at a Beatles concert. In that case, older people of that day strongly preferred more classic styles such as Sinatra and wondered "whatever happened to music, it used to have class, used to mean something and be made of REAL instruments now it's just this electronic noise and about getting girls!". Fast forward to the 1980s, older people heavily criticised the big artists of the day for using electronics like the synth over 'real' instruments "like The Beatles and Bob Dylan used to". Today the cycle continues, and it's going to continue well into the future. In 2065, I'll hear people criticise the music of that day and wish it used to be as good as it was in 2017.

Honestly I think it's quite unfortunate. I'm not usually one who stereotypes because I know many older people who can appreciate what is good about newer music. But to be frank, it's really irritating whenever I hear older people go "todays music is crap", no it's literally just because you don't like it and that's totally fine, but that doesn't automatically make it crap. It's no better than young people stereotyping old music as automatically bad because it sounds old or outdated. There's a lot of great stuff out there amongst the crap.

I really hope when I'm older, I don't end up like some of you and that instead I have a more open approach to the present music of that day.

Isn't most of Prince's Sign o' the Times made up of stock samples and loops on a synthesiser, with a bit of actual guitar on top? Seems like it:
"The song was constructed by Prince almost entirely on the Fairlight sampling synthesizer, which provides the primary keyboard riff and sampled electronic bass sounds heard on the track. Unlike some artists, Prince did not program new sounds for this song. He simply used the stock sounds the Fairlight offered, including the famed "orchestra hit" towards the end of the composition."

And yet it remains one of the most critically revered songs in the entirety of Prince's catalogue. Probably one of your most favourite Prince songs too. Yet he's constructed it in the same manner that many artists today construct their songs... and you're criticising them for doing what Prince did. Interesting.

Now of course we know Prince can play instruments, but my point is just because a song involves sampling or loops doesn't mean it's automatically a bad song, you can still make good songs by doing so.

No one, and I mean NO ONE actually consider those meaningful lyrics. Not every song has to have meaningful lyrics.

Also, the artists you give as 'talentless', don't play instruments etc are pop artists. Pop artists are generally prized for their image, their stunning vocals, with their instrumental proficiency generally being limited to just one or two instruments tops. So no Katy Perry, Megan Trainer, Nicki Minaj, Beyonce, Rihanna generally don't play instruments either in the studio or on stage, but neither did Michael Jackson, Madonna, Whitney Houston, Cyndi Lauper, Olivia Newton-John, Donna Summer, Barbra Streisand, Janet Jackson, Cher, Diana Ross, Mariah Carey or other respected legacy pop artists.

All of these artists primarily only offer great vocals, with the odd instrument playing here and there. No doubt many of these people are also great at coming up with ideas musically, but just need someone else to perform and translate it into an actual sound which is why they are respected by their peers. If you look towards other genres where artists playing their instruments has always been more common place, such as rock, alternative, alternative, singer/songwriter etc, you'll find that many, many of today's artists are very capable of playing instruments.

Dude that's literally always been happening: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_and_fad_dances. I'm sure there were dance fads from when you were young that your parents cringed at too.

Well Frank Sinatra wrote almost none of his songs, he didn't even play instruments. He just sang (and what a voice he had). You also need to keep in mind that a lot of new music does involve genuine recorded instruments, but many times they are heavily processed, distorted and played with to get specific sounds. That's actually some great stuff that's being worked on today - I remember on a Justin Bieber song a few years ago there was this really cool flute sound playing during the chorus. My jaw was on the floor when they pointed out it was actually a heavily distorted and processed vocal of Justin Bieber's vocals, they had this really cool BTS video on it and I thought that was really cool. At that point, you are showing genuine creativity and so long as the end result is good, I don't care whether it was real or electronic.

Absolutely nothing wrong with choosing to produce purely electronic music too, just like playing a legitimate instrument it actually takes skill to produce new electronic music. Unless you want to simply use the basic stock sound (which isn't that common), it's not as easy as simply 'pushing a button' as so many people seem to think it is.


Migos and Lil Wayne are far from the most respected artists of today, hardly the standard for music in the 2010s. That's like trying to claim Herman's Hermits are the standards for 1960s music or something.

Rapping (or "talking" as you say) badly is no easier than playing an instrument badly. Just as being a good rapper can take as much talent and hard work as playing an instrument well. It totally depends on the person, as one or the other could come easier to them personally.



In the words of Michael Jackson, "Great music and great melodies are immortal. Fashions change, culture changes, customs change. Great music is immortal." It doesn't matter if it's from 1932, 1962, 1992, 2012, 2032, there is (or will be) really great music from all those years and they will be remembered as time goes by.

You are completely wrong with the bolded part, and I say that respectfully. You can go look at many of the best songs from 2000-2010 on YouTube right now, and you'll see the comments filled with people reminiscing on this song from their childhood, about how great it was, how much they love it etc. You even see young people who weren't still in diapers when the song came out loving it too. Many of these songs are over 10-15 years old now - more than enough time to properly view them in retrospect.



Exactly. You have to keep in mind that people are always going to prefer the music they grew up to. That's exactly the youth who grew up with Sinatra lovers disliked the Beatles and Stones. It's exactly why the lovers of rock'n'roll or early metal hated on artists who used electronics in the 1980s. It's why people who grew up with music in the 1980s are now hating the music of today, it's a never ending cycle. On the vice versa, it's also why the youth of today will happily listen to what's popular now, but when you play on an older artist from decades ago, they just don't care for it and would want to put on today's music.

One thing I really try to do is keep an open mind to art, and I'm glad I have because it has opened my mind to so much great music - old and new - I might not have tried out in the first go. It's something I really don't want to lose as I get older.

I think you just have to look beyond the charts to find the good music now, especially because a lot of guitar based music doesn't chart and many artists if they're lucky they get one single from an album rather than 3-5 we used to get.

So, music by Liam Gallagher, Noel Gallagher, released this year for example.

Plus if you like your singer song-writers, then you have more of those now than ever. Adele, Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran for example.

I agree, the charts now are full of crap, but then I'm 44, I'm hardly the target audience.

Very interesting discussion.

Although great music is created in every era, I don't see why you'd think that the average quality of music cannot vary across time, especially when you focus narrowly on what's mainstream. For instance, some nice and very influential music was certainly made in the '40s and (particularly) '50s, but the overall output of mainstream music in that era is imo much less diverse and interesting than work from the '60s and '70s. Yeah, music is subjective in the end, but I think most people would agree about that.

Societal, technical and industry developments can all influence the quality of music output. I think Matty made some great points regarding the former. With regards to technical developments, I think the ease with which music can be created nowadays is a blessing and a curse. I still sit back in amazement sometimes that I can make an entire track and mix it decently in one evening in my home studio (which is not much more than a computer and a handful of instruments), and expose it to a potential audience of millions by uploading it to the web. But great as that is, it wouldn't be surprising at all if the ease with which music can be made and distributed nowadays inhibits the desire to master an instrument. Can't record a good take in one go? Just splice it together from a bunch of them in Pro Tools. Can't play a synth or piano very well? Just quantize and loop a pattern. Keep hitting a flat note? Ah, just autotune it. In the past, you'd have to make sure you mastered your instrument in order to get noticed in the first place, as well as record successfully (because the editing you could do was fairly limited). Nowadays, the incentive to do so is much lower and thus takes much more dedication. It's only natural that less people bother doing so as a result.

There is nothing wrong with using modern technology in music, it can be used as creatively as any analog instrument out there. But it does create a risk that people fall back on the easy way out, and I think that actually happens a lot.

Industry changes can also have a huge effect. First of all, in mainstream music the focus has shifted almost entirely to teenage audiences, and appearance is therefore more heavily emphasized than ever before. Secondly, money is made primarily from touring nowadays, so the art of crafting an unbelievable album from start to finish is disappearing. It's more efficient to just churn something out frequently as an excuse to tour behind (this also applies to legacy artists). These are just two examples of industry factors that I think both negatively influence the quality of the average mainstream music output.