Is it possible for us to ever see present day musical acts close to the caliber of entertainers from the past era of the 90s, 80s, 70s, and 60s again? I don’t think so because there are so many talented musicians but the value of good music is fogged with the attention seeking musicians of mediocre skills. An artist can get an award in less than a year of professional music career and even without an album to showcase actual talent. It doesn’t take much effort to do well in the music industry nowadays. Actual talent is just a bonus for the industry, not a requirement. What are your thoughts?
I don't think it's that much different now as compared to back then. Charisma and personality always had a role in making the fans to crazy over an artist or group, and if they are talented enough to sustain it then that is the bonus and the source of reward they get in terms of keeping themselves present in public favor. It's just that those who have survived had the luxury of letting their fans grow and spread the love while the new ones have to give it some time. I don't see the scene nowadays as being that much different from the era of Beatles, just that there's way more competition these days.
Well talent is subjective in a way but I don't think it's all that different. For me personally I can't get into the artists of today so perhaps there is some blandness to a lot of them. However, you have to remember that a lot of people have nostalgia glasses on so they only recall the appealing ones. The media also forgets them too so most of them faded into oblivious faster than we could catch it but once in a while you see one that isn't so great.
There will be a few great singers from time to time but I don't think that we'll see any great number of great singers in future. It's not a matter of talent. The singers are not willing to commit themselves to actually honing their skills until they are really good at what they do. And then there's the laziness . . . most singers get their songs written for them. That doesn't help much.
That doesn't always have to do anything with laziness. Record labels can be brutal. For example contrary to popular belief Britney Spears did write plenty of songs but Jive never let them get released. Also when you write a song it helps but I'm not going to respect somebody just because they wrote a song (again see Taylor Swift). If writing songs mattered all the time then there wouldn't be so many people singing covers.
I heard people asking this same question quite a bit back in the eighties, and then again when the nineties rolled around. And, I am willing to bet that people who have been around longer than me can remember a similar sentiment in the seventies and earlier. It is important to remember that there was a wealth of utterly horrible music being made in those earlier eras just as there is today. You don't hear the crap songs anymore because they are... well... crap. Over the years, the inferior songs fall by the wayside, and only the cream of the crop is heard as time moves on. As an interesting experiment, check out the Billboard charts for any given year of music, and see how many songs you recognize are on there. As an example, here are the top 30 tunes from 1954: Log In If you're like me, you recognize some songs from the list, but certainly not all of them. And, those are the #1 hits - a comprehensive list of ALL songs written and recorded for that year would be absolutely riddled with tunes that have long since vanished into obscurity (often for a good reason). So, it isn't really that there is more awful music being made today, it's just that we haven't yet had a chance to forget the current era's terrible musical mistakes
I don't think today's music is any worse than any other era. I have heard bad music from the 60's ,70's and 80's because bad music has always existed. There were teen idols back then, just as there are now. The Monkees were a made for TV band just like Big Time Rush, except that the Big Time Rush guys are much, much better looking. Unstrung is right, not every old song is a gem. It's just that the gems are the only songs still being played. If you listen to an 80's radio station all day, you can almost trick yourself into thinking that all 80's music was great, except that they're not playing all the bad songs, so it's not an accurate sampling. In 10 years, no one will remember the mediocre songs from today, just the good ones and then everyone will complain that nobody makes music anymore like the music from 2000-2014.
