Has ireland matured with music?

red_ice

It might just be me, but have times changed with regards to socially acceptable music?

Let me try elaborate on what im saying.. I've always played the guitar, and i was forced into learning alot of different genres of music to try and addapt to different styles of music from all types of rock, jazz, blues, classical, metal pop everything. I also had a keen interest in hiphop. So any type of music that was in anyway audable i would have an interest in. The only exception is dance/trance and so on, i cant stand it. I like to think i have a very broad knowlege of music.

When i was growing up in school i was a closit rocker where as everyone in my surroundings was into their "gangster rap" and dance music. Most of the people that i would see walking around in town and so on, other than the goths, would all be dressed the same. Named brands and tracksuits. Since i left school i've really come out of my shell with regards to caring what music i was in to, not only that i started to see fashon trends change and what not, now being a mod/rocker/what ever, seems to be the new thing. I associate the way people dress with what type of music they are into... ok, thats a little sterotypical, but 8/10 times it hits the nail on the head.

Events like... lets say the 8k+ ones that get held over weekends here dont play crap music anymore. Ok, there are a few ones there, but the main acts on stage are quality bands. Groups like arcade fire, qotsa, interpol and so on who dont get played on any radio stations other than good auld phantom are great acts and everyone knows about them. This time 5-8 years ago, it would have been chart music at those events. Now chart music is been blatently left to the ignorant, and in my eyes, the ignorance is dying.

Would you agree?

PeakOutput

ill probably write a long responce to this later but im in work at the moment. you are forgetting that the likes of interpol arcade fire etc are the chart music of today...........they are still not pop music but they are say top 40 so things have not changed mucha s regards the gigs that are on what has changed slightly is the type of music in the top 40 but again I would say it is the cheesy pop music that has changed more than anything as there have always been "rock" groups in the charts.

The boyband era is largely gone with popular rap taking its place at the top of the charts.


If you leave aside big venues like the point there has always been alot of quality bands to go and see. after all boy or girl bands dont get big "locally" they get made and marketed to a national or international audience so the gigs that have been on in the smaller venues (whelans, ambassador, music center) have always been quality local bands or bands that are say big in london or new york but not elsewhere

The general public is no more or less ignorant to the majority of music than it was 10/20 years ago.

that was longer than i thought it would be

red_ice

true, but is that not fantastic music? I was using said bands as an exmaple. But to elaborate on the topic, the people who i talk to generally have a vast knowlege of music these days. Its hard to explain, but i've noticed a huge change in peoples taste in music. Ignorance towards genres and barriers between them are being broken down and so on..

know what i mean? Im not saying that musicical collaborations havnt happened before.. But people are listening to more bigger variety of music these days.

The bands that are in the charts worked to get there, they wernt manufactured or placed there, or given the preverbial silver spoon. Know what i mean? People arent being told what to listen to anymore

BaZmO*

By the sounds of it it's more a case of it being your musical tastes that have matured.

There has always been good and bad music out there. The difference today is that it's easier to get your hands on a wider variety of music due to the internet.

red_ice

i wouldnt really say that tbh - as stated in my first post! The good music is getting more exposure is what im getting at i rekon

BaZmO*

The reason why I say that is because you said..

red_ice wrote:

but i've noticed a huge change in peoples taste in music. I

Conversely, surely you still know a lot of people that are still into the usual radio fodder.

IMO the only thing that has changed is accessibility

PeakOutput

red_ice wrote:

Ignorance towards genres and barriers between them are being broken down and so on..

know what i mean? Im not saying that musicical collaborations havnt happened before.. But people are listening to more bigger variety of music these days.

not in my experience different bands do not constitute a a bigger variety of music if they are all in the same genre(or very closely related genres) which they usually are.

ignorance towards dance music is as bad as it has ever been. the fact is that the type of music that is popular has changed yes...........the people who have always been into this type of music believe it is because the quality of their music over all the rest is the cause of this but it is not true. the labels decide what is popular(and by popular i mean what the general public listen to, and individual can be into any obscure genre they want).

right now the kind of pseudo indie rock like arctic monkeys is in. arctic monkeys were very big before they were signed but they blew up because they were marketed correctly not because of their talent or the general publics new found knowledge of the industry.

you say yourself you are kind of a "rocker" and I am sure that alot of your friends are the same and therefore you can have great conversations with them about the music you as a group are into. this is not representative of the general publics knowledge of music or anything close to it.

the reason the music industry works is because they can pidgeon hole people like rockers dance heads, groups who only like boybands, these people, threw no fault of their own are still ignorant of the genres they are not into and that is not going to change any time soon

Attractive Nun

To a certain extent I agree with you OP. Certainly, thanks in large part to the Internet, there are are huge amounts of great music around today - and Irish people are generally quite good at finding this music. As my musical tastes started to broaden, I was quite frustrated with the dire (IMO, obviously) and commercialised musical tastes of my friends, but as time has gone on I think the musical tastes of everyone around me has started to become more 'mature' and independent. However, I would put this down more to people simply getting older than any broader 'maturing' of the Irish population. Any proper music fan will inevitably get bored with boring music and seek out better music as they grow older. I'm sure if I was to go and examine the music tastes of people in secondary school, they would be pretty bland still.

With regard to the charts, I think the fashion has just changed from pop to RnB and Hiphop mainly, with more emphasis too on 'indie'. Certainly, the move from the Spice Girls and the Backstreet Boys to the likes of the Arctic Monkeys and the Kaiser Chiefs is an improvement, but it's not a revolution. Make no mistake, the masses turn out at certain music festivals to see the Killers and Interpol not because they are more mature than the masses of 5/10 years ago, but because these are the bands that are being marketed at the moment. I have no doubt that the pendulum will swing some other direction some time soon.

Having said all that, I do think music is in a pretty healthy place at the moment. As long as the Internet exists, it is easy for music fans to listen to whatever they want. That being the case, the numbers of genuine, independent music fans will grow and will attract gigs. That one of the current fads in popular music is indie can only help this process.

JC 2K3

red_ice wrote:

Groups like arcade fire, qotsa, interpol and so on who dont get played on any radio stations other than good auld phantom are great acts

No they're not.

There's nothing more "mature" about them than pop music of the past, the industry is just marketing a different sound, ie. a more guitar based one.

PeakOutput wrote:

ignorance towards dance music is as bad as it has ever been. the fact is that the type of music that is popular has changed yes...........the people who have always been into this type of music believe it is because the quality of their music over all the rest is the cause of this but it is not true. the labels decide what is popular(and by popular i mean what the general public listen to, and individual can be into any obscure genre they want).

QFT.

The fact you say you can't stand dance/trance music shows how far we still have to go regards creating a universal open mindedness and musical maturity in Ireland.

I wouldn't consider someone who's favourite bands were The Killers, The Arctic Monkeys, Interpol and Arcade Fire any more musically "mature" than someone who's favourite bands/artists were 50 Cent, Justin Timberlake, Kanye West, Shakira and Girls Aloud.

orourkeda

Definitely not. Has anybody tried buying music in Ireland that strays even slightly from the mainstream? I suppose that's where the internet comes in but you have to go to websites based in England or America most of the time.

Karl Hungus

orourkeda wrote:

Definitely not. Has anybody tried buying music in Ireland that strays even slightly from the mainstream? I suppose that's where the internet comes in but you have to go to websites based in England or America most of the time.

Uh, yes.

Honestly, where are you looking for your music, if you can't find anything that's not mainstream?

JC 2K3

Yeah, I mean even Tower and HMV stock some underground stufff....

Orizio

No they're not.

There's nothing more "mature" about them than pop music of the past, the industry is just marketing a different sound, ie. a more guitar based one.

You are telling me Arcade Fire don't deal with more mature subjects in their music that the likes of Westlife ?

QFT.

The fact you say you can't stand dance/trance music shows how far we still have to go regards creating a universal open mindedness and musical maturity in Ireland.

I wouldn't consider someone who's favourite bands were The Killers, The Arctic Monkeys, Interpol and Arcade Fire any more musically "mature" than someone who's favourite bands/artists were 50 Cent, Justin Timberlake, Kanye West, Shakira and Girls Aloud.

Jaysus what did old Kanye do to be put into that list.

JC 2K3

Orizio wrote:

You are telling me Arcade Fire don't deal with more mature subjects in their music that the likes of Westlife ?

I generally don't listen to music for the lyrics, so I really wouldn't know.

Orizio wrote:

Jaysus what did old Kanye do to be put into that list.

erm, he happens to be on a lot of people's lists of favourite artists on Bebo alongside the others....

Orizio

JC 2K3 wrote:

I generally don't listen to music for the lyrics, so I really wouldn't know.

Oh dear.

This hold idea that 'my music choices are just as good as yours' idea,while very nice, holds little weight. Isn't it a bit like saying I'm just as good a bassist as Larry Graham, despite that I'm barely a beginner and Graham is recognised as one of the musical greats? It would be nice if it was true, but really its patronising bull****.

PeakOutput

Orizio wrote:

This hold idea that 'my music choices are just as good as yours' idea,while very nice, holds little weight. Isn't it a bit like saying I'm just as good a bassist as Larry Graham, despite that I'm barely a beginner and Graham is recognised as one of the musical greats? It would be nice if it was true, but really its patronising bull****.

what has that got to do with what you quoted,if anything?

Orizio

PeakOutput wrote:

what has that got to do with what you quoted,if anything?

It has to do with this...

There's nothing more "mature" about them than pop music of the past, the industry is just marketing a different sound, ie. a more guitar based one.

Assuming you read the whole of the thread, my post was relevent.

Want to waste my time with another question then?

JC 2K3

Orizio wrote:

Oh dear.

Lol, what's so wrong about that? What music sounds like is more important to me than what the artist has to say. That's not to say I don't enjoy good lyrics sometimes, just that it's not as important to me as the music itself.

Orizio wrote:

This hold idea that 'my music choices are just as good as yours' idea

That wasn't what I meant to imply, nor thought I implied at all.

Karl Hungus

I'd agree with JC 2K3, I listen for the music much more than I would for lyrics. Even listening to a vocalist, I'm more drawn to vocal melodies than what the lyrics are, as I consider the voice another instrument, and interesting melodies catch my attention far more than interesting lyrics as far as singers go.

Rozie

I don't know. I think a lot of these new guitar bands aren't much different than what we've had before, just with guitars. I think there's a lot of "Indie Trash" as I like to call it, that really isn't Indie since it isn't in the slightest alternative, just rather lackluster light rock that's immensely marketable to both teeny boppers and many rockers.

I would consider Interpol to not be very much out of line with this, to be honest, after hearing some of their tracks on the radio I'm disappointed. There's fair too much pop rock/pop punk and it's not even entertaining like say, Blink 182 were from a pure whimsical angle.

There's less and less personality, quirkiness in music. It's easy to see that as "growing up" as that's how most fleshy humans approach maturation too. But, much like what those people see as growing up, it's little more than a degradation.

Everything's far too bastardised. Everything sounds like Coldplay and the White Stripes meeting in the middle.

Irish music currently, is, of course, pretty terrible. Just pub rock, generimetal and more of those indie kids at the more "Underground" level, and Killers clones on the commercial level.

Ireland is disgustingly right wing and consumeristic and is becoming even more so. Since we're about 20 years behind the rest of the world socially and in terms of many services, I guess we're going through our own 80s right now. Except for the fact that the 80s had a lot of great underground music and metal, and even the commercial pap had some amount of atmosphere to it...

Orizio

I'm inclined to agree with Rozie from the point of view that the rock on the radio is wildly overrated. Kids ripping off The Pixies, Nirvana etc and too few are actually doing something original.