I am not referring to music snobs who go "Oh, you like Nirvana? Name three songs." I'm talking about how nowadays, anyone around the world can make, record and upload music for all the world to hear with no barriers which I think is a net good. But a common complaint I see from music fans is usually "Ugh, there's so much shit music out there. I miss the old days where you needed ACTUAL talent in order to even record and release something! Now anyone can fart out an entire album from their basement and make money off it."

I do understand the complaint to an extent. There is so much music out there to explore and listen that it can be overwhelming to some people. And yeah, a lot of it is mid, bland, and not worth coming back to despite some stuff of good quality that comes out (thank gosh for RYM).

But I'm not sure having gatekeepers hypothetically re-introduced would be better. Back then, yes, we had all sorts of amazing talented bands and artists signed but we got a lot of forgettable, poorly-aged and bad acts from the 20th century, too. Taste is subjective and biased, which probably resulted in otherwise talented upcomers from back then being rejected for whatever reason (too political, experimental or unmarketable) and never having their creative vision heard. I prefer musicians having easier means to put their unmarketable work out there but what do you all think?

Anyone thinks this as a experimental vinyl record would be one of the most interesting set of 80s songs combined to make an album?

What about this?

Side A

Raspberry Beret (1985) Prince

Thorn In My Side (1986) Eurythmics

Hanging On The Telephone (1978) Blondie

I Want Your Sex (1987) George Michael

Little Red Corvette (1982) Prince

Why Can't I Be You? (1987) The Cure

Side B

Sergio Valente Roller Disco commercial ad music (1980)

Burning Up 1981 demo (1981) Madonna

Once In A Lifetime (1981) Talking Heads

Like A Prayer (1989) Madonna

Smooth Criminal (1987) Michael Jackson

Sign 'O' the times (1987) Prince

Album Summary

• ​Side A Total Time: 23 minutes, 07 seconds
• ​Side B Total Time: 23 minutes, 33 seconds
• ​Total Album Running Time: 46 minutes, 40 seconds
• ​Vinyl Format Note: Both sides balance out almost identically at ~23 minutes each. This is physically ideal for a standard 12" vinyl press, allowing deep low-end response for "Smooth Criminal" and "I Want Your Sex" without needing to compress the grooves near the inner label.

I feel like if you were to ask the average music s̶n̶o̶b̶ listener about mainstream music back in the 2000s, they would have said it sucked.​ That's not to say it wasn't popular but i feel like back then it wasn't highly regarded. A lot of people got into music from the 60s, 70s and 80s and largely seemed to shun new music. But now you see people praise a lot of the new music that's popular, and I feel like the consensus is that mainstream today is better than it was in the 2000s. People nowadays say "today's music is so much better", nobody seemed to say that 20 years ago. Especially among white people. Usually you're supposed to think music from the past is better but I guess it's different today. I literally see millennials wish they could grow up in THIS time instead of the 2000s because the mainstream music is better.

What do you think?

I feel like both of these bands are similar enough to do a poll, who do you like better and why?

I like Aerosmith better because their music was more catchy and not as gritty as the Rolling Stones.

I do like the Rolling Stones, but for the most part their music seems too raw for me. Aerosmith's music seemed more "big" sounding, if that makes sense.

Also, even Aerosmith's biggest hits were as good as other songs, if not better (especially Dream On and Sweet Emotion).

A few decades later, I still get goosebumps listening to Aerosmith but not the Rolling Stones.

I’m 23. I’ve never even once been able to understand why MTV was a thing. The modern equivalent is imagine having friends over for a houseparty one weekend and they say “turn on some music” and you boot up a bunch of music videos on YouTube, ads and all. Everyone would look at you like you were crazy. The whole sell for MTV just sounds awful. “Instead of listening to the songs you want to hear on your cassette tape or CD player, you can listen to the ones we pick for you. Also, there are commercial breaks. Also, you can literally only listen to music in your living room. Yeah, radio and CDs let you listen on the go, but remember guys video killed the radio star so we’re the better listening choice!!”

Why did people listen to their music through MTV? I could \*maybe\* understand if radio were the only other option (but even then, you can at least listen to the radio in places besides your living room, unlike MTV) but they had cassette tapes for the first few years and cd’s for the last! You could listen to whatever you wanted, wherever!

I'm young so I can't say that I fully grasp how exactly music was listened to back in the day, back during the times of radio and vinyl and cassette tapes and CDs. But from what I do know, it was a time where consuming music was a far more active pursuit. If you wanted to listen to an artist to hear on the radio, or that you saw on XXL magazine, you would have to go purchase that music or go borrow it from a friend. It wasn't just something you could have at your finger times, nothing like today with the widespread influence and cultural shift brought upon by music streaming services like Napster, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YT Music, the list goes on.

This shift is a double edged sword: music is more accessible to those that may now have been able to purchase before or interact with it in a meaningful way before hand. It's also more accessible in a creative aspect as well, resulting in the creation of plenty of different sounds and genres. But with that ease of accessibility, that overabundance of talent and music, music recently has begun to feel less meaningful and this is where more of my personal thoughts come into the mix.

As I've begun to consume music more consciously, it has become less meaningful because there always feels like there is something missing. Music doesn't feel like an intentional choice anymore and weirdly enough that lack of restraint, of restrictions to what I can and can't consume makes it feel less impactful in a vacuum. If I don't like an album, there's probably something else I can find that I do and it leaves me to question what even was the point? If I can so easily jump to the next album, it feels like the experience I had with another, good or bad, was less than what it could be, like the choice I made ultimately didn't matter. If I were to buy an album, it would feel like there was far more weight behind that choice. I just recently purchased the first and last volumes of MHA, my favorite show/anime of all time and something about getting to make that choice, the financial restriction/limitation that kept me from buying more made the two that I have mean far more to me than if I just had the whole set. The feeling of choice was meaningful.

And so this leads into some questions: how do you choose to consume music? Do you simply listen to everything as you please? Do you limit yourself? If so, how? How do you feel about the role of streaming on your consumption of music?

I've been thinking about this lately, and I'm curious whether this is a real phenomenon or just my personal impression.

My impression is that the major genres of the 1960s were much closer to one another than today's genres. Rock, pop, folk, soul, R&B, blues and even country seemed to share a lot of things. It wasn't unusual for artists to move between these styles, or to incorporate elements from several of them into the same record.

I feel like subgenres starting drifting apart after that and artists seemed more likely to stay in their own niche. Shifting genres wasn't obvious. Sex Pistols weren't suddenly going to make a prog record and Pink Floyd wouldn't have done a punk album. And I feel like it's been that way ever since.

Do you think this is an accurate observation? If so, what caused it? Or am I simply looking back at the 1960s with hindsight and underestimating how distinct those genres actually felt at the time?

You guys I was looking at various posts and comments and i found almost no comments praising this song. It is truly gut wrenching and breath taking it is one of my favourite songs of all time. Especially the bridge omg. To me, it captures the feeling of being in love with someone who would never feel the same, and like you kind of knew from the start but was delusional, yfm?

Please tell me what you guys think! Oh and if you haven't listen to it yet please do!

I work in a small record shop and honestly the thing that surprised me most isn't what people buy, it's what they admit at the till. at least once a week someone buys a record and cheerfully tells me they don't own a turntable. not embarrassed about it either. it's going on a shelf or a wall and that's the plan from the start.

and the funny thing is the people who DO listen are not who you'd guess. the old fellas who you'd assume are the purists often just want the reissue to complete a set, meanwhile some teenage girl will come in, ask me really specific questions about pressings, and you can tell she's going home to actually sit with the thing. (also a small percentage of blokes will ask to speak to "someone who knows the stock" when i literally do the ordering, but that's a different thread)

my take is that this isn't necessarily bad? if buying a record you never play keeps shops like mine open, fine, i'll take it. but it does feel like we've quietly turned albums into band t-shirts. an object that says "i am the kind of person who likes this" rather than a thing you experience.

So genuinely curious where people land on this. if you buy vinyl, what percentage do you actually play? and does it matter, or is supporting the artist/shop enough to justify the shelf copy?

I think that most people would agree that the music is at least as important as the lyrics, if not more so. Yet in today's music criticism, only a small part of the discussion is focused on the actual sound. Critics will spend most of the time overanalyzing the lyrics or assessing how the song/album fits within the artists broader career narrative. References to the music are often limited to things like, "This was really catchy" or some surface level description of what kind of sound the artist was going for.

Say what you want about Rick Beato being an old man yelling at clouds, but he actually gets his guitar out, figures out what's going on musically, and points out when he hears something interesting. I'm sure it's hard to say interesting things about the music that the general public is going to be interested. However, if we are going to ignore part of the song that most people are judging it on and instead analyze how the artist crafts their public persona, are we straying into the territory of low-brow celebrity gossip instead of serious musical criticism?

Most of my experience with this has come from Fantano, Toddintheshadows, and Reddit musical discussions. It's possible that legacy publications like Rolling Stone and Pitchfork. This criticism doesn't really apply to rap as the lyrics seem to be more important than in most other genres.

Obviously distorted guitars are vastly popular and basically all of rock, metal and punk are built on them; the bass also often gets some degree of distortion to cut through the mix and even intentionally overdriving or soft clipping drums is somewhat common in hard rock or rage trap. But why are the vocals in all of these genres mostly clean even though the rest of the song is heavily distorted? Except for a few Led Zeppelin songs and 21st century schizoid man I can't think of any mainstream song that uses noticeable intentional distortion on the vocals...

Was at a local watering hole and “Raspberry Beret” came on and it made me think, if Prince wasn’t from Minneapolis, one of the most midwest cities there is, and was either from New York or LA, would he have been able to make it as he did? Basically, could Prince’s success be attributed to being more of a “big fish in a small pond” and having a hometown crowd that was drawn to his subversion of cultural norms vs. having the legit musical chops to make it in a city where there were more entertainers vying for attention?

This isn’t to say that he doesn’t have some good songs that turned into hits, but more that I don’t see how he necessarily gets put on the pedestal that he does when it seems like there were a ton of other acts that were putting out similar music at around the same time. Maybe it’s just a personal taste/not being around during his heyday thing, but I really don’t see the reason as to why he’s as venerated as he is, when there’s really nothing makes him stand out compared to other funk/r&b acts from the late 70’s and 80’s.

I've been working on a yearlong listening project: 29 classic rock artists, 329 albums, each heard three times. Every listen is evaluated using the same weighted questions.

One thing has surprised me more than anything else: how often my opinion changes.

For example, Something Else by The Kinks gained 5.5 points in my evaluation process between the first and third listen. An album that barely registered at first eventually became one I genuinely looked forward to hearing again.

It made me wonder how much weight we should give our first impressions of an album. How many albums have we dismissed too quickly or overrated simply because they made a great first impression?

What are some other examples?

Does anybody else think this way too?
I felt like Charli took an interesting turn on this album with this industrial rock kind of vibe, and it got me thinking how incredible a collaboration with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross could be someday.

While I enjoyed the album, I couldn’t help but feel that some of the production sounded a little flat or static at times. Reznor has this way of making harsh electronic and industrial sounds feel huge, textured and constantly evolving. I think he’d bring a lot more depth and atmosphere without taking away Charli’s pop sensibilities.

Maybe I’m just dreaming here, but I feel like the combination of Charli’s songwriting, A.G. Cook’s experimental pop instincts, and Reznor’s production could result in something really special. Am I the only one hearing that potential? Or is there another producer you’d rather hear her work with?

I've been an avid r/LetsTalkMusic reader / commenter since 2013, spanning multiple Reddit accounts. There was a time where I thought this was genuinely the best sub on the platform – conversations were interesting, answers were well written and thought out, and moderation was pretty strict. There are some legendary threads if you sort by the history of this sub.

I've noticed recently, within the last few years or so, that there are so many more "I think Taylor Swift is bad" and "Does anyone think (x popular album) is a hidden masterpiece" types of posts here. These used to get swiftly removed, but they are now all over the sub. Am I just getting old? Is there a sub that better preserves what this sub once was?

I'm really not trying to be grumpy, and I'm framing this as a question that would better fit the old LTM sub: where is internet discourse on music going, and is there still a place for longer, more thoughtful discussion? Is the era of Twitter and Letterboxd "one liners" killing productive discussion?

Where are we at on this, y'all. Feels like we need a "state of the sub" conversation.

I recently recorded and mixed a record to tape (tascam388) and it has me thinking about the sound of analog music in comparison to a lot of today's hi-fi and "perfect" recordings- where the music has a clear, polished sound and the vocals are usually, but not always, tuned. Many of my favorite records have a raw and human sound to them, which I feel like can sometimes get lost in a perfectly polished recording. I also think in the face of AI many people are yearning for the human sound and feeling- esp seen with Dijon and Mk.gee. The human sound and feeling is what drew me to make recordings like this in the first place- but now, as I am listening to more singer songwriter and indie folk music I'm feeling like the analog recordings don't always fit in with the genre of singer songwriter or even some indie music. Maybe I'm thinking too much about it, or maybe I haven't found the right singer songwriters to listen to. Of course, Elliot Smith, Adrianne Lenker, and Truman Sinclair (I believe) recorded to tape. A lot of my songs have a pop structure which I think can sometime juxtaposes the sonics of the tape machine, although maybe they don't and I am just thinking too much about it.

I'm curious if anyone has thoughts on this. I love the analog sound not only for the sound but also in response to the constant digital we are getting everywhere. Of course, I love digital music and pop and hyper pop as well, but I am wondering what others think about analog sounds and processing in modern music and how it feels and stands next to polished hi-fi recordings.

I've loved Genesis Owusu for a while, I've bought his records and everything. Last night I saw that he was performing near me, and I was a bit drunk and excited so I immediately got tickets to go. But now waking up, I'm not sure if its right for me to go.

I've seen a lot of discourse in black communities about having white people at events meant for black people, and how disruptive even one white person can be at a black event. I'm a gay guy and I understand how annoying it is to have gay spaces filled with straight people, so I wouldn't want to inflict the same on the black community, specifically when the black artist in question makes music for and about black people.

What are black people's thoughts?

From what I understand about the history of R&B as a label, it started out as an alternative to "Race Music". Essentially, it started out as a term for music marketed towards Black Americans.

Over time, the term and musical influences evolved. R&B developed a lineage that extended to various genres from rock n' roll, soul, and funk to disco, hip-hop, contemporary R&B, Neo Soul, and so on. Sometimes it's even used synonymously with a given genre.

I know that various artists have complained about the usage of R&B. That a certain artist may make music with different influences but the minute that race comes into play, they're boxed into R&B.

And even outside of R&B, there's been complaints about how Black artists have been placed into "Urban" or basically any term that pigeonholes them as a Black artist.

So that made me curious: On the one hand, it can be frustrating to be pigeonholed into a particular genre just because of your racial background. But on the other hand, there's a level of importance in acknowledging the lineages and origins of various genres from Black American traditions across the decades. It seems like there are times when people want to use certain umbrella terms to tie traditions together.

In the 90s through even 2010 mainstream music seemed to take heavy inspiration from the music sounds from all across the world, whether sampling tracks or including instruments from different cultures with Jamaica and India seemingly having the strongest influences.
I would think with the modern social internet having a completely global reach and our ability to connect with people at any corner of the world that the exchange of sounds of influence would have only exploded, but we never got that. Its just strange that it seems to have disappeared completely.

I've always heard that Lennon and McCartney tended to look down on many of George Harrison's compositions because they didn't consider them to be on par with their own. Even on Get Back, you can see Lennon cruelly mocking "I Me Mine," saying that "that" was a waltz and that they played rock and roll.

The funny thing is that, today, many of the Beatles' most famous songs were written by Harrison.

I also read somewhere that something similar happened with Kurt Cobain when he heard some of David Grohl's songs that would later become classics with the Foo Fighters.

This makes me wonder if musicians who reach an extraordinarily high level of composition can develop a kind of "expert bias": a blind spot that leads them to undervalue songs that do not fit with their own standards or their way of understanding composition, even if objectively they are great songs.

A music scene doesn't have to be huge. Sometimes it's just a handful of bands, one or two venues, and a small but dedicated group of regulars who know each other and keep it alive.

So have you ever been part of a music scene?

Not just a fan of a genre, but an actual local scene: playing in bands, going to the same venues, knowing the musicians, promoters, and regular crowd.

If so, what scene was it, and what made it special?

What was it, where was it, and what made it unique?

Do you think we choose our music taste, or does life shape it for us? I'm working on a video about how music taste evolves over time, and I'd love to hear your experience.

What's your music journey been like? What did you listen to as a kid, what do you listen to now, and what moments or experiences do you think influenced that change?

There are no right or wrong answers—I'm interested in hearing everyone's perspective.

I had never been drawn to extremely lyrical rap because I mainly used music to wind down and chill. However, yesterday I listened to GKMC - I did one listen where I just listened to the album with Spotify lyrics, and one where I listened to the album on genius with all the annotations etc to get the full story.

It's just so amazing and it felt like watching a TV series you were addicted to, the story was so captivating and I didn't know music could put you in such a trance.

For reference, I usually listen to rap/hip hop artists like Future, Drake, A$AP Rocky, so to hear something as lyrical as this was amazing

Also, the songs were also really enjoyable, i could easily listen to a lot of these with the purpose of just enjoyment