«Today’s Lyrics Are Pathetically Bad» Rick Beato

By the way, you’ve brought up singer/songwriters like Ray LaMontagne, Norah Jones and Mia Doi Todd (haven’t heard of her), but as you point out, they’re all in their 40’s and 50’s. That’s not ancient by any means, but they don’t really fall into the category of young contemporary artists.

@ezwind , the reason I picked those artists, and others, was because at some point in the course of this thread the statement was made about what was or was not being written in the 21st century. All of those artists I have listed released their first studio album in the early 2000s, with the exception of one who released two in the very late ’90s and then followed up with several releases in the 21stt century.

@immatthewj

How much effort have you put into exploring contemporary songwriters?

I would confess not all that much. But in a way that makes my point. During the 60s and 70s you didn’t have to search high and low or put a great deal of effort into finding great songs. In fact, it was hard to miss them. All you had to do was turn on your radio (yes, we listened to the radio back then) and you couldn’t avoid hearing great songs.

. . . @ezwind , I will just quickly point out that I was not the member who posted that query to you (about how hard have you tried to hear new music), but no-matter.

I remember my childhood in the ’60s and my teen age years in the ’70s, and I can tell you that most of the AM country &/or top 40 stations that were popular in the small town in north central Montana where I grew up were not playing Dylan very often. I doubt my Dad (who did like Lawrence Welk) would have even known who he was if my sisters hadn’t have been playing it in the basement. And I don’t know how they were exposed to it, except my oldest sister was a small town hippy-girl, and I suppose that they were privy to some kind of "underground hippy network" whose reach mangaed to extend to the northern plains.

As far as being exposed to contemporary artists these days, back in the mid ninetys someone at work turned me onto a public radio station, 91.3 WYEP, that got me away from the classic rock stations. I don’t know what their play list is like now, but at the time it was like, "Wow! I never heard of this group/artist! This is real good!" And I bought a lot of CDs due to that radio station. I kept my car radio on 91.3 and the radio at my bench at work as well. At work, except for two other guys who listened to that station, all everyone else knew was classic rock or what passed for country back then (meaning Garth Brooks, et al). I caught a lot of grief over that.

@immatthewj 

Oops, sorry about mixing up who I was responding to!

As far as not hearing much Dylan in the latter half of the 60s and early 70s, that was likely due to the fact that he got married, had kids and took a hiatus from touring starting in 67 until 74 and only released two or three albums of new music during that period. The fact that you were in a small town in Montana probably had something to do with as well.

Really a lovely thread and ensuring discussion especially in light of the new years and choosing growth  n learning, new musical experiences…

@tyray so glad you are here…

i probably missed mentions of them but i greatly miss Lowell George and Warren Zevon and …..so many who have passed.

@slaw nice !
@bdp24 Caught Iris several weeks ago in a trio… wonderful 

The fact that you were in a small town in Montana probably had something to do with as well.

That probably had the most to do with it, @ezwind . They played top 40 hits and old-goldies and C&W. They probably played Blowing In The Wind back then, unless it had some kind of bad rap of being a protest oriented song--as good as my memory is, I do not remember. My Mom liked different types of music--she was relatively open minded. Relatively. She bought the 45 rpm of Hey Jude because she thought it was beautiful when she heard it on the radio. She did like what she heard by Paul Simon, although she was a bit aghast by Kodachrome ("When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school . . .").

My Dad was different story. I remember playing an 8 track (I think it was a greatest hits) for my mom because I had just discovered Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da and I thought it was so cool, and my Dad walked by and was quite condescending. He liked Lawrence Welk and he also liked Kenny Rodgers. In the ’90s, after my mom died, he’d come to visit us for Thanksgivings and one year we all went to DC to see Lucinda Williams at the Oh Nine Thirty Club and that didn’t do anything at all for him. A year or two later we went to a local club to see Jill Sobule and Warren Zevon. Not impressed. I played him some Leonard Cohen on my system which was, even back in the later ’90s , not a bad system, and maybe you can guess how he felt about that. He wasn’t liking the Cowboy Junkies cover of I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry; "I don’t think that’s how Hank Williams meant for that to ever sound."

Which is all to say that different people have different thoughts about what is great and what is pathetic.