«Today’s Lyrics Are Pathetically Bad» Rick Beato

Do you know how many concepts are necessary to define rythm in music ?

My point was not against the popular concept of beat or the musical one but against the mechanization of rythm and his simplification by an industry mechanizing our mind...

@mahgister , you’re my guy and you have taught me so much, but I disagree with you on the ’Beat’ thing. The one instrument that someone tried to teach me in a very formal ways were the Drums.

In the same way do you know how many concepts are necessary to define musical time ?

The degradation of musical time in simplistic "beat" is a fact...

 

Now i attack no genre being "rap" or "heavy metal" or "pop" because there is great music in all these genre...

My point is about an impoverishment across most genres...

By the way rythm is the essence of music and the ground zero of music for reason linked to the gestural body, members and mouth....

my favorite music is African Yoruba speaking drum.....

( my favorite book about theoretical acoustics is written by a master of this instrument )

 

 

If we want to understand someone we must understand what he spoke about...

 I never intended to speak  against rap or beat... ( there is plenty of great poetical texts in rap by the way )

But against their degradation by a process of manufacturation of the product and of the public which exist in almost all genres......

 

I dont attack musical taste, i claim that music has nothing to do with taste but with education of our taste...

 

I am not born with taste for some opo artist or for bach or for yoruba drum...

I learned about myself discovering some ...

 

 

 

«My crocodile too had "good" taste»-- Groucho Marx

 

 

 

 

 

I wish to all a happy new year

with health, abundance, friends, new music ,

and some miracle for  you at some corner

this year...

my deepest regards to all ...

The 60's & 70's gave us: Walter Becker & Donald Fagen - Leonard Cohen - Ray Davies - Bob Dylan - Joni Mitchell & Al Stewart.

The 80's & 90's gave us: Lloyd Cole - Rodney Crowell - Matt Johnson (The The) - Paddy MacAloon (Prefab Sprout) - Morrissey (Smiths) & Paul Westerberg (Replacements).

As for the 21st century, I'm hard pressed to think of anyone who deserves to be mentioned or compared to any of the above songwriters. 

As for the 21st century, I'm hard pressed to think of anyone who deserves to be mentioned or compared to any of the above songwriters. 

To name some, Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams and Michael Timmins have continued to write lyrics in to the 21st Century.  I don't listen to the radio much anymore, but I am sure that there are plenty of others.  

But maybe you are right.  After all, what can compare to such great lyrics like those of The Bird Is The Word?  

"As for the 21st century, I'm hard pressed to think of anyone who deserves to be mentioned or compared to any of the above songwriters."

Totally agree. Most of the best songwriters of the 21st century got started in the 20th century. Try to name a dozen great songwriters of today who are under 30,or even 40. I think most would be hard pressed to do so. I can go back to the 1960's > 1980's and just off the top of my head name dozens of songs that have become classics that people still listen to today.

But I can't think of a truly memorable song that will become a classic that was written in the last 20 years by someone who wasn't around before that. As far as the next Dylan, Cohen, Simon, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Robbie Robertson....I could go on and on.....there's no modern songwriter under 40 that's even close to that stature. Do a Google search for best songwriters of the 21st century. You'll get some lists and some forum discussions and 90% of the artists named will be in their 40s or older, many much older.

Does this mean there are no decent modern songwriters? Of course not; but they're few and far between and even fewer of them would arguably deserve being called great.