«Today’s Lyrics Are Pathetically Bad» Rick Beato

Anyone with ears knows Joni, Paul, and Gordon have no equal.

My Dad,kind of thought the same thing, except he was in to The Lawrence Welk Show.  I think it was "champagne music" or something like that.  He thought it was pretty good and his mind seemed pretty much closed off about anything else.  

Try this..... "She’s Making Friends, I’m Turning Stranger" Purple Mountains

I like it... Kind of reminds me of Michael Chapman

@stuartk

Please link me to some Rap in which melody is as prominent as the rhythmic delivery of the lyrics.

This is off the album ’The 18TH Letter’ from the Rap Artist - RAKIM with the rap/song ’Guess Who’s Back’ 1997 The beats/sample music is from the album ’Hands Down’ from the artist Bob James from the song ’Shaboozie’ This is an analog audio only version. Guess Who’s Back

This is a video off the album ’The 18TH Letter’ from the Rap Artist - RAKIM with the rap/song ’Guess Who’s Back’ 1997 The beats/sample music is from the album ’Hands Down’ from the artist Bob James from the song ’Shaboozie’ This is a live version recorded at The Blue Note in NYC 02/09/23 Rakim - Guess Who’s Back with Talib Kweli, Black Thought & Bob James at The Blue Note NYC 2-9-23

I wanted to show the live version so you can see these young men paying homage to one of the most melodic composers I’ve had the pleasure of listening to over these years and also them paying homage to back in the days when poetry was recited in the New York clubs over a cup of coffee with yes, sometimes a band.

This is a video off the album ’DAMN’ from the Rap Artist - Kendrick Lamar with the rap/song ’LOVE’ featuring Zacari 2017 The beats/sample music were made in the studio by in house studio producers. This is Kendrick Lamar’s attempt at making a love song. A very melodic love song if you will. This video is of its time and is very visually descriptive and forward but offers no disrespect to women. Kendrick Lamar - LOVE featuring Zacari

@immatthewj 

Anyone with ears knows Joni, Paul, and Gordon have no equal.

Be sure to keep your dial glued to the oldies stations so that you will never have anything to compare with.

I'm sorry to laugh, but that was funny!

Actually, @tyray , at the time your post made me think of those lyrics (". . . memories can be friends . . .") I could not remember the name of the song. I did a google prior to that post, and the song title was Recently, and I just did another google, and that was released on the I Got A Name album. Which, as an aside, may have been the first cassette tape I ever bought, when I was a teenager, for my "stereo, which was a little portable cassette player. However, I also thought that Photographs And Memories was a pretty good song.

Yep, once I went back and googled Recently and Photographs And Memories it all made sense. Thank you

The Beato cry was about the decreasing lyrical poetics content quality in popular chart...

Not about genres, not about tastes, not about nostalgia...

But it ask too much for people to think about why this phenomenon even exist

Fair enough, allow me to take a stab or two

1. As has been pointed out previously, the zeitgest has moved on (can we say reversed itself). The 60s / 70s were a time of youth, newness, daring and creativity. You were not to trust anyone over 30. Heck, you were not to be over 30.

In the present era risk management reigns supreme, and what's safer than proven sellers?.Hence New Beetle, New Mustang, 80-year-old rockers selling out arenas all decked out in ADA ramps, the Marvel Universe, Mission Impossible 12, McIntosh amps, whatever.

This arc moves in unison with the XXL-sized boomer demographic passing through the boa constrictor of time.

2. What was once culture is now known as entertainment, and Internet has made possible its present, extreme granularity. This is rather a good thing in some ways: without Internet, many of us would have never known many of our favorite musical artists, and with the Internet there is no way that talentless British bands could ever turn the wholesale appropriation of Black folks' music into billion-dollar careers. If the Rolling Stones came up today, they would hustle to book gigs in half-empty taverns.

The downside is that a shared culture and a common language have been lost. Whether you loved the Stones or laughed at them, you knew them. Were you a rocker or a mod? Stones or Beatles? It's probably safe to say there is no equivalent today. Not that we ran out of reasons to fight each other, but that's a different conversation.

@mahgister

That beato character appears to be a bit controversial. Perhaps some folks reacted to him rather than to the questions you posed, which are very good questions indeed.