…except country…

    • drath@lemmy.world
      26·
      6 days ago

      AI music still easily beats all the top chart slop in creativity and like 95% of actual musicians in production quality. Honestly, it’s probably the least shitty thing that came out from the AI hype-bubble.

      • m0darn@lemmy.ca
        5·
        6 days ago

        So I’m pretty ignorant of the top of the chart I’d be willing to be a guinea pig. Do you want to send me like 3 chart toppers and an AI song and I’ll see which one is most creative? Don’t tell me which is which.

        • drath@lemmy.world
          2·
          6 days ago

          I’ll do you one better. I’m actually curious what’d the result be so I’ve thrown together a little survey.

          https://drath.ru/ai/

          Methodology: Picked 11 random tracks from random youtube regional weekly charts (10-20mil views each), and 11 random AI tracks from Suno monthly trending, also in random regions. I don’t trust you being ignorant of charts to be good enough factor to shield you from their influence, hence the random regions part. I’ve tried to make it a little more fair by skipping tracks in both sets that contain elements I think would’ve been dead giveaways, like diegetic switches, heavy metal hooks, etc. Also, all tracks are intentionally downsampled to 120kbps to try and hide some of the artifacts inherent to AI music. After all, I don’t think I did that good of a job picking the tracks, tbh, certainly not in favour of AI, but let the result decide.

          • m0darn@lemmy.ca
            2·
            2 days ago

            IVQJHOUPLGCFDNERTSMBKA

            Great work. A few thoughts re: methodology.

            • I despair for society’s musical inclinations.
            • Not being able to understand the lyrics was a big impediment.
            • Not being familiar with/fond of the genres was a big impediment.
            • given those two limitations I think I may have inadvertently selected for intra-song diversity and that may favour AI generation since it’s a lot more work for musicians to change sounds in the middle of a song.

            I’m very curious to see the results. Sorry I didn’t get to it sooner.

            • drath@lemmy.world
              1·
              1 day ago

              Nice. Let me dig up which was what.

              I’m not exactly sure how to fairly rate this, so let’s try this - for every place in the rating give +11 to -11 score, if it’s AI at the top half flip the sign, same for real tracks at the bottom half, for a possible scores of -132 to +132, and random shuffle expected to average at 0, and giving most value to those at the ends and less to those in-between. Which gives the result of -11+10+9-8+7-6+5+4+3-2-1-1+2-3-4+5+6+7-8+9-10+11 = +24, which equates to 156/264, or 59.1% AI-detection™ score

              Some sidenotes: I’m surprised P ended up that high, the amount of autotune in it sounds like AI speech synthesizer with articulation cranked all the way 11 where it just makes random weird sounds. D in the middle is also unexpected, given that it’s one of the few English songs and the lyrics are about AI supremacy. I’ve considered removing it and B from the set though, just because they sound way too different from the rest, but at that point I already skipped tons of AI tracks and had to stop and settle on something. N was my favorite of human songs. Despite it’s relative simplicity, it’s probably the only one that I found pleasant to listen to.

              I despair for society’s musical inclinations.

              Can’t agree more. Don’t get me wrong, AI music sucks big time, but it sets the bar high enough that most human musicians can’t even pass, and those that do are unlikely to be in mainstream since success in the industry is mostly unrelated to actual talent.

              Sorry I didn’t get to it sooner

              No worries, thanks for participating! Would be interesting to hear your thoughts on the results

              • m0darn@lemmy.ca
                2·
                1 day ago

                I’m surprised P ended up that high, the amount of autotune in it sounds like AI speech synthesizer with articulation cranked all the way 11 where it just makes random weird sounds

                59.1% AI-detection™ score

                A small note: that I wasn’t trying to decide whether something was AI, I was trying to evaluate its creativity. So I actually thought A was real, but that it was extremely generic… I also suspected D was AI but trying to judge on creativity, I was unimpressed with the lyrics (not that creative) but I found the soundscape it created interesting. That’s a place where my (un)familiarity with the genre was a liability. I also found the pitch of “you” in “who are you” nrar the end to be creative, like in the wrong key but in a good way.

                Also I only listened to each track once, then decided where to put it in the list. Like “top”, “bottom”, “near bottom but not worst”. And I placed them as I went. If I went through the list again I’d probably swap some but that would have taken way longer and I decided it was more important to be done. I probably should have done some spot checks at the end to make sure things ended up where I wanted.

  • doingthestuff@lemy.lolEnglish
    12·
    7 days ago

    I pretty much like good music from many generations and genres. But you know what I don’t understand? About 85% of the Beatles songs.They had a few great songs, but so many of them do absolutely nothing for me.

    • yermaw@sh.itjust.works
      10·
      7 days ago

      This is, in a nutshell, why music was better back then. Only the gold has stood the test of time. Most of it, like today, was shit.

    • Zink@programming.dev
      2·
      6 days ago

      My son was the prime age for Baby Shark when it blew up a few years ago.

      I remember we were on a ride at a little local amusement park and some girls started singing Baby Shark.

      I was the dad that stepped in right on the beat and bellowed out “DAAAAAADDY SHARK DOOT DOOT…” with as much bass in my voice as I could manage.

      I grew up in a conservative household. Fuck that whole universe of attitudes.

  • thespcicifcocean@lemmy.world
    61·
    7 days ago

    My kids told me about how they love something called phonk or something. I got excited, because I thought they said “funk”. I was very upset when they put on their phonk “music”. I was expecting something akin to Sam and Dave or earth wind and fire, but what I got was a cacophony of dying animals and a back beat so horribly off tempo that I couldn’t be sure that it was actually part of a song

  • ViatorOmnium@piefed.socialEnglish
    65·
    7 days ago

    My parents routinely started listening to several of my favourite bands when I was a teen.

    Do you have any idea how hard it is to be an angsty rebellious teenager when your parents are supportive of your tastes and phases?

    • FiskFisk33@startrek.website
      3·
      7 days ago

      You think you’re immune.

      You think you stand over the previous generations outrage over young peoples listening habits.

      Let me tell you two words:
      AI Music

    • Honytawk@feddit.nl
      231·
      8 days ago

      Mumble rap is the rebellious version of old school rap.

      Just look how angry it makes old school rap lovers.

      • Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de
        31·
        8 days ago

        Might well be, some variant of rap seems to be a good candidate.
        Although here in Germany I would rather see immigrant-influenced Deutschrap here, maybe connected to the Talahon youth culture.
        That would definitely fit the bill, as I certainly will never become a fan of any kind of macho ultra-conservatism.

      • Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de
        4·
        8 days ago

        Don’t know Hanabie, but Electric Callboy certainly is the ultimate comfort music for GenX and Millenials.
        The Europop-Techno-Metal mix massively tingels my nostalgia based on the music genres of my youth. Plus it is a surprisingly fitting combination and rocks on a massive scale. :-)

        • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
          5·
          7 days ago

          Fucking same. I’m early millennial. Been absolutely loving Electric Callboy. Favorite Band to come out of the 15ish years. Also like Hanabie and some of the more recent Babymetal. I don’t need to know the words to like the music.

        • knatschus@discuss.tchncs.de
          4·
          7 days ago

          Definitely check Hanabie out if you like Electric Callboy. They are the all female Japanese answer to them. One of the best female shouts I’ve ever heard and the Jpop-techno mix is real fun

    • mozingo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      8·
      7 days ago

      I feel like there’s a few. Like whatever you want to call artists like 100 gecs, or femtanyl.

      • Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de
        4·
        8 days ago

        The whole brainrot thing goes in the right direction, but is not really a music genre.
        The Skibidi song e.g. is pretty conventional stuff.
        The videos are the avant-garde part here.

      • Multiplexer@discuss.tchncs.de
        2·
        7 days ago

        Growing up in a still deeply Catholic environment, and having heard all those Satanism-warnings in my 80s school classes (best promotion ever…) it was more Metal for me.
        But yes, also “Bad Religion”, for obvious reasons… ;-)

        • doingthestuff@lemy.lolEnglish
          2·
          7 days ago

          All of the genres try to push the envelope to some extent. I listened to all of them. I loved the vibe and recklessness of nu metal bands like Korn particularly. It’s funny that two of the band members are Christian now. In my mind the songs pushing the envelope the hardest these days is shit like WAP. Can’t say I’m really a fan of that song in particular but I’m still listening to everything I can.

  • Juice@midwest.social
    14·
    7 days ago

    Mark Fisher, the author of Capitalist Realism, in another book called “Exiting the Vampire Castle”, argued that in the history of recorded music, every 20 - 30 years or so there were new genres of music that wouldn’t be recognizable as music to the previous generation. But around the early 2000s this process stopped, and musical categories hardened due to capitalist logic. Record companies just wanted to churn out the same things that they already knew how to market, rather than invest in artists who were cutting edge. He called it “the slow cancellation of the future”.

    Granted I think Fisher is kind of overrated as a practical theorist, all those CCRU research people went crazy, and Fisher is a particularly sad example. His vampire castle book is okay, and that generation was like preoccupied with marketing manipulation (a perspective that arguably was being marketed to them/us).

    But through that perspective this meme is interesting, because the reason younger generations can connect about musical tastes, is because popular music has stopped being subversive. Chances are the band the younger boy is listening to has a sound that was copped from an older group, which is why the young man recognizes it as good. But to the older generations, music was still subversive, the young rejected the older, already explored categories of music, which were themselves subversive in their own time.

    • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
      4·
      7 days ago

      musical categories hardened

      That seems like nonsense, given how genres slimed together by the late 90s. Everybody was stealing from everybody else and the best we could do was throw around labels like “alternative.” ClearChannel made every genre pull toward country while country became R&B for hwhite people. Meanwhile the electronica scene had discovered computers - a development that took longer than you’d think - and a bunch of dorks styling themselves as DJ [noun] had MP3s all over piracy services. This is right before Youtube, SoundCloud, and MySpace let truly independent artists reach arbitrarily large audiences.

      If we really want to start an argument - there’s people who say anything generated literally is not music. Kids these days are growing up with the ability to drop a diss track on their friend for a faux pas that happened five minutes ago. Formulaic, yes, but immediately distinct from everyone listening to the same ten conventionally-attractive pop artists.

      • Juice@midwest.social
        4·
        7 days ago

        Actually he wrote a lot about 90s music in this theory, his main example of a subversive musical genre from the 90s was Jungle/D&B.

        I mean I don’t think its complete nonsense, this is definitely something that has always happened regarding the capitalization of popular music, Gramsci wrote about some of the tendencies, in his analysis of italian theatre and how monopolized capital exploited artists and small venues, back in the 1920s. I think the pressures certainly exist, especially because of the examples you mention, like clear channel, but also live nation and ticketmaster. Those pressures to homogenize and commodify music are objectively the result of monopolization of the music industry. Culture and economy are intrinsically bound up in one another.

        But also I feel that he sort of over stated his point, like his analysis is sort of warped by chronic depression and like fiercely hating the Arctic Monkeys.

  • user_name@lemmy.world
    82·
    8 days ago

    Actual, classic country is really good. It’s the modern stuff that’s all about loving Bush’s wars, drinking shitting beer, and hating gay people that’s the problem.

    Doc Watson, Johnny Cash, and Marty Robbins are all worth checking out, to name a few.

    • Wolf314159@startrek.website
      2·
      5 days ago

      For me good country music is about growing up rural poor and making rebellious music with heart and soul. You can’t authentically make that music while hating people (be they women, brown, queer, trans, foreign etc.). You can’t make that music without being against cops and corporations like Nestle and United Health.

      I had typed out an overly long rant about modern country losing its soul and just being pop music with a guitar twang veneer and classic country shit heels like David Allen Coe who still managed to make some memorable songs. Instead I’ll just list some contemporary artists that I’d put on the same playlist and call it country.

      In no particular order: Jesse Welles, Sturgill Simpson, Lil Nas X, Robert Ellis, Father John Misty, Old Crow Medicine Show, Courtney Barnett, Kurt Vile, The Texas Gentlemen, etc. I’m sure others can suggest more and some will dispute some of these. I make no claims that any of these people won’t turn out to be bad guys later. After all, I do still kind of like that David Allen Coe song about being drunk the day his mom got out of prison and he went to pick her up in the rain, but before he could get to the station in his pickup truck she got run over by a damned old train.

    • kboy101222@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      6·
      7 days ago

      Some modern country is also great! Tyler Childers has multiple songs about fucking around and being a cokehead in Kentucky (he’s thankfully clean now). Then there’s his Country Squire album that’s very fun to watch videos from while stoned. It’s like some southern Yellow Submarine.

      Zach Bryan released an anti ICE song that I can’t currently remember the title of for the life of me.

      If you want more folk, Haunted Windchimes, The Ghost of Paul Revere, and Poor Man’s Poison are all excellent, with Poor Man’s Poison just straight up having multiple leftist as fuck songs. More mainstream you’d find Noah Kahan, who’s done some excellent music. It’s more pop folk than normal folk, but I’m still a fan personally.

      Basically, just avoid artists like that whiny little bitch boy Morgan Wallen or basically any of the mainstream musicians from the 80s to the 2000s and you can find some actually good shit.

      Also, both are mainstream, but Travis Tritt’s Trouble and John Michael Montgomery’s Sold are both absolute bangers.

      • user_name@lemmy.world
        1·
        7 days ago

        Thanks! I’ll check them out; I know I was speaking in a broad generalization. For contemporary country, I’m a fan of Aida Victoria, to name one. It’s just, as OP said, those songs and musicians who produce “Republicunt siren songs.”

    • cm0002@literature.cafeOP
      3·
      8 days ago

      I find actual classic country to just be boring, but not boring with a beat enough for work music like Classical music.

      The modern country stuff I loathe for just like you said, being Republicunt siren songs lol