The Lost "Shock of the New"
Fisher argued that the rapid, disruptive mutations in popular music that defined the 20th century—the sudden leaps from post-punk to hip-hop, jungle, or electronic music—have completely dried up.

To illustrate this, he proposed a famous thought experiment:

Imagine taking a record track from 2026 and playing it for a listener in 1996. Would they be shocked?

When 1970s Kraftwerk was played in the '70s, it sounded like a transmission from an alien world. But if you play a contemporary R&B, indie rock, or electronic track for someone in the mid-90s, they wouldn't be bewildered by its futuristic textures. They would completely recognize the form, the production, and the rhythm. The shock value of the avant-garde has evaporated into a permanent present.

Hauntology and Retromania
Instead of moving forward, 21st-century music has become deeply hauntological—it is haunted by the lost futures that the 20th century promised but failed to deliver.

Rather than innovating, modern music excels at pastiche and stylistic revivalism. We see genres that do not merely draw influence from the past, but meticulously recreate its textures (think of the endless cycles of 80s synth-wave, 90s shoegaze revivals, or early 2000s post-punk aesthetics). The past is no longer a launchpad for the future; it is a warehouse of styles to be endlessly raided and recycled.

The Culprit: Capitalist Realism
Fisher didn't blame a sudden lack of individual talent or creativity. Instead, he blamed the structural reality of late capitalism, a concept he termed Capitalist Realism (the widespread sense that there is no imaginable alternative to capitalism).

The Death of Cultural Safety Nets: Innovation requires risk, and risk requires a safety net. In the 20th century, British and American subcultures thrived because of social housing, art school grants, and unemployment benefits. Musicians had the material security to fail, experiment, and spend years developing radical subcultures (like the UK rave scene or post-punk).

The Market Bureaucracy: Today, neoliberal precariousness means artists are forced to be hyper-commercially viable from day one. When survival is on the line, creators—and corporations—default to what is already proven to work.

The Algorithm and Archival Excess: The internet has turned culture into a flat, timeless archive. When all of music history is simultaneously available on a smartphone, the pressure to synthesize the past outweighs the drive to invent a completely new sonic language.

"Formal Nostalgia"
The tragedy of modern music, for Fisher, is formal nostalgia. Music sounds slick, clean, and technologically advanced, but its form is deeply conservative. We use 21st-century hyper-advanced digital tools just to mimic the analog warmth, tape hiss, and songwriting structures of the 1970s, 80s, or 90s. The technology changes, but the cultural imagination remains stagnant.

>>130626594
2008 was the final straw. It's no accident that the biggest musician after that was Lady Gaga telling people to just escape into fantasies of fame and dancing. And the hundred clones after her. As well as Korea. And with the internet, it just made it easier to take over. Kids rarely had much going on to counter it locally. At best, they created stuff alone and also resided on the internet. Instead of scenes, there were just "aesthetics".

>>130626601
>Imagine taking a record track from 2026 and playing it for a listener in 1996. Would they be shocked?
People from 1996 would probably be a bit shocked that people unironically listen to sped up versions of songs.

>>130626665
The Death of the "Scene" and the Rise of the Algorithm

The economic crash of 2008 accelerated the exact precarity Fisher talked about, but it also coincided with the total consolidation of Web 2.0.

Here is why the shift from "scenes" to "aesthetics" is the ultimate proof of the slow cancellation of the future:

Lady Gaga and the "Capitalist Realist" Pop Star
The observation about Lady Gaga is brilliant. Before 2008, pop music often had to feign subcultural authenticity or rebellion. Post-2008, Gaga arrived as a hyper-real, corporate-engineered avant-garde. It wasn't counter-culture; it was a simulation of it. Her message—just dance, embrace the paparazzi, escape into fame—was the perfect soundtrack for a generation watching the real world's economy collapse. It was the musical embodiment of Capitalist Realism: don't fight the system, just turn your life into a lifestyle brand.

>>130626699
Sped up. Chopped screwed. Slowed reverbed. Nothing new. Just recycled.

>>130626628
>In the 20th century, British and American subcultures thrived because of social housing, art school grants, and unemployment benefits.
this is ridiculously reductive and completely unntrue, especially so in the case of america
subcultures thrived because there was time and a place for them to develop, access was limited, and getting involved required more than downloading a crack of ableton and some sample packs
no scene ever developed without having a place to go and hear that music being played by peers to one another
>artists are forced to be hyper-commercially viable from day one
no
>the pressure to synthesize the past outweighs the drive to invent a completely new sonic language.
highfaluting drivel. and again, untrue
>We use 21st-century hyper-advanced digital tools just to mimic the analog warmth, tape hiss, and songwriting structures of the 1970s, 80s, or 90s
what advanced digital tool helps mimic song structures? the emulations exist because there was demand for them from industry and now it's a self-sustaining category

no it was because we banned leaded gas. people used to be slightly more insane than now.

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>>130626594
More like the slow cancellation of your penis

>>130626724
lady gaga was just fag music for fags. nobody liked it for more than 5 minutes

>>130627224
It'd be nice if that was true, but you're kidding yourself.
Either way, many younger people bought into the delusions and "personal brand" meme that anon mentioned even if they hated Lady Gaga too. Partly because of social media.

>>130627244
Gaga didn't invent that, it's the same message the industry was selling since disco, only interrupted for a little while in the 90s.

>>130627215
>no it was because we banned leaded gas. people used to be slightly more insane than now.
if you take 50s music for example, even the housewife pop stuff was remarkably demented a lot of the time. it seems that at some point everything became template music and no eccentricity or human element was allowed.

>>130627258
You aren't wrong. It's just people had more ways to fight back, and even parts of the music industry that took more routes and risks elsewhere too. After 2008, they went full blast on the "dependable product".

>>130627296
>>130627280
I feel that started before 08. Usher--"Burn" was 2004 and sounds AI generated.

>>130627258
Disco was the same slop. Party until the world ends even though the late 70s was objectively a shithole era that saw America turning into Honduras.

>>130627318
it proves his point though. that song is 22 years old but you'd hardly notice it wasn't released yesterday whereas if you played a 1974 song in 1996 you would very clearly not think it was released yesterday.

>>130627327
Occasionally disco could surprise with interesting lyrics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGBDAxCDLs4

>>130627200
Show me something from the 21st century that created a new future

>>130627200
>this is ridiculously reductive and completely unntrue, especially so in the case of america
Well when you conveniently ignore every other part of that section, I’m sure it sounds that way.

>>130627318
Country got worse too, just cliches to check off a box on a list.

Every genre is dead. Harsh noise wall was the last innovative music

>>130626611
>>130626628
The real reason for all of this is not that culture has become too conservative but it has in fact become too liberal. And I say this as a lefty.

>>130627318
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5Oyaoc52ug
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXMYqeJuxpU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9uZvrsAoyE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-unmnfATr3Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLOqTIRMEmM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kXKUSAbvuM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le0b0qmrA4E

Only truly demented minds whose gray matter was scrambled by leaded gasoline fumes could come up with these. Jack Antonoff could not, all he's capable of is elevator music.

>>130627467
Culture has definitely not gotten more conservative. Just economically it's gotten more capitalist. If that's conservative, so be it. Culturally, I'm partly expecting some pop star to one up GG Allin any day now. Like straight up eating her own shit on stage and everyone is memed into supporting it.

>>130627471
I do have to wonder how that guy can get up in the morning and be that inconceivably boring and unable to actually feel anything.

>>130627488
Lmao a tay tay allin of sorts

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>>130627296
>>130627318
I remember when ipods came out that the ad with people jogging while wearing one really created a strong impression on normies. They rushed to buy one just so they could ostentatiously display it while going outdoors.
It then struck me that aesthetics became more important than function. People became obsessed with image projection. That was in the early 00s.

There was already this retro vibe in the spirit of that time, as the Strokes were somewhat popular. You could see this in the style of clothes too. They were recycling stuff from the past a lot. To give you that vintage look from the past.

So this must have started earlier, it's not clear when. Primal Scream was already doing this shtick in the mid-90s. And the 90s did have some acts like Portishead that were practicing this retro-noir aesthetic.

So the brand and aesthetics thing appeared much earlier. Apple mania was just a symptom of this becoming generalised among normies, but the trend itself originated in the late 90s.

Until then Apple was a marginal company, specialised in building these computers with aesthetics. They were not popular at all, more like a gimmick. They claimed to be 'special and different'.

And then the zeitgeist changed to this obsession with looks and Apple became popular. It wasn't because of the products, but because normies became obsessed with projecting aesthetics through the products they owned.

>>130627493
i don't want to say it's solely because Jack is a nepo baby who has never been more than 5 miles outside LA his entire life, because Randy Newman was too and he actually something to say in his music instead of making pop slut background music to play at the mall.

>>130627524
>i don't want to say it's solely because Jack is a nepo baby who has never been more than 5 miles outside LA his entire life
He was born a decade after leaded gas was banned in the United States is why.

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>>130627513
>>130627471
since you guys bring up the 50s, i'd like to point out that they did an early experience with selling aesthetics back then with cars. these things were trash that rusted in 3 years of purchase, the gimmick was the badass jukebox styling so you could show off to your neighbors.

>>130627513
The Apple Silhouette and the Genesis of the Flattened Era
This is an essential correction to the timeline. We can't understand the post-2008 collapse into "pure aesthetics" without looking at how the late-90s consumer landscape primed everyone to prioritize image projection over actual cultural production.

The iPod silhouette commercials are the perfect patient zero for this phenomenon.

When "normies" bought iPods to ostentatiously wear them while jogging, music was transformed from a shared, communal subcultural experience into a private, lifestyle-branding exercise. The white headphone cord became a wearable luxury logo. This is exactly what anon means by the zeitgeist shifting: Apple didn't win because their tech was revolutionary; they won because society had finally evolved into a state where identity was something you purchased, not something you lived.

Anon’s nod to Portishead and Primal Scream is spot-on. In the 90s, while genres like jungle and digital hardcore were pushing the sonic envelope into the future, a parallel track of formal nostalgia was already being laid down.

When Portishead dropped Dummy in 1994, it was staggering, but it achieved its mood by using 90s hip-hop production to exhume the corpse of 1960s spy-movie soundtracks and torch songs. It was a simulation of a past that never quite existed—classic hauntology.

By the time you get to The Strokes in 2001, the avant-garde edge of that nostalgia was totally smoothed over. The Strokes weren't inventing a new sonic language; they were a meticulously curated, highly photogenic revival of late-70s New York cool (Television, The Velvet Underground). They proved that the music industry no longer needed to fund risky, alien futures when they could just sell a polished, vintage look to a generation that hadn't been alive to see the original.

>>130627589
Until the late 90s, Apple’s "Think Different" campaign was aimed at creatives who viewed themselves as outsiders. But capitalism's greatest trick is taking the aesthetics of the outsider and mass-marketing it back to the mainstream.

Once the "alternative" look became the dominant consumer aesthetic, the engine of subcultural innovation stalled out. If you can achieve the feeling of subversion or artistic depth simply by buying a sleek aluminum MP3 player or wearing a thrift-store jacket replicated by a fast-fashion brand, the exhausting, risky work of actually building an underground scene becomes redundant.

The internet didn't create this superficiality; it just supercharged the infrastructure. The infrastructure was built the moment we agreed that the look of the culture mattered more than the culture itself.

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Armchair sociologists are unironically the worst types of posters on the internet. They will make broad generalizations about society based on their own anecdotal evidence and expect nobody to call them out for it. They all think they're breaking new ground too even though most functional adults have been over and done with the same ideas by the time they turn 18

the wall of text above is dum because it implies music never plundered from the past and that boomer rockers totally didn't play stolen Robert Johnson or Mississippi John Hurt tunes packaged for suburban white kids, not at all

>>130627650
It's better than the typical critic posted here. Since this one acknowledges the vast sea of shit.

>>130627471
Back then songwriters just wrote whatever they thought sounded cool, only making sure it was radio-safe. Stuff wasn't focus grouped in a Sony boardroom.

>>130627659
You’re 100% right about the theft. Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, and Eric Clapton literally built the multi-billion-dollar rock empire by plagiarizing Black blues musicians note-for-note. Pop music has always plundered the past.

But there’s a crucial difference between what the Boomers did and what’s happening now: mutation vs. preservation.

When those 60s and 70s bands stole from Robert Johnson, they ran his acoustic country blues through massive Marshall amplifier stacks, cranked the overdrive, and accidentally invented heavy metal and hard rock. They used the past as raw material to create a loud, aggressive sonic texture that literally didn't exist before. The context and the sound mutated completely.

What Fisher is talking about in the 21st century isn't just "borrowing"—it’s formal preservation.

Today, we don't take a 90s shoegaze track and mutate it into a terrifying new alien genre. Instead, we use hyper-advanced digital plug-ins to meticulously recreate the exact tape hiss, the exact pedalboard settings, and the exact haircut from 1993. It’s not a theft that creates something new; it’s a museum curation.

The Boomers stole the blues to build a spaceship; modern culture borrows the past because it’s comfortable.

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"My advice to musicians is always 'If you can't think of any ideas, just rip off whatever stuff you like. Chances are it'll end up sounding like its own thing anyway.'"

>>130626594
Swancore is pretty fuckin unique. A blend of funk, prog, and hardcore like no one has ever done

>>130627383
please do continue to believe in the fantasy world you never experienced and just go by what a suicidal, talentless, non-musician ideologue tells you
that nigga couldnt even write a paragraph without quoting or referring to some other commie theoretician, he was so afraid to stand on his own
perhaps it was his attempt at sampling
>Innovation requires risk, and risk requires a safety net
this has to be one of the most stupid things i've ever read. wish i had picked up on it earlier. it's a complete contradiction, there is no risk if you have a safety net. only a babied faggot who grew up online would ever type something so idiotic. there is zero risk in making music nobody wants to buy. you arent going to die from being unpopular. nobody is going to punish you, or ridicule you, you will just languish in obscurity. art is not a matter of life and death until you become successful, at which point you have a higher chance of dying prematurely, but nobody will shoot you for making a duff album. you get to keep the money if you can hold on to it.
>When survival is on the line
nobody dies because of music.

>>130627380
find it yourself you lazy cunt.

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>>130627589
Yes, there was this retro streak throughout the whole 90s. Especially focused on the 60s, for some reason.
Even Nirvana's melodies had this 60s jumpy upbeat vibe to them, if you think about that bassline from Been A Son and how the melodic line "descends" in On A Plain.

That's why I had this vague impression back in the 90s that a revolution was in the air, but somehow it failed to take off, because despite all that creative explosion in music, the mood was nihilistic. So like people wanted a revolution but they couldn't express anything that projected a common horizon. It all came out looking nihilistic because of this lack of a common creed to rally around. So people just defaulted on 'having fun', going to concerts, letting loose. Culture became not so much about any message, but about collective enjoyment. From this to the "look and aesthetics" phase was just a step and it happened later.

Maybe the 60s undertones in the 90s were due to the 80s being divided between either the mainstream fake poptimism and spandex cockrock or the downcast post-punk underground. The latter influenced and bloomed in the alt-rock current that broke onto the mainstream charts and "won" the cultural race. But since having a mainstream status put pressure on them to serve the masses some positive vibes, they felt compelled to borrow from the 60s hippie spirit to put on this facade of positivity. That's the impression that Smashing Pumpkins' Today song gave me back the 90s. Corgan was even wearing those flowery shirts during live shows.
And Mazzy Star's live performances also looked like hippie ballads with a moody and slowed down melody. They were also using those tambourins a lot, just like hippies.

https://youtu.be/ypS2K-fUfIk
This was from 1999, before the Strokes became a hit.

Supergrass got their first hit "Alright" back in 1995 and it already sounded like some glam song played with a piano riff.
Weird how this retro spirit appeared in the mid90s

>I'm 16 and this is deep
nobody is going to read your walls of text in earnest dude

>>130627767
>When those 60s and 70s bands stole from Robert Johnson, they ran his acoustic country blues through massive Marshall amplifier stacks, cranked the overdrive, and accidentally invented heavy metal and hard rock. They used the past as raw material to create a loud, aggressive sonic texture that literally didn't exist before. The context and the sound mutated completely.
this nigga never heard of muddy waters. absolute dribbling spastic pseudointellectual thread here.

>>130626699
The weird thing to me is go back to a metal head in 1999 and tell them how much their kids will like Deftones. They will be sad they have gay kids.

>>130627872
/thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIrm4W3W9JI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_Mou6SKur4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m0unOhP--0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAwvV53vuiE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he9T0R0OCIA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP1o4DQx6-4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swhEa8vuP6U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM3fodiK9rY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQEQ8hr7lG0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gFqeslmpC8

But I'm saying. Several 1920s (and one 30s) songs and later cover versions. How do you get the Animals' CC Rider out of the original Ma Rainey version? If that was Millenials they would just recreate the original recording down to the low fi sound because sick retro vibes, man.

>>130627921
Cultural influence is one thing, simulation of past styles is another.

>>130627921
you mean Black Keys, right? fuck those fags.

>>130627921
I noticed the tendency in a lot of these is to juke up the tempos while the originals tended to be draggy ballads.

Rock bands didn't do straight blues covers except a handful of "purists". They tapped into British folk, cringey British theater granny tunes, and psychedelic. Before that, Elvis rarely did a straight blues cover. He incorporated his Hillbilly thing and the hiccup singing which was his own thing at first afaik.

>>130627985
Led Zep also added drumming and a noisier guitar.
In a way their rendition added grandiosity but took some soul out of the original.

>>130627985
The original Elsie Carlisle "I Love My Baby" is better, the Mitch Miller-ized cover from '56 has simplified lyrics (even though to be fair a lot of the lyrics wouldn't make sense in the 50s), but that aside, Jill Corey doesn't sell it convincingly and her singing isn't very expressive unlike Carlisle's coy delivery (as the song was in fact semi-autobiographical).

The original "Roll Them Roly Boly Eyes" is slow and boring, Teresa Brewer's remake is way better.

>>130627839
"Today" is the ultimate expression of the 90s dilemma: the song sounds like a soaring, sun-drenched 60s pop anthem, but the lyrics are literally about Corgan being so depressed he wants to commit suicide ("Pink ribbons scar my face / I can't live for tomorrow").

Corgan wearing flowery silver shirts and Mazzy Star using tambourines like a slowed-down, opiate-drenched Jefferson Airplane wasn't a genuine revival of 1960s optimism—it was formal irony. They borrowed the sonic textures of hippie utopianism because the 90s alternative scene lacked any positive political vision of its own. It was a mask of collective enjoyment thrown over a core of deep, localized alienation.

You hit on the exact reason the 90s felt like a revolution that stalled out: the mood was entirely nihilistic because there was no common creed left to rally around.

In the 1960s, the counterculture had a concrete, common horizon: ending the Vietnam War, civil rights, and dismantling the traditional nuclear family. There was a belief that society could be structurally transformed.

By the 1990s, the Berlin Wall had fallen, and Western society entered what Francis Fukuyama famously called "The End of History"—the idea that global capitalism had won permanently and there were no alternative political systems left to fight for.

Because youth culture couldn't imagine a different political future, their rebellion became entirely inward-facing. It became about my depression, my alienation, my trauma.

there was a tiny bit of zeitgeist and sense of purpose back for a little while after 9/11 but that lasted about three years tops

>>130627921
You forgot "In My Time of Dying"

>>130628234
Because the only mental ill believe that. And they're the only ones driven enough to do something.
If you actually think you're ruled by fascist kid fuckers, what are you even doing? How are you even alive to begin with? This is hell.

>>130628251
bleh, only the mentally ill*

>>130628234
low quality b8.gif

>>130628234
libtards like you and orange man are mere symptoms of the same globohomo factory

>>130628234
Is that you, Fantano?

>>130628234
You lost, bro.

>>130628234
The guy who will be out of office in 2 years?

>>130628132
>Because youth culture couldn't imagine a different political future, their rebellion became entirely inward-facing. It became about my depression, my alienation, my trauma.

I think that happened because the 80s were too contrived and phony and the youth had no outlet for those feelings of struggle. So they perceived that mainstream scene as lacking authenticity, as not expressing the youth's spirit.

And that found a home in the college rock and later alt-rock breakthrough. The downcast vibe didn't really appear with grunge, Depeche Mode already struck a chord with the youth with their moody electro-pop in the late 80s.
And then we see REM going mainstream with Losing My Religion.

The youth rejected the forced optimism of the 80s and found a counterculture in seeing their angst reflected in mainstream hits.

>>130627921
from the 20s, when radio broadcasting began, all the way to the 80s there's this sense of tension in music as if shit is about to hit the fan at any minute, and that was kind of lost in the post-Cold War era.

>>130628333
>The youth found a counterculture in seeing their angst reflected in mainstream hits.

If sadness, alienation, and thrift-store flannel can be packaged and sold at Walmart, then the rebellion is defanged from the start. The youth thought they won the cultural race by pushing R.E.M. and Nirvana to number one, but capitalism simply swallowed their angst, turned it into a lucrative product line, and cleared the stage for the hyper-commercially engineered "pure aesthetics" era that followed in the 2000s.

I saw a shirt at Wal-Mart the other day that said, "Brain Rot"

>>130628484
As I said, 9/11 was the last kind of universally unifying political event and the effects of that were only a few short years.

did i also mention black music degenerated into rap in the 90s?

>>130628518
the lockdows? those didn't really result in any good music though.

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These ChatGPT answers don't really connect with the cultural discourse of the 1990s. There's a lot of lost media like random interviews, fanzines, student album reviews, grassroots stuff, that AI doesn't task itself with absorbing and interpreting. AI answers questions with a 2026 sensibility where conversation is so consolidated that we're desperate for hard answers to things that could be discussed and turned over slowly via other channels without the same urgency. What sticks out about the 1990s is a hyperawareness of the fad cycle, selling out, self-promotion, overexposure, authenticity, all of it. Very blunt questions would get thrown at musicians about these things and they'd have to respond sincerely because people paid attention. Nowadays, there's really such a restricted media ecosystem where you see less critical questions, which oddly makes the moment these questions are asked seem so much more doomeristic. Then you get these AI hallucinations where OP is plugging in his "the iPod was behind the enshittifcation of the 2000s" theory, and it's like Yes yes and it was all so bad and now it's worse than ever! Like, it comes out as fucking gospel because of the media environment. Kurt Cobain could talk some shit about a band, then talk shit about himself, complain about this, then say maybe I'm complaining too much, and laugh it off. You don't see as much willingness to speak out and maybe say the wrong thing. When normal discussions happen, all this pent up doomer shit comes out. The real truth is the Boomers and older Gen X have a stronger grasp on what the situation is than they're admitting. There's just a fucking wall of silence up and we're all out here guessing what they're thinking on the other side.

>>130628811
I'm not OP, but I brought up the ascent of Apple and ipod as an illustration of how superficial aesthetics took over culture.

I actually lived through those times and I noticed these changes but didn't understand them fully until years later, because back then it seemed like it wasn't so significant. But from that it grew into something bigger and bigger until it engulfed the whole way culture was presented and consumed. Through gadgets and app stores and brands and the way the consumer projected a certain look.

Idk why you feel so threatened to ascribe all these things we lived in those times to ChatGPT.

Back in those times I had a shitty Pentium and my edge technology was a TV tuner board I used to rip off music from TV channels. I bet you never even heard of that haha

New music isn't just about new genres.It's also about new variation of melody
2020s melodies are much more complex in all genres

>>130630157
No, they aren't. The influence hip hop has been a disaster for other genres.
Take Taylor's Shake It Off, for example. It barely varies from the verse to the chorus. Most that same beat through the whole thing. Shake, shake, shake...
It didn't start off that way though. Gaga had 80s pop sense with her melodies.

>>130630157
There are melodies in 2020s? That's news to me.
Any examples?

>>130626594
I hate this motherfucker like you wouldn't believe

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It was sampling that killed music. Sampling has made music more easily reproducible, and like all "art" in late-stage capitalism, has prioritized efficiency over artistry.

China, on the other hand, bans hip hop and teaches its children real music, namely classical. They don't give their kids MPCs and teach them to sample but teach them how to put beauty back into music.

>>130630282
And yet their music doesn't make any waves.
Last time I tried to listen to Chinese music, it was very boring.

>>130630282
>>130630355
You gotta have groove and melody. It doesn't have to be Bach. Just a catchy hummable tune is a good start. But the hip hop mindset doesn't even consider that.
I'm not one to say rap isn't music per se. There's artistry to it, but transferring it's mindset into the pop world has resulted in shit. You can't hum half of the pop songs out there.
Not just to pick on rap, but you can't hum a lot of stuff. Metal isn't hummable like it was in the 80s or something. It's ooga booga Grug shit itself. Just for white kids.

>>130630355
>>130630392
you're responding to a schizo that spams this exact post in multiple threads and thinks rap is a CIA psyop

shit nobaldi gives a fucky wucky wuctapus also this nigga is an epstein client and i don't know how you simpsons avi somethingawful reject guys read shit like capitalist realism and not realize you're sitting in a ideological play pen dragging your asses around across the carpet. your shit was a solved system back in 1972 you're just hoping against hope and being delusional on purpose atp

>>130628811
>The real truth is the Boomers and older Gen X have a stronger grasp on what the situation is than they're admitting. There's just a fucking wall of silence up and we're all out here guessing what they're thinking on the other side.
Xennial here, not sure what you're talking about. All music started to suck since 2000, but that's no secret. Maybe the crashing of the twin towers was the black magic spell that enforced it?

>>130630245
Boy do I have good news for you!

>>130628811
This reads like esl chat gpt schizobabble nonsense

>>130626594
>Imagine taking a record track from 2026 and playing it for a listener in 1996. Would they be shocked?
Hyperpop, modern breakcore and dubstep would be completely alien to someone in 1996

>>130631222
Someone from 1996 would probably just think dubstep was shitty house music

>>130630187
>Take Taylor's Shake It Off, for example. It barely varies from the verse to the chorus.
That's more a limitation of her shit singing, you can only do so much with that.

>>130631222
>Hyperpop, modern breakcore and dubstep would be completely alien to someone in 1996
that would be like watching Idiocracy, which was only released in 2006

>>130626628
Always funny to see commies complain about a lack of originality when their answer to literally everything they ever complain about is "give me money."

>tldr. I don't understand [thing] made by youth: let's just ignore that I'm old af and just state with many words that [thing] was better when I was young!!!

Fisher was a sentimental commie pseud faggot and k-punk sucked - but none of it sucks more than the subhumans who repeat his repetitions of Spectres of Marx as if they were the final word on anything.

Some of his concepts were nice, but ultimately the way he went out was predictable and lame. Sympathy for those who give up, but no deification for quitting.

>>130637940
I doubt Derrida was thinking about mass culture and cultural stagnation when he used the term to refer to Marxism as an ahistorical spectre.

Fisher and others just gave the word a different connotation using it in another context.
But I guess there are lots of pseuds who borrow precious terms just to create this connection with what is perceived as super-sophisticated philosophical theorising.

So you hear lots of niggers and feminists running their mouths about deconstructing this and that, as if they have any idea about metaphysics, Heidegger or ontology.

still not a single one of yall has proven OP wrong. post a link and show us where the new music is at

>>130636996
if you're a Millenial it was already too late and you didn't have good music in your childhood

Woah, it's like we're experiencing the decline of an empire in real time while the rest of the western world is going to shit alongside it. It's like culture, society, and art is dying or something. Imagine my shock.

>>130639463
It's the entire planet in a sense. It's not like there's new music coming out of Africa or Asia either. Although, I disagree fundamentally and I do think there is quite a bit of room for innovation.

>>130639233
Since 2014...PLENTY of good, absolutely unique music beyond all imagination has come out. Hyperpop, techno, rap have all had evolved rapidly with technology. Imagine ANY of these songs coming out before 2014.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z97qLNXeAMQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thXSSJo1MQE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcS3EWtYsrk&list=RDGcS3EWtYsrk&start_radio=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvG-W-aUXSI&list=RDZvG-W-aUXSI&start_radio=1

>>130639626
Thirdies don't innovate or create. Why bring them up?

>>130639626
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsCSKYJEp3M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVuEQxqL33Y

Please find artists who made music like this before 2014.

>>130639694
I guess afrobeat is just jazz. Japanese noise is just like...ambient music.

Furthermore, The Ramones just played music like The Ronettes. My Bloody Valentine is just rock music with more reverb. Michael Jackson didn't invent anything. The Velvet Underground is just blues riffs. The only invention in music comes from progress in technology in the head of a pedestrian fan, and now DAWs are so good at making sounds there wont be that spark of innovation that came with the invention of synths and drum machines.

>>130627921
When the leeve breaks fucked me up that was nasty. Still a great song though.

>>130639233
https://soundcloud.com/sewerslvt/ruined-snowy-day

https://youtu.be/6aF7bJsYs74

https://youtu.be/1HG5eII55JA

>>130627200
>Where da white womenz at?
scenes are killed in the cradle now because black and brown thugs show up and destroy places where Whites can feel free to create and take risks, there are no "safe spaces" for White kids anymore as darkie thugs demand entry to every space and only want to intimidate not participate

>>130626594
I would argue that the past must get destroyed and deconstructed and the process too that were the risk to the whole undertaking and endeavor owing to the cause that if something truly were deconstructed then something would get constructed owing to the cause that what get deconstructed was at least important enough to get deconstructed at the first place and that were part to that relationship to and not mention temporality or language now here and the instrument as algorithm and algorithm as instrument were things that were thought partly as algorthm and instrument and part what where at the real level to the idea getting deconstructed or constructed or reconstructed on the ideal real plane matched against some real number line and anyway and also that deconstruction was also one of these technologies like some large ‘dozer that can both construct and destroy that can occlude and also reveal trace part to that were the speculative ontology and the idea to the future and also both those ideas as deconstructed just as much as to look at how the ps2 rock band guitar hero algorithm functions as much as anything else to the basic that more algorithm could get constructed off of that or something like that

>>130644724
Alright also there were the argument that the risk also were that after destruction and deconstruction that harnessing that energy as to that deconstruction were part to what eatable rancier’s regime to taste and an aesthetic arche which according to dissonance to emancipation were some dialectic that was advancing through substance and through the harmonic series but also that the klang and the harmonic series were truly part to what all the dispute were about and part to life as some wild idea and establishing the aesthetic arche about the harmonic series were not meant to get done now here and whether that was done or not i cannot claim but i would just like to claim that after destruction and deconstruction that some arche which must also get deconstructed to move onward does often get put to place and establishes arche or something like that

>>130644779
*Enable

>>130638064
>I doubt Derrida was thinking about mass culture and cultural stagnation
Read that book and get back to me
>Fisher and others just gave the word a different connotation using it in another context.
That's the most generous reading. What he actually did was misread it because he was a pseud. Credit where it's due, he was timely - but ultimately even Derrida has a place in the canon and Fisher simply does not.
>So you hear lots of niggers and feminists running their mouths about deconstructing this and that, as if they have any idea about metaphysics, Heidegger or ontology.
True enough but they don't even understand the wagers of poststructuralism, and that's something they actually read (or used to) to some extent. Anything related to 20th century philosophy is out the window. Metaphysics isn't even in the conversation

the last "futurist" sound i saw emerge and went into was the laptop glitch noise of mego records, etc. "the aesthetic of digital failure". it didn't age very well, and where do you go from there to avoid mimicking the past anyway?

>>130645041
Some theory i keep observing thrown around the internet were the ps2 rock band guitar hero algorithm and part to that theory were the heat ghost twenty ten algorithm tulpa and part to theory were that kevin shields argument about the history of rock ‘n roll where the guitar were like some instrument to noise making or something like that

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I'm SO. SICK. of everything being in the 20-20,000Hz range
BORING

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>>130645041
All human culture is referential so I think people expecting some kind of millenarian originality are starting out from a false premise if they think a lack of something like that is a new or recent thing. The most recent music I can think of that feels genuinely novel and futuristic would have to be SOPHIE or PC Music more generally. Shadoes of 19th-century French decadentism and aestheticism crossed with what I can only call 'spiritually Dubai' 2010s neofuturism. That was around 10 years ago already now. Needless to say, it's pretty Marmite-y (you either love it or hate it, no inbetween).

>>130648880
>The most recent music I can think of that feels genuinely novel and futuristic would have to be SOPHIE
LOL

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>>130648880
I don't think I need to scroll down any further.

>>130645033
His book is about the spectre of communism, an expression from the manifest. Hence the hauntology/ontology play on words that Derrida used to talk about Marxism being this sort of transhistorical menace, lurking like a spectre.
Frankly it's typical Derrida mental wankery, not worth spending time on this "everything is text" nonsense.

>>130626594
The Wastelamd Essay, in a nutshell corporate-overconsolidation starting in the 90s. Same reason movies suck.

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>>130626628
>The Death of Cultural Safety Nets: Innovation requires risk, and risk requires a safety net. In the 20th century, British and American subcultures thrived because of social housing, art school grants, and unemployment benefits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoUmNiq-vcg&t=6m17s

>>130627589
>When "normies" bought iPods to ostentatiously wear them while jogging, music was transformed from a shared, communal subcultural experience into a private, lifestyle-branding exercise
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrrTv_BzAAQ

>>130651016
That was different.
It didn't happen in a decade when composing an aesthetic look was central to one's identity.

Sure every age had some fashion and tech fads but there's clearly something new about the smartphone revolution and the obssession with gadgets as a lifestyle

Arguing on this sort of flat analogy is such a brainlet take. Like those people who say that every generation musicmakers got inspired by previous works, so every decade works on the same dynamics, there's no difference between the 90s and the 50s.

Music used as a vehicle for nostalgia has been a thing for a while. The Beach Boys popped up in the '60s and felt like an attempt at continuing the '50s. Then Billy Joel came along and started plundering the '50s while Sha Na Na was a straight-up nostalgia act. I guess punk rock could be seen as a mutation of old styles rather than an outright recreation, but retro-styled rockabilly bands like the Blasters and the Stray Cats came up in the wake of the original punk movement. And then there's this thing called the Paisley Underground movement of California bands like the Bangles and the Dwarves recreating the sounds of '60s rock during the early-to-mid '80s at around the same Dukes of the Stratosphere and Thee Mighty Caesars in the UK and The Secrets in Canada are doing something kind of similar. And there's also Dexys Midnight Runners who brought back the sounds of British Northen Soul and had more than just a single hit in the UK. "Nostalgia as a Product" has been around since before the '90s, though I do realise the '90s accelated this phenomenon. Forrest Gump and That '70s Show are someof the clearest indicators of this acceleration.
A lot of what I talked about happening in the '80s wasn't exactly all that mainstream. The mainstream had plenty of '50s nostalgia, but a lot of the nostalgia expressed through music was filtered through the fake plastic production trends of the era. I guess it's like a far, far worse version of the "Robert Johnson riffs played through a Marshall stack" type of mutation someone mentioned earlier lol

>>130627871
>this nigga never heard of muddy waters
Wheres his heavy metal

>>130651579
>>130651555
Oh look, it's an attempted Dixieland jazz homage. As if they never ever did this stuff.

>>130651627
Don't forget Paul McCartney using the Beatles as a platform for reviving pre-WW2 styles of British music, as well. He was doing this later than your example, but still.

>>130631222
breakcore already existed in 1996 and "modern breakcore" is literally just DnB which has existed for longer

>>130652943
This neo-breakcore is much different, though.
Way more syncopated, more atmospheric and I'd say more creative.

Heck even compared to the one from the 00s.
Check this out

https://youtu.be/XCR80DthmPU

vs

https://soundcloud.com/subheroine/divine-reboot

The 2nd track is much richer musically. That rhythmical vocal part gives it something innovative. Whereas old-breakcore sounded very dry and 'deadpan'.

>>130626594
Did this commie retard ever ask himself why musical innovation only came from capitalist countries? If he cared so much about music why did he advocate for a system the stifles its creation?

>>130654156
Nigga have you even read Mark Fisher he never advocates for fucking Maoism. In fact he doesn't even advocate for anything, and his and Zizek's version of communist view USSR and countries like that as just other capitalist states but with a red face.

>>130654175
>it wasn't le real communism
Commies are a fucking joke.

>>130626724
You guys are cooked if you don't recognize AI here

>>130626628
>The Death of Cultural Safety Nets: Innovation requires risk, and risk requires a safety net. In the 20th century, British and American subcultures thrived because of social housing, art school grants, and unemployment benefits. Musicians had the material security to fail, experiment, and spend years developing radical subcultures (like the UK rave scene or post-punk).

Fisher and those in his scene (Reynolds et al) were always good at identifying trends in culture, but abysmal at pinpointing the cause. The above is particularly silly in the case of the UK as it's easier than ever to do doss around there and live like an aristocrat if you know what to say to get on PIP, mobility and in social housing (latter may require the correct skin colour). This is literally what's killing the country and has certainly not resulted in a revolution in music.

Indeed demographic trends caused by social housing in London means the people who made Britain's music are now unable to live near where scenes were created before, ceding what little music is created there to a thin layer of nepobaby junk like the Last Dinner Party and generic roadman shit.
Weirdly this has very little to do with "Capitalist Realism" and more to do with actually existing socialism.

>>130655435
>Fisher and those in his scene (Reynolds et al) were always good at identifying trends in culture, but abysmal at pinpointing the cause
that's funny 'cause that's exactly what you did here in this post. the real truth is Millenials are just faggoty perma-children who can't make anything good. that's all it is.

>>130655458
Dude we know have grown 20 something men larping as youtubers they were watching as children. We are living that life right now.

>>130655458
We made plenty of good things. Zoomers have made absolutely nothing, and continue to never do so. You're an absolute faggot, btw.

>>130657284
We have good artists but not good genres fuck off and kill yourself

>technological innovations led to a glut of new genres of music
>Process stops as the innovations coalesced into streamlining rather than allowing completely new methods

"Wow this is because of capitalism"-Mark Fisher


Complete Bullshit that could only come from someone dumb enough to be blinded by aesthetics

>>130627367
>1974-1996
Is that really that crazy of a jump?
All that matters is writing GOOD SONGS
it doesnt matter if the window dressing around the bones reminds us a little of the past. Was that a problem for the Ramones? Or the Misfits/Creedence Clearwater Revival/Soundgarden
Or a whole lot more hugely important bands that drew heavily from the past

there has been plenty of new music genres in the 2010s. Arguably in the 2020s too but I lack distance to judge

>>130657572
Vaporwave
>vaporwave is just sampling
That wasn't the question

>>130657603
I said plenty, not one, and I wasn't counting vaporwave

>>130641218
Good.

Arthur Danto was wrong about Painting & Mark Fischer is wrong about Music. Stop taking liberal arts fags so seriously. normies will always make stupid contrived bullshit because normies are primarily concerned with status & reproduction. The things that normies make are mere vehicles to acquire those things, and that will never change.

If you want culture to feel as though it is thriving, you need to fix or dismantle the institutions which encourage the production of this trite garbage so that the weirdos and freaks can make it through the gates again.

>>130657532
You really refuse to get it.
When the main shtick of the music is to sound like that thing from the 80s or 70s, then it's not just influenced by it. Its whole reason to exist is to deliver pastiche, simulation.
That was the whole thrust behind the Strokes. And I like their songs, but let's get real, they were selling this Stonesy revival done with some Modern Lovers and Television undertones, with a look like it was crafted from their parents' 70s closets

It wasn't just influence or a little reminding of the past, past simulation/revivalism was it

>>130657321
Listen to more music, scrub.

>>130658518
how was eg. Sheryl Crow's entire career being a love letter to 70s rock any different? people have always done this.

>>130626699
>>130626738
This is more of a symptom than a contributor to the issue, it can even be a vanguard in creatively bankrupt times like this

>>130626594
The other thing i would mention were the thing about what were the mind or what were nature and that artists were engaging on that topic when the causality to construct some art was engaged at

>>130648880
what you described must be cleansed with a flame thrower, but you inadvertedly pointed towards the real problem