Like the Conan Doyle estate, that squeezed every dollar possible from Sherlock Holmes, litigating well past the time when the character went into the public domain. They (in)famously tried to claim that any use of the character that portrayed him as “emotional” infringed on the Holmes of the later stories that had yet to be in the public domain.
Agree with everything stated. But I think another problem (and perhaps a chicken and egg scenario) is the lack of recording studios and the lack of finances for bands to record. The rise of EDM and solo artists has always seemed like a financial one to me — electronic music is cheaper to make than rock or jazz. One of the first things that happened post Napster was labels cut budgets for recording sessions. And much of the recording industry has been decimated; partly by this myth that home recording is just as good. Which is only the case if you write music like Billie Eilish (nothing wrong with that kind of music! But its easier to get one good vocal mic sound at home than do an actual band).
So part of the rise of old music now might just be that people want to hear music performed by a band rather than computer loops and samples — but there’s a huge gap of that in new music, at least in music that isn’t underground.
But music creation tools like Logic encourage the use of samples which definitely encourage another level of creativity for music creators. Not all good but some great...
There's nothing underground about the live music scene in Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia. Plenty of new music to hear performed or albums to buy, either on CD or some electronic format to download.
That's what I figure. If a hip hop song is a collage of other artists' work, plus the hip hop artists own work, can the latter survive without the former and be covered? Or is the song and the performance so intertwined that they can't be undone, which would prevent another performance?
I should note, I don't know hip hop at all, so maybe someone has taken, say, someone's lyrics and redone them with new beats, samples, etc.
A cover song feels anathema in hip-hop. There's an inherent pressure to create original work. Samples and homages are okay, reusing chorus sometimes, but doing a full cover song feels weird. So much of a hip-hop artists' aura is wrapped up in their "realness", so to cover someone else feels inauthentic.
I had always been wary of the idea of "hip-hop as a culture" but your post actually made some cultural aspects clear to me.
No good new music out there? My Bandcamp collection says otherwise. Folk, pop, experiments from Korea, ambient, drone/minimalism, rock, country (no, not that slick Nashville "product"). It's out there and I can hardly keep up!
I’m not convinced that Ted is in the “no good new music” camp. He spends hours every day scouring sources like Bandcamp etc for new music and often shares his research. He usually offers an optimistic take on the resurgence of grass roots music making. But at the broader level of popular culture he is not alone in thinking that the market for older music is bigger than that for new music and has been for a while.
Absolutely agreed, Mark! There are many sources of great music now and Bandcamp is a major force. I can’t keep up either, and it’s very inspiring. I know a lot of this topic is about live bands but I wrote a big article about my personal solution to moving forward as a composer in relation to some of the expressed issues and put out an album through this solution on Bandcamp. It might be something that interests you.
Yes, I’ve said this here in this space before but between my love of Jersey’s WFMU (non-commercial, fully independent) and my subscription to The Wire, I’ve got more new music than I can handle. It’s out there! If you say it’s not then you’re either lazy and just don’t care anymore.
After reading the essay that goes with your album (now in my wishlist), it’s clear that you’ve got big ears. It’s not often you see somebody namecheck Nancarrow, Zappa, and Cannibal Corpse all in the same space.
Thanks for reading! It's a lot. And I'm glad you appreciate the wide range of influence. There are common threads among all the composers/bands mentioned, as I see it. I hope you enjoy the album, especially now that you have context.
See, this conversation very much reminds me of what goes on at the WFMU comments board. Lots of music lovers who’ve been seeking out and ingesting this stuff for years.
Where do you find this music??? And what about live venues?? What state do you live in. I can tell you here in South Florida all I see is cover bands and tribute bands. Only 1 spot I know that has the occasional band playing original music. Would love to know of some more spots.
As I said above, I find a lot of new music by listening to WFMU (wfmu.org). There are a lot of varied shows there, from drive-time pop/rock, to jazz, to really out there stuff. My two favorite shows are This Is The Modern World, and Strength Through Failure. All of this stuff is available on their archives. Decades of it!
And between that and the stuff I read about in The Wire, I end up purchasing a lot of it via Bandcamp.
I’m up here two thirds of the way up the Maine coast. We have a pretty decent local scene with original music. There are some clubs we used to go to years ago back when we were living in New Hampshire and yeah, a lot of them seem to feature these tribute acts. That said, not long before Christmas we did take a trip down there to see Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings. Certainly worth the drive.
I sometimes wonder about youth culture and live music. When I was a kid, so many people aspired to be in a band….and dances featured live music. That has all sort of disappeared, not a good thing.
Well, the way you find that is to watch the bands from that 1 spot, find their socials, and see who they play with + where else they're playing. Even if you don't love the first few bands you find, they're the keys to finding ones that you might love.
I LOOOOVE finding music on YouTube. It's one of the few places that always brings back great results when I search for random music terms like "Kazakh Folk Music." Once you feed that algorithm up, it can really serve.
It occurs to me that contemporary musicians also share a problem that SNL has: thanks to the easy availability of great old music and sketch clips, new material is constantly competing not with the music and sketches of the past, but the GREATEST HITS of the past, the non-hits of the past having been weeded out. How is a perfectly good, but not great song of today going to compete against something that's stood the test of generations for decades?
I have come to believe that the popularity of "old" music derives from the fact that much of the "new" music isn't very good. I'm a jazz guy but also an old guy who was present (and paying attention) at the birth of rock & roll. It was a great time to be a music-crazy teenager. I hear the pop and hip-hop of today and it sounds unexciting and/or angry. Fats Domino famously said, "Music is supposed to make people happy." I listen to a lot of contemporary music that makes me happy, but I surely enjoy my Ahmad Jamal or Dave Brubeck fixes from 1959. Those cats were captivating. I'm sorry I can't say the same about many of today's musical acts. Alas!
Hmm, music is supposed to do alot more than simply evoke one emotion. Thats been true forever, so fats is wrong. Who could be satisfied with "happy" all the time? Life is not that way, why should music be demoted to deluding us only? Plenty of room for the full range of emotions. Bc sometimes i want to feel those other emotions, and music can do that beautifully.
It pains me to say so, but you're right. On jazz, it might actually be that Europeans and Japanese musicians are more in touch with the spirit and truth of American music than Americans are. I know a lot of great reissues have come from Japanese labels.
I say this with very little data, but I did see these guys when I was in Stockholm:
You are definitely not listening to the same new music that I am. There's plenty of good new stuff out there. Just find someone young to show you where to get it.
I’ve asked management why so many tribute acts at my biggest local venue. Their answer is interesting. With original artists, the venue makes the booking, the fee is guaranteed and the venue carries the financial risk of low ticket sales. When the venue is booked by a tribute acts, the act books the venue and carries the risk.
There's also the fact that baby boomers ate their young. They're the last living generation with money. The generations that follow have less and less.
This post reminded me of the scenes in Blade Runner 2049 with the holograms of Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra in the ruins of a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas hotel.
Ted, I love your work. I have to say, though, that when I try something from your lists of "recent best of" music, I'm never very impressed.
Is it possible that "pop music" is exhausted, and nothing will ever approach the peaks? I know we all recoil from that notion, as we should. Yet: there it is.
you mean, like creativity is dead??? lol... you need to get out more! lots of great music happening today probably right in the place where you live too..
Go to everynoise.com and hit the scan button. It will sample through thousands of different genres and further clicks will take you to the bands that make up the genres, and then the band’s Spotify page. The amount of music we haven’t heard is endless and there are so many incredible new tracks to be found. I grew tired of the corporate radio playlists by the time the eighties hit and now the limiting algorithmic selections. I wondered about more current “new” music and whether it measured up to the tastes I developed as I aged. Ohh, it does. You just need to know where to look around the world to find it.
Dont take this wrong, but are you sure you arent just hooked on new music? Does any of this new music stand the test of time, any time?
Ill elaborate with myself as an example. My music is rap, which ive been listening to since the early 90s. More recently(past 5 or so years) i was diving into all that new rap, and there was alot of it. Every song sounded cooler than the last, it seemd like the greatest thing ever, this "neverending new bangers yo!" But when i took a break, went back to my cds for a year, when i went back on yt to listen to that still pretty new music, i found only maybe a quarter(and generally just specific artists) of it still seemed worth a listen. The newest music plugged right in to a sea of what was really mundane music, that had sounded so cool a year ago. I had to get off the "new music" needle before i could really hear it for what it is, without the freshness clouding the water, if you will.
Idk, but im pretty sure the never ending new awesomeness is an illusion, specifically designed to keep us right there, listening to more new music. And idk how rap compares to other genres in this respect(though my forays into new reggae were very much the same), but i suspect if its online content on any popular platform then its probably made and peddled with the same intent.
I think that only about a quarter of it and specific artists still sounding good is true of all music, all genres, any time. So you haven't proved that new music is any different to old music. How many 70's, 80's and 90's music has been lost to the mists of time, and yet we loved it when we first heard it. Context is everything.
Interesting take. It's not that I don't like older music as well. I like good music; it's just that it is often harder to find something unique that fits my tastes. I grew up being enamored with reggae music -- I used to DJ at a community radio station in the early '80s discovering and playing reggae tracks on Sunday nights.
And just over the past year, I started DJ'ing in the modern sense, which is why I am looking for new tracks to curate because I don't want to play the same thing over and over in the sets I create. I also want people to hear things they love that they will likely never or rarely hear anywhere else.
That's why I've become a fan of everynoise dot com. I can go on musical explorations in it and delve up intriguing music that will never be offered by an algorithm or a radio station.
Another factor are my experiences in China where I lived in the '90s and where I have been traveling to and from for more than 30 years now. I follow the Concrete Avalanche Substack from Jake Newby which shares new music from China every two weeks. That's where I've found the Chinese music that is refreshing and original, in my opinion. I also dig the Chinese music scene from the '90s.
I guess my larger point is that it takes a little work to find unique music, just like when we used to sort through the cutout bins when we were younger. Now we need to find a modern equivalent to find tracks that the usual algorithms are not going to play for us.
Well it was the way you said "theres so many incredible new tracks to be found".. i also felt that way, for a minute. But now i suspect id been hoodwinked. I mean if you like it, you like it. But imo this new music is a far cry from the peak of any genre. Its formulaic. Making a song that lasts 3 minutes is obviously a waste of their time, bc once youve heard the first minute, youve heard it all, and time for the next one. And some of the artists are obviously capable of more and better, but the motivation to make great music is gone.
I might be taking this opportunity to rant a little lol, but im not meaning to lay that on you.. it just came up bc of what you said about all the great new music. Personally i dont see it, and going back to whats now classic made that obvious. I do try to keep an open mind, bc music is ever evolving, but rn its evolving into something that fits the online content world, not the music world.
Perhaps. Boring and mundane get thrown around also. I don’t know what kind of music you enjoy, but there are three bands I discovered in 2024. two from China and one from France, that I have had on repeat for months now. That passes muster for me.
Did you click on all 6000 of them? It's simply a map/scattergraph of Spotify from late 2023. Is it trying to describe the genres or simply trying to categorize the music? I'm sure there's some subjectivity involved.
music is subjective in nature.. what one person might like, another person might not... but there is definitely a huge amount of great music happening in 2025, and one would have to be a hermit or mole to avoid hearing it..
It's our sick and twisted culture. Music and movies are dead. Mostly repeats/ do-overs from the past. Degenerate, dark, and depressing in my opinion. Until western civilization gets their head out of their butts I don't expect anything new, innovative, and positive.
Agreed -- I've listened to many of his recommendations and still haven't found anything beyond "meh". Certainly some interesting ideas here and there but I haven't found any new band that can even fill an entire album of music with repeat listenability.
Example: Ted recently recommended the Australian band "Midlife". Funky and spacy, which appeals to me, but anybody my age (Gen X) will immediately hear similarities to Avalon-era Roxy Music, Pink Floyd, and 80s pop-funk. Definitely better than average but nothing ground-breaking.
My rule of thumb: new music is only good to the extent that it imitates older music.
Thanks, I definitely feel "I've heard this before" when I listen to the newer stuff.
I almost feel bad that Leonid & Friends gives me so much joy -- after all, they're basically a tribute band. They actually have some original music, which doesn't do much for me.
The peaks of pop music were, to a large extent, drawing on and combining the ur-music, of blues, folk, country, funk, classical, and so on. That's been done now. The newer groups are, in turn, drawing on THAT, and that's why they sound derivative.
Great post, thanks Ted. I've devoted my Substack and journalism career (even the music history books) to spotlighting new music by artists not dead or dying. It's ALWAYS out there, even if the makers are struggling in this climate.
I’ve been noticing kids apparel in stores (physical stores with tangible objects) sporting The Rolling Stones logo. Other retailers are selling vintage looking shirts with variations on classic rock band logos, for adults. I’m not quite sure what to make of this, except that the vintage Nirvana shirt has been very popular with college students. Is this simply a reemerging fashion trend or is there a bigger and more direct connection to the music industry?
Merch seems to be a huge moneymaker. I’m not sure how I feel about NIN Doc Martens or Pretty Hate Machine t-shirts sold at Forever 21. “God money, I’d do anything for you…”
I was quite chuffed last week when 84-year-old Ringo Starr released a NEW album of ALL-NEW county songs! That's quite a project for an octogenarian, even if he is a Beatle! (Of course, Paul's silver-era output is utterly gobsmacking.)
Thank you for an interesting post. I'm no expert on popular music and yes, everyone should develop their own taste, but I will say this flatly. When I was young (yes, a long time ago), there was music from singers such as Jackie Wilson. If you listen to his 'Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher and Higher', you feel good. Even his sad songs, Lonely Teardrops' were uplifting. Same for Chuck Berry and as far forward as Neil Diamond, Elton John, and Billy Joel. Now?!! Spare me the grunge and don't come near me with that stuff called rap. in summary, I consider music to be an art form and in my view, art of any kind is supposed to nurture our souls. If the new creators of music come up with some of that, I'll be happy to listen.
Maybe Western pop music simply had its heyday in, say, the 60s to 90s? So can we expect new Beatles to emerge from each new generation in a quasi-natural way? Even though I can understand such often unconscious expectations very well - especially since I belong to the generation of musicians who consciously experienced the 90s in their youth. New pop music had a much greater cultural influence on young people back then than it does today.
I was hanging out at a recording session with Ray Barretto's band. If Ray knew he wasn't going to use the take, out it went. No outtakes. He only saved the one take that would be used for the record.
Often we save a couple takes or even more, because later we can make edits using different parts of them. For instance, the sax solo was better in take 1 but the trombone solo was better in take 2, and the intro was the best in take 3. Things like that.
Maybe in many places around the world ,but the greater percentage of Ah-Mare-Kins don't have a clue of what a Hellscape is like (Except maybe the survivors of the last few huge fires
Re "How greedy are the heirs and estates of dead superstars? We will soon find out."
I've worked with the heirs and estates of authors. The answer is: super fkg greedy, especially the farther from the author an heir is.
I always say that you only understand the true nature of a person when there is something of value on the table.
That’s why socialism always seems so attractive but always fails: free stuff!!!
You’re dumb as dirt.
Like the Conan Doyle estate, that squeezed every dollar possible from Sherlock Holmes, litigating well past the time when the character went into the public domain. They (in)famously tried to claim that any use of the character that portrayed him as “emotional” infringed on the Holmes of the later stories that had yet to be in the public domain.
Agree with everything stated. But I think another problem (and perhaps a chicken and egg scenario) is the lack of recording studios and the lack of finances for bands to record. The rise of EDM and solo artists has always seemed like a financial one to me — electronic music is cheaper to make than rock or jazz. One of the first things that happened post Napster was labels cut budgets for recording sessions. And much of the recording industry has been decimated; partly by this myth that home recording is just as good. Which is only the case if you write music like Billie Eilish (nothing wrong with that kind of music! But its easier to get one good vocal mic sound at home than do an actual band).
So part of the rise of old music now might just be that people want to hear music performed by a band rather than computer loops and samples — but there’s a huge gap of that in new music, at least in music that isn’t underground.
But music creation tools like Logic encourage the use of samples which definitely encourage another level of creativity for music creators. Not all good but some great...
There's nothing underground about the live music scene in Castlemaine, Victoria, Australia. Plenty of new music to hear performed or albums to buy, either on CD or some electronic format to download.
This makes me wonder: are rap songs and EDM covered by others? Sampled probably, but covered and re-envisioned?
No, with rap and EDM it's the other way around. Just look up some YouTube reactions to Steely Dan's "Kid Charlemagne" by rap and hip hop artists.
That's what I figure. If a hip hop song is a collage of other artists' work, plus the hip hop artists own work, can the latter survive without the former and be covered? Or is the song and the performance so intertwined that they can't be undone, which would prevent another performance?
I should note, I don't know hip hop at all, so maybe someone has taken, say, someone's lyrics and redone them with new beats, samples, etc.
A cover song feels anathema in hip-hop. There's an inherent pressure to create original work. Samples and homages are okay, reusing chorus sometimes, but doing a full cover song feels weird. So much of a hip-hop artists' aura is wrapped up in their "realness", so to cover someone else feels inauthentic.
I had always been wary of the idea of "hip-hop as a culture" but your post actually made some cultural aspects clear to me.
I've been thinking about it more...
EDM songs get remixed all the time, but that's not quite the same as a cover.
Rap songs get covered with things like midi recreations or piano covers, but usually without the vocals.
My favorite EDM cover is these Harvard kids the covering Darude's "Sandstorm" using plastic pipes (Boomwhackers):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCNNNv7AAYk
No good new music out there? My Bandcamp collection says otherwise. Folk, pop, experiments from Korea, ambient, drone/minimalism, rock, country (no, not that slick Nashville "product"). It's out there and I can hardly keep up!
I’m not convinced that Ted is in the “no good new music” camp. He spends hours every day scouring sources like Bandcamp etc for new music and often shares his research. He usually offers an optimistic take on the resurgence of grass roots music making. But at the broader level of popular culture he is not alone in thinking that the market for older music is bigger than that for new music and has been for a while.
Absolutely agreed, Mark! There are many sources of great music now and Bandcamp is a major force. I can’t keep up either, and it’s very inspiring. I know a lot of this topic is about live bands but I wrote a big article about my personal solution to moving forward as a composer in relation to some of the expressed issues and put out an album through this solution on Bandcamp. It might be something that interests you.
https://open.substack.com/pub/lonewick/p/existence-is-futile-album-out-now?r=1ldz1t&utm_medium=ios
Yes, I’ve said this here in this space before but between my love of Jersey’s WFMU (non-commercial, fully independent) and my subscription to The Wire, I’ve got more new music than I can handle. It’s out there! If you say it’s not then you’re either lazy and just don’t care anymore.
Yep, true.
After reading the essay that goes with your album (now in my wishlist), it’s clear that you’ve got big ears. It’s not often you see somebody namecheck Nancarrow, Zappa, and Cannibal Corpse all in the same space.
Thanks for reading! It's a lot. And I'm glad you appreciate the wide range of influence. There are common threads among all the composers/bands mentioned, as I see it. I hope you enjoy the album, especially now that you have context.
See, this conversation very much reminds me of what goes on at the WFMU comments board. Lots of music lovers who’ve been seeking out and ingesting this stuff for years.
Where do you find this music??? And what about live venues?? What state do you live in. I can tell you here in South Florida all I see is cover bands and tribute bands. Only 1 spot I know that has the occasional band playing original music. Would love to know of some more spots.
As I said above, I find a lot of new music by listening to WFMU (wfmu.org). There are a lot of varied shows there, from drive-time pop/rock, to jazz, to really out there stuff. My two favorite shows are This Is The Modern World, and Strength Through Failure. All of this stuff is available on their archives. Decades of it!
And between that and the stuff I read about in The Wire, I end up purchasing a lot of it via Bandcamp.
I’m up here two thirds of the way up the Maine coast. We have a pretty decent local scene with original music. There are some clubs we used to go to years ago back when we were living in New Hampshire and yeah, a lot of them seem to feature these tribute acts. That said, not long before Christmas we did take a trip down there to see Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings. Certainly worth the drive.
I sometimes wonder about youth culture and live music. When I was a kid, so many people aspired to be in a band….and dances featured live music. That has all sort of disappeared, not a good thing.
Ty, I found the bandcamp app. Will try wfmu also.
Bandcamp is incredible. The way you can explore very nuanced genres through tags and search is my favorite. Enjoy it!
Well, the way you find that is to watch the bands from that 1 spot, find their socials, and see who they play with + where else they're playing. Even if you don't love the first few bands you find, they're the keys to finding ones that you might love.
I LOOOOVE finding music on YouTube. It's one of the few places that always brings back great results when I search for random music terms like "Kazakh Folk Music." Once you feed that algorithm up, it can really serve.
It occurs to me that contemporary musicians also share a problem that SNL has: thanks to the easy availability of great old music and sketch clips, new material is constantly competing not with the music and sketches of the past, but the GREATEST HITS of the past, the non-hits of the past having been weeded out. How is a perfectly good, but not great song of today going to compete against something that's stood the test of generations for decades?
Really great point.
So true.
The artists try harder.
I have come to believe that the popularity of "old" music derives from the fact that much of the "new" music isn't very good. I'm a jazz guy but also an old guy who was present (and paying attention) at the birth of rock & roll. It was a great time to be a music-crazy teenager. I hear the pop and hip-hop of today and it sounds unexciting and/or angry. Fats Domino famously said, "Music is supposed to make people happy." I listen to a lot of contemporary music that makes me happy, but I surely enjoy my Ahmad Jamal or Dave Brubeck fixes from 1959. Those cats were captivating. I'm sorry I can't say the same about many of today's musical acts. Alas!
Hmm, music is supposed to do alot more than simply evoke one emotion. Thats been true forever, so fats is wrong. Who could be satisfied with "happy" all the time? Life is not that way, why should music be demoted to deluding us only? Plenty of room for the full range of emotions. Bc sometimes i want to feel those other emotions, and music can do that beautifully.
It pains me to say so, but you're right. On jazz, it might actually be that Europeans and Japanese musicians are more in touch with the spirit and truth of American music than Americans are. I know a lot of great reissues have come from Japanese labels.
I say this with very little data, but I did see these guys when I was in Stockholm:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trio_T%C3%B6yke%C3%A4t
and damn, they were good.
Lastly: this isn't jazz, but I know The Ventures had a huge following in Japan for years; in fact, I think they sold more records than The Beatles.
That may be a result of your not paying attention to those making rock n roll; of which there is plenty that's very good indeed.
It's not all AutoTune pop and death metal out here, man.
You are definitely not listening to the same new music that I am. There's plenty of good new stuff out there. Just find someone young to show you where to get it.
I’ve asked management why so many tribute acts at my biggest local venue. Their answer is interesting. With original artists, the venue makes the booking, the fee is guaranteed and the venue carries the financial risk of low ticket sales. When the venue is booked by a tribute acts, the act books the venue and carries the risk.
There's also the fact that baby boomers ate their young. They're the last living generation with money. The generations that follow have less and less.
I'm on the tail end of that boom & one of them basically. I have said that for Many Many decades ... "boomers ate their young"
This explains a lot.
This post reminded me of the scenes in Blade Runner 2049 with the holograms of Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra in the ruins of a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas hotel.
I was just going to say that. That scene came to my mind.
That was one of the classic real life imitating Science fiction moments. Loved that film. I know not everyone did.
Ted, I love your work. I have to say, though, that when I try something from your lists of "recent best of" music, I'm never very impressed.
Is it possible that "pop music" is exhausted, and nothing will ever approach the peaks? I know we all recoil from that notion, as we should. Yet: there it is.
you mean, like creativity is dead??? lol... you need to get out more! lots of great music happening today probably right in the place where you live too..
I don't see any content there, just an attitude. "Lots of great music" is an aspiration, not a statement of fact.
Go to everynoise.com and hit the scan button. It will sample through thousands of different genres and further clicks will take you to the bands that make up the genres, and then the band’s Spotify page. The amount of music we haven’t heard is endless and there are so many incredible new tracks to be found. I grew tired of the corporate radio playlists by the time the eighties hit and now the limiting algorithmic selections. I wondered about more current “new” music and whether it measured up to the tastes I developed as I aged. Ohh, it does. You just need to know where to look around the world to find it.
Dont take this wrong, but are you sure you arent just hooked on new music? Does any of this new music stand the test of time, any time?
Ill elaborate with myself as an example. My music is rap, which ive been listening to since the early 90s. More recently(past 5 or so years) i was diving into all that new rap, and there was alot of it. Every song sounded cooler than the last, it seemd like the greatest thing ever, this "neverending new bangers yo!" But when i took a break, went back to my cds for a year, when i went back on yt to listen to that still pretty new music, i found only maybe a quarter(and generally just specific artists) of it still seemed worth a listen. The newest music plugged right in to a sea of what was really mundane music, that had sounded so cool a year ago. I had to get off the "new music" needle before i could really hear it for what it is, without the freshness clouding the water, if you will.
Idk, but im pretty sure the never ending new awesomeness is an illusion, specifically designed to keep us right there, listening to more new music. And idk how rap compares to other genres in this respect(though my forays into new reggae were very much the same), but i suspect if its online content on any popular platform then its probably made and peddled with the same intent.
I think that only about a quarter of it and specific artists still sounding good is true of all music, all genres, any time. So you haven't proved that new music is any different to old music. How many 70's, 80's and 90's music has been lost to the mists of time, and yet we loved it when we first heard it. Context is everything.
Interesting take. It's not that I don't like older music as well. I like good music; it's just that it is often harder to find something unique that fits my tastes. I grew up being enamored with reggae music -- I used to DJ at a community radio station in the early '80s discovering and playing reggae tracks on Sunday nights.
And just over the past year, I started DJ'ing in the modern sense, which is why I am looking for new tracks to curate because I don't want to play the same thing over and over in the sets I create. I also want people to hear things they love that they will likely never or rarely hear anywhere else.
That's why I've become a fan of everynoise dot com. I can go on musical explorations in it and delve up intriguing music that will never be offered by an algorithm or a radio station.
Another factor are my experiences in China where I lived in the '90s and where I have been traveling to and from for more than 30 years now. I follow the Concrete Avalanche Substack from Jake Newby which shares new music from China every two weeks. That's where I've found the Chinese music that is refreshing and original, in my opinion. I also dig the Chinese music scene from the '90s.
I guess my larger point is that it takes a little work to find unique music, just like when we used to sort through the cutout bins when we were younger. Now we need to find a modern equivalent to find tracks that the usual algorithms are not going to play for us.
Well it was the way you said "theres so many incredible new tracks to be found".. i also felt that way, for a minute. But now i suspect id been hoodwinked. I mean if you like it, you like it. But imo this new music is a far cry from the peak of any genre. Its formulaic. Making a song that lasts 3 minutes is obviously a waste of their time, bc once youve heard the first minute, youve heard it all, and time for the next one. And some of the artists are obviously capable of more and better, but the motivation to make great music is gone.
I might be taking this opportunity to rant a little lol, but im not meaning to lay that on you.. it just came up bc of what you said about all the great new music. Personally i dont see it, and going back to whats now classic made that obvious. I do try to keep an open mind, bc music is ever evolving, but rn its evolving into something that fits the online content world, not the music world.
I will, thanks.
I think, though, that adjectives like "great" and "incredible" are thrown around a little loosely.
Perhaps. Boring and mundane get thrown around also. I don’t know what kind of music you enjoy, but there are three bands I discovered in 2024. two from China and one from France, that I have had on repeat for months now. That passes muster for me.
OK. If I promise not to comment, one way or the other, will you tell me what they are?
Yes, but that has been the case for some time
While I agree with your comment, that sites genre descriptions are way off.
Every one i clicked on was way off
Did you click on all 6000 of them? It's simply a map/scattergraph of Spotify from late 2023. Is it trying to describe the genres or simply trying to categorize the music? I'm sure there's some subjectivity involved.
music is subjective in nature.. what one person might like, another person might not... but there is definitely a huge amount of great music happening in 2025, and one would have to be a hermit or mole to avoid hearing it..
Disagree.
So true. I couldn't agree more. Especially the bit about great music happening right where you live.
It's our sick and twisted culture. Music and movies are dead. Mostly repeats/ do-overs from the past. Degenerate, dark, and depressing in my opinion. Until western civilization gets their head out of their butts I don't expect anything new, innovative, and positive.
Agreed -- I've listened to many of his recommendations and still haven't found anything beyond "meh". Certainly some interesting ideas here and there but I haven't found any new band that can even fill an entire album of music with repeat listenability.
Example: Ted recently recommended the Australian band "Midlife". Funky and spacy, which appeals to me, but anybody my age (Gen X) will immediately hear similarities to Avalon-era Roxy Music, Pink Floyd, and 80s pop-funk. Definitely better than average but nothing ground-breaking.
My rule of thumb: new music is only good to the extent that it imitates older music.
Thanks, I definitely feel "I've heard this before" when I listen to the newer stuff.
I almost feel bad that Leonid & Friends gives me so much joy -- after all, they're basically a tribute band. They actually have some original music, which doesn't do much for me.
The peaks of pop music were, to a large extent, drawing on and combining the ur-music, of blues, folk, country, funk, classical, and so on. That's been done now. The newer groups are, in turn, drawing on THAT, and that's why they sound derivative.
Great post, thanks Ted. I've devoted my Substack and journalism career (even the music history books) to spotlighting new music by artists not dead or dying. It's ALWAYS out there, even if the makers are struggling in this climate.
I’ve been noticing kids apparel in stores (physical stores with tangible objects) sporting The Rolling Stones logo. Other retailers are selling vintage looking shirts with variations on classic rock band logos, for adults. I’m not quite sure what to make of this, except that the vintage Nirvana shirt has been very popular with college students. Is this simply a reemerging fashion trend or is there a bigger and more direct connection to the music industry?
Merch seems to be a huge moneymaker. I’m not sure how I feel about NIN Doc Martens or Pretty Hate Machine t-shirts sold at Forever 21. “God money, I’d do anything for you…”
Nothing as ubiquitous as a Gen z'er in a Nirvana t-shirt. Very mimetic, I think.
I was quite chuffed last week when 84-year-old Ringo Starr released a NEW album of ALL-NEW county songs! That's quite a project for an octogenarian, even if he is a Beatle! (Of course, Paul's silver-era output is utterly gobsmacking.)
Thank you for an interesting post. I'm no expert on popular music and yes, everyone should develop their own taste, but I will say this flatly. When I was young (yes, a long time ago), there was music from singers such as Jackie Wilson. If you listen to his 'Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher and Higher', you feel good. Even his sad songs, Lonely Teardrops' were uplifting. Same for Chuck Berry and as far forward as Neil Diamond, Elton John, and Billy Joel. Now?!! Spare me the grunge and don't come near me with that stuff called rap. in summary, I consider music to be an art form and in my view, art of any kind is supposed to nurture our souls. If the new creators of music come up with some of that, I'll be happy to listen.
Rap definitely nutures the soul. Perhaps when the doors are closed too tightly only the thinnest substance can make it through.
Art is really only supposed to make you feel something. Don't be surprised if that feeling is not always a good one.
Maybe Western pop music simply had its heyday in, say, the 60s to 90s? So can we expect new Beatles to emerge from each new generation in a quasi-natural way? Even though I can understand such often unconscious expectations very well - especially since I belong to the generation of musicians who consciously experienced the 90s in their youth. New pop music had a much greater cultural influence on young people back then than it does today.
I was hanging out at a recording session with Ray Barretto's band. If Ray knew he wasn't going to use the take, out it went. No outtakes. He only saved the one take that would be used for the record.
Why would anyone do anything else ?
Often we save a couple takes or even more, because later we can make edits using different parts of them. For instance, the sax solo was better in take 1 but the trombone solo was better in take 2, and the intro was the best in take 3. Things like that.
We are living in a dystopian hellscape.
Maybe in many places around the world ,but the greater percentage of Ah-Mare-Kins don't have a clue of what a Hellscape is like (Except maybe the survivors of the last few huge fires
This is so dire it's funny. Dead artists performing in your own home! This will be a huge boon for funeral parlours.