Dude, I ain't even on your lawn! This is the sidewalk....
Declaring melody dead is a little premature. Or a little late; how would his criticism not apply to, say, this? Or, say, this? These pieces are all about the hook, repetitive, hypnotic. Hell, think of most drum musicâwhere it all started....
Melody may be out of fashion, but if that bothers you you're just listening to the wrong music. It's hardly dead, it's just not on the boom boxes at the beach...at the moment. Sooner or later someone will rediscover it and it will be the summer's big hit, the hottest trend.
I had seen that video a year or two ago; I guess that YouTuber was more interested in making a provocative click-bait title than actually proving his assertion - it worked: over 2 million views. Still, it's interesting stuff and he makes good points (while even pointing out that disregarding melody is nothing new in music), but declaring melody "dead" is more than premature - it's sentimental hyperbole, done for effect. At any time (like right now for example), the majority of the Top 100 songs on Billboard, iTunes, or wherever, are going to be songs which have some sort of clear melody. Sure, many of them are cliched melodic hooks or just really rudimentary, pentatonic-scale melodies, but they are melodies.
Melody may be out of fashion, but if that bothers you you're just listening to the wrong music.It's hardly dead, it's just not on the boom boxes at the beach...at the moment. Sooner or later someone will rediscover it and it will be the summer's big hit, the hottest trend.
Interesting and well done video. Thanks for sharing SirD.
A long time ago, my then girlfriend from Arizona and I were backpacking the Drakensberg mountains in the Kingdom of Lesotho. We were invited to a wedding ceremony by The Basutho people living in the hills a couple of days from the nearest road.
After a big keg or two of millet beer, along with some very fine locally grown Durban Poison, we were all dancing in the light of the kerosene lanterns in a dirt-floored thatched roof hut that was kept empty for the purpose.
Not much in the way of melody. I would not even call the shrill trills 'melodious' though the tone and sonic space they created were unique. The rhythm was great and the moment was sheer magic.
Dude, I ain't even on your lawn! This is the sidewalk.
Declaring melody dead is a little premature. Or a little late; how would his criticism not apply to, say, this?
Or, say, this?
These pieces are all about the hook, repetitive, hypnotic. Hell, think of most drum music—where it all started.
Melody may be out of fashion, but if that bothers you you're just listening to the wrong music. It's hardly dead, it's just not on the boom boxes at the beach...at the moment. Sooner or later someone will rediscover it and it will be the summer's big hit, the hottest trend.
I like his videos - they're very informative - he often makes good observations, and he's not afraid to be goofy and funny. Still, he knows that most of the rock or pop songs of the '60s, '70s, '80s, and beyond, used that same chord "vocabulary" he speaks of: usually some arrangement of the I, ii, IV, V, and vi chords. Even "classic" rockers like The Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, etc. very often worked in those conventions. Those conventions are centuries old - it's fundamental music theory (for Western music anyhow), but his point seems to be how he admires the artists who have deviated from them or used them as a starting point to explore other directions. Those deviations are usually more common in jazz than pop or rock genres. I know what he means though about much of the music these days - that so many artists are using the same chord sequences, at the same tempo, with the same sort of production techniques, etc... Part of it is that there is just a handful of writers and producers composing and producing most of the hit songs these days. For example: there is one composer who has written over 50 Top 40 hits since 1999 - for some of the biggest stars in the business. Rick Beato has made some recent videos where he checks out current Top Ten songs from Billboard, iTunes, etc. and breaks them down. He points out what he likes about some of them (especially ones that deviate from the formulaic approach) and ones he doesn't like he doesn't trash - he just says "That doesn't appeal to me" or something like that.
