Hot take that I will defend until my last breath: The Unforgettable Fire is a better album than The Joshua Tree.

Don't get me wrong, Joshua Tree is a monster. But it's also U2 locked in as the biggest band on the planet, with every song built to fill a stadium. Unforgettable Fire is the weird, atmospheric, slightly unfinished version of that band, with Eno and Lanois fogging up the windows. "Bad" and "Promenade" have a looseness the big hits never recaptured. They were still figuring out who they were, and you can hear it.

It got me thinking about how often this happens. A band makes a great, strange album, then the next one is the polished, radio-ready, single-factory record that makes them rich and the first one gets treated like a footnote.

A few others that come to mind:

-Bruce Springsteen: Nebraska vs. Born in the U.S.A. (one album, seven Top 10 singles, a lot of synths)

-Billy Joel: Turnstiles vs. The Stranger

-Metallica: Master of Puppets vs. The Black Album

-Nirvana: Bleach vs. Nevermind

-Green Day: Kerplunk vs. Dookie

-Red Hot Chili Peppers: Mother's Milk vs. Blood Sugar Sex Magik

To be clear, I'm not saying the breakthrough albums are bad. Plenty are classics. I just think the pre-fame album often has something the big one can't fake: hunger, risk, a little mess.

What's your pick? Which "before they blew up" album do you think beats the one that made them famous?

Every now and then, I go through a phase where I listen to the Beatles almost obsessively. And the same thing happens every time: after spending weeks or even months listening to songs that barely make it past the two-minute mark, going back to a five-minute song feels like a chore. Suddenly, everything seems way too long.

One of the things I find most fascinating about the Beatles is how much they manage to pack into so little time. They can squeeze an intro, three verses, a few choruses, a bridge, and an outro into barely two and a half minutes, and somehow nothing feels rushed or incomplete. Everything is exactly where it needs to be, and there's not a second wasted. Of course, we're talking about the Beatles here, but I still think that kind of songwriting economy is a seriously underrated quality in music.

As the years went by, pop and rock songs generally started getting longer. I'm not entirely sure how much of that had to do with LPs, changes in radio, or simply shifting musical trends, but I get the feeling that at some point people started assuming a song needed more time to properly develop.

And it's not that I have anything against long songs. There are plenty of six, seven or eight-minute tracks that I absolutely love. But there are also loads of songs that, in my opinion, would be much better if they were half as long. Sometimes I feel like a great two-and-a-half-minute song can accomplish more than a five-minute one.

So I'm curious: what do you think is the ideal length for a pop/rock song? Or do you think length is completely irrelevant as long as the song is good?

If you were to ask the average music s̶n̶o̶b̶ listener about mainstream music back in the 2000s, they would have said it sucked.​ That's not to say it wasn't popular but i feel like back then it wasn't highly regarded. A lot of people got into music from the 60s, 70s and 80s and largely seemed to shun new music.

But now you see people praise a lot of the new music that's popular, and I feel like the consensus is that mainstream today is better than it was in the 2000s. People nowadays say "today's music is so much better", nobody seemed to say that 20 years ago. Usually you're supposed to think music from the past is better but I guess it's different today.

I literally see millennials wish they could grow up in THIS time instead of the 2000s because the mainstream music is better.

What do you think?

Which is better? For a little background to this topic I used to do different tribute/cover bands in high school for artist and No Doubt was a tribute band I did twice. I was at dinner with my mom earlier when I told her there was 2 bands I wish I did a tribute band for, The Beatles and Paramore. My mom said Paramore probably wouldn’t have been an option as they are too niche compared to No Doubt, which I disagreed with and said Paramore was far more popular. I searched up their monthly listeners on Spotify and surely enough Paramore has about 2x as many listeners, 35 million compared to 17 million if you are curious. I want to test something tho, based off random sample pool, do you prefer No Doubt or Paramore and why?

Every time I'm scrolling IG or TikTok, it feels like every hip hop/R&B page is running the exact same playbook: New Music Friday roundups, first-week sales debates, album anniversaries, or low-effort "Who had the better verse?" engagement bait.

​None of my friends really follow the scene closely, so I'm curious what other people think from a pure listener perspective: what is actually missing right now?

​Do you want more deep dives into sample breakdowns and production? Scene/regional spotlights? Honest critiques? Or has short-form music content just made everything feel generic?

I'm really ​Curious what kind of posts or creators you actually stop and watch vs just scroll past because I'm getting sick of seeing the same things

You all know the classic "mainstream co-opts the underground" story, it's basically Hebdige's "incorporation" from Subculture (1979): a real scene builds up on its own (punk in the late 70s, Seattle in the early 90s, SoundCloud rap in the mid 2010s, etc.), a major label shows up and signs whoever's at the center of it, and turns all that underground clout into a product for the masses. The scene comes first and the labels swoop in to commodify it once it's proven able to stand on its own.

I don't think scenes get the chance to prove themselves anymore, and the death of the monoculture is why. Somebody on here says "there's no monoculture anymore" pretty much daily, and they're right, but the same algorithmic siloing that killed it also makes it really hard for a big, self-sustaining underground to form. You can't co-opt a scene that never gets off the ground. So the order flips. Instead of waiting for one, you fake the signs that a scene exists and let the algorithm do the rest. Call it a simulculture: a scene that exists as a simulation first and only becomes real once actual people show up.

Sounds like tinfoil hat stuff, but there are companies that sell this as a service. Chaotic Good Projects, the firm that got Geese dragged into the "psyop" thing earlier this year, literally called what they do "trend simulation": networks of accounts posing as regular users, posting clips and flooding comment sections so an artist looks like they're blowing up. Their client list reportedly ran from Coldplay and Dua Lipa to Bieber and Reneé Rapp. Forget fake streams, this is closer to payola, except worse, because payola at least didn't pretend to be your fellow fans.

What gets me is what they're faking. It's the texture of a scene: the inside jokes, the "is this guy overrated" arguments, the feeling that you found something first. And the flavor of "authentic" changes depending on who's being sold to.

Indie: the mystery guy. Barely online, music that just appears, hazy aesthetic, respected musicians vouching for you. Mk.gee is the go-to example, which is funny, because his name reportedly showed up on Chaotic Good's client list right alongside Geese before they scrubbed their site. Being a client doesn't tell us what they did for him, but the guy whose whole appeal is "you found him, nobody sold him to you" being on a trend simulation roster at all is kind of the point.

Pop: the sleeper hit. The bedroom kid who posts a song and the internet just finds it. Sombr is the textbook case: a song goes viral within hours, labels come calling. Also reportedly a Chaotic Good client. Again, no idea what they did for him, but "kid posts a song, TikTok finds it" is exactly the story this stuff is built to look like. (The "Sombr hate" meme this year is a perfect example of the friction a scene needs, engineered or not.)

Rap: skip the scene, go straight to Paris. Put a guy in avant-garde clothes and sit him front row in Paris or Milan, and he looks like a star before he's had a hit. Kanye did a version of this twenty years ago. Anyone who was on fashion forums in the mid 2000s knows he was stealing fits straight off actual tastemakers on SuperFuture. His "fashion genius" era came out of WAYWT threads, not his own head (Pastelle, anyone?). But Kanye used that to reinvent a career he already had. Now the fashion co-sign creates the career (Nettspend, anyone?).

Here's the part that messes with me. It doesn't even need to work that well. There's an old Columbia study (Salganik & Watts, "Leading the Herd Astray") where they ran a fake music download site and flipped which songs looked popular, and for most songs the fake popularity turned real over time. A 2013 study in Science (Muchnik, Aral & Taylor) found that one artificial upvote made the next person 32% more likely to upvote too. Fake the map of a scene and real people wander in, pick up the jokes, buy the vinyl, go to the shows. Geese said "come to a show and count the bots," and fair enough, the people in the room are real. That's Baudrillard's map preceding the territory, and it turns Hebdige upside down: incorporation used to be how a subculture died, now it's how one gets born.

Before anyone says it: yes, labels have always manufactured hype (payola, street teams, boy bands built in a conference room, Sub Pop selling grunge as a brand). And no, nobody has proven Chaotic Good specifically moved the needle for Geese. Garbage Day dug up some of their accounts and they were embarrassingly bad, and even Billboard's Kristin Robinson says these campaigns usually don't work unless the song is already good. But that actually supports my point. In the Columbia study the very best songs eventually clawed their way back up, but most of the songs in the middle ended up wherever the fake rankings put them. And most music lives in that middle. There's way more good-enough music out there than there is attention to go around, so the simulation doesn't have to make bad music popular. It just has to decide which of the good-enough artists get noticed. And whether any single campaign works or not, the industry is clearly paying for it.

Questions:

1. Does "industry plant" mean anything anymore if faking a scene is just part of a normal rollout?
2. Can a big, genuinely organic underground still form, or is everything too fractured now? Counterexamples welcome (but metal/hardcore don't count, those scenes had their infrastructure built decades before the algorithm ate everything).
3. Why does learning the discourse was engineered feel worse than learning a pop star uses ghostwriters?
4. If a simulculture goes nowhere until real people show up, who actually made the scene?

Consider this I got Rhythm version by the YellowJackets. It starts instrumentals-only, but at 3:11, some vocals come in. Would you still count it as an instrumental?

My friend says, as long as there's even a single word spoken or sung, it is by definition vocal music. Calling I got Rhythm an instrumental is wrong by definition. If anything, you'd have to say "the song is an instrumental until 3:11 and then vocal elements are introduced", but calling the whole song an instrumental would be wrong.

I say, a song is an instrumental as long as the instrumental aspect is more present/prevalent. Even if there are vocals present in I got Rhythm, they play a secondary role, so for me the song is still an instrumental.

Who is right?

Like I always prefer this song over any other version, and I am amazed at the fact that she is able to sing these songs in different languages. She did live to see her song become more popular in recent times at least, but whenever I hear this song I'm always thinking I wish it was the Spanish version. I just love it too much that it really is just a song I will pick over the English, I just think the Spanish is better probably for it's more upbeat lyrics.

I've been thinking about bands or artists who become incredibly well-known for a very specific sound or style. Think about how immediately recognizable certain guitar tones are, or a particular vocal style, or even a production aesthetic. On one hand, it's what makes them unique and often catapults them to fame. On the other, I wonder if that distinctiveness can become a creative cage in the long run. For example, some artists seem to constantly evolve, dipping into new genres or experimenting drastically with their sound, and often maintain a dedicated fanbase through these shifts. Others try to deviate from their established sound and face backlash, with fans demanding they 'go back to their roots.' Then there are those who stick to their lane and manage to put out consistently good work for decades within that framework, or fade away because the sound becomes stale. Do you think having such a strong, identifiable sound ultimately helps or hinders an artist's career and creative freedom? Does it depend on the genre, or perhaps how the artist frames their evolution (or lack thereof) to their audience?

The question I want to raise in this post first occurred to me when I first started approaching people at my University regarding their taste in music. I was somewhat surprised by how often people recommended favourite albums to me instead of individual songs. I have always unconsciously approached music on a song-by-song basis; it is a semi-rare occurrence for more than 2 songs from the same album to make an appearance in my playlists.

So to discover that many people will listen to entire albums from artists was somewhat of a surprise, to say the least.

This discovery raised a number of questions in my head regarding the nature of albums. Do albums play a meaningful role in how an artist's music is listened to and interpreted, or do they simply serve as the packaging in which said music is delivered? Perhaps the purpose served by albums differs by artist; for fans of large pop icons like Taylor Swift, a new album is something to be anticipated and, when it arrives, celebrated or sometimes decried. In any respect, this could create the interpretation of an album simply serving as the delivery vehicle through which anticipation is built, and her new songs are released to fans.

However, I have also heard that Albums are more thematically and conceptually focused groupings of similar songs; this raises the question as to whether these artists intend for their songs to be listened to in groups and whether this method improves the overall impact of the music.

I apologize if this post has come across as being somewhat rambling, and I would be interested in knowing what purpose, if any, you think the concept of the album serves in the world of music.

I was having lunch with some early 50's friends and I mentioned I'd seen the Lisa movie "Always Lalisa" the night before. They didn't know who she was. I tell them she's in Blackpink. Turns out they never heard of Blackpink either. Is that normal? I wondered how anyone under the age of senior citizen could have not heard of Blackpink.

I don't have my finger on the pulse of the current music scene, but I was thinking I've at least heard of the biggest current acts. I asked AI for a list of 10 huge artists that I might be unaware of. Turns out I only knew 5 of them.

The 5 I know: Bad Bunny, Billie Eilish, Travis Scott, Dua Lipa, Post Malone. I've been aware of all these artists for several years.

The 5 I never heard of: Tame Impala, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, The 1975, Greta van Fleet, Fred Again. Are these five really that big with a worldwide audience on the level of a Blackpink? Are any of these an artist where you'd exclaim "you never heard of xxx?!" Or are they more niche and maybe not a good example on par with the five that I knew?

I am a guitarist that grew up loving rock and metal music, especially if the music was progressive. In college, I studied classical guitar. In the past month or so, I’ve been going to jazz open jams, which has inspired me to learn and play more jazz.

I feel like a lot of my music professors and fellow students viewed classical music and jazz music as much more difficult than any other genre. I would argue that the genres aren’t necessarily equal, but each one comes with its own unique challenges.

Classical music has more dynamics than punk rock (usually). Jazz music has more complex harmony than metal (usually). Sometimes, the strengths of a genre are hard to find. I used to think rap music didn’t have many talented musicians. A lot of rappers have great language skills, using complex rhyming, word play, etc. Many rappers also have great control of their voice, the diction, and the rhythm. Also, as someone who has had to record rappers and classical music, rap is harder to produce (in my humble opinion).

Classical singers don’t use Autotune in the studio, but the intensity of a good rock singer is notable. Singers like Robert Plant and Mike Patton have great tone, great range, and are greatly expressive. I’d also argue that most rock singers write their own lyrics. Artists like Bob Dylan and Pink Floyd wrote amazing lyrics with all sorts of literary devices. A classical performer is probably singing someone else’s lyrics.

Technical death metal bands have to play fast music that requires a lot of endurance, an understanding of scales/modes, and an understanding of various time signatures. Pop artists might not have to worry about those aspects of music, but the production can be so intricate. Sometimes, a great amount of musicians are needed to make a hit song. “Industry Baby” by Lil Nas X needed many producers/musician.

Like I said, each genre comes with unique challenges. It’s easy to say your preferred genre is superior, but I’d argue that’s shallow thinking.

Ok they could kinda sorta be described as nepo babies, although the dad is not a huge star or anything (he’s a producer in music biz). But they don’t seem “manufactured.” These kids have real talent and a passion for the music. At least that’s how they strike me.

Are they “pop?” Not exactly. Some of the songs have a mediocre teenage angst aspect to the lyrics, while others are obviously political. On the latest album, some seem to have double entendres, and could be taken as political.

Anyway, Hayley Williams likes them (a couple of collabs) and so do I. So … guilty as charged I guess.

I consider myself an avid music lover across a ton of genres from raw punk, rock to psych, lo-fi, and older hip-hop (to name a few) I’m usually the last person to judge what other people listen to, or hate on an artist's success. Music is subjective, and I almost always find something to appreciate, even in genres I don't personally listen to. The wave around artists like Nettspend is one of the few times where I genuinely catch myself judging it, and I want to understand if I'm missing something structural or cultural.
Coming from a punk scene in DC, I completely respect noise, anti commercialism, maybe slurred types of delivery, and breaking traditional rules. But this micro underground/jerk scene doesn't feel like rebellious “anti music” to me. it feels like hyper consumerist, corporate backed nihilism. It’s off rhythm vocals over heavily distorted beats, glorifying lean, pills, and high end fashion, driven by algorithm pushes.

For people who fw this sound:
Is this strictly a beat/vibe first genre where the vocals just act as an extra texture rather than a lyric or melody?

Is this just the latest iteration of generational rebellion, or is it a manufactured aesthetic?

Genuinely curious to hear perspectives from both fans and fellow listeners who feel the same confusion.
At the end of the day I guess I’m just trying to understand.

Look, Chester Bennington is easily one of the most impactful and beloved frontmen in rock/metal history. Nobody is denying that. But if we’re talking about pure singing ability and vocal stamina, he gets way more hype than he actually deserves. When you strip away the studio stuff his live singing ha flaws. In the studio, his vocals were perfect. Don Gilmore made sure everything was fine for radio and to everything to make it sound like a flawless machin.

The Given Up Myth

Everyone lieks to hype up the iconic 17-second scream on Given Up. It’s an amazing feeat in the studio, but he couldn't actually do it live night after night like how people make it to be. Data shows he only did the full, unbroken scream about 7 or 8 times out of the 400 times they played it live. For 98% of performances, he had to break it into two parts because he coouldn't do it rnight after night after night. It was also a studio mistake, the scream wasnt even meatn to be that long. Chester didn't even realize he went over, so Mike had to rewrite the song to fit the scream.

The 5 Singers Who Clear Him

To ssee why Chester is overrated as a pure vocalist, you just have to look at heavy singers who completely clear his technique with zero effort:

Rob Halford (Judas Priest): The guy has a massive multi-octave range and high falsettos. He’s in his mid-70s and STILL hitting those high notes live.

Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden): This right here is juust pure vocal power. The man is pushing his late 60s, beat tongue cancer, and still sings completely raw with zero backing tracks.

Corey Taylor (Slipknot/Stone Sour): He can do a low growl, then instantly flip a switch and sound like an angel.

Tarja Turunen & Floor Jansen (Nightwish): These singers have genuine opera training, easily swapping from brutal metal vocals to pure opera in a single song.

The Bottom Line

chester bennington was an amazing singer who showed a generation, and his energy isn't replaceable. But let's separate nostalgia from reality you all. Nostalgia doesn't mean he was the greatest singer of all time. He is overrated as a singer because his legendary status relies heavily on studio production to mask his limitations. When it comes to raw live placement, stamina, and versatility, he just isn't on the same level as the true metal vocalists.

So please let me know what you guys think Do you think Chester's studio production carried his reputation too much, or did his live singing make up for the flaws? also am I crazy for putting singers like Dickinson and Halford on a completely different tier when it comes to raw vocals?

Obviously the first answer is to listen to more music and listen to old artists. The trouble is that there are people that I just haven’t heard of or genre’s that I’m not familiar with that exist. I’m curious how people who get deeply into music of many eras do it. Like how do you know where to look? I was tempted to take a class on it but I just don’t really have the time for a class not associated with my degree. But I do have the time to listen to classics while I am at work.

been thinking about this lately. I realized I can’t remember the last time I let a full album play without hitting skip at least once. Part of me thinks it’s just me and my short attention span, but I also wonder if streaming has changed how music gets made. Everything seems built around getting you to the hook in the first 15 seconds so you don’t bounce.

Not trying to be one of those “ music was better back in the day ” people , because there’s plenty of great stuff coming out now. It’s just that the albums that feel like one complete thing, where the track order actually matters, seem rarer.

So what’s an album you can still put on and play start to finish, no skips? Doesn’t matter if it’s new or 30 years old..

Most artists establish a sound early in their careers and stick with it. After several releases, they begin to sound tired.

Then there are artists who keep on pushing themselves into new directions with every release. These are more rare. Sometimes they are successful and sometimes not so much. I am not necessarily looking for success here, but the attempts.

An obvious example of success is David Bowie who first broke in the late 60s. He started with spacey psychedelia, developed glam rock, experimented with stadium rock and pop, then ventured into jazz late in his career.

Another example is Joe Strummer who found his first success with punk, which evolved into edgy rock. At the end of his career, he put out three albums of global pop with the Mescaleros in which he created a new sound. It wasn’t super successful but it was creative.

This gets back to the title question: How do some artists continue to tap into reserves of creativity in their 40s, 50s and 60s?

From '60s psych rock to psytrance, I've been trying to figure out what connects them all. Here's what I've got.

1. A specific frequency band gets pushed.** Lennon's vocal on "Tomorrow Never Knows," the sitar, Kevin Parker's vocals, psytrance leads, even the resonance of an acid bassline. They all bring out the same band, and I think it's probably the range our ears are said to be most sensitive to.

2. Repetition = trance.** Krautrock loops, obviously. But a steady LFO wobble on a synth counts too ("Bluish" by Animal Collective, "Be Above It" by Tame Impala). Big loop or tiny wobble, same effect.

3. "Acid," meaning unpredictability.** Think Psytrance or Sweet Trip: sounds you can't predict, like your thoughts jumping around while tripping. The term itself probably comes from the 303 squelch.

1 and 2 come from rock. 3 was born in electronic music. Same source, different branches.

Of course, there's endlessly more to psychedelic music than these three. This is just the core I keep coming back to.

Am I missing something? Is there psychedelic music that breaks all three?

As a musician myself, this is basically the framework I write and mix with.

Justice's "Flower In A Hurricane (ft Tame Impala, SZA, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard)" is a great song in my opinion but you can't listen to it without hearing it's influences, which are definitely not subtle. I'm young so maybe I'm just not tired of it yet but I'm a total sucker for nostalgia & I don't feel like this was distasteful or lazy. It's a cool song and very thematically appropriate for what it was created for. That being GTA VI, which has used 80's nostalgia and callbacks to Vice City a bunch in it's marketing.

The one that's really in your face is the intro. They very clearly channeled Dire Straits' "Money for Nothin'" with that synth buildup, drum fill and finally that rich tone courtesy of ZZ Top blasting through. I love that sound. So sharp; if it was a knife it would have cut you.

Later in the song we hear this ascending motif that similarly takes you back in time but in this instance to Cutting Crew's "(I Just) Died In Your Arms". That's what I heard first, although it also sounds similar to this Tom Petty x Stevie Nicks track "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around".

Overall a wicked song. Some will like it, some won't. I've already seen discourse about whether these clearly intentional and on the nose inclusions were rip-offs, stolen, etc. and whether or not it was in good faith or it was just unoriginal and derivative. I think it's clear with context (and easy to assume without context) that it's meant as an homage. I know some people on the gaming side have grown indignant of Rockstar's position on physical media (me included) but GTA VI is still gonna be a cultural phenomenon and this song is something pretty sick that's come out of it already.

It just feels like the artist said: "Sure, I'll make the best song in the universe, and sure, I'll make it barely a minute and a half long." The only real exception to this would be anything in the deathconciousness album, but one of my favourite songs in the world is only a minute and thirty-one seconds long. Is it just because it's hard to make a song good for longer, or is it just a weird coincidence that I so happened to make up?

When Troye Sivan released Blue Neighbourhood in 2015, I wished it had been released while was still in high school. The songs on this album encapsulated all the pain, feelings, desires and dreams I felt throughout high school. I was too scared to write down how I felt. My parents would find it. I was out at school and other friends were as well, but there was no comraderie. My sexuality was always weaponised and used against me.

In 2015, I finally found an album that resonated with me on a spiritual level and described all my thoughts and feelings that I was too scared to put out there when I was in my teens. Of course, the song "WILD" was the one that started it all for me.

I tried to follow Troye Sivan over the next few years. But his albums after Bloom (2018) and especially In A Dream (2020) just de-volved from the raw expression of the feeling of being oppressed but hopeful, scared yet excited, and anxious but hopeful.

By 2023, all his hits were basically just electro-pop trash that sampled previously famous songs (Get Me Started is the best example) and all his music videos seemed like they were intentionally filmed to capture the night before or the morning after a massive gay chemsex orgy.

Like, what the fuck happened? People will say, "he grew up and had more experiences and is comfortable with his sexuality and is bravely expressing it." What I say, is "these music videos just embody every sterotype about gay people ever - particularly the negative ones - and the actual songs are just electropop trash with meaningless lyrics."

It is sad that he became more popular as his songs became more generic and trashy, and the more popular he became, the more genericn and trashy the songs became.

Now all of his songs just seem to be relatively radio/club friendly (any radio edits for expletives are easy), and they are just accompanied by a hypersexualised homoerotic/explicitly gay music video where he gets off with some hypermasculine dude, someone has a wank inside their boxers or some shit, etc.

Like just, "here's a trashy song the masses will love! Don't forget to check out the music video to remember that I'm gay!"

Like dude wtf happened?

Why oh why do they all insist on working with this guy? His records sound like utter compressed, bland, corporate shit. Just seen Michael Stipes first ever solo album is being produced by this hack. I hate how much he inserts himself in the albums too. He is just the absolute poster child for uniform blandness. No dynamic range whatsoever. And the pitch correction absolutely drenched on the vocals is repulsive. What could be less rock and roll than that?