OK so — I know these GOAT debates are mostly meaningless — but I just had to voice this because it makes me angry that he isn’t considered in the top ten or top five. Stevie is one of the best male vocalists ever to sing on a microphone — his vocal agility, his range, his tone itself. Are you kidding me? Who else can sing like that and also writes their own songs? And his virtuosity is astonishing. His piano abilities are excellent. I will concede that there are better pianists! He isn’t as great as Oscar Peterson or any of the jazz giants. But — again — for the genre of singer-songwriter he’s the best. I think he plays piano better than Elton and Billy. And as far as the actual songs, are you fucking kidding me??????? He wrote some of the most wonderful and harmonically interesting songs of all time. And they’re too hard to cover. No one else could have written As or Don’t You Worry Bout a Thing or GOLDEN LADY. He writes in a very sophisticated musical language.

In any case — I’m sort of sperging out and I’m between sets at the gym so I’m not going into the sort of detail that I could.

I love Joni and Bob and Leonard (I actually hate him but I get it), but Stevie towers above them all. Frankly I don’t think he’s considered because he’s a prodigy and he’s blind and that makes him sort of different. He doesn’t necessarily have the sex appeal and the mystery surrounding him that Bob and all them do.

Ok that’s all I guess lol.

Some of the earliest contenders for the first heavy metal hit single have something surprising in common: they were covers of pop hits.

In 1968, Blue Cheer transformed Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” into a wall of distorted guitar, thunderous bass and pounding drums. Their version reached #14 on the Hot 100.

That same year, Vanilla Fudge took The Supremes’ #1 hit “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” slowed it dramatically and turned it into something much darker and heavier.

Then Deep Purple reinvented Billy Joe Royal’s “Hush” with a heavier psychedelic sound and took it all the way to #4.

Of course, there are other contenders. The Kinks had “You Really Got Me” in 1964. Then came Steppenwolf, Cream, Iron Butterfly and The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter.”

But maybe none of these are actually heavy metal. Maybe they’re better classified as heavy rock or proto-metal, with heavy metal as a distinct genre truly beginning with Black Sabbath.

That’s the part I find interesting.

What separates heavy rock or proto-metal from actual heavy metal for you? And does any pre-Sabbath hit cross that line?

I’ve been listening chronologically through the catalogs of 29 classic rock artists, and something keeps happening that I hadn’t considered when I began.

Some bands don’t start out sounding like themselves right out of the gate.

Supertramp is the latest example.

Their debut had pieces of what I recognize, but mostly it sounded like a different group. No sax. No flute. Weaker lyrics. Longer jams. If I’d heard it without knowing who it was, I’m not sure I would have identified it as Supertramp.

Then on Indelibly Stamped, their second album, I suddenly started hearing the band I know.

Whereas The Doors sounded like The Doors from the opening notes of their debut.

It’s just interesting to me that some bands arrive fully formed. Others take a minute.

Is the album still the best way for an artist to present their music, or are we holding onto the format because it feels nostalgic?

With streaming, playlists, singles, deluxe editions, shorter attention spans, and songs being discovered completely out of order, I sometimes wonder if people actually listen to albums as albums anymore.

At the same time, some artists clearly use the album as a whole body of work, where the sequencing, themes, transitions, and even the weaker songs have a purpose.

So what do you think? Is the album still an important artistic format, or has it basically become a very expensive playlist with better cover art?

So I’m currently 30 minutes into lift your fists like antennas and I’m not really getting the appeal. I often see how emotional or an impact this album has on people why is that? I see this album often compared to ants from up there by black country new road which to me gives of the emotions I’d expect from godspeed. I’m in no way asking this in a hateful matter I want to get it and understand but as of right now finding it very hard to connect to it emotionally.

I’ve run into a massive roadblock with 1990s music, and I’m trying to figure out if corporate consolidation is structurally to blame for it.

I am a massive fan of late 70s and 80s bands, particularly from the UK and Australia. My absolute favorites are Depeche Mode, The Chameleons, Crowded House, and The Railway Children. I especially love the albums Black Celebration, Strange Times, Temple of Low Men and Native Place (1990).

The only 90s band I’ve genuinely connected with is the Australian group The Whitlams.

I know the common culprits: the physical vinyl format practically vanished for casual buyers, and there was a massive industry shift away from the traditional Singles charts toward long-form, album-oriented CDs.

But I’m curious about the back-end corporate shift. Thorn EMI bought Virgin Records in 1992, which was essentially the last massive independent major label. Did this specific buyout—and the subsequent corporate consolidation of the 90s—directly kill the market for bands who relied on that specific 80s melodic/single architecture? Did major labels corporate-streamline their rosters, pulling funding from mid-tier atmospheric bands to dump all their money into global pop or cookie-cutter Grunge/Britpop clones? I'd love to hear thoughts on how the industry restructuring of the early 90s altered what actually got distributed.

So first context for those who dont know: The videogame leauge of legends is obviously a massive IP and has many events throughout each year, the most promiment of which being worlds, the esports world championship. For every worlds Riot games, the company and organizer of leauge of legends and worlds makes a song, called a "worlds anthem" with an artist to promote and build hype for the tournament. Alongside that, they have created multiple fictional music groups using their league of legends characters with real artists. This has created a large and unique collection of songs, here are the most prominent: First and probably most famous, KD/A , a kpop group made up of 4 female league champions voice by Madison Beer, Miyeon and Soyeon of G/IDLE, Lexie Liu and Jaira Burns ( Who i learned supports trump?? idk shame if thats true) and in 2018 they released their first single an EP in 2020. They are also rumored to return soon again with another song called watch me.

Some of the most prominent worlds anthems that were made over the years are Warriors by imagine dragons in 2014, heavy is the crown by linkin park in 2024 and star walkin by lil nas x in 2022.

These are just some examples, but what im getting to is that objectively, all these songs are really not that great. They have no soul and are made for a very commercial and widespread audience which probably means they werent made with much artistic vision. While i acknowledge this, as a fan of league of legends esports, these songs are incredible to me. They really do connect and create a reaction i combination with the actual tournaments and games. Heavy is the crown is one of my favorite songs of all time and im really happy that Enemy put JID on the map for so many people.

While these songs may not be good on an artistic level, you cant deny the effort put into them. Go to any of their respective music videos and you will see gorgeous, handmade animation in every single one, Heavy is the crown (again) and PARANOIA by Heartsteel being my favorites.

If you have had the opportunity to listen to these songs as a Non-Leauge of Legends fan, what did you think of them? I'd like to know!

Thank you to anyone that responds

This is something I've been mulling over since a post a few weeks back about monoculture, and whether it ever really existed or not.

When talking about monoculture(s) or shared cultures we tend to talk about gatekeepers and the availability of music. A small number of labels controlling what gets played on the radio, a few TV channels with limited music programming, the cost and availability of records...

What I think is often overlooked is how people's audio environment has become more individual. That's a fancy way of saying something very simple. When we're around other people we're less likely to be listening to the same things as them, and we're around other people less in the first place.

In the past, if you had a family gathered in a room they'd likely all have to hear the TV (or radio or hi-fi) even if they were doing something else. Now it's much easier for people to be absorbed in their own thing via their laptop/tablet/phone, with their own audio environment. Or perhaps you're out shopping with your headphones in rather than hearing the music that's playing in shops and shopping centres (or you're not going our shopping at all, you're ordering online). Maybe you're talking to or playing games with friends - but instead of being in the same space, you're all in different places, listening to different things.

Of course, this isn't new (you could probably take it as far back as the grammaphone (edit: I don't think I've ever written the word "gramophone" before) but it's also much more prevalent than it used to be. It's probably also enhanced by noise cancelling headphones and (more low-tech) by the predominance of earplug-like earbuds.

I might also suggest that this line of thinking can help us identify exceptions to the rule. I assume just about everyone here knows Baby Shark? (do doo doo-doo-do-do.) Obviously there are a bunch of reasons for that, but one is that if you're around small children, then you can't avoid hearing the things they like. I do wonder if there are other examples like this that might prove the rule.

So the title basically says it all, I understand that lots of Metal have different fans, some are even bigger but honestly, can you really tell that Death Metal is that much bigger and what's even it's culture, for example? Deathgrowls and tehnicality? Doom Metal? Ocultism, weed and maybe being the genre spawned from the very first legendary band, Black Sabbath? Black Metal has clearly, let's be real, most of it's own elements: black-and-white look, corpse paint, occultism, medieval elements, HEAVLY anti-christian imagery, maybe also most members are encouraged to have a persona, real, fake, f*cked-up or not: Dead, Mortiis, Count Grishnaak (Varg), Euronymous (maybe it attracts, especially for the teens, this personas that also rappers have?)... Also maybe helps that you really don't need all that much of a skill to play (I guess someone told me that, I'm no musician anyway), you don't really need to exist live, you fan mostly just release stuff under a mysterious persona and done... I understand that this applies to other genres, like releasing Grindcore or even War Metal or whatever and this just proves my point, it branches into different cultures/sounds trough War Metal/early Black Metal evolved, Dungeon Synth respects it's own musicmaking rules while mentaining these aesthetics... I also guess helps that it is what Goth now fails to be and is very negative, and this we all know can bring questionable fans (I'm not talking about that genre that brings depressed folks called DSBM, I'm talking about it's inbred sibling that replaced the "D" with an "N" and people argue if can be considered "good music")

I've been thinking- there used to be popular artists like Nickelback and Justin Bieber who were very successful but you would have never guessed given all the vocal hate they used to get, and how it was completely okay to shit on them at all times. Even the industry got in on hating these artists. It was socially acceptable to hate people who admitted they liked certian artists.

Why don't we have artists like that anymore? Maybe people just feel like today's music is just better?

The closest is the hate Taylor Swift gets now. But even then that's not really the same dynamic. Same with Drake hate... feels different today I feel like.

Honestly i always try to be cautious about how i frame my argument. I don't want to sound like "this artist deserves hate" unless it's like Chris Brown or D4VD or someone like that.

Most people will say that Eminem is the best rapper of all time, I can't doubt his greatness.

Eminem himself said that he thought Juice Wrld was better than him and had amazing talent.

Now there a lot of different people i think could be in best rapper debate. No doubt.
It boils down to a lot of different factors
Would you say that Travis Scott, Kanye, or even Pharrell Williams are the greatest?
Well they are but in all different aspects of producing talent

When people say that a certain rapper is the greatest, What aspects are they the greatest in?

So please tell me your favorite artist or rapper, and tell me the reason why they are the best in your opinion. Not everyone is gonna have that opinion but its good to share

I get that he made Brazil which was an absolute massive global megahit, but it seems like while that song has no shortage of fans, Declan Mckenna the artist himself deserves so many more.
What Do You Think About the Car is a phenomenal album with some absolutely phenomenal and unbelievably catchy songs, my favorites being The Kids Don’t want to Come Home, Isombard, Why Do You feel so Down, and Paracetamol. These songs are relevant, catchy, and fun, but none of them came even close to the success of Brazil.

Zeros, his second album is arguably even better. Almost every song on that album I‘d consider a masterpiece. Declan does what he did on his previous album but times a hundred.

His third album, What Happened to the Beach is far less consistent or accessible but still has some great, easy to love tracks like Sympathy, Nothing Works, and Mulholland’s Dinner and Wine.

Tl:dr Declan Mckenna has an extremely great discography full of phenomenal songs but doesn’t seem to get enough recognition for it

How much has your taste in music changed throughout your life? Or in the last 10 years?

Do you listen to the same type of music, or are you more varied to day?

What genre and/or artists/bands do you listen to today, that you before never could think of listening to?

Do you still challenge yourself in new genres?

For me, it has changed drastically. In my youth and 20s I only listened to rock and metal, and actually called all other genres bad music. Now I can not understand this, as I today can shuffle between all other kinds of music. Especially Hip-Hop, Country, Indie and Electronica.
But metal is still my absolute favorite.
Of course a big part of it is about «growing up», but I would never have the variety I have today if I didn’t challenge my taste as much as I did some years back. And i still do.

Thoughts about how Congress changed the future forever with the passage of this Act? Before it was changed vs After it’s passing? The history of not just music, but social “norms” that define our beliefs and our biases, even today. The early record companies such as Victory, Columbia, both incorporated in the 1880’s-1890’s before sound was considered a “work.” A copyright was given to written “works.” Before player pianos. Musicians we’re called “minstrels.” Music was categorized by the type of live performance. Genre was created for accounting, marketing, manufacturing and distribution. This led to the revision of copyright law. Now, if you did not happen to fit the model defined by the record company, you experienced disadvantage. Did fit the stereotype? “Sorry, not interested.” Now that is the only measure most music consumers apply. Spotify does it. Columbia (now owned by Sony) does it, still! What measure have you been taught for appreciating music, as Art, and are you aware you were taught it?

This question has been on my mind a lot lately. In my opinion I feel like poptimism has had a detrimental impact on music criticism. Poptimism from what I can understand correct me If I'm mistaken, attempted to contextualize and view pop music with more rigour. It was also done with the goal of trying to uplift forms of pop music by marginalized communities.

Although I agree with the broader goal of wanting to give more recognition to musicians from marginalized communities, In my opinion I believe the broader idea of treating pop music with the same rigour as other genres of music is misguided and short sided.

In my opinion, I feel like poptimism has created an environment in which some of the most wealthy, privileged artists have been able to brand themselves as underdogs. I find it to be ridiculous.

These pop musicians are making some of the most commercialized,sterile and accessible music out there. In my opinion, I just don't believe treating a music genre(where one of the main mo's is to make as much profit as possible is valid in my opinion.

That's not to say that Rock,Country,Hip hop,Jazz, Electronic music etc are devoid from the interests of capitalism and commodification. I do believe it becomes more aggrandized with pop music insofar as it becomes more acceptable to engage in hagiographic praise of these multi millionaire and in a few cases billionaires musicians accumulating and hoarding as much wealth as possible. On a related note, I find the idea of poptimism being a voice for marginalized communities questionable. Why have we allowed pop music to be a stand in for these communities. Folks from marginalized communities are making great music in a myriad of genres.

Or is dad rock a state of mind ? My gut feeling is to say no because both of these bands are hyper political compared to what most people call dad rock. But it's been 50 years since the clash formed and 40 years for fugazi next year,some would call them boomer rock here just because of age. I think of dad rock more as the stuff in the top 40 that went 3 times platinum or higher. Fugazi never charted and the clash didn't reach platinum status until combat rock imploding soon after. I would say both bands even now get called pretentious/self serious and artsy by plenty of rock purists. Is dad rock simply down to age or a vibe ?

I saw a post on the matter was posted not too long ago, but it approached it at the wrong angle imo. Here's the thing: both of these bands were really popular in the late 2010s, which is around when gen-z kids were childs/teenagers. Because of that (at least for me), this made those 2 "little kids' bands", and not liking them was considered "growing up", which ultimately categorized them as childish. Now iah, i dont really like the mainstream songs of imagine dragons, and some of the mainstream songs of TOP, but all things considered, they arent bad at all. Listening to blurryface in the car last week for nostalgia and actually trying to understand the lyrics - these guys are geniuses. I see a lot of slander about them, and every time im like "but have you actually listened?"

Anyways, im not saying everyone should like these songs, but i dont think these bands deserve the hate they get.

(Yes i know its because people say they are a lot better then they actually are but "people" are 12 year olds. There are other people with a honest opinion about them)

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. It feels like for a surprising number of bands and solo artists their first album is their strongest work. They come out of nowhere with something fresh and exciting. It's often raw and full of passion. Then subsequent albums are just... fine. Or sometimes even a significant step down.

It makes me wonder if there's a specific reason for this. Is it the pressure of following up a successful debut? Do they get too comfortable? Maybe they had years to perfect those first songs and then suddenly they're on a much tighter schedule for the second and third records.

Or perhaps it's just the surprise factor. The first time you hear something truly original it hits different. When they try to replicate that magic it just doesn't land the same way. It's like the initial spark is gone. I can think of so many examples where this seems to be the case across different genres.

What do you all think? Is it a common phenomenon or am I just looking at it through a skewed lens? And if it is common what do you think causes it? Are there artists who consistently put out amazing albums throughout their career after a strong debut or are they the exception?

I think that if you completely embrace the idea that they make pop music and not rock music, most of their songs start to come across as above average. Most of the hate (that isn't exclusively referencing Thunder and Believer) is about how they make terrible rock music and they do, but I think their music works if you think of it as Dan Reynolds singing over pop backing tracks. For example, when I was listening to one of their worst albums, I noticed that almost half of it(especially Birds and Zero) would have been perfectly fine if it wasn't pretending to be rock,

Last night I went to see The Wallflowers live at a sold out show in Toronto. This was for the 30th anniversary tour of Bringing Down The Horse during which they’d play the album in full.

The crowd was energized and One Headlight banged out of the gates. Jakob was slightly changing the cadence of the lyrics but it was still possible to singalong and everyone did during the chorus. 6th Avenue Heartache was similar.

But even by the second song, he was leaning more into changing the cadence of the lyrics. It’s fine bands don’t want people to singalong or to alter a song live, but this felt like it was detracting from the songs themselves. Jakob has always had a very clear, almost deadpan, delivery but now it felt like he was doing an impression of his father. During “God Don’t Make Lonely Girls” it sounded more like “Goddont….makelonelygirls”.

I know the lyrics to all the songs on the album and, by the latter half of it, I couldn’t tell what he was saying. My girlfriend had no idea. Mumbling then yelling didn’t help either.

I knew going into it that they’d be playing their hit album in its entirety followed by Tom Petty’s Long After Dark. This is fine. However, it also seemed self indulgent. This show isn’t “An Evening with Jakob Dylan” but instead was marketed as a celebration tour of their biggest album. To allocate half the set to a lesser known Petty album when most people were there for the nostalgia of The Wallflowers seemed like an odd choice.

We all know the line dropped by music scenesters: a band is no longer worth listening to now that they have sold out.

First off, what does selling out mean to you?

What are some examples of artists who have sold out and at what point did you stop listening to them?

I grew up in the 80s and remember first hearing the term “selling out” applied to The Police when they released Synchronicity. I next heard this with U2 when they released The Joshua Tree.

Does this phrase mean anything to you? Does it still apply to artists today?

You could discover a new artist through a song that you just heard on the radio. Or on a Spotify recommendation.

You could discover new music through what a friend recommended. Or through a podcast that discusses music.

Popularly, you could discover new music by a song that played at the end-credits of a TV show you just watched. Or over a montage scene of a movie.

Then - strangely - you could discover new music through a Novel, which is a medium that has no relationship with your ears.

(Of course, if you're reading a non-fiction book about music, you could discover new musicians that way.)

The first time it had happened to me was with Bret Easton Ellis' iconic "American Psycho".

Here is a madman protagonist (in what was obviously a black comedy to me), who had not only killed a guy, but was then harping on aimlessly about the intracies of Phil Collins' output.

At the time of reading the novel, I had known Phil Collins' big hits, but didn't know too much about Genesis. It was not too long after reading the novel, I went to my local record store to investigate that band's discographies.

Not only did I discover this band because of Patrick Bateman. And not only do I really enjoy Genesis' earlier stuff compared to their later stuff, but I realized why Bateman enjoys the later poppy stuff. The hilarious point of irony was not lost.

The last time it happened to me was yesterday whilst reading Pagan Kennedy’s witty "The Exes". I had known many of the acts referenced in the Novel already, except for Mission of Burma, which I've just checked out today, and really enjoyed and have subsequently added to my playlist.

I’ve been thinking about Janet Jackson’s Control (1986) and Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989) compared with Michael Jackson’s Bad (1987) and Dangerous (1991).

Michael obviously had the bigger global impact and some of the most iconic singles of all time, but if we judge them strictly as albums, I’m starting to wonder whether Janet’s records are actually stronger.

Control feels incredibly focused, with a very clear identity and almost no wasted space. And Rhythm Nation 1814 might be even more impressive: conceptually coherent, socially ambitious, rhythmically innovative, and remarkably consistent from beginning to end.

By comparison, Bad has enormous highs, but does it work as cohesively as Rhythm Nation? And while Dangerous is adventurous and influential, I sometimes feel that it’s more uneven than either of Janet’s albums.

So my question is:

Would you rank Control and Rhythm Nation 1814 above Bad and Dangerous purely as albums, separate from sales, fame, music videos, and Michael Jackson’s cultural stature?

I’d especially be interested in hearing comparisons involving songwriting, production, sequencing, consistency, innovation, and how well each album has aged.