Struggling to Get Into 2010s Pop

[veganvalentine]

As a fan of mostly 60s and 70s music, I've been listening to the most acclaimed songs of the 2010s in an attempt to broaden my horizons, and while I've enjoyed many of the songs, it's difficult for me to get into a lot of the pop, R&B, and hip hop songs, which comprise most of the list. Honestly, some songs like EMA's "California" and SOPHIE's "Bipp" I just can't appreciate whatsoever.

I have no issue watching recent acclaimed films from They Shoot Pictures, but like Henrik says, music is extremely subjective. Has anyone else had this problem with the 2010s list? (And to be clear, I'm not completely stuck in the past, there are many recent songs by modern artists I love, but they didn't make the list.)

[prosecutorgodot]

Are you saying you don't love the songs, or that you don't even like the songs? If you can enjoy the songs, even if ever so slightly, then no need to think about it more; you don't need to love everything.
If you actually don't like them, then... I would ask which of the songs do you like, and we in AMF could try recommending other stuff you might like.
Personally, just skimming through the top 100 songs or so, I seem to enjoy everything, even if only to a small degree. I really can't find anything that I'd be like, "Dang, that's a bad song, why the hell is that here?" I haven't heard all the songs, tho, but all the stuff I have heard is at least alright.
...Hmm okay one example, I guess I can say that "Goin' Up on a Tuesday" is a very simple-sounding song, but it's catchy enough that it's passable.
Don't take the charts too seriously is what I would say.

[Pierre]

Well, prosecutorgodot raised good points. I will take another approach: do you want or do you actually have a reason to get into current music?

My own personal opinion and, actually, experience about it is that you can acquire tastes. I come from a family whose tastes are rooted in what is now dubbed the "classic rock" era, with Simon & Garfunkel, CSN&Y, the Rolling Stones and the Doors playing all day long at home. However, I did seriously want to broaden my horizons, as you said, for various reasons which were important to me, but when I first started to go through hip-hop, modern r'n'b and, on the other end of the spectrum and timeframe, jazz, man did I suffer. These are music styles which are so totally alien to what I was exposed to as a child that I didn't know where to start and just couldn't understand. My only hope was that I immediately felt a connection to electronic music when I tried it even though I wasn't exposed to it in my childhood, and it probably helped me a lot. By the way, all aforementioned genres now I firmly love.

As I said, tastes can be acquired, but it can be very struggling, and the first thing you'll need to get is a motive to support you. After that, from my personal experience, I'll say that 1. hip-hop, r'n'b and modern pop are music genres which are more based in production (same for electronic music) and performance from the vocalist (that includes hip-hop, in that case I'm not talking about vocal acrobatics but the efficiency of the flow) than performance from musicians which was the rule back in the 60s-70s. That's a shift which started in the 80s and has carried on up to this day, and it needs to be acknowledged and accepted if you want to start exploring this music. 2. You won't get into it overnight or have a revelation (well it can happen if you're very lucky, but it only worked for me with electronic music) and you're in for a lot of exploration. I've found two ways of doing it, either going back to the roots of these music genres and discover their evolution in chronological order (this website actually features great recommendations for that) or doing intensive listening (much more painful, but it worked for me with jazz and post-punk/post-70s alternative rock). Either way, as I said, you need a reason for going through it, otherwise you'll just make yourself suffer.

Once again, this is all personal experience and probably shouldn't be taken as a general rule. In fact, I'm probably a crazy person

[PlasticRam]

It is kinda difficult to get into hip hop if you just don't like the genre. And it is true that right now it's very acclaimed. Kind of like if metal was really popular/acclaimed, I would have a hard time cos I just don't like metal. The answer definitely isn't to force yourself to like music you instinctively don't like. Maybe just expose yourself to it bit by bit and maybe there's an artist/song/album you discover and you do like within the genre.

[Rob]

I want to add to Pierre's great comment that another way to get into music you are not familiar and immediately smitten with is trying to get into it through your current tastes. Genres always get mixed every once in a while, so say you like rock and you can't get into hip-hop you might want to start with a hip-hop act that uses a lot of rock in its vocabulary (in this case Run-DMC would be the obvious pick). That way, you have a familiar ground to start on, while also being introduced to a new musical vocabulary. Every genre and every era in music gets referenced somewhere from every other area, so there is always something to find.

But like Pierre said: you don't HAVE to like music from the 2010's of course.

[Jirin]

I like hip hop but I hate the overly violent, vulgar or boastful lyrics of much of it so in a lot of cases my enjoyment of it depends on how easy or hard it is to ignore the content of the lyrics for their beat and flow.

For pop I think a lot of my trouble comes from my dislike of the emotionally sterilizing qualities of auto-tuning. But in another sense it's simple: I am not the audience this music is targeted at.

I tend to think pop music is made according to the focus groups of its time, and the music that transcends just the original trend and original audience is the music that survives and gets remembered.

[bonnielaurel]

One way is to listen to one song by a lot of different artists in different genres, then to the full album of those you like best. After a while there will be a number of albums you can call your recent favorites.

[veganvalentine]

Thanks for the thoughtful responses. To give some context, I'm 30, so my love of 70s music isn't based on my age. When I was in high school in the early 2000s, most contemporary music didn't grab my interest, but once I discovered Pink Floyd (far and away my favorite band) and other progressive and classic rock, I had found music that clicked with me, and I've largely stayed in that comfort zone since then. However, I've become somewhat bored with music over the last few years, which has motivated me to peruse AM's lists.

The tone of my original post was probably too negative. I like a lot of the songs on the list, and as prosecutorgodot pointed out, that should be good enough. I am at a disadvantage since critics don't like modern progressive rock (which is somewhat justified, considering some of the stagnation present in the genre), but strangely enough, it's actually a lot of hip hop and R&B songs on this list (such as Kanye West's "Runaway" and Frank Ocean's "Pyramids," both excellent songs) that exemplify the ambitious, experimental spirit of prog rock that I like so much.

Regarding jirin's comments, I also find some hip hop lyrics pretty crude and distasteful, but to be fair, there's plenty of that in the annals of classic rock (stuff like "Whole Lotta Love"). As for autotune, I hadn't really noticed it lately. I was just glad when overt autotuning died out around 2013 because it seemed like every song on the radio used it at the time.

Re bonnie: Yeah, that's what I've been doing. I've listened to most of the all-time top 1000 and now I'm making my way through all the 2010s songs. It seems pointless listening to entire albums of genres and artists I'm not interested in.

[Nassim]

I like SOPHIE and a lot of PC Music songs, but it's hardly the music with the broader appeal, and lots of people who love modern pop are not huge fans of it, so you shouldn't feel too perplexed about that. Same goes for EMA (though I'd recommend the Grey Ship which I think is a vastly better song).

Jumping from the 70s to the 2010s is a big leap though, do you have the same issue with 90s and 2000S pop ? I guess 90s pop was still quite rock influenced, but from the 2000s not so much.
You have a good point that some modern R&B artists like Frank Ocean, d'Angelo or Miguel share a lot of the prog rock spirit, I wonder if you have tried post rock too as you might enjoy bands like Sigur Ros, Mogwai or Tortoise. (prog rock being one of my least favorite genres though, it's hard to give good advice here).
Also, metal has been the genre that kept a lot of prog rock ambitions and style, but while progressive metal is a wide and active genre, only Mastodon features significantly on AM (and Tool if you include them in the genre).

[Jirin]

You also have to consider whether you are a vertical listener or a horizontal listener.

A vertical listener finds one thing they love and then wants to find lots of other stuff just like that thing. Like some people listen only to metal or need to find every Grateful Dead concert ever recorded.

A horizontal listener craves variety and wants to find their favorites of every time and every genre.

AM is directed more at horizontal listeners whereas something like RYM might be more appropriate for vertical listeners.

You sound like very much a horizontal listener, so you might be best off first starting at the top and going down, then when you find something you resonate with, do more directed searches in the middle part of the list based on your experience of what you liked and what you didn't.

It's hard for horizontal listeners to get good recommendations from vertical listeners because vertical listeners are focused on the little variations and nuances among their area of focus and are predisposed against the major genre departures that might appeal to horizontal listeners.

What I like to do is find people's lists which contain a lot of stuff I like then seek out only things in their top 5 or so I haven't heard.

[Pierre]

If you're a prog rock fan then it all depends on what you're actually looking for in this music, I guess. I think the genres that are usually closest to prog rock of its heyday are 60s psychedelic rock (the Canterbury scene most of all), jazz fusion and art rock, but you probably know that already.

After the 70s, it seems prog fans satiate themselves in different ways. Some turn to heavy metal (the epics of Metallica and other bands which came later like Dream Theater, Emperor and others do owe some to prog rock) and its subgenres like prog metal or math rock, while I've seen others looking more into post-punk, post-hardcore and the subsequent indie rock scene influenced by the two aforementioned genres.

As others have said, post-rock is also a potential "descendant" of prog rock that could appeal to you. Music styles that also have ties to post-rock are dream rock/dream pop (like Cocteau Twins) or shoegazing in the late 80s-early 90s.

I think electronic music is also a good candidate. Some of the acts in this style like 808 State, Underworld and Orbital were actually labeled "progressive house" back in their heyday. Ambient and new age music are also subgenres with obvious ties to prog rock.

Globally, I think that many of the most acclaimed acts in electronic music, hip-hop and modern r'n'b are the ones which try a lot of exploration in production tricks and stuff like that. Therefore, it's certainly also a good place to look for "adventurous" developments in music today. Although a good amount of hits of these genres which appear on the charts tend to often be formulaic, which is why sales aren't probably the best guide to follow when exploring this music.

A more "out there" recommendation could be video game music. For some reason, it seems that Japanese video game music composers mention very often prog acts from the 70s as influences on their work.

[bootsy]

One way is to listen to one song by a lot of different artists in different genres, then to the full album of those you like best. After a while there will be a number of albums you can call your recent favorites.

I actually do the opposite. I like to go straight to the album first. I guess because I'm more of an albums person than songs but I like to listen to a full body of work and go from there.

[veganvalentine]

Thanks for the recommendations. Speaking of modern prog, does anyone have recommendations along the lines of The Mars Volta's De-Loused in the Comatormium (which is deservingly highly ranked on AM)? That album is an excellent of 21st century prog that is clearly pushing the genre in new directions.

My original post was kind of a rant post as I was annoyed that I had listened to 20 straight acclaimed 2010s songs that seemed pretty meh to me. However, I've had more luck lately and have really enjoyed Prince Johnny, Depreston, Ya Hey, Ben's My Friend, Busy Earnin', Recover, County Line, and most of all, Johnny and Mary, which is an amazing song (didn't realize Ferry had become raspy a la Roger Waters and Leonard Cohen, though).

[Jirin]

When I say auto tuning I don't just mean the machines that change the pitch only to exact notes, I mean in general cleaning up the tones to make them sound sterile and flawless, to make every note and every drum hit sound identical and exactly evenly spaced.

It makes the production sound emotionally sterile and dull.

Also a lot of pop music tends to A: Focus on singles and make the rest of the album filler and B: Focus the topic of the lyrics on hyping up the personality of the performer.

[Pierre]

Thanks for the recommendations. Speaking of modern prog, does anyone have recommendations along the lines of The Mars Volta's De-Loused in the Comatormium (which is deservingly highly ranked on AM)? That album is an excellent of 21st century prog that is clearly pushing the genre in new directions.

Sorry for the belated and probably unsatisfying answer, but I've discovered that there exists an Italian book called "Guida al Nuovo Progressive Rock 1990-2008" which is pretty much the only work I know of about the more modern prog rock scene. If you're like me, you probably don't understand Italian, but you can take a peek at the book's table of contents in Google Books, which is a list of acts from the modern prog rock scene.

https://books.google.fr/books?id=3oGcAg ... ck&f=false

The author also made one for the 1976-1989 era:

https://books.google.fr/books?id=KW1PAg ... ve&f=false

EDIT: scratch all I just said. It seems the author compiled the two books in one called "After the Flood: Progressive Rock 1976-2010" in 2011. Here's the link:

https://books.google.fr/books?id=jEttAw ... li&f=false

Final EDIT: the book features a "Progressive playlist" which is a selection of key albums from the period. I transcribed it here:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4892

In terms of recommendations, I can hardly do better

[veganvalentine]

Thanks for the recommendations. Speaking of modern prog, does anyone have recommendations along the lines of The Mars Volta's De-Loused in the Comatormium (which is deservingly highly ranked on AM)? That album is an excellent of 21st century prog that is clearly pushing the genre in new directions.

Sorry for the belated and probably unsatisfying answer, but I've discovered that there exists an Italian book called "Guida al Nuovo Progressive Rock 1990-2008" which is pretty much the only work I know of about the more modern prog rock scene. If you're like me, you probably don't understand Italian, but you can take a peek at the book's table of contents in Google Books, which is a list of acts from the modern prog rock scene.

https://books.google.fr/books?id=3oGcAg ... ck&f=false

The author also made one for the 1976-1989 era:

https://books.google.fr/books?id=KW1PAg ... ve&f=false

EDIT: scratch all I just said. It seems the author compiled the two books in one called "After the Flood: Progressive Rock 1976-2010" in 2011. Here's the link:

https://books.google.fr/books?id=jEttAw ... li&f=false

Final EDIT: the book features a "Progressive playlist" which is a selection of key albums from the period. I transcribed it here:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4892

In terms of recommendations, I can hardly do better

Thanks, I usually just check out whatever is highly rated on AM, progarchives.com, RYM, or various prog websites, but this looks like a great resource.

[Pierre]

Thanks for the recommendations. Speaking of modern prog, does anyone have recommendations along the lines of The Mars Volta's De-Loused in the Comatormium (which is deservingly highly ranked on AM)? That album is an excellent of 21st century prog that is clearly pushing the genre in new directions.

Sorry for the belated and probably unsatisfying answer, but I've discovered that there exists an Italian book called "Guida al Nuovo Progressive Rock 1990-2008" which is pretty much the only work I know of about the more modern prog rock scene. If you're like me, you probably don't understand Italian, but you can take a peek at the book's table of contents in Google Books, which is a list of acts from the modern prog rock scene.

https://books.google.fr/books?id=3oGcAg ... ck&f=false

The author also made one for the 1976-1989 era:

https://books.google.fr/books?id=KW1PAg ... ve&f=false

EDIT: scratch all I just said. It seems the author compiled the two books in one called "After the Flood: Progressive Rock 1976-2010" in 2011. Here's the link:

https://books.google.fr/books?id=jEttAw ... li&f=false

Final EDIT: the book features a "Progressive playlist" which is a selection of key albums from the period. I transcribed it here:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4892

In terms of recommendations, I can hardly do better

Thanks, I usually just check out whatever is highly rated on AM, progarchives.com, RYM, or various prog websites, but this looks like a great resource.

At least it's one rare source coming from a somewhat specialist of the genre. Hopefully his recommendations list will be added to AM, because as I mention in the aforementioned thread, critics just seem to disregard completely progressive rock from the punk era onward, except for a few rare acts like the Mars Volta, Porcupine Tree or Opeth.

[babydoll]

PC Music is not a good starting point with 2010s pop. Not at all.

That being said, just listening to a variety of music, including country, rock & roll, jazz, metal, and many others, will help you appreciate more music than just prog. I mean, songs. Just stick with songs for now.

It's interesting to hear you say that Pink Floyd is your favorite band. Now I really can't stand them; The Wall is probably one of the worst albums I've ever heard. However, I discovered "See Emily Play" and loved it. I think this works into listening to a variety of music. Don't force yourself to like it; force yourself to listen to it and appreciate it. Appreciation is not the same as liking. Once appreciation comes, I think liking will come more naturally.

[Moonbeam]

I'm in a bit of the same boat as the OP. It's odd - 2010 was a super strong year, IMO, but doing a PhD and having a child really hindered my musical exploration, and very little has caught the limited attention that I do have. I feel like I have moved into "dinosaur" territory, having only listened to 2 (!) albums from 2016.

[StevieFan13]

Pop albums from the 2010s I (personally) really enjoy:
Chance the Rapper - Coloring Book
Ariana Grande - Dangerous Woman
Daft Punk - Random Access Memories
The Revivalists - Men Amongst Mountains
Carly Rae Jepsen - Emotion
Beyonce - Lemonade
The Struts - Everybody Wants
Christine and the Queens - Christine and the Queens
Gabby Young - The Band Called Out for More
Paul Simon - Stranger to Stranger

[Jirin]

I decided to listen to the top of the top 50 list on Spotify a few days ago.

I heard a bunch of well produced, catchy songs that kinda bored me. I don't know if it's because I'm not the demographic they're trying to relate too or just an issue of the production being too sterile to convey emotions, maybe a little of both.

[babydoll]

I decided to listen to the top of the top 50 list on Spotify a few days ago.

I heard a bunch of well produced, catchy songs that kinda bored me. I don't know if it's because I'm not the demographic they're trying to relate too or just an issue of the production being too sterile to convey emotions, maybe a little of both.

Nah, that's not just you. They're kind of sterile. Granted, that's exactly how I feel about Radiohead, too.