[DaveSmith99]

(Original post by Appeal to reason)
I think Ed Sheeran is massively overrated.
His voice isn't bad, but its not amazing. Songs like Drunk, "You need me, I don't need you", are utter crap - I don't think the lyrics are good. I don't think the rapping with an acoustic guitar works, but neither does rapping in general.
I liked Lego House though.

Completely agree. I find that most of his fans don't really listen to any other acoustic music and are completely ignorant of the genre, so don't know that there is so, so much better stuff around.

At the end of the day he's alright, and more talented than most of the people in the charts, but his stardom and mediocrity annoy me.


edit: added some videos to demonstrate my point.





And the best till last

[takethyfacehence]

(Original post by Trailblazer)
The Smiths have a fantastic sound. But Morrissey as a person is a bit of a douche.

Okay there is a split between people who like the Smiths and who don't, but does anyone really seriously deny that Morrissey is a knob?

(Original post by Rock_and_roll)
Justin Vernon (Bon Iver) is a good songwriter but has such an irritating voice.

goodness me, I didn't expect anyone to think that!



My unpopular opinion off the top of my head is that I find Beyonce on the whole really dull and get really sick of how much everyone seems to **** over her.

[danadd9]

^^ DaveSmith99 totally should've posted Elliott Smith instead to further his point.

(Original post by Betacra)
NMH one.

i no rite. I've tried to listen to their records on like three separate occasions and I really don't see the appeal. If someone could point it out that would be cool.

[Endless Blue]

Disagree that Nirvana, Beatles and Rolling Stones aren't great artists, although i have to concede that Nirvana (and Cobain in particular) are overrated.

Don't like Dubstep, but I can sort of see why people like it.

The majority of mainstream music currently is awful and all done for the wrong reasons, i.e. the money, rather than just to make music - The X Factor is a prime example of this.

Absoloutely detest the likes of example and David Guetta, they produce the same innane bull**** every month it seems. Ed Sheeran is rather boring, Jessie J's songs are all either just huge cliches (e.g price tag) or just utter crap (can't remember the name, something to do with mandems... -.- )


Only a few decent current artists at the moment making music for the right reasons, names that stick out are The Horrors, perhaps the Arctic Monkeys (although not a huge fan personally) and a few others, although many will be practically unheard of. This is why I much prefer listening to my favourite music from various decades (60's psych, 70's punk, 80's post punk, 90's grunge & shoegaze etc etc).

[teamnoether]

(Original post by danadd9)
^^ DaveSmith99 totally should've posted Elliott Smith instead to further his point.

I'm pretty sure this isn't a controversial music opinion (if it is, everyone involved can just go away because I have nothing nice to say to you [I am the master of rational argument]), so it's not really relevant to the thread, but I just thought I'd second that Elliott Smith was so, so good.

So, so good.

[danadd9]

(Original post by teamnoether)
I'm pretty sure this isn't a controversial music opinion (if it is, everyone involved can just go away because I have nothing nice to say to you [I am the master of rational argument]), so it's not really relevant to the thread, but I just thought I'd second that Elliott Smith was so, so good.

So, so good.

No I mean he should've posted Elliott along with The Tallest Man on Earth as another example of how great singer-songwriters can get.

[teamnoether]

(Original post by danadd9)
No I mean he should've posted Elliott along with The Tallest Man on Earth as another example of how great singer-songwriters can get.

Understood, which is why I second your opinion.

[Wave]

That old jazz > new jazz.

[1.X.1905]

How about this: music as an art has a trivialised position in Western culture today. The fact that we have otherwise intelligent graduates who have read Homer and Shakespeare and Dostoevsky and Joyce (and maybe even Nietzsche and Camus!) and seen Citizen Kane and 2001 but have never heard a full Beethoven symphony is downright disgraceful. Almost all popular music (rock, hip-hop, whatever) is worthless both as art and as entertainment; it is melodically impoverished, rhythmically tedious, harmonically unadventurous, timbrally and texturally boring (this despite the sophisticated technology it has in this area thanks to the work of earlier pioneers) structurally simplistic, tasteless and in general plain dull.

People who criticise Justin Beiber/One Direction/Ed Sheeran fans for buying mass produced crap instead of 'real music' like The Beatles/Led Zep/Pink Floyd/Wu-Tang Clan/Tupac/Jeff Buckley/Muse/whoever the hell passes for good around here are the worst kind of hypocrite. They are also victims of marketing - the marketing which tells them that The Beatles were genuinely great musicians, great artists even, rather than talented amateur entertainers who seemingly took a perverse pride in their lack of technical knowledge (never learning to write music, for instance). And while we are on the topic, The Beatles were neither progressive nor experimental, everything they did had been done before. They just introduced it to the insulated world of mainstream pop. I announce this, in direct opposition to a poster on the thread's first page: no popular music, whether it be written by JLS or by The Beatles, has any significant lasting value.

People with musical talent who study music will write better music than people with talent who do not. Denying this is basically an announcement of one's own stupidity, and I shan't bother defending that statement unless someone specifically requests it. And yes, some music is better than other music. Okay, you can't produce a list of works in order of 'greatness' with a numerical points system. But more broadly you can certainly compare the musical competence evident in two pieces of music. The statements 'this piece of music is good' and 'I like this piece of music' mean completely different things.

Music education in the UK is the worst of any subject with the possible exception of art (the visual arts). Far too much of the curriculum is devoted to pandering to contemporary mass-market driven taste and trivialising the music of cultures with a percussion-driven musical heritage (predominantly African) simply because drums are cheap enough that everyone in the class can have one to bang on. It needs a thorough overhaul with primacy given to the Western Classical tradition, with emphasis on the fact, unknown to many, that it is still alive-and-well thank-you-very-much. (Non-Western musics should be given dignified treatments.)

I am by no means finished, but this will do for starters. Neg away, but please accompany this with a criticism of at least one point I've made.

[oipengting]

music is crap...

[taeace]

(Original post by hbk4894)
can you recommend a song we should listen to?

Sure! I'm a big fan of the kpop group SHINee and all of their songs are perfect, like Replay, Lucifer and Romantic

[Linweth]

Music brings out the worst in everybody.

[realisethedream]

(Original post by benpearson1)
Disagree that Nirvana, Beatles and Rolling Stones aren't great artists, although i have to concede that Nirvana (and Cobain in particular) are overrated.

Don't like Dubstep, but I can sort of see why people like it.

The majority of mainstream music currently is awful and all done for the wrong reasons, i.e. the money, rather than just to make music - The X Factor is a prime example of this.

Absoloutely detest the likes of example and David Guetta, they produce the same innane bull**** every month it seems. Ed Sheeran is rather boring, Jessie J's songs are all either just huge cliches (e.g price tag) or just utter crap (can't remember the name, something to do with mandems... -.- )


Only a few decent current artists at the moment making music for the right reasons, names that stick out are The Horrors, perhaps the Arctic Monkeys (although not a huge fan personally) and a few others, although many will be practically unheard of. This is why I much prefer listening to my favourite music from various decades (60's psych, 70's punk, 80's post punk, 90's grunge & shoegaze etc etc).

woah man how did you get inside my head? i'd add that I'm really currently enjoying bands like Girls and a few other currently touring groups but you said it all right here. I've had the pleasure of meeting four of The Horrors and you can tell straight away just how genuine their love of music is. they are real musicians, man. I love them.

[Converse Rocker]

(Original post by 1.X.1905)
which tells them that The Beatles were genuinely great musicians, great artists even, rather than talented amateur entertainers who seemingly took a perverse pride in their lack of technical knowledge (never learning to write music, for instance).

You can criticise their lack of technical knowledge all you want, they still wrote better songs than most. If I ever get into song writing, I will certainly try and learn theory, but it's not the be all and end all. It's important, but I'd say creativity is more important.

Lots of people know theory inside out, but could never write songs like the Beatles did. They made music, not just music theory.

[hbk4894]

Party All Night by Sean Kingston is better than Fire Burning.

[PatrickD]

Arctic Monkeys are just about average. They have a few decent songs that are great when you're drunk but they're highly overrated, IMHO.

The Saw Doctors, on the other hand, are brilliant.

[1.X.1905]

(Original post by Converse Rocker)
You can criticise their lack of technical knowledge all you want, they still wrote better songs than most. If I ever get into song writing, I will certainly try and learn theory, but it's not the be all and end all. It's important, but I'd say creativity is more important.

Lots of people know theory inside out, but could never write songs like the Beatles did. They made music, not just music theory.

From the top of my head, an incomplete list of people who wrote better songs than The Beatles (using a strict definition of 'song', similar to the kind The Beatles wrote), bearing in mind this is not a genre of music I have a particular interest in beyond the best stuff:

- John Dowland
- Ludwig van Beethoven
- Franz Schubert
- Carl Loewe
- Robert Schumann
- Hector Berlioz
- Johannes Brahms
- Ernest Chausson
- Edvard Grieg
- Modest Mussorgsky
- Gabriel Faure
- Claude Debussy
- Maurice Ravel
- Hugo Wolf
- Gustav Mahler
- Richard Strauss
- George Gershwin
- Samuel Barber
- Arnold Schoenberg
- Anthon Webern
- Olivier Messiaen
- Dmitri Shostakovich
- Benjamin Britten
- Aaron Copland
- Peter Lieberson

And if we extend this list to vocal composition more generally, including operatic and avant-garde vocal works, and works for more than one voice, we can add pretty much every semi-competent composer from Guillame de Machaut to Thomas Ades (and there are thousands of them). One thing they all had in common - a thorough understanding of music theory.

Creativity is of little use unless it is channelled.

[DaveSmith99]

(Original post by 1.X.1905)
From the top of my head, an incomplete list of people who wrote better songs than The Beatles (using a strict definition of 'song', similar to the kind The Beatles wrote), bearing in mind this is not a genre of music I have a particular interest in beyond the best stuff:

- John Dowland
- Ludwig van Beethoven
- Franz Schubert
- Carl Loewe
- Robert Schumann
- Hector Berlioz
- Johannes Brahms
- Ernest Chausson
- Edvard Grieg
- Modest Mussorgsky
- Gabriel Faure
- Claude Debussy
- Maurice Ravel
- Hugo Wolf
- Gustav Mahler
- Richard Strauss
- George Gershwin
- Samuel Barber
- Arnold Schoenberg
- Anthon Webern
- Olivier Messiaen
- Dmitri Shostakovich
- Benjamin Britten
- Aaron Copland
- Peter Lieberson

And if we extend this list to vocal composition more generally, including operatic and avant-garde vocal works, and works for more than one voice, we can add pretty much every semi-competent composer from Guillame de Machaut to Thomas Ades (and there are thousands of them). One thing they all had in common - a thorough understanding of music theory.

Creativity is of little use unless it is channelled.

This guy wrote some pretty amazing songs with little background in music theory.

[motunrolarulz]

(Original post by cz100)
I found Duffy's voice incredibly annoying.

agree.

[Spoonforknife]

(Original post by motunrolarulz)
agree.

Same ha