Episode 43 – “…we’d learn how our bodies worked”

Welcome to Songs That Don’t Suck, with your host, Mark Bradbourne.

Welcome to episode 43 of Songs That Don’t Suck. Thank you for checking out the episode as always.

It was another rough week in Songs That Don’t Suck land. And if you’ve listened to more than a couple of episodes, you know that it is not a rare thing for me to complain about the quality of new music. But if you know me on a deeper level, you know I believe in data and I believe in science. And this week, I found confirmation that the majority of new music does indeed suck. So let’s look at that research and get a little nerdy, shall we?

This is an older research study that was done in 2012 by the Spanish National Resource Council. And while it’s 11 years old, it’s not like music has improved, so I still feel like it’s valid. What they did is they took 500,000 songs out of the million song data set. This data set breaks down audio and lyrical content into data so that it can be analyzed. Joan Sarah, who is an artificial intelligence specialist, ran songs from the last 50 years through these complex algorithms and found that songs have become louder and more bland. She was quoted as saying that they found evidence of homogenization of the musical discourse, which I love that quote. They found a lack of diversity in transitions between note combinations, and that has been diminishing over the last 50 years. They were referring to this as harmonic complexity, which is basically them taking the chords and the melodies and kind of combining them into a single entity to analyze. And honestly, having done 43 episodes of this podcast, I can 100% validate those findings are still accurate 11 years later. Let’s see, they found that the palette of sounds, or the timber palette, sucked. I’m paraphrasing. They didn’t say sucked in the research, but that’s what they really meant.

And basically, music is all using the same sounds. And apparently that diversity of sound peaked back in the 60s, which makes sense, right? If we think about music today, if most artists are using something like a garage band, it’s the same drum sounds, it’s the same bass sounds, keyboards, etc. Even in the studio, with bands who are being produced at a kind of a, call it a major label level, they will actually model the EQ after the artist’s favorite sounds. It even happened to me. I was recording an album with Emmett, and the audio engineer asked me what my favorite drum sounds were, like what’s your favorite snare sound, what’s your favorite bass sound. And I was pulling sounds off of Pearl Jam’s 10. I really love the snare and bass sounds. And he was changing the EQ to match as closely as possible my snare sound from the recording to Pearl Jam’s, which I found fascinating and I thought it was really cool at the time. But the more I think about it, that diversity of sound is whittled away when people just don’t capture the natural essence of an instrument. So really interesting. But they also noted a lack of quality lyrics, which duh, that’s a really nice way of putting it. And they also looked at this attribute called loudness, which basically pointed out that there’s a complete lack of dynamics in music today. And if you listen to it, like I will pick out songs where there’s a cool bridge or a change in feel, and that is just lacking in music. It’s really interesting though.

There’s kind of articles that have been written about this research paper, and I was reading some of those and there’s a theory that the music listening public has actually been brainwashed into liking music because it’s being played everywhere. The music industry and the record companies are paying money to make sure the music shows up everywhere that you could possibly be exposed to it. And this is referred to as the mere exposure effect. It’s a psychological phenomenon where people develop a preference of things they see and hear often. Even songs we don’t like. Once you’re exposed to it enough, your brain recognizes it and will release dopamine. And it gets stronger the more and more you listen to it. It’s why one hit wonders when they’re everywhere. Once it fades away, you’re replaced by the next one, but when you hear it again, you still get that dopamine hit. It’s just entrenched in your brain. It’s fascinating. But anyway, a couple of these articles we’re talking about, like, how did we get here? And they pointed out that it happened during the transition from analog to digital, which makes complete sense, but they pointed to Napster.

So in 1999, Napster was at its height, had 80 million users, and those 80 million users had figured out that free music was way better than paying $20 to $30 for a CD that you had no idea the quality of. You heard the single, maybe two singles, and you hoped that the album was as good as those two songs, but the chances of that happening were nil. So people got pissed. And as soon as they could get their hands on free music, they went there. And it just decimated the record industry. They had no recourses on how to fight it. They tried a Metallica suit Napster, and it was the end of Napster. But at that point, Steve Jobs had jumped in and said, oh, you know what? We have a great idea. We’re going to make it legal, we’ll do Apple iTunes, and they talked the record industry into saying, well, you need to give us 30% for creating this platform, and we’ll give you the other 70%. So every dollar, the record company only got 70% of it, or 70 cents. And record companies had like no choice. They kind of were over a barrel. They didn’t know how to transition into this digital world. And Spotify came along with streaming, and it’s the same thing, you know, they’re taking a huge cut of it, and they’re getting fractional pennies to the artist per stream. But it really truly broke the industry, because what happened, you know, obviously there’s a severe lack of funds, because they’ve seen this huge hit in revenue. And the A&R people, so the artist and repertoire people who would work with artists to develop and become profitable, knowing full well that it might take three or four albums for a band to become profitable, but they were willing to make that investment. They didn’t have that kind of time anymore, and A&R people became risk averse. A lot of them got fired, honestly. So the whole kind of process of developing an artist just disappeared. The money had to come quicker. And this is honestly the beginning of what we are experiencing now, and now it’s just hyper, right? Like it’s viral, we’re going to make as much money off of it as we can, and then we’re on to the next one. But overall, this was kind of a fascinating research study to find.

And in short, I feel like I’m justified in my hate of new music. So there you go.

Let’s get into the brain bending cover this week, shall we? This week, I had a little blast from the past, which was cool. The cover this week is Piece of my Heart, and the artist is Slamming Gladys. My freshman year of college, one of my roommates introduced this band to me, and I can’t remember if he was related to one of them, or if he just knew them. They were from Akron, Ohio. I went to college in Akron. My roommates were from the west side of Cleveland, like the Parma area. And I listened to this band constantly, and nobody knew who they were, but I was completely overwhelmed on how much I loved their album. Piece of my heart was on their debut album. I think they only have two albums. But the song was originally done by Irma Franklin. It was made famous, obviously, by Big Brother and the Holding Company, which featured Janice Joplin. But the cool thing was, and I didn’t realize this, but Irma is the older sister of Aretha Franklin, which I found pretty cool. On this track in particular, I really love the background vocals. They just add a lot of kind of power to the chorus, but the lead singer’s voice is super distinctive on this track. He’s got a great kind of rattle in his voice when he kind of holds out those really high notes. Yeah, it was just, I really enjoyed kind of rediscovering this band, and I got the dopamine hit from it for sure. As a band, Slamming Gladys kind of danced the line between funk and glam metal. And honestly, the whole album is a really good listen. Highly recommend that you check it out if you’re kind of into the glam metal scene. You know, think of your, your poisons, your warrants, those kind of bands. And the lyrics on certain songs will either make you blush or laugh, depending on your personality. And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

All right. Let’s get into the new music. If this is your first time listening, welcome to the show. I appreciate you being here. Each week I listen to a small percentage of the new music that gets released every single week. Anywhere between two and 500 songs. And I weed out the crap and present the ones that I find that I think are worthy here on the podcast each week. There are only four songs this week. Usually I try to get five, but like I said at the top of the show, it’s a rough week. So let’s get into it.

The first song this week is Rotten Soul by Damona. Sometimes when I’m reviewing music, all it has to do is remind me of something that I haven’t thought about in a long time. And this time Demona reminded me of an artist named Poe. Poe only put out two albums, one in 1995 and one in 2004. Both were phenomenal. I still listen to them, not regularly, but they’re one of the, she’s one of those artists that I like always will go back to. And I get that dopamine hit. But anyway, I was lucky to see her live once. But anyway, I digress. Demona definitely comes from that same DNA, gave me the same feeling. There’s attitude, there’s swagger, just kind of this strong feminine energy, really strong hooks and really great production on this track. And as I’ve started to do when I find a new to me artist, I went back and I checked out kind of her most popular tracks, a couple of new ones, a couple of old ones, very kind of into the pop punk sound a little bit, a little bit of that feel. But definitely like if she hasn’t heard Poe, I’d be surprised. And if she hasn’t, I feel like once she did, she would become her biggest fan because I feel like they are lockstep as far as kind of the sound and energy, really, really good stuff.

The second song this week is We Looked Like Giants from Car Seat Headrest. Car Seat Headrest has been on my radar for a while. Ever since James Pequigot, who was the singer-songwriter that I’ve worked with in several bands over the better part of a decade, honestly, he introduced them to me. And this is one of those artists that I can’t quite put my finger on exactly who they draw influences from. Vocally, there’s a hint of they might be giants, but musically, there’s a lot going on. This track in particular, I love the groove and melody of it. And in particular, I love the way that the drummer kind of will subdivide the beat every now and then, kind of making it feel like it’s an odd time signal, but it isn’t. And this is happening kind of coming out of the bridge towards the end of the song. So when you’re listening to it, make sure you kind of pay attention to that point and see what I’m talking about.

The third song this week is Moon Chasers from Oxymorons. If you listen to this podcast, you know, it’s a rare thing, but a little bit of hip hop this week, but it’s got a rock edge. Or is it rock with a hip hop edge? It’s honestly hard to tell, but it’s cool and it grabbed me this week. This is coming off their new album called Melanated Punk, which I love the title of the album. Super catchy melody and hook. And you know, as far as the rap section of it, it’s so solid, it’s not mumble rap, it’s not bullshit self-hype. You know, it’s actually rap that’s kind of got something to say, it kind of matches what the rest of the lyrics in the song are kind of trying to do and it’s just solid, right? I checked out a couple of their other tracks and honestly, if I’m in the right mood, this might be one of those artists that I can really kind of get into. I could just see myself like throwing headphones on and chilling out, you know, listening to them. If you like this one, definitely check out some of their other stuff off this new album. It’s really good.

The fourth song this week is Pretty Vicious from The Struts. If you’re a longtime listener, The Struts are no stranger to you. While I try not to repeat artists when I have a crap music week and a really stellar track that comes out, I can’t help myself. This song, however, struck me in a completely different way than all of the other Struts songs. It has such a strong in excess feel, it’s crazy to me. I could actually hear Michael Hutchinson singing this one and honestly, even the bass and guitar parts are just kind of this slow, sexy, just groove that just feels like INXS and I love it. I love INXS, X, kick, listen like thieves, man, back in the day, those albums, I just listened the hell out of them. Anyway, Pretty Vicious is the title track of their new album, which is coming out very very soon. I personally cannot wait for it. I’ve mentioned this before, but I first kind of became aware of The Struts when they opened for Foo Fighters and I was immediately hooked. I’m still waiting to see them kind of headline a show. Just the dates have not lined up, but as soon as they do, I am going to be making that happen and I cannot wait for it.

Alright, that is it for this episode. As always, thank you. Spread the word to your fellow music fans. Everyone is struggling to find new music and this is the place that I hope we can help find each other some new music, right? Follow the show on social media, check out the website, songsthatdon’tsuck. net and thanks for listening and until next week, keep searching for and listening to songs that don’t suck.