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Why are 80's vocal just so much more powerful than most modern pop

Benji

Benji

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Oct 25, 2017
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Random drunk thread of the night

Blasting some old school 80's music and I'm reminded again how much more powerful a lot of the vocals from that era feel in regards to pop music. I'm not sure if its the lack of heavy auto tune making the performances more raw or what, but a lot of the big songs from that era just feel way more intense in terms of vocal performances. Yes there is a TON of cheese to these tracks as well, but I'll be damned if I'm not feeling the vocals. And I'm not even a child of the 80's so this isn't a "you grew up with it" or "nostalgia" thing.

John Parr - St Elmo's Fire



Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse of the Heart


Toto - Africa
 
nsilvias

nsilvias

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Oct 25, 2017
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Tons of Reverb and the remnants of disco kinda influenced alot of 80's pop after it died.
 
Primal Sage

Primal Sage

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You're hitting the nail on the head. Autotune enables producers to hide lack of talent much more easily. This is much more prevalent in modern pop compared to the 80's. Back then you were never in doubt if the singer had talent.
 
Emwitus

Emwitus

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Feb 28, 2018
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No. I think the problem is your not listening to the right people. Here is a song from my cousin j. S ondara.
 
Wracu

Wracu

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Oct 25, 2017
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Because the pop acts of today, mostly, don't have vocal talent. There are exceptions.

It's a pretty dreadful situation overall.
 
OP
OP
Benji

Benji

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Emwitus said:
No. I think the problem is your not listening to the right people. Here is a song from my cousin j. S ondara.
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So 2 things

First your cousin has an amazing voice. Wow

But Secondly he doesn't have that "raw" sound that was popular in the 80's. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but there is just something from that era that has this almost "I've been smoking for 20 years" edge to it that I LOVE. Its not clean at all and I love it

 
Emwitus

Emwitus

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Feb 28, 2018
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Benji said:
So 2 things

First your cousin has an amazing voice. Wow

But Secondly he doesn't have that "raw" sound that was popular in the 80's. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but there is just something from that era that has this almost "I've been smoking for 20 years" edge to it that I LOVE. Its not clean at all and I love it

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Lol I think I know what you mean now. Yeah, there is something to 80s music thats made them more endearing. I also feel that another factor is the large number of classic movies we associate with these songs as well eg.
 
dlauv

dlauv

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'80s vocals have a quality to them, but I think it's just a difference in equipment and production from then to now. Everything is smoother now. I don't know if it's because they've got more knobs they can turn and modulate or because they're recording at a way higher sample rate or what.
 
Dr. Caroll

Dr. Caroll

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Oct 27, 2017
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The 1980s were astounding period for music in the Anglosphere. This was before vocals were being universally mangled via autotune. Before music had turned into a digital production line. When many of the popular songs playing on the radio were steeped in a social conscience, but they weren't smarmy about it.









There is great music being made now. There will always be great music. But the landscape of the pop scene as a whole has changed, and not for the better, IMO.
 
TFGB

TFGB

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Dec 23, 2018
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Lyrics were sung in a more intelligible fashion back then, with better elocution. Nowadays it seems as though many younger vocalists intentionally warp their pronunciations to something incomprehensible.
 
PHOENIXZERO

PHOENIXZERO

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Oct 29, 2017
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Production decisions and other shit like level of experience, the move to digital, loudness wars, autotune, lower budgets, ect. Also had more artists and producers with a firm understanding of music theory.
 
Dr. Caroll

Dr. Caroll

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theofficefan99 said:
tf? Adele? Sam Smith? Beyonce? Ariana Grande? For starters.
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Contrast Grande against Tina Turner.




Modern pop music is to varying degrees "overproduced". Lyrical complexity has given way to incredibly repetitive hooks. The issues with modern pop go deeper than how weird and hollow and, yes, "soulless" the vocals sound. Even if you're a good singer, there's no real point when your vocals are surgically disassembled and reassembled into this cynical product designed to be as catchy and shallow and disposable as possible. The craft of pop songwriting went to strange places. The Bee Gees were a pretty big influence over the years with their use of catchy lyrical hooks that songs were crafted around, but the Bee Gees had genuinely good lyrics.

For example, take something like Post Malone. He's the poster child of shallow and disposable pop music for a generation with non-existent attention spans. The use of hypnotic loops and catchy phrases uttered over and over again. The truth is that I Started a Joke by the Bee Gees demonstrates how they pioneered a lot of the techniques that shape modern pop all the way back in the 60s. But... notice how his voice cracks? Notice how he sings like a normal human being over the instruments?





Way back in the way, there wasn't a huge difference between a live performance and a studio recording. The other artists you mention such as Adele and Sam Smith are good vocalists who hold up well live. But they're cogs in a pop machine that has turned the human voice into this auto-tuned instrument that is digitally layered into the musical equivalent of soft serve ice cream. And that right there, when you think about it, is the biggest problem with modern pop. There used to be a jagged edge. There used to be chewy bits. There used to be strange flavours. There used to be genuinely ugly pop stars. But pop music has become stunningly homogenized, and cynically massaged into something that's sweet and easy to eat with a spoon. The way we consume music has changed, too. We burn out on songs way faster. We move onto the next thing. Hoping for that next high.
 

VideogameVices

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Oct 2, 2018
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I like to think the older singers were signed on vocals and not looks.

I mean, there were days I looked at phil collins and thought "you know this guy wouldn't really be that big" - he looks like a salary man.
 
Eegah

Eegah

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PHOENIXZERO said:
Production decisions and other shit like level of experience, the move to digital, loudness wars, autotune, lower budgets, ect. Also had more artists and producers with a firm understanding of music theory.
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Don't listen to people saying that modern artists are somehow less talented. This is the real answer. It's all behind-the-scenes decisions.
 
Xagarath

Xagarath

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The main effect that time has on any period of media is to strip out most of the mediocre stuff and leave the classics. A ton of boring 80s music has already been forgotten, and the songs that people remember are going to be the ones that stand out.

You'll see exactly the same phenomenon with current music in 30 years' time.
 
Doctor_Thomas

Doctor_Thomas

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Oct 27, 2017
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I honestly think it's because image is more important than raw talent.

I don't even mean someone being classicallly attractive either, I mean having a gimmick or a certain style that stands out.

The 80s really relied on your voice to stand out, the current pop landscape requires you to be interesting and engage in social media battles.

I also just think that songs were better written with the artist in mind, when they didn't write their own, whereas now it's all about that hook with autotune fixing what can't be achieved normally.
 
Dr. Mario

Dr. Mario

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80s in general was peak music. Cassette tapes and walkmans democratized the medium like nothing else at the time. There's never going to be a King of Pop like Michael Jackson either. I think other media like TV, movies and games started taking over significant mindshare starting from the 90s onwards, where there wasn't that kind of singular worldwide focus on music anymore.
 
Scottt

Scottt

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Part of it is because production practices have changed. There are plenty of vocalists right now who perform just as well as those from the 80s or any other decade, but mastering for today's pop music often pumps up the average volume of the entire song. Compressing and boosting everything means that the dynamics of a vocal performance aren't as perceptible.
 
Coyote Starrk

Coyote Starrk

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Oct 30, 2017
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70's and 80's have the best music period in my opinion. Not just pop either. Modern stuff just doesn't pack the same punch to me. It's just not as good.


Also in the 70's and 80's you needed to actually have talent. That's not the case anymore thanks to autotune and lipsynching.
 
Stiler

Stiler

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Oct 29, 2017
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I mean....


That voice,

6r1eDlB.gif
 

mAcOdIn

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Oct 27, 2017
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Does music even play the same role in society now? To me it's almost now relegated to background music. There's so many silly old tropes that I think were partly based on reality. I can't even imagine a married couple that was born in this era sharing a story of sharing a mixed tape, the entire idea's almost asinine when both of you have access to the entire worlds discography at a moments notice. I also feel like songs made for movies are no longer as popular or perhaps even relevant anymore which a lot of iconic 80s and 90s tracks were.

I mean, I do think the popular music today sucks compared to the past. I also agree that there are still, and always will be tons of talented people making music so I'm not deriding anyone's actual talent. Though I am happy that Ariane Grande seems to have finally learned to enunciate, it's made the few occasions I have to hear her here on the radio at work more bearable. I also agree that through the power of hindsight we've pretty much separated the wheat from the chaff in regards to music from the past and we've yet to do so for the present, but even then I think the past will still beat out the present easily.

Now, I'm not going to complain too much as an older man, I had my era and now the kids are having theirs, it is what it is, nothing wrong with it. I feel like music has a 20 year influence or whatnot. The film and music writers and acts in the 80s I feel had a lot of 50s-70s inspirations, what's the inspiration for the younger musicians today, fucking late 90s and 00s? Eww. Again, is what it is.

I don't know that I'd entirely blame autotune. Autotune didn't have to be overt. Probably wouldn't blame the loudness wars either. I think it's just clear that while I appreciated different effects when I was younger, and still mostly appreciate them today, that this generation clearly prefers this sound, it's not like they don't all have access to the entire recorded musical history of the planet at their reach, so I wouldn't say they're all uninformed masses having this atrocious sound forced upon them.
 
lazygecko

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It's just weird noticing how vocal singing styles and tropes shift over time in popular music. I think especially female vocals over the last 10-12 years have gotten really "nasal".
 
Mikebison

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The idea that pop music now is just as good as it was then and it'll be remembered so in 30 years time is bupkis. Artists like Billy Ocean would have so many fucking bangers that their greatest hits albums don't even have all their greatest hits on.

There's nobody making music now that good. There's nobody approaching Jackson in terms of talent, ability to reinvent themselves. Pop music today is leagues worse than it was in the 80s.
 
Doc Holliday

Doc Holliday

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Oct 27, 2017
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Check out the original version of Annie Lennox's classic. This dude has an insane range.

Also check out anything by Peter Murphy.

Every male singer from that time had the new wave thing going. Weird mix of yodeling, and falsettos, I think it was inspired by David bowie or something.

 
Crawling Mushroom

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Oct 28, 2017
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There is still good music to be found, but way harder.

Everytime I listen to current pop (if I listen to it), it sounds like overproduced, loud garble. That doens't necessarily mean that there aren't talented artists around.
 
RPTGB

RPTGB

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Nameless said:
Unfair. The 80s had the GOAT dropping nukes from space the entire decade.




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Well now, you're just cheating ;)
Kate's talent is a once in a lifetime thing;)

A lot of those singers who hit big in the 80's were also products of the pub and club circuits of the 60's and 70's. They grafted harder (probably) and probably drank and smoked a lot harder too!
Plus modern music mixing is bloody awful. It's all about volume rather than subtleties of the voice and instruments.
 
Doc Holliday

Doc Holliday

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Mikebison said:
The idea that pop music now is just as good as it was then and it'll be remembered so in 30 years time is bupkis. Artists like Billy Ocean would have so many fucking bangers that their greatest hits albums don't even have all their greatest hits on.

There's nobody making music now that good. There's nobody approaching Jackson in terms of talent, ability to reinvent themselves. Pop music today is leagues worse than it was in the 80s.
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There are some super talented people right now like adelle, weekend, grande but for the most part you're correct.
 
lazygecko

lazygecko

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Oct 25, 2017
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Mikebison said:
There's nobody making music now that good. There's nobody approaching Jackson in terms of talent, ability to reinvent themselves. Pop music today is leagues worse than it was in the 80s.
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The talent is still very much there, same as ever. The difference is that the industry is no longer willing to invest the same ludicrous amount of money into a single artist. When they did an MJ song in the 80's, they paid for the best producer, the best songwriter, the best session/gig musicians and the best arrangers for any given part. If you had a one off brass section playing for just a small part of a track, then you got the best brass arranger in the business to polish that up. And this is not even getting into the amount of money spent on marketing/promotion, music video productions, etc.

I am not saying this to dismiss the inherent talent of artists like MJ but you shouldn't be conflating that with the sheer opulence that permeated the record industry relative to how things work today.
 
A Strong Latte

A Strong Latte

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Oct 25, 2017
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Itt people don't understand music production.

Don't act like the 80s vocal wasn't overproduced to hell also. Reverb anyone
 
Ovaryactor

Ovaryactor

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Nov 20, 2018
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Yo I was thinking this literally yesterday! This video came across my feed and I was awestruck:



Pure mf'n romance; wait till he belts it.
 
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