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

Yiazmat · Mar 2, 2019

srsly? said:
Art forms never decline: FACT

FALSE

1954

2010

ShapeDePapa · Mar 2, 2019

I wish music like that was still being produced today.

Equippedwithtowel · Mar 2, 2019

jet1911 said:
I wish music like that was still being produced today.

...it is tho, it's just not on the radio or mtv because times have changed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaTvWwlou9o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXtzcViZPGA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIqvRzEIqIo

RPTGB · Mar 2, 2019

Fuchsia said:
I talk about this with some musician and audio engineering friends sometimes. We can debate talent and use of pitch correction all day long and never really get anywhere. There are fantastic singers out there today. Of course, there are also not-so-great singers as well. This will always be true. The thing is, autotune and another piece of software called Melodyne (an interesting one to look into if anyone is really nerdy about this kind of thing) have simply become an expected sound in modern music. They are used in small amounts even on really strong singers these days simply because it gives "a sound." I'm not even talking about turning the retune speed to 90-100 and getting the T-Pain, robotic pitch jumps. Auto Tune in particular lends this shiny, crystalline quality to the timbre and texture of a vocal, even when used in small amounts, that is very expected and thus desirable for certain genres (especially top 100 style stuff).

Furthermore, listeners have been getting trained more and more since the late '90s and early '00s to hear near perfect pitch in our top 100 music. No human is perfect. We measure pitch in both a coarse measurement, called semitones, and a fine measurement, called cents. Semitones are basically the equivalent of moving up and down a key on a keyboard. Cents are if you were able to break that space between two neighboring keys on the keyboard into 100 little bits of which you could hear each one. A really struggling singer may sometimes be off one or two semitones. It happens. But that is where you'll really notice it. All of a sudden they may have hit a note that isn't even in the key of the song. But pitch correction algorithms to the rescue! We can correct that now with very minor artifacts. In the mix of a song most people wouldn't notice. However as I said, no human is perfect. Even singers who are almost never off by a whole semitone are usually off by cents. Because we have been trained to hear perfect, software pitch corrected vocals for so many years, we've become more judicious when singers are off even by 10-20 cents. An audience might not know why they feel something is wrong when they hear it, but they know it doesn't sound as perfect as the other pop song they just heard. This is, of course, assuming that the emotion in the delivery of the vocal was of equal caliber to the last song they heard. We're talking in general here. The fact of the matter is that every performance must have essentially no mistakes now. It's sort of this mindset in music production these days where it's like, "well we have the ability to fix it, so why shouldn't we make it perfect?" We can edit the absolute perfect take together out of 60 takes even if none of those takes were great performances the whole way through. Then we can pitch correct and not only will the delivery be there, but hey now the pitch will be too. It is easier to make bad singers sound good now (or acceptable really), but it is still hard to make a bad singer sound amazing. The performance has to be there. This is still what separates the absolutely phenomenal, one of a kind singers from the others. We still can't change someone's natural tonality (timbre) of their voice. We can make everyone sing with perfect pitch, but the delivery and timbre of their voice will still make or break it. That isn't even considering the songwriting, production, and engineering that can also make or break the song as a whole...

Bloody great post. Thanks for that.

Fuchsia · Mar 2, 2019

RPTGB said:
Bloody great post. Thanks for that.

Thanks very much for reading. Happy to share a little and I'm glad my ramblings were interesting to you!

entremet · Mar 2, 2019

I think people missing the OP point

pixelation said:
This is so true, today as long as you have a sellable face then you have it made. Talent almost doesn't matter with all of the tools available, you could have the most amazing voice but if you're "ugly" then you ain't going nowhere.

What about Shape of You guy? He's not ugly but he's not strikingly attractive.

Filipus · Mar 2, 2019

Fuchsia said:
I talk about this with some musician and audio engineering friends sometimes. We can debate talent and use of pitch correction all day long and never really get anywhere. There are fantastic singers out there today. Of course, there are also not-so-great singers as well. This will always be true. The thing is, autotune and another piece of software called Melodyne (an interesting one to look into if anyone is really nerdy about this kind of thing) have simply become an expected sound in modern music. They are used in small amounts even on really strong singers these days simply because it gives "a sound." I'm not even talking about turning the retune speed to 90-100 and getting the T-Pain, robotic pitch jumps. Auto Tune in particular lends this shiny, crystalline quality to the timbre and texture of a vocal, even when used in small amounts, that is very expected and thus desirable for certain genres (especially top 100 style stuff).

Furthermore, listeners have been getting trained more and more since the late '90s and early '00s to hear near perfect pitch in our top 100 music. No human is perfect. We measure pitch in both a coarse measurement, called semitones, and a fine measurement, called cents. Semitones are basically the equivalent of moving up and down a key on a keyboard. Cents are if you were able to break that space between two neighboring keys on the keyboard into 100 little bits of which you could hear each one. A really struggling singer may sometimes be off one or two semitones. It happens. But that is where you'll really notice it. All of a sudden they may have hit a note that isn't even in the key of the song. But pitch correction algorithms to the rescue! We can correct that now with very minor artifacts. In the mix of a song most people wouldn't notice. However as I said, no human is perfect. Even singers who are almost never off by a whole semitone are usually off by cents. Because we have been trained to hear perfect, software pitch corrected vocals for so many years, we've become more judicious when singers are off even by 10-20 cents. An audience might not know why they feel something is wrong when they hear it, but they know it doesn't sound as perfect as the other pop song they just heard. This is, of course, assuming that the emotion in the delivery of the vocal was of equal caliber to the last song they heard. We're talking in general here. The fact of the matter is that every performance must have essentially no mistakes now. It's sort of this mindset in music production these days where it's like, "well we have the ability to fix it, so why shouldn't we make it perfect?" We can edit the absolute perfect take together out of 60 takes even if none of those takes were great performances the whole way through. Then we can pitch correct and not only will the delivery be there, but hey now the pitch will be too. It is easier to make bad singers sound good now (or acceptable really), but it is still hard to make a bad singer sound amazing. The performance has to be there. This is still what separates the absolutely phenomenal, one of a kind singers from the others. We still can't change someone's natural tonality (timbre) of their voice. We can make everyone sing with perfect pitch, but the delivery and timbre of their voice will still make or break it. That isn't even considering the songwriting, production, and engineering that can also make or break the song as a whole...

The take away is that due to years of exposure to perfectly pitch corrected vocals building a certain expectation, minor human fluctuations are now seen as "off" even if they are minor. There is a great episode of a podcast by Switched On Pop titled "Do You Believe In Life After Autotune?" if anyone is interested in hearing more people break this down a bit more.

The thing I don't see talked about as much however, is the fact that the eighties were an era where pop chord progressions and melodies were really looked at quite differently than they are today. Every era of music has its own tropes and expectations - every genre even. This is true of the outfits that were worn by hair metal rockstars, the stereotypical drug use of '70s hard rock, etc. It is, of course, also true of the music itself. There are certain ways of creating with harmony and melody that become the hallmarks of different eras. For the eighties, you had people really trying to shake things up with different use of harmony. On a music theory level, pop songs could actually be quite complex. You had interesting chord changes: off-the-beaten-path extended harmonic voicing of chords, modal mixture, flamboyant key changes... The '70s were no slouch in this area also, and of course you can find amazing examples of harmonic prowess today easily if you look, but the '80s had people trained to dig and expect interesting harmonic movement in their pop. What goes hand in hand with harmony? Melody! When you have interesting harmonic structure in your music... Interesting chord progressions... Then you can go a bit crazier with melody. You can write your melody to really highlight, express, and compliment those interesting chord changes in a very emotive way. I'm completely generalizing here, but the harmonic expectations of pop music today have certainly become a bit simpler. There are tons of resources you can read, listen to, or watch on this, I'm not pulling this out of my ass. Good or bad, I'm not here to judge because I do think simple music can be incredible, it's just a thing that has happened. Again, this isn't: "all music is boring and simple now!" I love a lot of current pop music and there are tons of songs coming out in every genre that use more complex harmony. Just look at contemporary jazz! It's insane now... But pound for pound, there was an expectation for more harmonic beef back in the day. Nowadays, people aren't used to that. It's safer to write simpler music that teams of writers and producers can guarantee people will find catchy. This doesn't allow for melodies that are as crazy because, well, the chord progressions themselves aren't as crazy.

This isn't even getting into the fact that what is en vogue these days for melodies is to have (in general...) a smaller range between the lowest note sung and the highest note sung in a phrase than previous decades. Writers and producers in top 100 styles generally are trending towards focusing more on interesting rhythm. You'll even hear a thing quite frequently where it seems like the singer in a song is just sort of bouncing around on the same 3-4 notes in a verse.

I should stop typing... I started this and then the coffee I had kicked in lol. If anyone actually read this far then you're a hero. Just wanted to ramble for a bit and throw my two cents into the ring.

This is a GREAT post.

With why singers sound different, I really think it all comes down to dynamics and tone. Even the classic "digital vs analog sounds" is important to take into account as we do these comparisons. Nowadays we expect certain kinds of sounds (much like in the 80's pop you expected the crazy reverb) that are more soft and "prettier".

Sanka · Mar 2, 2019

I am pretty sure that people who grew up in the 80s were saying the same things about their own music and how much better the 60s were. I certainly don't think music was better in the 80s, I am quite content with the musical output in recent years. We are a product of our environment and most popular songs that are posted here are fairly entrenched in popular culture by now and are going to be liked by default.

pixelation · Mar 2, 2019

entremet said:
I think people missing the OP point

What about Shape of You guy? He's not ugly but he's not strikingly attractive.

He is not "ugly" ugly, I really can't think of a current artist who's truly ugly. And I bet that there are ugly people out there with amazing voices, they're just not given a chance.

Dr. Caroll · Mar 2, 2019

Kemono said:
Music (at least mainstream) was simply better in the past and there're reasons for that:

The moment he talked about the Millennial whoop, something clicked in my head that I'd forgotten for a few years. We all know Owl City, right? Musician who has done some damn fine music with some dreamy lyrics. Most people know Fireflies, but he's done some other fantastic stuff over the years.

However, there was a point around 2012 where he very clearly shifted from being a dude making music in his basement to someone working with pop writers and pop producers. Compare really early Owl to 2012 Owl, where the shift happened.

I remember it very distinctly. All Things Bright and Beautiful in 2011 was a fantastic album. It was self produced. It sounded crisp and clear and uniquely Adam Young. But then came The Midsummer Station in 2012. Produced by people like Kool Kojak and Stargate. Suddenly, out the blue, Adam was doing that bizarre whooping thing. Suddenly his music sounded... samey and generic. I remember remarking to someone sitting next to me in the car, saying, "It's One Direction-esque. Where he would once insert a great lyric he's just inarticulately vocalizing."

lunarworks · Mar 2, 2019

Rad Bandolar said:
Yeah, I was a teenager as well in the '80s and a lot of people thought pop music was shit, and if you weren't into hair bands, then you were shit out of luck, unless you had a cool friend or could deal with smarmy record store jerks long enough to get some good recommendations. I was lucky that I was more into hip-hop and rap, which people passed around easily and you could hear coming out of just about any boombox.

It's really weird to see the music from that time being lionized like it is, especially using it to critique today's music. Ironic, considering how people were using the '60s as a benchmark for how crappy '80s music was at the time. A critique like this:

I was a kid in the '80s, and none of that bubblegum pop or hair rock got played in my house. I was mostly exposed to new wave, post punk, and early alternative. I'd say I prefer it to a lot of what I listened to as a teen in the '90s.

Richietto · Mar 2, 2019

Ill be the first to say I don't really like modern pop. I don't really listen to the latest and greatest songs going around, and Im heavily biased. That being said the 80's DID have something to the vocals that current mainstream doesn't have. I don't know shit about music so I couldn't tell you, but I can hear the difference.

Fuchsia said:
I talk about this with some musician and audio engineering friends sometimes. We can debate talent and use of pitch correction all day long and never really get anywhere. There are fantastic singers out there today. Of course, there are also not-so-great singers as well. This will always be true. The thing is, autotune and another piece of software called Melodyne (an interesting one to look into if anyone is really nerdy about this kind of thing) have simply become an expected sound in modern music. They are used in small amounts even on really strong singers these days simply because it gives "a sound." I'm not even talking about turning the retune speed to 90-100 and getting the T-Pain, robotic pitch jumps. Auto Tune in particular lends this shiny, crystalline quality to the timbre and texture of a vocal, even when used in small amounts, that is very expected and thus desirable for certain genres (especially top 100 style stuff).

Furthermore, listeners have been getting trained more and more since the late '90s and early '00s to hear near perfect pitch in our top 100 music. No human is perfect. We measure pitch in both a coarse measurement, called semitones, and a fine measurement, called cents. Semitones are basically the equivalent of moving up and down a key on a keyboard. Cents are if you were able to break that space between two neighboring keys on the keyboard into 100 little bits of which you could hear each one. A really struggling singer may sometimes be off one or two semitones. It happens. But that is where you'll really notice it. All of a sudden they may have hit a note that isn't even in the key of the song. But pitch correction algorithms to the rescue! We can correct that now with very minor artifacts. In the mix of a song most people wouldn't notice. However as I said, no human is perfect. Even singers who are almost never off by a whole semitone are usually off by cents. Because we have been trained to hear perfect, software pitch corrected vocals for so many years, we've become more judicious when singers are off even by 10-20 cents. An audience might not know why they feel something is wrong when they hear it, but they know it doesn't sound as perfect as the other pop song they just heard. This is, of course, assuming that the emotion in the delivery of the vocal was of equal caliber to the last song they heard. We're talking in general here. The fact of the matter is that every performance must have essentially no mistakes now. It's sort of this mindset in music production these days where it's like, "well we have the ability to fix it, so why shouldn't we make it perfect?" We can edit the absolute perfect take together out of 60 takes even if none of those takes were great performances the whole way through. Then we can pitch correct and not only will the delivery be there, but hey now the pitch will be too. It is easier to make bad singers sound good now (or acceptable really), but it is still hard to make a bad singer sound amazing. The performance has to be there. This is still what separates the absolutely phenomenal, one of a kind singers from the others. We still can't change someone's natural tonality (timbre) of their voice. We can make everyone sing with perfect pitch, but the delivery and timbre of their voice will still make or break it. That isn't even considering the songwriting, production, and engineering that can also make or break the song as a whole...

The take away is that due to years of exposure to perfectly pitch corrected vocals building a certain expectation, minor human fluctuations are now seen as "off" even if they are minor. There is a great episode of a podcast by Switched On Pop titled "Do You Believe In Life After Autotune?" if anyone is interested in hearing more people break this down a bit more.

The thing I don't see talked about as much however, is the fact that the eighties were an era where pop chord progressions and melodies were really looked at quite differently than they are today. Every era of music has its own tropes and expectations - every genre even. This is true of the outfits that were worn by hair metal rockstars, the stereotypical drug use of '70s hard rock, etc. It is, of course, also true of the music itself. There are certain ways of creating with harmony and melody that become the hallmarks of different eras. For the eighties, you had people really trying to shake things up with different use of harmony. On a music theory level, pop songs could actually be quite complex. You had interesting chord changes: off-the-beaten-path extended harmonic voicing of chords, modal mixture, flamboyant key changes... The '70s were no slouch in this area also, and of course you can find amazing examples of harmonic prowess today easily if you look, but the '80s had people trained to dig and expect interesting harmonic movement in their pop. What goes hand in hand with harmony? Melody! When you have interesting harmonic structure in your music... Interesting chord progressions... Then you can go a bit crazier with melody. You can write your melody to really highlight, express, and compliment those interesting chord changes in a very emotive way. I'm completely generalizing here, but the harmonic expectations of pop music today have certainly become a bit simpler. There are tons of resources you can read, listen to, or watch on this, I'm not pulling this out of my ass. Good or bad, I'm not here to judge because I do think simple music can be incredible, it's just a thing that has happened. Again, this isn't: "all music is boring and simple now!" I love a lot of current pop music and there are tons of songs coming out in every genre that use more complex harmony. Just look at contemporary jazz! It's insane now... But pound for pound, there was an expectation for more harmonic beef back in the day. Nowadays, people aren't used to that. It's safer to write simpler music that teams of writers and producers can guarantee people will find catchy. This doesn't allow for melodies that are as crazy because, well, the chord progressions themselves aren't as crazy.

This isn't even getting into the fact that what is en vogue these days for melodies is to have (in general...) a smaller range between the lowest note sung and the highest note sung in a phrase than previous decades. Writers and producers in top 100 styles generally are trending towards focusing more on interesting rhythm. You'll even hear a thing quite frequently where it seems like the singer in a song is just sort of bouncing around on the same 3-4 notes in a verse.

I should stop typing... I started this and then the coffee I had kicked in lol. If anyone actually read this far then you're a hero. Just wanted to ramble for a bit and throw my two cents into the ring.

Huh, good write up. Maybe thats stuff is kinda what I hear thats different.

Dr. Caroll said:
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.

Excellent examples!

Raxel · Mar 2, 2019

80s top 40 music was fantastic. Produced well, experimental and accessible. Once you analyze the actual music, you're seeing more major and mixolydian songs, chord inversions, beautifully arpeggiated synth work, key changes, 7th chords...in short - more musical complexity, because the music was made by musicians.

To me, the current top 40 is devoid of any real musicality. Every aspect, the drums, bass, vocals, is simplified, minimalist and electronic. And probably written in minor.

What happened to feel good music?

Tuorom · Mar 2, 2019

Music today sounds very samey to me. I haven't really explored though, I get most of my music from the radio.

Idk I've always listened to older music.

Hell yeah. You can't escape mmmyyyy yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
Private eyes
They're watching you, they see your evvvvvvvery moveeeeeeee

And i've actually started going further back as I get older. I'm liking some Sam Cooke and such.

SharpX68K · Mar 2, 2019

Pilgrimzero said:
Music still had soul back then.

This!

Fuchsia · Mar 2, 2019

Filipus said:
This is a GREAT post.

With why singers sound different, I really think it all comes down to dynamics and tone. Even the classic "digital vs analog sounds" is important to take into account as we do these comparisons. Nowadays we expect certain kinds of sounds (much like in the 80's pop you expected the crazy reverb) that are more soft and "prettier".

Warning: It's about to get nerdy.

The digital vs analogue debate is another thing I have lots of thoughts on. In the '90s and '00s digital audio workstations and the individual plugin software processors were not in a place that made them "musical." They were essentially too clean. In general, analogue gear (analogue compressors, equalizers, consoles, tape machines, reverbs, delays) introduces non-linearities into the signal running through it by way of second and third order harmonics. A waveform will have additional information added to it by way of harmonics even if the settings on said analogue gear are at resting, neutral positions. This is due to the audio signal traveling through input and output transformers, potentially tubes, capacitors, op amps, etc. Depending on the design of these components within the analogue gear, harmonic distortion will be added. So not only would some famous pieces of analogue gear perform their intended function (be it equalization, compression, etc) well but they also really did beef up the signal in ways that were and still are pleasing to our ears.

When the audio engineering industry switched from primarily all analogue signal paths and recording to tape to recording straight to digital and processing the signal with software we did lose something. We lost those non-linearities and subtle character. Software algorithms weren't as good as they are now and the sound was indeed quite clinical and cold because we were essentially losing harmonic information we would have otherwise had by recording a mic through a preamp to tape, then processing it through a large console (the huge recording boards you see in studio pictures such as an SSL, Neve, API, Trident, or Harrison), then being sent through a myriad of outboard analogue gear... It all added up. Many engineers were resistant to the change to digital because of this. While digital promised ease of use and easy recall of settings if an artist or label came back to the engineer and asked for a recall on a song, many chose to either remain analogue only or go hybrid.

In the past years, however, we have really entered a golden age of digital. AD/DA conversion has become so good that nothing is lost by going from analogue to digital and digital to analogue. Plus, there are some absolute genius software plugin developers now who are making tools for audio engineers to use which offer all the functionality that digital can provide but with 90% of the tone of analogue. The analogue vs digital debate has less reason to exist than ever before in audio engineering. We even have plugins that can very effectively emulate famous pieces of analogue gear. Like I said, the good ones really do get like 85-90% of the way there. And, of course we can go beyond analogue with digital. People are designing plugins which offer tonal options and functionality now that are far beyond what an LA-2A or 1176 compressor from half a century ago can give. Digital is a completely viable way to go and many very famous audio engineers are actually going fully digital these days!

Still though, there is a magic to analogue! There are pieces of gear which are famous for a their sound for a reason. They just work. They sound fantastic. They lend recordings, mixes, and masters a subtle magic when used correctly. Traditionally, analogue gear really excelled at adding a width, glue, warmth (I hate this word when used for audio but it helps people to understand), and depth to signal that passes through it. An entire mix of a song run through certain analogue pieces really will seem to improve the stereo imagining and give a very euphoric sense of front-to-back depth within the song. Depth is really the final frontier I think digital still can't compete with analogue on. It's a game of inches though. If you can get there with digital, why spend $2000-$3000 for just ONE analogue compressor when you can get a plugin version of said compressor for 1/10th of the price? Is that last 15 or so percent really worth it? It is when you've started to master your craft as an engineer and are ready to invest in getting that little bit closer to a top shelf sound.

TL;DR: Analogue vs digital doesn't really matter as much anymore with regards to audio engineering. It really is more about how skillfully an engineer can use his or her tools. Especially now in 2019. Great mixes and masters can be made with analogue gear or they can be made with only software. Taste and skill are paramount and always will be. Of course, the performance, songwriting, arrangement, and general vibe of the recording have the most impact! A great song will always be a great song. I was mainly focusing on the engineering aspect of analogue vs. digital here.

dyelawn91 · Mar 2, 2019

Modern pop music is written for Spotify playlists -- as opposed to 80's pop, which was written for radio -- and the most popular playlists are organized by mood or activity. That "chilled out" dynamically flat sound that a lot modern pop has is desireable for a lot of artists because it makes it easier to place the song in a mood or activity based playlist without the song jumping out or "killing the vibe," which is a surefire way to get it removed from the playlist.

Obviously this isn't true of every pop song and pop artist, but it's why so much pop music sounds especially samey and flat these days; you used to make your money by having your song jump out of the radio at the listener, now you make money by making sure listeners don't skip over your song on the playlist.

OwOtacon · Mar 2, 2019

Pop radio has been failing pop. There is music that is better than the 80's stuff being posted here made recently. Stuff like Lemonade, Melodrama, Dirty Computer, and Honey. But those albums haven't had crossover hits, either due to being too controversial in subject matter (Lemonade, Dirty Computer), or not having the dulled-back sound radio is pushing (Melodrama, Honey). Also, that's not touching more experimental stuff like Pop 2, Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides, or I'm All Ears that will be the sound of the future. Hell - for overt nostalgia, I'd say that Bleachers, Daft Punk, and the cream of the Bruno Mars crop is more enjoyable than a large chunk of the "better than the 2010's" examples being posted here.

(On an unrelated and non-pop tangent, I'd argue a large reason why I will partially defend the modern charts is because there is some amazing hip hop. In no previous point in history could songs like DNA. by Kendrick Lamar or Sicko Mode by Travis Scott have been hits.)

80's music has a degree of formulaic repetition to it that I feel is under-analysed - very similar synth-tones, identical drums (80's revival music used gated drums way better than the actual decade did). 80's pop has a lot more easy-listening schlock and gutless ballads than people here acknowledge it for. I've listened to the year end charts for a very wide range, and I would take 2008-12 pop music over the 80's any day of the week. Maybe even push the needle to 2005-15 if I need a decade.

I will acknowledge that 1983 is one of the best years in music history. Just like 2012 and 2015.

RavFiveFour · Mar 2, 2019

I believe today's lyrics are still powerful, and are selling just as many records. 80s was pure firepower. I love the 80s.

Filipus · Mar 2, 2019

Fuchsia said:
In the past years, however, we have really entered a golden age of digital. AD/DA conversion has become so good that nothing is lost by going from analogue to digital and digital to analogue. Plus, there are some absolute genius software plugin developers now who are making tools for audio engineers to use which offer all the functionality that digital can provide but with 90% of the tone of analogue. The analogue vs digital debate has less reason to exist than ever before in audio engineering. We even have plugins that can very effectively emulate famous pieces of analogue gear. Like I said, the good ones really do get like 85-90% of the way there. And, of course we can go beyond analogue with digital. People are designing plugins which offer tonal options and functionality now that are far beyond what an LA-2A or 1176 compressor from half a century ago can give. Digital is a completely viable way to go and many very famous audio engineers are actually going fully digital these days!
.

What are you referring to here in specific? I've only tried "home" solutions (the best results I got were vocal plugins for pro-tools that were pretty accessible in price, and I've seen some famous ones for famous 70's keyboards but never tried them) but the world of plugins can be pretty daunting. Do you have any favorites or know of some famous ones worth looking at?

Mona · Mar 2, 2019

Accoun · Mar 3, 2019

Kemono said:
Music (at least mainstream) was simply better in the past and there're reasons for that:

Music didn't die, it was M U R D E R E D

/s

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

Yiazmat

ShapeDePapa

Equippedwithtowel

RPTGB

Fuchsia

entremet

You wouldn't toast a NES cartridge

Filipus

Prophet of Regret

Sanka

pixelation

Dr. Caroll

lunarworks

Richietto

One Winged Slayer

Raxel

Tuorom

SharpX68K

Fuchsia

dyelawn91

OwOtacon

Alt Account

RavFiveFour

Filipus

Prophet of Regret

Mona

Accoun