RonRyan85

When ELVIS PRESLEY died he continued to make money with his
recordings or rather his wife and family and the ELVIS company;
RCA,ect. continued to make money but was there any new guys
or gals to sing as good as E did? When Bing Crosby, Dean
Martin,Roy Orbinson and Frank Sinatra passed away were any
singers of equal talent able to step forward and start getting
the big bucks for their GOLD recordings? NOT to my way of
thinking. Good lyrics,great sounds and songs you could hum or
whistle by yourself were the result of GREAT SONGS sung by
GREAT SINGERS. Where are they now? Most songs unless they are
some by COUNTRY STARS are horrible! You can't undestand any
RAP stuff, no great melodies and NO TALENT. The one cool thing
is the invention of MP3 music and APPLE'S iPOD ! ITUNES has
sold a BILLION tunes on the internet for 99 cents a tune and
most record shops that sold CDs for $16 a disc are closed up
or about to close. Sure there are exceptions to every thing:
Some guys and gals have talent with songs that sound good but
they are few and hard to find.

fresnelly

I'm not sure how to respond to this. Can I name a modern timeless musician? That's a tough one. It's hard to imagine a troubled icon that Hollywood can honour 25 years from now like Elvis or Ray Charles or Johnny Cash. Curt Cobain and Nirvana comes to mind; but then despite his mystique, grunge has quickly fallen out of favour.

Michael Jackson is also a candidate, but it's going to be a long time before his murky reputation is forgiven, and he may never again produce anything like Thriller.

U2 certainly has worldwide iconic status, and they're still going. The Red Hot Chili Peppers might not have the same mass appeal, but they've been putting out solid music of their own sound for what, 20 years now? I don't doubt that their tracks will stand the test of ages. At least for me anyways.

It's something I think about: what entertainments and icons reach beyond living memory. Johnny Depp is an Icon now, but so was Rudolph Valentino, who's films just don't translate today. It seems impossible to predict who will stick like Louis Armstrong, or fade like Louis Jordan.

Generations die out, tastes change, rediscoveries happen. Who knows?

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meanSpleen

What does iTunes have to do with Elvis, or the fact that you think music after Elvis sucks?

Elvis Presley was a huge star, yes, but he was not that great of a singer. There are plenty of people out there who sing better, clearer, and probably with more feeling than he did. At the end of his life you have to remember that he was who he was because (in no particular order)
1) People thought he was good looking
2) He got in 'first'
3) He had a huge marketing department, thus he was able to continue making money after his death - Licensing
4) He was able to branch out into other fields of the entertainment business to futher extend his reach

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Willravel

I think music after Rachamninov sucks, but you have to take what you can get. Also, you're not going to make any friends saying '*insert musical genre here* sucks'. We all secretly know that country music sucks, but we don't say it outloud because we feel badly for Texans.

skinnymofo

look into chris cornell if you want a person who can sing his and your ass off.
then theres also Greg Graffin from Bad Religion and Iggy Pop for some real full of emotion stuff (mostly in the stooges-post bowie influenced areas though)

If you want my opinion, country especially the stuff around today is some of the weakest and most uninspired music genre followed by 98% of everything on mtv right now.
BUT music is very subjective and often different genres dont make sense to different people. i like rap, i can understand them, if you dig you can find good vibes/grooves/beats whatever you want to call them.

was that a typo?
if not im confused even more than the several ideas stuck into a block paragraph?

vanblah

That makes him a good singer?

I'll say that those guys sang fairly well, but not great. Their style was certainly popular; but styles fall out of favor. I seriously doubt that anyone trying to emulate that style would make it to the POP charts in the way the rat pack did. There are several people doing it, and doing it well, but since it's not popular they are not in the limelight. You seem to equate record sales with talent. It certainly takes talent to sell a couple million records ... but not musical talent.

They are out there. You just have to find them. It may take some research, but no one is going to come knocking on your door and hand it to you.

Really? You think that men whining about trucks in nasally, little honking voices that have what life they may have had auto-tuned out of them are good songs? Don't get me started on the women country singers.

If you're talking about REAL country then you might find a few good singer songwriters. Nancy Griffith, Lyle Lovett; Iris Dement; etc.

I don't understand any RAP stuff? Thanks for clearing that up for me. I always thought I could understand it fairly well.
All it takes is the ability to step outside of my midwestern, white-bread roots. (I'm originally from Missouri, but I'm in Memphis now.) Same for blues and soul.

That's the beauty of music -- and art in general.

Rap is not about melody ... it's about meter and phrasing. It is Soul taken to it's extreme. Of course, there is a lot of BAD rap out there.

Well, I agree with you there but not for the same reason. I do think that iTunes is a pretty cool model to work on, but they only carry what's popular. They also promote the watering down of music until every singer, every song, every band sounds just like the one before -- especially pop music; which is what you were referring to with the whole Elvis thing. I know it's hard to believe but Elvis was a POP star. By today's standards he'd be considered easy listening or adult contemporary (sort of). Country music is no exception, it's all formulaic; sounding if not exactly the same from song to song then extraordinarily similar.

Not true if you stop looking to iTunes and go to a boutique music store that caters to the style of music you enjoy most. And I don't mean chain stores. Find the place where all your Elvis fans shop at. It could be online.

I agree that CD's should not cost more than $12 especially from an established act. If us indie guys can sell CD's for $10 then so can everyone else. You have to support the music in some way. The best way to do it is by BUYING DIRECTLY FROM THE ARTIST when you can. If your favorite (living) singer can't pay the bills then they will a) cease to be alive or b) they will cease to write songs.

Paradise Lost

I find it's not that music after 'time period' sucks, so much as it stops seeming as creative.
For as much as I love classical, jazz, and classic rock, I'm always very delighted to find worthwhile contributions to many modern styles of music, including the former three I mentioned, but also in R&B, Blues, Hip-Hop (which are always the most surprising to me) and many other styles. Looking back on to the past you can always pickup hundreds of seemingly legendary/great/good/better-than-today artists, but then there's always the thousands of artists you don't hear about anymore because back in 'time period you like' they too sucked. Although, even when taking that into account, I do see a general downward trend in the truly great acts/albums of today as compared to yesteryear. Although, I'm a firm believer that except for classical and delta blues and some jazz, nothing endearing came from turn of the century 1900s to about 1949, and there was something very much alive in the waters of music from the mid 50s to the late 70s that made non-classical so thoroughly interesting.

It may be harder to come upon better music, especially if you're a fan of 'particular style or time period' but when you do, I think its all the more enjoyable, even when it sounds nothing like the style you thought had exclusive rights to your enjoyment. :P

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Gatorade Frost

Don't feel bad, I'm from Texas and country music sucks. Finally something we can agree on.

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Toaster126

There is a time and a place for nostalgia, and music isn't it. If you think there isn't good music out now, you are just hung up on how music is different compared to how it used to be... and that has always been true.

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shakran

Best post of the thread. Right there.

newtx

I am a 70's music fan. Never been an Elvis fan- sorry. How can you not like Santana, Chicago, I could go on and on??

Paradise Lost

The nostalgia argument works in some cases, but in quite a few cases, probably mine and newtx, most of the music I listen to know comes from at least 10 years before I was born and a good 25 years before I actually started listening to music in any sort of day-to-day basis. I don't like most today based on this simple criteria: Is it good? Answer: No.

But then again, music is probably the thing I'm most biased towards, I can't talk about it without getting all emotional, rather than logical, like most of my political discussions.

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MSD

I'm not sure if this is a rant, a troll, or something else, but what I do know is hat you don't need manual line breaks at the end of the message box

Baraka_Guru

Wasn't Elvis's rockabilly the rap of the '50s?

Regardless, rap and rockabilly have similar roots: R&B (a combination of blues and jazz)

Both Elvis and Eminem are dependent on strong backbeats, a 4/4 rhythm with the emphasis on the second and fourth beats.

While the melodies and lyrics have changed, the basis is quite the same, which is why both musics are popular and should remain so for a long time. It would be hard to argue that Eminiem's lyrics aren't as good as Elvis's. They are, of course, too different to compare.

I'm sure parents banned Slim Shady as much as they did Elvis the Pelvis.

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filtherton

You need to listen to foreigner.

roachboy

no-one needs to listen to foreigner.
i know that may be cold as ice to say, but i am not willing to sacrifice our love long enough to sit through anything foreigner has ever done.
on the other hand, i dont take advice and will one day pay the price, i know.

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Derwood

Congratulations, original poster. You have passed my "you're officially old" test. As soon as the words "music today is not as good as back then" cross your lips, you have forever crossed over into OLD.

I'm 31 and still buy new music all the time. My best friend is 32 and hasn't bought a new album since 1992. By my logic, that makes him, oh, 14 years older than me

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filtherton

Sounds like you need to follow your own advice .

Locobot

Yeah music hasn't evolved substancially since Bach, there have been some pretty novel innovations in terms of instruments and performance though.