Sara Bareilles had two big hits: one in 2008 with Love Song and one in 2013 with Brave. Ingrid Michaelson similarly had one hit in the 00s with The Way I Am and one in 2014 with Girls Chase Boys, though neither were as big. It seems like Norah Jones-esque music that occasionally got spun last decade no longer gets spun this decade.
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Does the U.S. "play it safe" with music more than other countries.
- Thread starter tall_guy1
- Start date
I actually heard this on Australian radio a year or two ago while waiting for the retro American Top 40 countdown to air there:
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Harvey_Dogg
Guest
I like the Crystals. But don't play this one today.
Just like the Motown Sound of the '60s, Disco hi-hat of the '70s, Stock Aitken Waterman synth beat of the '80s, or Max Martin boy-band/girl-group sound of the '90s, they're going to ride it until the wheels fall off.
Country music had its own phase a while ago where nearly every song had the same finger-snaps in it:
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Harvey_Dogg
Guest
Drummers have been replaced by computer rhythm software. In fact, computers can imitate many instruments. A computer can take a sample of your voice and make you sound like a good singer.
Someday soon. Radio stations run by computers playing songs made by computers.
Someday soon. Radio stations run by computers playing songs made by computers.
It's been happening for 40 years.
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Harvey_Dogg
Guest
Computers are much better today. The rise of the robot. Canned radio at it's best. Maybe soon, DJ's will be total robots too.
Thomas Edison said, "Why should a man do something a machine can do?"
Thomas Edison said, "Why should a man do something a machine can do?"
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Since we've been discussing Canadian content, I have a story to share about my discovery of a Canadian song during my first visit to Canada.
In July 2002, while I was visiting Toronto and Niagara Falls, I was listening to the radio and discovered a song by Jann Arden, the Canadian singer whose one hit in the US is "Insensitive" from 1994. It is a song entitled "Thing For You," which has a catchy chorus in which Jann lists the things that she likes about the person she's singing to. I heard it a few times on the radio while in Canada, and I thought about it during my flight back to New York. Sometime after my return to New York, I bought a CD of Greatest Hurts: The Best of Jann Arden, the album that contains the song.
In July 2002, while I was visiting Toronto and Niagara Falls, I was listening to the radio and discovered a song by Jann Arden, the Canadian singer whose one hit in the US is "Insensitive" from 1994. It is a song entitled "Thing For You," which has a catchy chorus in which Jann lists the things that she likes about the person she's singing to. I heard it a few times on the radio while in Canada, and I thought about it during my flight back to New York. Sometime after my return to New York, I bought a CD of Greatest Hurts: The Best of Jann Arden, the album that contains the song.
Even when a real drummer is used, on a computer audio editor "pocketing" is used to align their beats exactly to the tempo. Rick Beato blames it on bands insisting to use "their guy" (who is actually a lousy drummer) instead of a professional session drummer, like the famous Wrecking Crew.
Not a problem in country music, where the elite session guys appear on just about every recording and some even double as musicians in performers' road bands.
Yeah, but Country definitely does use pocketing, as well as a hell of a lot of Auto-tune. In fact, I first started hearing Auto-tune on Nashville recordings in 1998, a year before Cher and Eiffel 65 made it famous by taking its effect to the extreme.
Some Country recordings even use a variant of Auto-tune to automatically generate harmony vocals of the singer's voice, without him/her needing to record the multiple parts and multi-track them together.
I hate that effect. Pretty sure it's on Sam Hunt's records. Didn't Phil Collins use it, too, to make his voice sound "thicker"?
John Lennon used to double track his voice for the same reason. If you listen carefully the two tracks don't always sync up.
A drummer friend of mine who plays for a well known band and I were having this discussion just the other day. He said that the trend is going away from E-drums and tracks to using actual, tuned drums and seasoned drummer's. Even if they're session folks.
The discussion progressed to: "Who is the top ten rock drummers of all time?" Both of our lists differed slightly, but we agreed on one who over the years hasn't been given enough credit: Phil Rudd of AC/DC. Not artistic or really musical like Neil Peart, but is a total machine without click track, stays solidly in the pocket, and has that signature driving beat rock rhythm.
Even Phil Spector! He is often credited with the first successful usage of double and even triple and quadruple tracking. It's told that at first, he'd have the musicians record additional tracks, in synch. But then he discovered in the earliest multi-track machines, that he could play the same track multiple times with either the tiniest electronic delay or with different EQ and processing to created the same effect.
He did that with voices, instruments and even background noise to get his wall of sound characteristic.
Not every radio station plays it safe with regards to new music or new artists. Bailey Zimmerman is a new country artist who already has a Top 10 with his debut single "Fall In Love." According to this, some stations are digging deeper into his music and playing album cuts:
www.countryinsider.com
Outliers: Some Stations Going Deep On Bailey Zimmerman Airplay.
Bailey Zimmerman has his first Top 10 country radio single, with “Fall in Love” sitting at No. 6. But a handful of stations, notably Audacy “93.1 The Wolf” WPAW Greensboro,
Les Paul pre-dated Spector. See his recordings with Mary Ford. https://www.les-paul.com/multi-track-recording/
The problem is that humans also like to hear some of that 'offness' (for lack of a better word), or the infrequent mistake that makes the music sound more real, more emotive, and more human. If the singer's voice is just a hair high or low at times it can give the phrase more expression, and more emotion. Sure, I suppose a computerized voice could do that. But not yet.
Same with playing an instrument. While the ultra-pure notes that one can get from a synthesizer and autotune can sound cool (it was used a lot in the early 2010's pop music, and I really liked a lot of that), a lot of people still like roots music, where the changes in rhythm or pitch are appealing.
That was done a lot in the 80's, when every track was 'comped', i.e., every artist would perform the same track 4-5 times, and then the final drum track, guitar track, vocal track, bass track, etc. would be compiled from the best bits and pieces of those 4-5 (or more) tracks, and sometimes the tape would be cut to make every track perfect. Mutt Lange (who produced Def Leppard, Shania Twain, and some AC/DC albums) was famous for this. But a lot of the producers in the 80's did this.
This only became easier after DAW's like ProTools became standard in every recording studio.
The grunge movement changed that to a certain extent. Nirvana played every backing track live in the studio when they recorded Nevermind, and I think it was the same with In Utero. Not even a click track. I think with Pearl Jam it was similar. They had more of a 60's/early 70's view of recording basic, backing tracks.
I'm not sure how it's done now. The access to so much technology by so many probably makes the temptation to make it all "perfect" very strong.
Same thing with Whitney Houston's acapella intro to "I Will Always Love You". If you listen closely with headphones you can hear the edits where they pieced it together from multiple takes.
And Mutt Lange not only produced Shania Twain, he married her! (But they split in 2010.)
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