What is fascinating about this music-getting-worse debate is not the question - I’m simply right, it’s a fact - it’s how people fiercely object to the notion. Because you have to be a fucking moron not to realise it is getting worse - uglier, brasher, more simplistic and formulaic
So why do so many PB-ears resist this? Why are they happy to look like a fucking moron?
It’s because they are even more scared of looking like some grumpy old git who hates modern music. Given that so many of us are of advanced years, I imagine this notion plagues quite a few people on the site
And so you get the insane spectacle of intelligent people trying to claim that drill music is just as good as Aretha Franklin
Whilst I agree with you, the problem is that old farts have been saying this for the last 70 years, maybe more.
How are you right, when the people who complained about Punk, Beatles,Elvis etc were wrong?
Since musical taste is subjective, it’s a hard argument to make convincingly.
Personally, I blame the internet. The fact all music is available on demand crushes space for innovation. You don’t need to write a new tune, or create something new from another half remembered tune, when the whole back catalogue is there right now.
Well at least the weather, round here anyway, looks good! That we should perhaps be looking forward to a time when Patel was Home Secretary as a relatively liberal time is amazing gut-wrenchingly terrifying!
I’m not just emotionally and artistically correct, I can scientifically prove I’m correct. Music is decreasing in complexity and variety, songs are more formulaic, lyrics are more repetitive and mundane. Music is getting worse
Oh man, there's a ton of excellent new music out there, you just gotta find it. Most pop music is gash, always has been. Most people want simple music. Pop music has always been music getting simpler. Simpler chords, simpler structures. Rock evolved from 12 bar blues, which is about as simple as you can get. Tomorrow Never Knows, one of the most musically adventurous things the Beatles ever did, is one chord - C - like a lot of Indian music is.
The best pop music is made by skint kids with no musical training on the cheapest equipment. In the Big Band era that was kids with guitars, and that lasted until something cheaper and easier to learn than guitars came along - computers. Now it's kids with a counterfeit copy of Ableton or Cubase, or whatever, on a laptop. No it's not my cup of tea, but I'm not the audience. The kids love it.
But there's loads of good, often complex, new music out there. Here are some recent-ish new releases, all come highly recommended:
Skin by Joy Crookes - smoky voiced young Londoner doing soul//funk/blues type stuff
Dancing Dimensions by Ural Thomas and the Pain - old skool soul guy finally getting some recognition
My Finest Work Yet by Andrew Bird - classically trained American indie type railing against Trump, but beautifully
Yn Rio by Carwyn Ellis - lush Tropicalia with Welsh lyrics, an unlikely combination but makes a great summer album
The Overload by Yard Act - nominated for the Mercury this year, excellent post-punk indie from a Leeds-based band
INTROSPECTIO by Mario Batkovic - what this guy does with an accordion will blow your mind
Having pretty much the entirety of recorded music at your fingertips can be quite overwhelming, but there are gems out there.
And if you're still thirsty for new - to you - music, you could always go back to old stuff that you never heard when it came out. I just discovered One Year by Colin Blunstone, who was the singer with the Zombies. Great solo album, came out in '71, could've been recorded last week it sounds so fresh.
All in all looks like an even more right-wing and ERG heavy Cabinet than Boris' was if Truss wins
Sacking Gove would be a very acceptable move, and I can imagine Kwarteng would actually be quite a good Chancellor.
But Braverman at the Home Office? While that would at least remove an Attorney General who has utter contempt for the law, the mere thought of what she might do while controlling the state security apparatus given her highly authoritarian tendencies is enough to bring anyone out in a cold sweat.
Be very careful what you wish for with the sacking of Gove. Obviously he was a terrible EdSec, and bringing Cummings into public life was a huge crime, but now he's the voice of relative sanity. And he's only going because he was meeen to Poor Borwis.
Put it this way: Good news: The Hundred is being scrapped. Bad news: It's being replaced by a new four-team competition called The Fifty.
Which opens up a different question of which group of Tory seats / voters is she targeting. Down South they want low spending but fairly socially liberal (which is why the seats tend Lib Dem) up North they are going to like the right wing social viewpoint but still want levelling up...
By going for low tax but right wing policies she's very likely to be targeting absolutely no one...
It's Professor Goodwin's National Populism. Appeals to hard-faced self-made men who did well out of the crisis. Low tax (so they can keep their money) and lots of police (to stop people, especially foreigners, taking their money). It has a certain appeal.
Whether it works in 2023/4/5 depends on what really happened in 2019. Did Boris find the electoral magic that the country has secretly wanted all along but couldn't get in one package before? Or was he up against the worst ever opponent in modern history?
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
Our presence in this universe appears to be the result of a long series of lucky circumstances.
These include: The fortuitous value of the fine structure constant, which, if it were a little difference would not allow stellar fusion to produce carbon. The existence of a rocky planet at just the right distance from a stable and long-lived star. The presence of just enough water on said planet to make a complex environment of coasts and shallows that would drive evolution along. The presence of an unusually large moon orbiting said planet to slosh all that water about and further drive evolution. A complex geology that, combined with the effects of life, has managed to remove CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere at a rate that has just about compensated for the gradual increase in the luminosity of the sun, this keeping the temperature of the Earth in a range compatible with life over the aeons.
And we are just about to screw it all up.
Not at all. Whilst you are right about the serendipity element of our existence, you vastly overestimate the significance of our current civilisation and the nature of the changes we are facing. Presenting these current very minor adjustments in our environment with the vast changes that have occurred over the last few million years (one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals) really shows a fundamental disconnect with the reality of our existence on planet earth.
The changes of a few degrees - whilst undoubtedly bad for our current comfortable civilisation - are bugger all in both scale and rate of change compared to the natural changes that have occurred even in fairly recent times.
This is not to say we shouldn't try to mitigate such changes, nor that they won't be very bad for our current lifestyles but your hyperbolic comment shows a stunning lack of historical and prehistorical perspective.
Not really, as your parenthesis "(one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals)" accidentally reveals. What is the point of saying This is nothing, we've had snowball earth and ice free earth and oxygen levels of 31%, this is a mere pin prick, when any one of those three sets of conditions would leave mankind wholly or mainly, stone dead? What has the long view got to do with us, when we have only been in the picture for a couple of minutes relatively speaking?
It's like warning a population of tadpoles in an April puddle that if it doesn't rain in the next week their puddle will dry out and they will all die: not much consolation for them to know that rainfall usually averages out in the course of a year and their puddle was virtually a pond back in January.
Nah. The point is that the changes we are seeing now are pinpricks compared to what nature can and has done in the past. We will and as we always have and this idea that this is the end of humanity or even civilisation which is expressed in FE's posting really is baseless. Indeed civilisations of the past have thrived under exactly the conditions which are being predicted now. It is uncomfortable for individuals and is probably something to be avoided if we can since it will make life miserable for a lot of people. But it is simply rubbish to consider anything we re predicting at the moment as the end of humanity.
Of course if we decided to nuke each other that is another matter. But I grew up in the 70s and 80s when threat was a permanent imminent threat so even that I find a bit of a yawn.
The world is a wonderful place and will continue to be so pretty much regardless of what we do.
The world is a wonderful place here and now for well heeled UK property owning PBers with money in the bank and drink in the fridge, sure. Our current predicament is such that either hundreds of millions of people who are mainly poor and fucked up anyway are going to be wiped out, or all of us are. I can't pretend to be terribly fussed at either possibility, but that's because I am a selfish twat. How about you?
The poor in the rest of the world are always being fucked up by those of us in the first world. But in fact their lot has being getting better rather than worse over the last century and continues to do so. So yes I continue to say the world is a wonderful place - and a lot better place to live in than it has been for almost all of human history for the vast majority of its population whether rich or poor.
But there's more of them. Lots more of them. So in absolute terms there's more human misery now, than in all previous history combined. Not claiming I lose sleep over this, but celebrations seem out of order.
And yet by all the measures - income, life expectancy, HALE, access to education and technology - the whole world is getting better.
Global average life expectancy increased by more than 6 years between 2000 and 2019 (WHO).
The same goes for Healthy Life expectancy (WHO). Almost all of this was as a result of increase in Third World Life expectancy.
Infant mortality has dropped from 9% in 1990 to 2.6% today. (WHO)
By 2015 the number of people living in absolute poverty globally had dropped less than half of its 1990 levels - from 1.9 billion to 736 million (World Bank). And that in spite of there being far more people in the world than there were in 1990.
In the same period illiteracy dropped from 24% of the world's population to less than 14%. (UNESCO)
Irrespective of how many people there are in the world today, they are better off overall than they were only 30 years ago and vastly better off than they were a century ago.
This is not a call to do nothing more. But it is a fight back against the idea that the world is becoming a worse place to live in whether rich or poor. It is not.
100x this.
Despite all that we see going on, the world has never been a better place in which to live. There is less poverty, fewer wars, higher life expectancy, more democracy, more education, less disease…
It was probably better in the 1990s, lower inflation, Yeltsin not Putin, Zemin not Xi, pre 9/11, more nations were democratic and pre Covid.
Though in world history terms today is still a good time to be alive
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
Our presence in this universe appears to be the result of a long series of lucky circumstances.
These include: The fortuitous value of the fine structure constant, which, if it were a little difference would not allow stellar fusion to produce carbon. The existence of a rocky planet at just the right distance from a stable and long-lived star. The presence of just enough water on said planet to make a complex environment of coasts and shallows that would drive evolution along. The presence of an unusually large moon orbiting said planet to slosh all that water about and further drive evolution. A complex geology that, combined with the effects of life, has managed to remove CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere at a rate that has just about compensated for the gradual increase in the luminosity of the sun, this keeping the temperature of the Earth in a range compatible with life over the aeons.
And we are just about to screw it all up.
Not at all. Whilst you are right about the serendipity element of our existence, you vastly overestimate the significance of our current civilisation and the nature of the changes we are facing. Presenting these current very minor adjustments in our environment with the vast changes that have occurred over the last few million years (one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals) really shows a fundamental disconnect with the reality of our existence on planet earth.
The changes of a few degrees - whilst undoubtedly bad for our current comfortable civilisation - are bugger all in both scale and rate of change compared to the natural changes that have occurred even in fairly recent times.
This is not to say we shouldn't try to mitigate such changes, nor that they won't be very bad for our current lifestyles but your hyperbolic comment shows a stunning lack of historical and prehistorical perspective.
Not really, as your parenthesis "(one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals)" accidentally reveals. What is the point of saying This is nothing, we've had snowball earth and ice free earth and oxygen levels of 31%, this is a mere pin prick, when any one of those three sets of conditions would leave mankind wholly or mainly, stone dead? What has the long view got to do with us, when we have only been in the picture for a couple of minutes relatively speaking?
It's like warning a population of tadpoles in an April puddle that if it doesn't rain in the next week their puddle will dry out and they will all die: not much consolation for them to know that rainfall usually averages out in the course of a year and their puddle was virtually a pond back in January.
Nah. The point is that the changes we are seeing now are pinpricks compared to what nature can and has done in the past. We will and as we always have and this idea that this is the end of humanity or even civilisation which is expressed in FE's posting really is baseless. Indeed civilisations of the past have thrived under exactly the conditions which are being predicted now. It is uncomfortable for individuals and is probably something to be avoided if we can since it will make life miserable for a lot of people. But it is simply rubbish to consider anything we re predicting at the moment as the end of humanity.
Of course if we decided to nuke each other that is another matter. But I grew up in the 70s and 80s when threat was a permanent imminent threat so even that I find a bit of a yawn.
The world is a wonderful place and will continue to be so pretty much regardless of what we do.
The world is a wonderful place here and now for well heeled UK property owning PBers with money in the bank and drink in the fridge, sure. Our current predicament is such that either hundreds of millions of people who are mainly poor and fucked up anyway are going to be wiped out, or all of us are. I can't pretend to be terribly fussed at either possibility, but that's because I am a selfish twat. How about you?
The poor in the rest of the world are always being fucked up by those of us in the first world. But in fact their lot has being getting better rather than worse over the last century and continues to do so. So yes I continue to say the world is a wonderful place - and a lot better place to live in than it has been for almost all of human history for the vast majority of its population whether rich or poor.
But there's more of them. Lots more of them. So in absolute terms there's more human misery now, than in all previous history combined. Not claiming I lose sleep over this, but celebrations seem out of order.
And yet by all the measures - income, life expectancy, HALE, access to education and technology - the whole world is getting better.
Global average life expectancy increased by more than 6 years between 2000 and 2019 (WHO).
The same goes for Healthy Life expectancy (WHO). Almost all of this was as a result of increase in Third World Life expectancy.
Infant mortality has dropped from 9% in 1990 to 2.6% today. (WHO)
By 2015 the number of people living in absolute poverty globally had dropped less than half of its 1990 levels - from 1.9 billion to 736 million (World Bank). And that in spite of there being far more people in the world than there were in 1990.
In the same period illiteracy dropped from 24% of the world's population to less than 14%. (UNESCO)
Irrespective of how many people there are in the world today, they are better off overall than they were only 30 years ago and vastly better off than they were a century ago.
This is not a call to do nothing more. But it is a fight back against the idea that the world is becoming a worse place to live in whether rich or poor. It is not.
100x this.
Despite all that we see going on, the world has never been a better place in which to live. There is less poverty, fewer wars, higher life expectancy, more democracy, more education, less disease…
I wish that was all true, but it ain’t
For instance, democracy is in retreat. And has been for many years. Do you get out much?
“In 2018, Freedom in the World recorded the 13th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. The reversal has spanned a variety of countries in every region, from long-standing democracies like the United States to consolidated authoritarian regimes like China and Russia. The overall losses are still shallow compared with the gains of the late 20th century, but the pattern is consistent and ominous. Democracy is in retreat.”
That was in 2019. Do you think it’s got better since then? No, neither do I
That’s a random think-tank opinion piece trying to push a narrative, rather than a scientific study. The last few years have shown that, in countries like the USA, democracy has very much prevailed over those who said it woundn’t.
China and Russia never had anything but a fig-leaf of democracy anyway.
What is fascinating about this music-getting-worse debate is not the question - I’m simply right, it’s a fact - it’s how people fiercely object to the notion. Because you have to be a fucking moron not to realise it is getting worse - uglier, brasher, more simplistic and formulaic
So why do so many PB-ears resist this? Why are they happy to look like a fucking moron?
It’s because they are even more scared of looking like some grumpy old git who hates modern music. Given that so many of us are of advanced years, I imagine this notion plagues quite a few people on the site
And so you get the insane spectacle of intelligent people trying to claim that drill music is just as good as Aretha Franklin
Whilst I agree with you, the problem is that old farts have been saying this for the last 70 years, maybe more.
How are you right, when the people who complained about Punk, Beatles,Elvis etc were wrong?
Since musical taste is subjective, it’s a hard argument to make convincingly.
Personally, I blame the internet. The fact all music is available on demand crushes space for innovation. You don’t need to write a new tune, or create something new from another half remembered tune, when the whole back catalogue is there right now.
Indeed, because old farts have said it for 70 years, no one wants to look like an old fart by saying it now. Except, this time it is true (see those multiple scientific studies). Music is simpler, louder, and more boring. Less surprising. The lyrics less interesting
And yes there are many factors at play and one of them is the internet. The overwhelming presence of all the great music in the world, on hand, freely, 24/7, surely inhibits people who want to make NEW music
All in all looks like an even more right-wing and ERG heavy Cabinet than Boris' was if Truss wins
Sacking Gove would be a very acceptable move, and I can imagine Kwarteng would actually be quite a good Chancellor.
But Braverman at the Home Office? While that would at least remove an Attorney General who has utter contempt for the law, the mere thought of what she might do while controlling the state security apparatus given her highly authoritarian tendencies is enough to bring anyone out in a cold sweat.
Be very careful what you wish for with the sacking of Gove. Obviously he was a terrible EdSec, and bringing Cummings into public life was a huge crime, but now he's the voice of relative sanity. And he's only going because he was meeen to Poor Borwis.
Put it this way: Good news: The Hundred is being scrapped. Bad news: It's being replaced by a new four-team competition called The Fifty.
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
I think you understate the case. The way we're going it will be a runaway climate change. Although some, especially reputable researchers, know what we need to do to counter this, most of us are too gormless to act accordingly. For instance, getting an electric car does not justify an otherwise wanton life style.
That's my fear. That we are now in an accelerating loop of increasing warmth and volatility, which will feed off itself like a chain reaction. And perhaps it is already too late to stop this
Our presence in this universe appears to be the result of a long series of lucky circumstances.
These include: The fortuitous value of the fine structure constant, which, if it were a little difference would not allow stellar fusion to produce carbon. The existence of a rocky planet at just the right distance from a stable and long-lived star. The presence of just enough water on said planet to make a complex environment of coasts and shallows that would drive evolution along. The presence of an unusually large moon orbiting said planet to slosh all that water about and further drive evolution. A complex geology that, combined with the effects of life, has managed to remove CO2 from the Earth's atmosphere at a rate that has just about compensated for the gradual increase in the luminosity of the sun, this keeping the temperature of the Earth in a range compatible with life over the aeons.
And we are just about to screw it all up.
Not at all. Whilst you are right about the serendipity element of our existence, you vastly overestimate the significance of our current civilisation and the nature of the changes we are facing. Presenting these current very minor adjustments in our environment with the vast changes that have occurred over the last few million years (one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals) really shows a fundamental disconnect with the reality of our existence on planet earth.
The changes of a few degrees - whilst undoubtedly bad for our current comfortable civilisation - are bugger all in both scale and rate of change compared to the natural changes that have occurred even in fairly recent times.
This is not to say we shouldn't try to mitigate such changes, nor that they won't be very bad for our current lifestyles but your hyperbolic comment shows a stunning lack of historical and prehistorical perspective.
Not really, as your parenthesis "(one of which probably reduced the human population to less than 10,000 individuals)" accidentally reveals. What is the point of saying This is nothing, we've had snowball earth and ice free earth and oxygen levels of 31%, this is a mere pin prick, when any one of those three sets of conditions would leave mankind wholly or mainly, stone dead? What has the long view got to do with us, when we have only been in the picture for a couple of minutes relatively speaking?
It's like warning a population of tadpoles in an April puddle that if it doesn't rain in the next week their puddle will dry out and they will all die: not much consolation for them to know that rainfall usually averages out in the course of a year and their puddle was virtually a pond back in January.
Nah. The point is that the changes we are seeing now are pinpricks compared to what nature can and has done in the past. We will and as we always have and this idea that this is the end of humanity or even civilisation which is expressed in FE's posting really is baseless. Indeed civilisations of the past have thrived under exactly the conditions which are being predicted now. It is uncomfortable for individuals and is probably something to be avoided if we can since it will make life miserable for a lot of people. But it is simply rubbish to consider anything we re predicting at the moment as the end of humanity.
Of course if we decided to nuke each other that is another matter. But I grew up in the 70s and 80s when threat was a permanent imminent threat so even that I find a bit of a yawn.
The world is a wonderful place and will continue to be so pretty much regardless of what we do.
The world is a wonderful place here and now for well heeled UK property owning PBers with money in the bank and drink in the fridge, sure. Our current predicament is such that either hundreds of millions of people who are mainly poor and fucked up anyway are going to be wiped out, or all of us are. I can't pretend to be terribly fussed at either possibility, but that's because I am a selfish twat. How about you?
The poor in the rest of the world are always being fucked up by those of us in the first world. But in fact their lot has being getting better rather than worse over the last century and continues to do so. So yes I continue to say the world is a wonderful place - and a lot better place to live in than it has been for almost all of human history for the vast majority of its population whether rich or poor.
But there's more of them. Lots more of them. So in absolute terms there's more human misery now, than in all previous history combined. Not claiming I lose sleep over this, but celebrations seem out of order.
And yet by all the measures - income, life expectancy, HALE, access to education and technology - the whole world is getting better.
Global average life expectancy increased by more than 6 years between 2000 and 2019 (WHO).
The same goes for Healthy Life expectancy (WHO). Almost all of this was as a result of increase in Third World Life expectancy.
Infant mortality has dropped from 9% in 1990 to 2.6% today. (WHO)
By 2015 the number of people living in absolute poverty globally had dropped less than half of its 1990 levels - from 1.9 billion to 736 million (World Bank). And that in spite of there being far more people in the world than there were in 1990.
In the same period illiteracy dropped from 24% of the world's population to less than 14%. (UNESCO)
Irrespective of how many people there are in the world today, they are better off overall than they were only 30 years ago and vastly better off than they were a century ago.
This is not a call to do nothing more. But it is a fight back against the idea that the world is becoming a worse place to live in whether rich or poor. It is not.
100x this.
Despite all that we see going on, the world has never been a better place in which to live. There is less poverty, fewer wars, higher life expectancy, more democracy, more education, less disease…
I wish that was all true, but it ain’t
For instance, democracy is in retreat. And has been for many years. Do you get out much?
“In 2018, Freedom in the World recorded the 13th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. The reversal has spanned a variety of countries in every region, from long-standing democracies like the United States to consolidated authoritarian regimes like China and Russia. The overall losses are still shallow compared with the gains of the late 20th century, but the pattern is consistent and ominous. Democracy is in retreat.”
That was in 2019. Do you think it’s got better since then? No, neither do I
That’s a random think-tank opinion piece trying to push a narrative, rather than a scientific study. The last few years have shown that, in countries like the USA, democracy has very much prevailed over those who said it woundn’t.
China and Russia never had anything but a fig-leaf of democracy anyway.
No, it’s a fact. What is wrong with PB today? Denying facts? There are fewer democracies than there were, and the democracies that do exist are more flawed
if you don’t like that study, here’s the Economist
“Global democracy has a very bad year The pandemic caused an unprecedented rollback of democratic freedoms in 2020”
“The 2021 edition of the EIU’s Democracy Index sheds light on continued challenges to democracy worldwide, under pressure from the coronavirus pandemic and increasing support for authoritarian alternatives.
“The annual index, which provides a measurement of the state of global democracy, reveals an overall score of 5.28, down from 5.37 in 2020. This fall is the biggest since 2010, in the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis, and sets another dismal record for the worst global score since the index was first produced in 2006.”
All in all looks like an even more right-wing and ERG heavy Cabinet than Boris' was if Truss wins
Sacking Gove would be a very acceptable move, and I can imagine Kwarteng would actually be quite a good Chancellor.
But Braverman at the Home Office? While that would at least remove an Attorney General who has utter contempt for the law, the mere thought of what she might do while controlling the state security apparatus given her highly authoritarian tendencies is enough to bring anyone out in a cold sweat.
Be very careful what you wish for with the sacking of Gove. Obviously he was a terrible EdSec, and bringing Cummings into public life was a huge crime, but now he's the voice of relative sanity. And he's only going because he was meeen to Poor Borwis.
Put it this way: Good news: The Hundred is being scrapped. Bad news: It's being replaced by a new four-team competition called The Fifty.
I’m not just emotionally and artistically correct, I can scientifically prove I’m correct. Music is decreasing in complexity and variety, songs are more formulaic, lyrics are more repetitive and mundane. Music is getting worse
Mazzy Star Quantic Tash Sultana DJariium Husky Loops Paul Hartnoll Finley Quaye Young Fathers Dave Thomas Junior Light Asylum Nitin Sawhney Elbow Unkle Kerli Wankelmut Leftfield X Ambassadors Silver Mt Zion FKA Twigs Covenant Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra The Allergies Michel Kiwanuka Dennis Lloyd Robert Levon Been Maribou State The Cinematic Orchestra Molotov Jukebox
Something there for everything. You might think you recognise some of it/it's derivative of course you might but then welcome to pop music for the past 70 years.
And that's to exclude the superstars - eg Kanye, Rihanna, Adele, Lizzo, etc, or, say, Grime.
You need to get out more, take the Chris de Burgh tape off loop and start shazaming your way to find some new music.
"Cash has been in decline for well over a decade, the pandemic accelerated this, but now it's going back up, and that's absolutely because of the cost of living crisis," she said.
Sigh. People read into things what they want to. I'd have thought it's more a case of things going back to normal after the pandemic.
I've had a look online and can't find any report or data supporting this.
There is a month on month increase, but surely that is just people going out to the pub etc? Close to calling bollocks on it.
The people quoted in the article are quite adamant though.
What is fascinating about this music-getting-worse debate is not the question - I’m simply right, it’s a fact - it’s how people fiercely object to the notion. Because you have to be a fucking moron not to realise it is getting worse - uglier, brasher, more simplistic and formulaic
So why do so many PB-ears resist this? Why are they happy to look like a fucking moron?
It’s because they are even more scared of looking like some grumpy old git who hates modern music. Given that so many of us are of advanced years, I imagine this notion plagues quite a few people on the site
And so you get the insane spectacle of intelligent people trying to claim that drill music is just as good as Aretha Franklin
My dad used to bang on like this in the 70s when I was a teenager. How current music wasn't a patch on the stuff he grew up with in the 40s and 50s. It used to really get on my nerves.
I’m not just emotionally and artistically correct, I can scientifically prove I’m correct. Music is decreasing in complexity and variety, songs are more formulaic, lyrics are more repetitive and mundane. Music is getting worse
Mazzy Star Quantic Tash Sultana DJariium Husky Loops Paul Hartnoll Finley Quaye Young Fathers Dave Thomas Junior Light Asylum Nitin Sawhney Elbow Unkle Kerli Wankelmut Leftfield X Ambassadors Silver Mt Zion FKA Twigs Covenant Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra The Allergies Michel Kiwanuka Dennis Lloyd Robert Levon Been Maribou State The Cinematic Orchestra Molotov Jukebox
Something there for everything. You might think you recognise some of it/it's derivative of course you might but then welcome to pop music for the past 70 years.
And that's to exclude the superstars - eg Kanye, Rihanna, Adele, Lizzo, etc, or, say, Grime.
You need to get out more, take the Chris de Burgh tape off loop and start shazaming your way to find some new music.
It’s faintly tragic that you had to write all that out to prove how youthful you really are, if only to yourself. But well done
I’m not just emotionally and artistically correct, I can scientifically prove I’m correct. Music is decreasing in complexity and variety, songs are more formulaic, lyrics are more repetitive and mundane. Music is getting worse
Mazzy Star Quantic Tash Sultana DJariium Husky Loops Paul Hartnoll Finley Quaye Young Fathers Dave Thomas Junior Light Asylum Nitin Sawhney Elbow Unkle Kerli Wankelmut Leftfield X Ambassadors Silver Mt Zion FKA Twigs Covenant Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra The Allergies Michel Kiwanuka Dennis Lloyd Robert Levon Been Maribou State The Cinematic Orchestra Molotov Jukebox
Something there for everything. You might think you recognise some of it/it's derivative of course you might but then welcome to pop music for the past 70 years.
And that's to exclude the superstars - eg Kanye, Rihanna, Adele, Lizzo, etc, or, say, Grime.
You need to get out more, take the Chris de Burgh tape off loop and start shazaming your way to find some new music.
Ouch. CdeB
Interesting list. Do you have it in shareable form?
I’m not just emotionally and artistically correct, I can scientifically prove I’m correct. Music is decreasing in complexity and variety, songs are more formulaic, lyrics are more repetitive and mundane. Music is getting worse
Mazzy Star Quantic Tash Sultana DJariium Husky Loops Paul Hartnoll Finley Quaye Young Fathers Dave Thomas Junior Light Asylum Nitin Sawhney Elbow Unkle Kerli Wankelmut Leftfield X Ambassadors Silver Mt Zion FKA Twigs Covenant Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra The Allergies Michel Kiwanuka Dennis Lloyd Robert Levon Been Maribou State The Cinematic Orchestra Molotov Jukebox
Something there for everything. You might think you recognise some of it/it's derivative of course you might but then welcome to pop music for the past 70 years.
And that's to exclude the superstars - eg Kanye, Rihanna, Adele, Lizzo, etc, or, say, Grime.
You need to get out more, take the Chris de Burgh tape off loop and start shazaming your way to find some new music.
It’s faintly tragic that you had to write all that out to prove how youthful you really are, if only to yourself. But well done
You a bit harsh in a list that contains ‘wanklemut’
All in all looks like an even more right-wing and ERG heavy Cabinet than Boris' was if Truss wins
Braverman Home Secretary destroys any credibility she might have had. She might as well just give the job to Dorries and be done with.
She as good as promised Sunak a role in one of the earlier debates, and Tory party rules don’t (any longer) allow him to withdraw before the final ballot and throw his weight behind her. So if she doesn’t work with him it would be a bad call.
I’m not just emotionally and artistically correct, I can scientifically prove I’m correct. Music is decreasing in complexity and variety, songs are more formulaic, lyrics are more repetitive and mundane. Music is getting worse
Mazzy Star Quantic Tash Sultana DJariium Husky Loops Paul Hartnoll Finley Quaye Young Fathers Dave Thomas Junior Light Asylum Nitin Sawhney Elbow Unkle Kerli Wankelmut Leftfield X Ambassadors Silver Mt Zion FKA Twigs Covenant Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra The Allergies Michel Kiwanuka Dennis Lloyd Robert Levon Been Maribou State The Cinematic Orchestra Molotov Jukebox
Something there for everything. You might think you recognise some of it/it's derivative of course you might but then welcome to pop music for the past 70 years.
And that's to exclude the superstars - eg Kanye, Rihanna, Adele, Lizzo, etc, or, say, Grime.
You need to get out more, take the Chris de Burgh tape off loop and start shazaming your way to find some new music.
It’s faintly tragic that you had to write all that out to prove how youthful you really are, if only to yourself. But well done
Twat. I just Shazam anything I like the sound of. You should get with the technology.
Edit: and I like modern British drama which brings you face to face with grime.
I’m not just emotionally and artistically correct, I can scientifically prove I’m correct. Music is decreasing in complexity and variety, songs are more formulaic, lyrics are more repetitive and mundane. Music is getting worse
Mazzy Star Quantic Tash Sultana DJariium Husky Loops Paul Hartnoll Finley Quaye Young Fathers Dave Thomas Junior Light Asylum Nitin Sawhney Elbow Unkle Kerli Wankelmut Leftfield X Ambassadors Silver Mt Zion FKA Twigs Covenant Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra The Allergies Michel Kiwanuka Dennis Lloyd Robert Levon Been Maribou State The Cinematic Orchestra Molotov Jukebox
Something there for everything. You might think you recognise some of it/it's derivative of course you might but then welcome to pop music for the past 70 years.
And that's to exclude the superstars - eg Kanye, Rihanna, Adele, Lizzo, etc, or, say, Grime.
You need to get out more, take the Chris de Burgh tape off loop and start shazaming your way to find some new music.
Ouch. CdeB
Interesting list. Do you have it in shareable form?
All in all looks like an even more right-wing and ERG heavy Cabinet than Boris' was if Truss wins
Sacking Gove would be a very acceptable move, and I can imagine Kwarteng would actually be quite a good Chancellor.
But Braverman at the Home Office? While that would at least remove an Attorney General who has utter contempt for the law, the mere thought of what she might do while controlling the state security apparatus given her highly authoritarian tendencies is enough to bring anyone out in a cold sweat.
Be very careful what you wish for with the sacking of Gove. Obviously he was a terrible EdSec, and bringing Cummings into public life was a huge crime, but now he's the voice of relative sanity. And he's only going because he was meeen to Poor Borwis.
Put it this way: Good news: The Hundred is being scrapped. Bad news: It's being replaced by a new four-team competition called The Fifty.
Fair comment.
How on earth did he end up as the sane one?
Good question.
I was going to say that a decade in government would knock a sense of reality and humility into anyone, but then you have to explain Liz Truss.
All in all looks like an even more right-wing and ERG heavy Cabinet than Boris' was if Truss wins
Braverman Home Secretary destroys any credibility she might have had. She might as well just give the job to Dorries and be done with.
She as good as promised Sunak a role in one of the earlier debates, and Tory party rules don’t (any longer) allow him to withdraw before the final ballot and throw his weight behind her. So if she doesn’t work with him it would be a bad call.
Creating a situation where Gove has time to plot could be described as either risky or brave!
All in all looks like an even more right-wing and ERG heavy Cabinet than Boris' was if Truss wins
Which opens up a different question of which group of Tory seats / voters is she targeting. Down South they want low spending but fairly socially liberal (which is why the seats tend Lib Dem) up North they are going to like the right wing social viewpoint but still want levelling up...
By going for low tax but right wing policies she's very likely to be targeting absolutely no one...
If she is reduced to standing in Northern Ireland she will be getting desperate
All in all looks like an even more right-wing and ERG heavy Cabinet than Boris' was if Truss wins
Sacking Gove would be a very acceptable move, and I can imagine Kwarteng would actually be quite a good Chancellor.
But Braverman at the Home Office? While that would at least remove an Attorney General who has utter contempt for the law, the mere thought of what she might do while controlling the state security apparatus given her highly authoritarian tendencies is enough to bring anyone out in a cold sweat.
Be very careful what you wish for with the sacking of Gove. Obviously he was a terrible EdSec, and bringing Cummings into public life was a huge crime, but now he's the voice of relative sanity. And he's only going because he was meeen to Poor Borwis.
Put it this way: Good news: The Hundred is being scrapped. Bad news: It's being replaced by a new four-team competition called The Fifty.
Fair comment.
How on earth did he end up as the sane one?
Because the other sane senior Tory MPs were binned by Bozo in October 2019...
My wife and I are paying nearly £2,000 pa. more tax since April due to the NI rise, and now any reversal of this is considered a "hand-out to the well-off".
Um, no. It's reversing a hand-grab from those on good professional salaries working long hours. It's why I was such an opponent of the levy - it will go up from 1.25% to 3% within a few years of Labour taking office.
Followed to its natural conclusion, this argument could be used to defend any NI/income tax increase on higher earners to any level, and against reversal.
Just to give another view, my children who also work hard (but earn I am sure a lot less than you) are now paying less NI because of the other changes which Sunak brought in at the same time. The amount by which they benefit is not huge but it helps, particularly given that they have similar costs eg utilities, have to pay usurious rates on their student loans and are saving to be able to afford - eventually - a mortgage.
Would Truss do anything for people like my children? I have not heard her say anything. Perhaps I have missed this.
While my predictions, as the Stodge Saturday Patent has demonstrated, aren't worth any attention, I'll offer a thought based on recent experience.
In 50-75 years time, London will empty at the beginning of June as those who can seek solace from the 45c temperatures and humidity associated with the late 21st century British summer between the spring and autumn monsoon seasons.
The newly-refurbished London Euston station will host the regular 30-minute Maglev summer service to the Lake District having passengers disembarking at Oxenholme in little more than a hour. From there, families will decamp to their summer chalets near the lakes (or as near as is affordable). The ability to work independently from location, first established during the 2020 pandemic, will allow tens of thousands of Londoners to continue working far from the overheating capital.
For those without the means to escape the heat, the annual ordeal that is summer in London is the very definition of purgatory. On the hottest days, with temperatures nearing 50c, many head to vast "cool centres" where they can enjoy air conditioned relief before heading home in the later evening.
While the Lakes are one popular "retreat from the heat", the Pennines and Cheviots have also seen summer housing and the major development of the north Scottish coast around Torrisdale and the islands of Harris and Lewis have seen an explosion of summer homes for those from southern and eastern Britain desperate to seek cooler summer weather.
That actually sounds like a reasonable prediction, as I stare out at the parched sere grass of the Regent's Park, which has not seen decent rain since early July
Wiltshire was looking very parched on Saturday evening:
I’m not just emotionally and artistically correct, I can scientifically prove I’m correct. Music is decreasing in complexity and variety, songs are more formulaic, lyrics are more repetitive and mundane. Music is getting worse
Mazzy Star Quantic Tash Sultana DJariium Husky Loops Paul Hartnoll Finley Quaye Young Fathers Dave Thomas Junior Light Asylum Nitin Sawhney Elbow Unkle Kerli Wankelmut Leftfield X Ambassadors Silver Mt Zion FKA Twigs Covenant Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra The Allergies Michel Kiwanuka Dennis Lloyd Robert Levon Been Maribou State The Cinematic Orchestra Molotov Jukebox
Something there for everything. You might think you recognise some of it/it's derivative of course you might but then welcome to pop music for the past 70 years.
And that's to exclude the superstars - eg Kanye, Rihanna, Adele, Lizzo, etc, or, say, Grime.
You need to get out more, take the Chris de Burgh tape off loop and start shazaming your way to find some new music.
Ouch. CdeB
Interesting list. Do you have it in shareable form?
Comments
How are you right, when the people who complained about Punk, Beatles,Elvis etc were wrong?
Since musical taste is subjective, it’s a hard argument to make convincingly.
Personally, I blame the internet. The fact all music is available on demand crushes space for innovation. You don’t need to write a new tune, or create something new from another half remembered tune, when the whole back catalogue is there right now.
The best pop music is made by skint kids with no musical training on the cheapest equipment. In the Big Band era that was kids with guitars, and that lasted until something cheaper and easier to learn than guitars came along - computers. Now it's kids with a counterfeit copy of Ableton or Cubase, or whatever, on a laptop. No it's not my cup of tea, but I'm not the audience. The kids love it.
But there's loads of good, often complex, new music out there. Here are some recent-ish new releases, all come highly recommended:
Skin by Joy Crookes - smoky voiced young Londoner doing soul//funk/blues type stuff
Dancing Dimensions by Ural Thomas and the Pain - old skool soul guy finally getting some recognition
My Finest Work Yet by Andrew Bird - classically trained American indie type railing against Trump, but beautifully
Yn Rio by Carwyn Ellis - lush Tropicalia with Welsh lyrics, an unlikely combination but makes a great summer album
The Overload by Yard Act - nominated for the Mercury this year, excellent post-punk indie from a Leeds-based band
INTROSPECTIO by Mario Batkovic - what this guy does with an accordion will blow your mind
Having pretty much the entirety of recorded music at your fingertips can be quite overwhelming, but there are gems out there.
And if you're still thirsty for new - to you - music, you could always go back to old stuff that you never heard when it came out. I just discovered One Year by Colin Blunstone, who was the singer with the Zombies. Great solo album, came out in '71, could've been recorded last week it sounds so fresh.
Put it this way:
Good news: The Hundred is being scrapped.
Bad news: It's being replaced by a new four-team competition called The Fifty. It's Professor Goodwin's National Populism. Appeals to hard-faced self-made men who did well out of the crisis. Low tax (so they can keep their money) and lots of police (to stop people, especially foreigners, taking their money). It has a certain appeal.
Whether it works in 2023/4/5 depends on what really happened in 2019. Did Boris find the electoral magic that the country has secretly wanted all along but couldn't get in one package before? Or was he up against the worst ever opponent in modern history?
Though in world history terms today is still a good time to be alive
China and Russia never had anything but a fig-leaf of democracy anyway.
And yes there are many factors at play and one of them is the internet. The overwhelming presence of all the great music in the world, on hand, freely, 24/7, surely inhibits people who want to make NEW music
How on earth did he end up as the sane one?
if you don’t like that study, here’s the Economist
“Global democracy has a very bad year
The pandemic caused an unprecedented rollback of democratic freedoms in 2020”
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/02/02/global-democracy-has-a-very-bad-year
And on….
“The 2021 edition of the EIU’s Democracy Index sheds light on continued challenges to democracy worldwide, under pressure from the coronavirus pandemic and increasing support for authoritarian alternatives.
“The annual index, which provides a measurement of the state of global democracy, reveals an overall score of 5.28, down from 5.37 in 2020. This fall is the biggest since 2010, in the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis, and sets another dismal record for the worst global score since the index was first produced in 2006.”
https://www.economistgroup.com/group-news/economist-intelligence/democracy-index-2021-less-than-half-the-world-lives-in-a-democracy
Democracy is in retreat. I’m sorry if this upsets you, but it is the case
On my playlist:
Mazzy Star
Quantic
Tash Sultana
DJariium
Husky Loops
Paul Hartnoll
Finley Quaye
Young Fathers
Dave Thomas Junior
Light Asylum
Nitin Sawhney
Elbow
Unkle
Kerli
Wankelmut
Leftfield
X Ambassadors
Silver Mt Zion
FKA Twigs
Covenant
Shawn Lee's Ping Pong Orchestra
The Allergies
Michel Kiwanuka
Dennis Lloyd
Robert Levon Been
Maribou State
The Cinematic Orchestra
Molotov Jukebox
Something there for everything. You might think you recognise some of it/it's derivative of course you might but then welcome to pop music for the past 70 years.
And that's to exclude the superstars - eg Kanye, Rihanna, Adele, Lizzo, etc, or, say, Grime.
You need to get out more, take the Chris de Burgh tape off loop and start shazaming your way to find some new music.
There is a month on month increase, but surely that is just people going out to the pub etc? Close to calling bollocks on it.
The people quoted in the article are quite adamant though.
Interesting list. Do you have it in shareable form?
She as good as promised Sunak a role in one of the earlier debates, and Tory party rules don’t (any longer) allow him to withdraw before the final ballot and throw his weight behind her. So if she doesn’t work with him it would be a bad call.
Edit: and I like modern British drama which brings you face to face with grime.
I was going to say that a decade in government would knock a sense of reality and humility into anyone, but then you have to explain Liz Truss.
Would Truss do anything for people like my children? I have not heard her say anything. Perhaps I have missed this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y94UwQ5au9Y