Also, what I mean to say is that from selective pressure, all the old music used to be “foreground music”. That’s why you don’t play it at parties; it distracts! I could play your song at a party and have no problem.
Let me show you a little more liberty here from Liszt So that you can know the difference here between foreground music (Liszt and other classical composers) and the background music you submitted:
Liszt, Mephistopheles waltz (waltzing with the devil):
Again Liszt: totentanz (dance of death)
And of course Beethoven has the best funeral march ever!
Again, with these musicians, you didn’t hear the song 100 times on the radio and finally you liked it, it was do or die back then, one fucking concert, and you were shit if people didn’t like you on one hearing!
I’m going to be a pedant and say something completely off-topic: Liszt isn’t a classical composer but a romantic one. My impression is that, on average, romantic music tends to be better than both classical and baroque. The reason being that romantic music is much more melodic (even though emotionally over the top.) Baroque is probably the worst in this regard.
Beethoven was considered the bridge between baroque and romantic. It’s all considered classical music. Beethoven was super awesome because he was the first composer to say “fuck the Catholic Church, I’m going to write whatever I want to write!”’
His music was so good that the Catholic Church relented. He was the birth of modern music in the west! He started it all!
Liszt started Jazz (which black people take credit for)
Alkan started 20th and 21st century music (a contemporary of Chopin and Liszt).
I’ll save you some research on alkan!
Couldn’t find lewenthal for the last one (damn YouTube!) sorry! “Le vent” translates as “the wind”
So… alkan was an eccentric recluse who Liszt himself called “the greatest pianist and composer I’ve ever known”.
Alkan wrote most of his songs for a 4 pedaled organ! Which incidentally, almost nobody plays! He does have surviving piano works though.
Liszt thought so highly of alkan that when he stepped down as the dean of music at Weimar, he offered the job to alkan, which alkan refused.
Anyways, why did we get into this…??
Silhouette sent me elevator music! Background music!
It has its place to be sure.
All my favorite music is foreground music.
I like the adventure not only of the foreground music itself, but also the stories behind it.
Anything that doesn’t capture your attention is background / elevator music. A great deal of baroque (and also romantic) music doesn’t capture my attention, so I consider it to be background music (e.g. Bach and Wagner.)
I think Silhouette’s point was that vocals aren’t really (that) important when it comes to great music. Personally, I don’t agree. (I do, however, think one can make a great instrumental without vocals. I’m actually one of those people who start with the music and then move towards the lyrics i.e. it doesn’t matter to me how great the lyrics are if the music is bad.)
On the other hand, I probably have lower standards than you do. All I expect from my vocals is for them to be pleasant and natural. (A lot of vocals aren’t, for some reason.)
Angelina might be a great singer (the greatest living today, in fact) but I can’t help but dislike the way she’s singing in this video:
youtube.com/watch?v=jnnzbdt4_RE
Frank Sinatra sounds much more natural.
And the same goes for Michael Jakson. He might be a great singer but the way sings puts me off.
Black - Wonderful Life
youtube.com/watch?v=u1ZoHfJZACA
A normal guy with a normal masculine voice singing in a normal way.
Bad stuff:
Alice Cooper - Poison
youtube.com/watch?v=Qq4j1LtCdww
Bee Gees - Staying Alive
youtube.com/watch?v=fNFzfwLM72c
(Men shouldn’t be singing in high pitched voice.)
Empire of the Sun - We Are the People
youtube.com/watch?v=a47Y1lCRHlM
(Very unnatural + falsetto.)
Louis Armstrong - Wonderful Life
youtube.com/watch?v=A3yCcXgbKrE
(Bad voice.)
AC/DC - Thunderstruck
youtube.com/watch?v=v2AC41dglnM
I guess I’m less of a critic of one’s ability than one’s decisions.
Incidentally, I’m not a fan of Liszt.
He strikes me as another one of those virtuosos showcasing their dexterity rather than writing anything that’d move someone like me. Perhaps others would disagree - again I emphasise the subjectivity of artistic creation/reception.
The same goes for this comment:
I know so few people who appreciate the kind of music that I linked - I shared the track partly just to see what would happen, but even with regards to my main intention to demonstrate a wider point about art, I probably ended up failing if all you hear is elevator music. To me it’s an abyss of emotional turmoil that can could hardly be better expressed, and which certainly communicates far more depths of humanity than an Angelina cover song. But, once more: subjectivity.
Magnus is probably right to sum it up as “Anything that doesn’t capture your attention is background / elevator music.”
I also hear that musical appreciation is largely a function of familiarity.
So the less familiar a style of music, the less likely you are to respond positively to it. This is another tragedy for all artforms when it is distilled into something like contemporary pop music, which is all so homogenous and explicitly formulaic - just to tap into the lucrative market of human mediocrity and closedness to experience.
That’s not to say that music ought to broaden itself to absurd limits for its own sake, which is something I usually find pretentious, but I often find it difficult to respect those who don’t explore beyond the pop music that I subjectively find to be background / elevator music, to discover and be inspired by alternative music that is doing something a little more different and brave. In this sense - I too would say that my favourite music is foreground music, and that I don’t find the music linked to be background / elevator music in the slightest. I find that it intensely steals my attention.
To bring this all back to Angelina, or the notion of “best singer”, she certainly does steal my attention as well - but as I said, only because of her surprising and impressive mastery of the human voice at such a young age, even when it comes to emulating singers with far more maturity and life experience than she’d have even come close to experiencing personally.
The reason I brought up the song I linked was to completely invert everything that Angelina does, to achieve something that (to me) is far more meaningful.
You don’t have to like the song I linked to get my point, I suppose - perhaps you can think of your own examples of a far better musical experience than being impressed and surprised by Angelina Jordan?
To reiterate, it’s just to make a broader point about what “best singer” could incorporate beyond what Angelina can offer.
Silhouette, now I have to redeem Liszt for you (hopefully)
You think he’s showboating. He has a lot of stuff besides the pyrotechnics! Maybe this doesn’t do it for you either. It’s pretty hard to not like SOMETHING from Liszt!
i very much dislike this trend to oversing the fuck out of everything
I agree. Not even my favorite songs of all time can fight against eventual tedium. It goes with the territory.
This my favorite song from the 21st century:
Damn it’s been overplayed!
The beegees were it during the late 70’s, they were so overplayed that a selling point for radio stations became “we’re a beegee free zone!”
Over saturation is inevitable with music
Oh shit! Phoneutria! I thought you said “overusing” instead of “oversinging”
Yeah, oversinging is a problem as well.
This was my explanation for this trend:
I’d even go as far as linking it to a market economy where the loudest and most elaborate displays of sounds (and visuals) simply drown out the competition.
For visuals, MTV is infamous for marking the beginning of a downward trend of taking the emphasis away from the whole “in it for the music, man” thing and towards looking good while you do it - the more base appeal of sexiness sold more copies more easily, even at the cost of the music itself. Better looking musicians did better, and these days musical talent is almost irrelevant as long as you put on the biggest show with the hottest figurehead(s).
For sounds, the shift was toward perceived virtuosity through showcases of vocal dexterity, which became even more accessible for more attractive singers through technological advances in auto-tuning and/or post-production. One thing that frustrates me about the average person is their inability to tell if someone is actually in tune, allowing even painful warbling to shine through without them noticing (I physically cannot watch any of these new “talent” shows). Nowadays if you don’t attempt it, you’re not associated with today’s “good singers”, and you lose out just from that.
I’d argue that the same goes for other artforms as well, particularly film. The most money is in the mediocre and the most superficially appealing marketing. A market economy is great for flashy technologies appealing to more people but it’s the death of art.
Silhouette,
Singing competitions are the modern form of “casting calls”. Welcome to a new era! If anyone is going to be the best eventually, they all use this format now!
Your bias against singing competitions is irrational.
Irrational on the grounds that my bias is counter to what is to become of this new era?
I don’t choose paths that comply with whatever I’m offered by emergent prevailing tendencies, I fight for what I think is best. It certainly feels futile and impractical sometimes, and perhaps that seems irrational to you? Irrationality simply depends on what your premises are, and they don’t have to be winning ones for one to be rational in staying true to them. I know you relate - you don’t even seem to feel like your life’s purpose to eradicate all consent violation is anywhere near close, so I know you understand this type of rationality.
Unless of course you think some line of logic that I’ve used is illogical in some way? In which case, do elaborate 
If you simply mean to state that there’s a subjective element to my preferences when it comes to art, then I’ll only repeat that of course there is since art has an inextricable subjective element. All anyone can do with regard to artistic matters is accept subjective tastes as a premise, and then argue logically given such premises - which I believe I am doing. Let me know if you disagree.
I don’t think you’re doing justice to Liszt. He is at the very least melodic. Both La Campanella and Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 are to an extent melodic. That’s probably more melody than there’s in both Paganini and Wagner. And it most certainly has more melody and rhythm than doom metal.
Still, I’m not impressed by Liszt. I’d rather listen to Bach’s Badinerie or Bach’s BVW 1052 or Bach’s BVW 1044 or Vivaldi’s RV 580 or Vivaldi’s Winter of Vivaldi’s Autumn.
Magnus! Dude! Vivaldi is awesome.
As if people care… I have two favorite love songs (I hate love songs!). One of my criteria is that the song is gender neutral.
I also like this song because of the line: “we’re searching for some perfect world we’ll never find”
I like this song because of the subtle reference to suicide. “People ask me how, how I’ve lived ‘til now, I tell them I don’t know”