Why everything is Crap

[Jason Cross]

I read a really good forum post over at the Rolling Stone website a few weeks ago (no chance of finding the link anymore), and recently a post here reminded me of it.

The forum poster had an interesting opinion about why there's so much crap these days. Big-budget crap, wheras it seems like 20 years ago anything big-budget was better and the low-rent stuff was crap. Crap movies, music, food, games, magazines... you name it.

I can't recall the post word for word, but the basic principle goes something like this:

1. Kids are dumb. Well, not dumb, but they have no experience or wisdom. They're not careful, don't know the value of a dollar since they have no responsibilities, and they're easily influenced by peer pressure.

2. Kids under the age of 18 or so never used to have much buying power. If a 14-year old wanted something, they had to convince their parents to give them the money for it. But starting maybe 10 years ago (give or take), they started to become independant consumers. Now kids have their own money, hell their own CREDIT, and a whole lot more of it than when I was an adolescent.

3. While the money and credit the 16 and under market has now isn't huge, it's ALL expendable. They got no bills to pay.

4. In the last decade or so, Corporate America realized all this. They said "holy shit, there's all these dollars in the hands of naive impressionable kids!"

So what would you do if you want to make some easy money? Churn out crap, and market the shit out of it. Make it appeal to what kids like, or what they THINK they're supposed to like. The music can be shit as long as it has a girl they think is hot lip synching it. The movie can be shit as long as it's visually impressive and stays within 14-year old's attention span. The food can be shit (and WAY overpriced) as long as it's "cool" and in every way not like what their parents eat. The magazine can be shit as long as it's got flashy pictures (hot chicks is a bonus), doesn't provoke any thought, follows the latest fads, and makes the self-conscious feel cool.

I bet Maxim is a bigtime favorite of High School boys.

In other words, there's all this crap virtually choking to death anything of substance because it's far easier for a marketing firm to recognize and exploit pop culture trends than it is to come up with something genuine. And the kids will eat up the fluffy, trendy, shallow schlock because they don't know any better and have such a need to fit in that they follow the flock.

Anyway, it struck me as an interesting notion. I certainly noticed that the increase in crappy TV, movies, music, magazines, etc. started to happen right around the time that kids got to have serious buying power. But maybe I'm imagining that.

What do you think, Sirs?

[wumpus]

I think you can find a very similar editorial in any decade, going back to the early 1900's. These doggone youngsters, screwing up everything! If only they'd listen to us older, wiser adults! There is no more crap today than there was in, say, 1960. It's not like a magical elf waved a magical crap wand. 90% of everything is crap. Always has been, always will be.

I will say this: the argument that kids have a lot more buying power than they did in the past has some merit. But there's no way that overrides the 90/10 rule.

Personally, I just wish those damn kids would stay off my goddamn lawn.

[Jason McCullough]

Correct. Everyone used to be wrong when they blamed it on the kids, but their disposable income has gone up so much post-1970s that they've actually driving lots of things now.

'I bet Maxim is a bigtime favorite of High School boys.'

Mid-20s types, actually, but I'll be damned if I can remember where I saw that.

[Sparky]

Back in MY day we had only high-quality films like "Ice Pirates", "Short Circuit", and "Mannequin"! And classic bands like Dexy's Midnight Runners, Ratt, and Morris Day and the Time! And I had to walk FIVE miles to school wearing those black sequined ankle boots JUST like Madonna wore in "Desperately Seeking Susan"!

UPHILL! In the SNOW!

[Sparky]

Edit: I was wearing more than just the boots. Not like kids today!

[Anonymous]

I think the disposable income theory is a good one.When I was a teenager,I used to look forward to the $12 I would get mowing my granmother's lawn(orchard is more like it....),so that I could buy the next $12 Avalon Hill game I had my eye on.Then,when I was in college,I used my meager wages to try to pay rent-I didn't have much extra to purchase crud like 'Maxim'.

It seems like the stronger economy has allowed merchants of crap to flourish-understandably,in lean times,crap takes a back seat to the necessities.

[chet]

If crap in music is new only because of the rise in disposable income of kids, explain the Bay City Rollers.

Chet

[Jason McCullough]

More accurately than disposable income, I think you can tie it to "teenagers with jobs"; broad teenage unemployment didn't take off until the 1980s. They aren't getting all it from their allowance, you know.

[Anonymous]

I'd like to add another thought to this "kids with disposable income driving the shittification of culture" theory.

Those kids aren't growing up, either. The megacorps are trying to encourage adults to remain gullible, self-indulgent children for as long as possible, if not until death.

Examples:

... the Disneyland ad campaign showing adult couples without children wearing shorts and Mickey Mouse ears, bumbling around Disneyland, enthusiastic about meeting minimum wage dopes in cartoon character costumes

... the return of Star Wars, and encouragement of adults to collect action figures and other Lucashite

... Adam Sandler albums, South Park, The Man Show, and other R-rated crap which is grade-school juvenile, yet too obscene for the young children who would truly enjoy it

Aw, geez we're fucked.

[Anonymous]

oh i dunno maybe everything is crap b/c why should it not be crap?
That is a serious question. You know these things so I assume you participate in them, how are you not part of the problem.
You see this is what is called hypocrisy... when one complains that the world is shit, but then neither rejects it nor supports efforts to create something more meaningful. You are what is called the worst fucking vermin that exists on this planet. i can respect those in posistions of power and influence b/c they actively create the world and apologize to no one, I can even accept the stupid who keep quiet and live obediently, People like you though who sit around and discuss the most vacuous shit, who complain mutely to fucking walls, then ask everyone else "why everything is shit" people like you are the true pigs of this fucking world.

I am so fucking tired of rhetoric, the world is shit b/c you do nothing to make it smell like flowers... until you understand this you would be more effective to the world if you shoved your head up your ass.

[mtkafka]

Here's an interesting tidbit from the late great dead guy who wrote stuff ... PK Dick....

"....Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups -- and the electronic hardware exists by which to deliver these pseudo-worlds right into the heads of the reader, the viewer, the listener. Sometimes when I watch my eleven-year-old daughter watch TV, I wonder what she is being taught. The problem of miscuing; consider that. A TV program produced for adults is viewed by a small child. Half of what is said and done in the TV drama is probably misunderstood by the child. Maybe it's all misunderstood. And the thing is, Just how authentic is the information anyhow, even if the child correctly understood it? What is the relationship between the average TV situation comedy to reality? What about the cop shows? Cars are continually swerving out of control, crashing, and catching fire. The police are always good and they always win. Do not ignore that point: The police always win. What a lesson that is. You should not fight authority, and even if you do, you will lose. The message here is, Be passive. And -- cooperate. If Officer Baretta asks you for information, give it to him, because Officer Baretta is a good man and to be trusted. He loves you, and you should love him.

So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. It is my job to create universes, as the basis of one novel after another. And I have to build them in such a way that they do not fall apart two days later. Or at least that is what my editors hope. However, I will reveal a secret to you: I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos. There should be more of it. Do not believe -- and I am dead serious when I say this -- do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe. The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the birth of new things. Before the new things can be born the old must perish. This is a dangerous realization, because it tells us that we must eventually part with much of what is familiar to us. And that hurts. But that is part of the script of life. Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new.

Of course, I would say this, because I live near Disneyland, and they are always adding new rides and destroying old ones. Disneyland is an evolving organism. For years they had the Lincoln Simulacrum, like Lincoln himself, was only a temporary form which matter and energy take and then lose. The same is true of each of us, like it or not. "

Then later in the speech...

" The power of spurious realities battering at us today -- these deliberately manufactured fakes never penetrate to the heart of true human beings. I watch the children watching TV and at first I am afraid of what they are being taught, and then I realise, They can't be corrupted or destroyed. They watch, they listen, they understand, and, then, where and when it is necessary, they reject. There is something enormously powerful in a child's ability to withstand the fraudulent. A child has the clearest eye, the steadiest hand. The hucksters, the promoters, are appealing for the allegiance of these small people in vain. True, the cereal companies may be able to market huge quantities of junk breakfasts; the hamburger and hot dog chains may sell endless numbers of unreal fast-food items to the children, but the deep heart beats firmly, unreached and unreasoned with. A child of today can detect a lie quicker than the wisest adult of two decades ago. When I want to know what is true, I ask my children. They do not ask me; I turn to them. "

Pretty good speech he gave around 1977 right when Star Wars got big... kind of relevant even moreso today with the internet. Kind of nihilistic... yet hopeful... odd.

OH yea, here's the link...

http://www.philipkdick.com/pkdweb/How%20To%20build%20A%20Universe.htm

other good articles there too, even if you don't read his books, he has some interesting, albeit odd, things to say.

Sad that if theres one writer who deserved at least a moderate income it was PK Dick... for the amount he wrote he got... SHIT.

etc

[Anonymous]

PK Dick always had some great ideas for his books, but he can't write for shit. It's not just the style of his prose, either, he just can't write a book. I should check out his short stories, which I suppose are better in the writing department. He is also the all-time master of strange science fiction titles. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and A Scanner Darkly are good examples. He's like a real-life Kilgore Trout, now that I think about it.

Getting back to the original topic, marketing is definitely a problem. Actually, it's a lack of marketing. If I'm reading something on the internet from a trusted source I snatch up any reference to a band I've never heard of, scoot over to CDNOW.com and give it a listen. That's the only way I hear about new music. If it's good, and it usually is, I buy the CD, sometimes over the internet because you can't find good stuff at Media Play or Best Buy.

[mtkafka]

"PK Dick always had some great ideas for his books, but he can't write for shit. It's not just the style of his prose, either, he just can't write a book."

Something tells me you haven't even read him. Or maybe you read a second hand criticism of him (not a good one) and consider that enough. Well you have to READ his books before you pass judgement. DUH!

And back on the topic. Its true. The music now is shit. Thats a fact... JACK! Gimme a good band and I'll give you a dollar.

etc

[Anonymous]

"Gimme a good band and I'll give you a dollar."

Tenacious D.

[chet]

There are many good bands out there, you can't just look to radio or MTV.

But Tenacious D. is not one of them. Adam Sandler meets Dead Milkmen meets a 13 year old with a potty mouth meets spinal tap with a big swirl of unfunny to ruin any of the above. The Tenacious D formula for music, pick generic music to play, say something that would get snickers by 13 year old boys, move around fast when playing live because everyone thinks fat people moving fast is funny.

I think even Jack Black is bored with his shtick.

[Anonymous]

"a big swirl of unfunny"

obviously a matter of taste.

[Jason Cross]

Hey, I'm not saying there wasn't plenty of crap BEFORE the 16 and under market got disposible income. There obviously was plenty of it. And this is not a "those darn youth!" argument, the likes of which have been going on as long as there were teenagers. Teenagers with money (and scarier yet, credit cards) are a relatively new phenomenon.

I'm just saying - or rather I was paraphrasing another's forum post that was saying - that the dreck seems to be far more widespread now. Especially on TV and in the movies.

Walk around any center of commerce (like The Mall or something) and virtually all the marketing materials and front-of-the-store items are "Flash in the pan" crap aimed directly at high school freshmen.

I'm not sure I buy the whole concept 100%, but it does make a certain amount of sense, and I thought it was worth bringing up.

[Alan Au]

Give the people what they want, etc. :roll:

- Alan

[Anonymous]

I'm just saying - or rather I was paraphrasing another's forum post that was saying - that the dreck seems to be far more widespread now. Especially on TV and in the movies.
How is it dreck if those money-empowered teenagers actually like it? If there's some universally accepted truth that Britney Spears sucks, someone forgot to send teenagers the memo.

As you enter adulthood, maybe it's near 30, I dunno, it seems people still think everything is targeted at you. Eventually, for me at least, I gave up that notion and realized that I wasn't supposed to like Limp Bizkit or Blink 182 or Britney Spears or Fast and the Furious or whatever, and it doesn't matter.

Or at least it didn't used to matter. Now that no one bothers targeting adults at all, because those kids are so much less discriminating and spending more freely, it's a problem. Or is it? There are still fantastic bands out there, you just need to look for 'em. And there are still independent movies, or those wonderful foreign films championed by 1337 moviegoers. Or just go for books, that'll always have a higher level of non-suck by virtue of the sheer amount of titles pumped out by the industry every year.

Or you can just listen to your old music, watch your old movies, read your old books, and generally be bitter and complain about the sorry state of the world all the time.

[Mark Asher]

"Or just go for books, that'll always have a higher level of non-suck by virtue of the sheer amount of titles pumped out by the industry every year."

Not only that, but you could read a book a day for the rest of your life and never run out of interesting books.

And really, there's still a ton of music I could investigate that would give me a lot of pleasure.

Same with movies. There are tons that I've never seen.

The only thing that worries me about opting out of pop culture is that I like to sprinkle in references in my writing, and I'm stuck at about 1985 or so. Who's going to get my Starsky and Hutch references? Or the Partridge Family? Or Gilligan's Island? It's very sad. :(

[algahar]

... and always look on the bright side of life

:lol:

[Anonymous]

As you enter adulthood, maybe it's near 30, I dunno, it seems people still think everything is targeted at you. Eventually, for me at least, I gave up that notion and realized that I wasn't supposed to like Limp Bizkit or Blink 182 or Britney Spears or Fast and the Furious or whatever, and it doesn't matter.



Frank Zappa had typically wise opinion on this subject-when asked(in the early '90s,I think) about the fire breathing hair metal bands and the like that were all the rage,he said that 'that world is not for me.'I'm not interested'.He went on thusly:'I think that if a person is making music-even if it's the most crass,commercial kind of crud,(they're) doing a necessary function for the audience that needs to be entertained.Just because I'm not the consumer of that stuff,it's no reason for me to go on some big campaign against it.I don't think it's particularly aesthetic,but then again,if it's providing enjoyment for somebody,then fine'.

I used to rail against crap culture,but I think part of growing up is to,like Frank,pursue your own personal wheat,and ignore your own personal chaff.I know what I like,and that's good enough for me.But there is certainly plenty of crap out there. :D

[Anonymous]

Err,the above is by me,if it matters.....


Mike

[mtkafka]

Yeah there's some ok bands... but there isn't anything, like, I dont know, pretty good. My cousins who I talked to over the 4th of July holidays (who are high school and early college age) agree AND they follow music religiously! Though there not into the hip hop scene so that leaves out a huge section of pop music.... like Eminem...

Anyway, I'm not gonna say there's NOT some good band or good movie or good whatever out there. There probably is. But I get the sense nobody gives a crap anymore, its all about appearance, message and rebellion and not about the music. Not that it matters really, because I could give a damn. Life as usual, no big deal. Music doesnt matter much to me anymore. Funy thing I turn to the classical station or talk radio now, must be getting old fart.

I just wish there was another outlet. Even MTV had 120 minutes a few years back. The internet is good and all... but its still not as good as good radioplay or mtv (when it didnt run The Real World every damn day!).

Actually, I'm just not looking I suppose.

etc

[chet]

Shoutcast radio stations are a favorite place of mine to find new music. But with the new rulings, that may go away (nice for the riaa on one had to bemoaon the consolidation of the radio industry and then squash the new outlet).

I love to be able to hear something new and then download everything from that person in a few minutes and discover something.

Yes, I pirate music. I have no deep bits must be free thing - I just hate the recording industy and double hate all the f'ing spam they send me. I do buy cd's of stuff I like, but it is so hard to find some stuff. I also sometimes use the old school napster and order CDs online from my library, two days later they are sitting at the drive thru waiting for me. Lovely.

Chet

[Anonymous]

"Even MTV had 120 minutes a few years back. The internet is good and all... but its still not as good as good radioplay or mtv (when it didnt run The Real World every damn day!)."

I agree with you about the decline of MTV, but apparently a lot of other people don't. I just read a story that said that MTV's ratings went up 35% in the last year, due in large part to "The Osbournes."

[Brad Grenz]

Man, the Osbornes managed to set a new land speed record for overexposure. WTF is up with the daughter doing a madonna cover at the MTV Movie awards? Excuse me, we should care about your singing because...?

Music is in a bad way right now. It's no use listening to commercial radio or watching MTV because the mega labels have completed their takeover of every institution that used to be "alternative" music. What passes for mainstream rock these days is just as synthetic, spun and marketed as any pop diva. I think we're pretty much back to where we were before Nirvana sparked the revolution. Nothing but canned, big-hair music as far as the eye can see.

[Jason McCullough]

'Man, the Osbornes managed to set a new land speed record for overexposure. WTF is up with the daughter doing a madonna cover at the MTV Movie awards? Excuse me, we should care about your singing because...?

Music is in a bad way right now. It's no use listening to commercial radio or watching MTV because the mega labels have completed their takeover of every institution that used to be "alternative" music. What passes for mainstream rock these days is just as synthetic, spun and marketed as any pop diva. I think we're pretty much back to where we were before Nirvana sparked the revolution. Nothing but canned, big-hair music as far as the eye can see.'

I've never been able to figure out how the music industry gets away with its anticompetitive practices. There's, what, three big labels that own 90% of the market? Throw in payola at virtually every radio station in the country, and it's entirely plausible that music is the most corrupt industry in the United States.

[Brian Rucker]

Relax. This is the cycle of pop culture. Things have to suck really badly before a reaction sets in - and it will. Just because it seems a huge proportion of kids today can be gulled into buying crap doesn't mean there aren't some of them, right now, who are looking for other ways to express themselves. Given the new routes of distribution over the internet renegade movements will really have a shot at some success before, inevitably, they too are coopted into the corporate moneymaking machine.

And then the cycle will be begin all over again as it always has.

Ohmmmmm......

Popular music has pretty much hit a wall with there it can go which is why I'm much more interested in new forms of media.

[Anonymous]

Relax. This is the cycle of pop culture. Things have to suck really badly before a reaction sets in - and it will.
Excactly. Punk killed disco, grunge killed hair metal... maybe garage rock will kill teen pop. I dunno, I listen to a lot of White Stripes, the Hives, The Mooney Suzuki... it's all this raw, minimalist rock that sounds pretty good to my ears, and it's all "current" music.

When people say, "Music sucks," it's that music changed and your tastes didn't. It's a part of getting older. I still dig my old R.E.M. and Replacements CDs, and it's cool to think those are better than anything made today. Of course they resonate more with me because I grew up with them, much like those hippies we made fun of yammered on about the Beatles and the Stones.

I buy fewer CDs today than I used to, but I like what I like a lot more. And I'm less snobby than I was back when I was "Mr. More Alternative Than You." I have a T-shirt that says it all about how people discuss music. It says, "Your favorite band sucks."

[mtkafka]

My complaint is that the stuff thats being popularized... is crap. Its obvioulsy an opnion but even then, I know enough about music to tell the genuine from the commercial. I just wish there was more genuine in the mainstream... for me at least. Yes, the world revolves around me.

BTW, when I hear White Stripes I think of White Snake... yay. Is this minimalist stuff like formalist stuff? Is it self referential rock stuff like Pavement? I actually just like my rock to be melodic...

I guess I'm really getting geeky old when I listen to game music cd;s over hundreds of music cd's I have. :(

etc

[Anonymous]

My complaint is that the stuff thats being popularized... is crap. Its obvioulsy an opnion but even then, I know enough about music to tell the genuine from the commercial. I just wish there was more genuine in the mainstream... for me at least. Yes, the world revolves around me.
When wasn't this true? The 1337 music fan has always thought the commercial is crap. And when their precious geniune music becomes popular, it suddenly becomes crap (see R.E.M., U2, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, etc.). When the Beatles were big, the 1337 championed the Velvet Underground.


BTW, when I hear White Stripes I think of White Snake... yay. Is this minimalist stuff like formalist stuff? Is it self referential rock stuff like Pavement? I actually just like my rock to be melodic...
White Stripes are minimalist because it's two people, a guitarist and a drummer. The drummer redefines simple, the guitarist is sloppy but can actually play... and it's all very melodic. The previous CD, De Stijl, is all blues-y, the current CD White Blood Cells is more straightforward.

[Supertanker]

If you want minimalist music that has not been co-opted by the big labels, yet the kids all dig it, you have to give a listen to Jack Johnson. http://www.jackjohnsonmusic.com/

It is acoustic - just him, a drummer, and a bass player. He has not signed with a major label (he's better known for directing surfing movies so claims to not need the money and just plays because he likes it). He is popular enough to have played at this year's KROQ Weenie Roast. Two teenagers about fell over when they were discussing him nearby me and I corrected them about something. What do old people know about music, anyway? Crusty old turds.

Part of why I like Jack Johnson is that he reminds me of an acoustic version of Sublime. I was counting on Brad Nowell to start a new wave (har) of surf music until he OD'd. Perhaps Mr. Johnson can carry that ball instead.

[Toddy]

"Adam Sandler meets Dead Milkmen meets a 13 year old "

Hey. don't be dissing the Dead Milkmen. Big Lizard in My Backyard and Beeulzabubba are amazing albums. Call "Takin' Retards to the Zoo" childish and stupid, but it's always made me laugh. I think a big part of the reason why the Dead Milkmen succeeded more often than not is that they kept things short. Every Tenacious D song is overblown and goes on about two minutes after the "joke" got tired. Dead Milkmen songs are, for the most part, two minutes and under. Plus there's the music. Some of the DM's stuff is pretty interesting.

[Jason McCullough]

My complaint is that the stuff thats being popularized... is crap. Its obvioulsy an opnion but even then, I know enough about music to tell the genuine from the commercial. I just wish there was more genuine in the mainstream... for me at least. Yes, the world revolves around me.
When wasn't this true? The 1337 music fan has always thought the commercial is crap. And when their precious geniune music becomes popular, it suddenly becomes crap (see R.E.M., U2, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, etc.). When the Beatles were big, the 1337 championed the Velvet Underground.


To be completely accurate, three of those five bands started to suck the second they became popular (U2, Pearl Jam, REM).

Well, maybe not "suck," excepting the nightmare of Pearl Jam, but the quality dropped way off.

[Anonymous]

To be completely accurate, three of those five bands started to suck the second they became popular (U2, Pearl Jam, REM).

Well, maybe not "suck," excepting the nightmare of Pearl Jam, but the quality dropped way off.
I disagree in all three cases... well, maybe a bit with Pearl Jam, but they just reacted to their success by doing what they wanted and not what everyone expected, which was to remake their first CD over and over again. That you, and others, didn't go along is really no big deal. And by the way, "Yield" is a terrific CD... I think it's less preachy and obvious than "Ten" is.

But with U2 and REM, I think their two best records are "Achtung Baby" and "Automatic for the People," both of which came well after their big-time fame.

Most bands get better, except maybe the Ramones. They just don't make the same records as their first ones, and you're not the same person as the one that listened to those first records.

[Matthew Gallant]

Fleh, R.E.M. put out plenty of good (and some bad) stuff after Green. Critically, I think Automatic for the People was their best-received album. Strange Currencies is one of my favorites, and maybe Up as a whole wasn't a favorite, but Daysleeper is a good song. I think R.E.M. has remained pretty consistent throughout.

U2 has done some pretty lame stuff though. I don't know, it seems like they went off on their current tangent as a joke back with Zoo TV...and then forgot what they were doing.

Pearl Jam never disappointed me because I had no expectations. I liked some songs on Ten, but it wasn't really coherent as an album and I really scratch my head as to why Evenflow was a hit. It sounded like a Jethro Tull song with a fuzzy guitar instead of a flute.

But I'm no music aficionado. There's a good chance my opinion is stupid. My favorites are The Police, They Might Be Giants and Radiohead, after all.

[Anonymous]

Fleh, R.E.M. put out plenty of good (and some bad) stuff after Green.

Arguably, they got "popular" after Document. And yeah, they've put out plenty of good stuff since then.


maybe Up as a whole wasn't a favorite, but Daysleeper is a good song.

I think Up is R.E.M.'s best album since Fables. There are also some gems on New Adventures despite that album's lackluster reception. As you said, R.E.M. has done some excellent stuff since they "broke through."

[Jason McCullough]

Hmm, more accurately:

I didn't like any of the above examples after they hit it big, and neither did my friends. So there.

[Anonymous]

I didn't like any of the above examples after they hit it big, and neither did my friends. So there.
But why? Because the songs sucked or because everyone else liked them?

Man, listen to Murmur or Reckoning some day, then Automatic for the People. There's no comparison in just about every aspect. Top to bottom, the songs are just stronger. But then again, I prefer the lyrical clarity, in both the literal and figurative sense, and the more diverse music.

I actually like Reveal, though Up sorta wore out its welcome for me fairly quickly. I also liked New Adventures in Hi-Fi quite a bit, because it wasn't as overtly "Let's try to be relevant again" as Monster but still retained some of its grit.

[Jason McCullough]

Um, because I thought the songs sucked. Really, nothing Pearl Jam did after their first album sounded even remotely like what came before.

[Anonymous]

Um, because I thought the songs sucked. Really, nothing Pearl Jam did after their first album sounded even remotely like what came before.
I thought you were talking about REM, not Pearl Jam.

Did you listen to Yield? That sounded a lot like their earlier work.

Then again, what band, other than the Ramones, never changed styles over the course of their career? It's generally considered "artistic growth" when a band changes... though some fans only want them to sound the same forever. And they scream for those old hits at concerts and ignore the new tunes. And they probably yell "Freebird" too.

[Jason McCullough]

Um, because I thought the songs sucked. Really, nothing Pearl Jam did after their first album sounded even remotely like what came before.
I thought you were talking about REM, not Pearl Jam.

Did you listen to Yield? That sounded a lot like their earlier work.

Then again, what band, other than the Ramones, never changed styles over the course of their career? It's generally considered "artistic growth" when a band changes... though some fans only want them to sound the same forever. And they scream for those old hits at concerts and ignore the new tunes. And they probably yell "Freebird" too.

Oh, I'm all for growth and what have you, but what the hell happened to Pearl Jam? It's like every other album is just.....boring.

I'm not really interested in rock anymorel, so it's kind of a moot point.

[Anonymous]

Oh, I'm all for growth and what have you, but what the hell happened to Pearl Jam? It's like every other album is just.....boring.
Seriously, Yield isn't boring at all.

But anyway, they decided they wanted to be artists, or Neil Young, or really unpopular because they didn't like being popular, but they probably liked the money, blah blah blah.

I saw them open for Nirvana and the Red Hot Chili Peppers once, though.