Country Song Breaks Record for Longest Running No. 1 Song in US History

[SummerMadness]

You might want to take a class on music theory. The quality and very substance of music are actually devolving. The number of elements of music found in popular compositions is dwindling with each generation. And with ever-increasing frequency, recordings are dynamically compressed so that softer sounds are amplified, louder sounds are attenuated, and then the entire waveform is normalized to the slightest margin below what would introduce unplanned distortion. This yields the maximum amount of decibel assault upon our eardrums and represses the actual electro-chemical function of the pre-frontal cortex--the part of our brains that governs empathy, moral fidelity, decision-making, ability to worship--you might actually even think of it as the Most Holy Place of the temple of the Holy Spirit. So when you're all done chuckling, you might want to utter a little prayer for our children and grandchildren.

Many intelligent producers of popular entertainment will either curb greatly or simply not allow their children indulgence. Audiovisual entertainment is exponentially worse.

If you're going to start making these arguments about music devolving, then please provide the citations to the particular studies you're referring to. I'd also like to see the papers on neuroscience with music that you're referencing.

 

[SummerMadness]

If you make a claim, then back it up. Running away from responsibility makes it look like you made everything up.

 

[98cwitr]

That aint country

 

[Go Braves]

That aint country

Probably why it's so darn popular, lol. I personally love country. I was raised on it. My girl OTOH treats it like it's torture to her ears. She'll be tolerant of it for a short while out of love for me but eventually a song will play she just can't bear. She loves this song.

 

[98cwitr]

Probably why it's so darn popular, lol. I personally love country. I was raised on it. My girl OTOH treats it like it's torture to her ears. She'll be tolerant of it for a short while out of love for me but eventually a song will play she just can't bear. She loves this song.

This thread kinda reminds me of all the hype over FGL and Bebe Rexha's - Let It Be song. It was catchy and definitely a fun song, but it wasn't country. There's a reason Buy Me a Boat by Chris Janson, or anything Luke Combs never made it onto the pop charts...because it aint pop; it's contemporary country. The music style, lyrics, tone, and attitude is all completely different. Even Bebe had to take a backseat with her normal genre topics to collab on that FGL song, but hey...good for them.

 

[D.A. Wright]

If you make a claim, then back it up. Running away from responsibility makes it look like you made everything up.

But I assume no responsibility and I don't care what it looks like. Just a little friendly advice. Take it or leave it. The End.

 

[SummerMadness]

But I assume no responsibility and I don't care what it looks like. Just a little friendly advice. Take it or leave it. The End.

Some advice for future reference: if you start quoting science to a scientist, expect for that scientist to ask you for the reference. Part of this is interest in the source; the other part is it is likely the claim is an inflation of the actual study and its results. The "music has gotten worse" argument has been made before, but it appears the people making this statement only partially read a news article without understanding or even reading the actual study. The ignorance combined with the pretension becomes notable.

So, if you will, please provide the source for your claim, else you're know better than the person arguing that unicorns are the reason for the current state of music.

 

[D.A. Wright]

Some advice for future reference: if you start quoting science to a scientist, expect for that scientist to ask you for the reference. Part of this is interest in the source; the other part is it is likely the claim is an inflation of the actual study and its results. The "music has gotten worse" argument has been made before, but it appears the people making this statement only partially read a news article without understanding or even reading the actual study. The ignorance combined with the pretension becomes notable.

So, if you will, please provide the source for your claim, else you're know better than the person arguing that unicorns are the reason for the current state of music.

Again, don't care about your expectations. And I'm not a scientist, but I do know a thing or two about media production. With the time you've wasted dictating terms and pontificating, you could've already looked into this, if you cared about anything besides arguing. In any case, I'm done with this silly volleying.

By the way, congratulations on being a scientist.

 

[Shiloh Raven]

Probably why it's so darn popular, lol. I personally love country. I was raised on it. My girl OTOH treats it like it's torture to her ears. She'll be tolerant of it for a short while out of love for me but eventually a song will play she just can't bear. She loves this song.

I was raised on Country music too. My family tolerates me listening to classic country. My uncle told my husband he could take me out of Oklahoma, but he could never take the Oklahoma out of me.

 

[Chesterton]

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Hip hop is country.
Bruce Jenner is a woman.

 

[Ana the Ist]

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Hip hop is country.
Bruce Jenner is a woman.

Lol I gotta say after hearing it....it's not country.

I'm curious about what people think is country about it? The slight twang in his voice as he raps?

 

[Trogdor the Burninator]

Is it country - there's an easy test.

If he lost his job, his wife left him for his best friend, his dog died and his truck broke down, it's country.

 

[iluvatar5150]

My comment about angry old person applies to anyone over the age of 20 because that's about the time people start complaining about new music and how the music they grew up with was far superior (i.e., they often highlight the music from when they were 10-16). When I hear complaints like that, I believe those people don't have a real appreciation for music and its diversity.

For those of us who are/were into metal, that phenomenon happens much earlier than that.

You might want to take a class on music theory. The quality and very substance of music are actually devolving. The number of elements of music found in popular compositions is dwindling with each generation. And with ever-increasing frequency, recordings are dynamically compressed so that softer sounds are amplified, louder sounds are attenuated, and then the entire waveform is normalized to the slightest margin below what would introduce unplanned distortion. This yields the maximum amount of decibel assault upon our eardrums and represses the actual electro-chemical function of the pre-frontal cortex--the part of our brains that governs empathy, moral fidelity, decision-making, ability to worship--you might actually even think of it as the Most Holy Place of the temple of the Holy Spirit. So when you're all done chuckling, you might want to utter a little prayer for our children and grandchildren.

Many intelligent producers of popular entertainment will either curb greatly or simply not allow their children indulgence. Audiovisual entertainment is exponentially worse.

Lol, I’m a professional audio engineer and most of what you wrote is nonsense.

 

[D.A. Wright]

For those of us who are/were into metal, that phenomenon happens much earlier than that.



Lol, I’m a professional audio engineer and most of what you wrote is nonsense.

Yeah, hard to believe you would take issue with information that might be a threat to your own livelihood.

Care to expand and itemize/dissect?

 

[SummerMadness]

Yeah, hard to believe you would take issue with information that might be a threat to your own livelihood.

Or what you posted was junk, hence the lack of citations.

 

[D.A. Wright]

Or what you posted was junk, hence the lack of citations.

This is me, still not caring about your demands for sources. Call it uninformed opinion, junk, or whatever you like. I have a valid experience of the effects of media entertainment. It is submitted for consideration, not for the sport of mind-numbing debate. I do not expect to convince you of anything. Or do you not get that? You don't own the thread, you only initiated it.

"Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces." (Matthew 7:6)

 

[SummerMadness]

This is me, still not caring about your demands for sources. Call it uninformed opinion, junk, or whatever you like. I have a valid experience of the effects of media entertainment. It is submitted for consideration, not for the sport of mind-numbing debate. I do not expect to convince you of anything. Or do you not get that? You don't own the thread, you only initiated it.

Becoming indignant because you can't cite your sources is not the way to go. Making claims about music and its effects on the brain is not "your experience," it's an unsupported claim; then again, it's obvious this is not based on reality when discussing audio and not even broaching the temporal lobe. Moreover, increasing the frequency of a sound higher and higher means you won't be able to hear it anymore (e.g., like a dog whistle). No, they are not producing music for humans that only dogs can hear.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Yeah, hard to believe you would take issue with information that might be a threat to your own livelihood.

I work mostly in video games and live music/theater, so the complaints about over-compression and musical complexity have almost no impact on me. If anything, video games are going the other direction.

Care to expand and itemize/dissect?

Why not.

You might want to take a class on music theory. The quality and very substance of music are actually devolving. The number of elements of music found in popular compositions is dwindling with each generation.

I haven't seen data on this; I doubt you have any; and I suspect that anybody who tried to compile something like this would be guilty of some extreme cases of cherry-picking.

How do we quantify "elements of music"?

Number of instruments available and/or utilized? There are more types of instruments available now than ever: all of the acoustic instruments developed over the past few centuries + all of the classic synthesizers from the 20th century + all of the digital stuff from the late 20th & 21st centuries. That digital stuff includes custom instruments constructed from recordings of modified instruments and/or non-traditional "non-musical" items. John Cage wrote a piece for an amplified cactus. I've seen water balloons and skeeball machines used for percussion tracks. Hildur Guðnadóttir's score for Chernobyl was made using recordings of her banging on stuff in an abandoned factory. I don't recall any Mozart concertos written for a bowed vault door. Western composers also have access to a wider variety of non-western ethnic instruments than they did even a few decades ago.

Complexity of music? This varies widely by genre. Some modern music is very simple; some is very complex. But the same is true of older music as well. Bach chorales are so simple and formulaic that they're used as the basis for nearly every Music Theory 101 class. A lot of atonal new music is so self-indulgently complex that it's absurd. Music for video games is often written and constructed in a way that allows it to be rearranged and re-mixed in real-time in order to respond to events in the game.

And with ever-increasing frequency, recordings are dynamically compressed so that softer sounds are amplified, louder sounds are attenuated, and then the entire waveform is normalized to the slightest margin below what would introduce unplanned distortion.

This is true, but often overblown. Yes, it's sometimes overused, but at the same time, some genres benefit greatly from heavy dynamic compression.

This yields the maximum amount of decibel assault upon our eardrums and represses the actual electro-chemical function of the pre-frontal cortex--the part of our brains that governs empathy, moral fidelity, decision-making, ability to worship--you might actually even think of it as the Most Holy Place of the temple of the Holy Spirit. So when you're all done chuckling, you might want to utter a little prayer for our children and grandchildren.

And that's where we get into the pseudoscience, pseudoreligious nonsense.

The loudness wars started as a sort of arms race that were based on the limitations of broadcast and playback technologies. If a radio broadcast is fully modulated, it transmits farther. If a track is louder, it stands out more than other tracks and is also easier to hear over ambient noise (which is important when you're listening in a car).

It's a relatively new-ish phenomenon because the physical medium of vinyl couldn't handle waveforms like that.

Then there's your usage of the word "worship", which, I'm guessing, is conflated with a trance-like sense of euphoria. While that conflation is common, there are not only a lot of theological problems with it, but it ignores the fact that many people actually respond positively to that sort of loud, highly-compressed sound. For them, it makes them more inclined to "worship".

Many intelligent producers of popular entertainment will either curb greatly or simply not allow their children indulgence. Audiovisual entertainment is exponentially worse.

And more nonsense. I know hundreds, if not thousands, of people who work across all facets of the entertainment industry. I can't think of a single one who doesn't allow their children to consume media. Sure, they may put caps on screen time or limit things for age-appropriateness. But my impression is that the majority seem to afford their kids more screen time than the folks I know who work outside the industry.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Becoming indignant because you can't cite your sources is not the way to go. Making claims about music and its effects on the brain is not "your experience," it's an unsupported claim; then again, it's obvious this is not based on reality when discussing audio and not even broaching the temporal lobe. Moreover, increasing the frequency of a sound higher and higher means you won't be able to hear it anymore (e.g., like a dog whistle). No, they are not producing music for humans that only dogs can hear.

He wasn't talking about the frequency of sound waves themselves; he was talking about how frequently audio content is over-compressed.

 

[D.A. Wright]

He wasn't talking about the frequency of sound waves themselves; he was talking about how frequently audio content is over-compressed.

Aw, come on, humor the poor fella. I really was talking about "doggie music."