[SoftTalker]

Modern (popular) music sucks because it's not human. It's produced by software, quantized, gridded, autotuned, copy/pasted, and though the result is technically perfect, it isn't human.

Modern architecture is the same. It's copy/paste design, assembled by software, the human element is gone. When buildings were designed by artists on paper there was no avoiding the designer's humanity and creativity being infused into the design. Today it's just lego blocks. You see the same buildings in every city you visit.

[antiterra]

Music produced by software that’s quantized and gridded has been some of my favorite stuff for decades and listening to it does the same thing any recorded music can do such: remind me of something, occasionally teach me something new, be a tool for growth or mourning or comfort. Something being virtuousic or analog or raw doesn’t necessarily make it good. Simplicity or rigidness is not inherently bad. sometimes you want Raphael instead of Bosch. You may want The Knife instead of Fleetwood Mac, or Parry Grip instead of Paganini.

There was a time that the pinnacle of stereotypically bad music was Girl From Ipanema on an elevator. Except it’s a great song, even played for muzak.

Compound that with how the barriers around genre have gotten so much more flexible that you can chart with a Nine Inch Nails + Billy Ray Cyrus + Hip Hop song, and it kinda seems like we’re in a golden age.

[torotonnato]

Haha speaking of barriers and Nine Inch Nails: have you heard the cover of "Head like an hole" by an improbable (but good!) Miley Cyrus? It was made for an episode of Black Mirror.

[antiterra]

Yeah. Miley is actually a pretty good rock vocalist that got pigeonholed into pop and had a rebellious stage to break out of it.

[oblio]

I guess you managed to miss their key point about classic design:

> And it is. But it's arguably NOT functional.