do we actually like anything? is pop culture popular?

Idk if I should have posted this in high ideas cuz I'm high. But anyways,

I was thinking, it seems that every generation comes up with their own culture, with multiple different sects that think their individual but are just part of a larger group, and likes things that are part of said generation.

By what I mean by that, is that new music,media,fashion gets available to them, which is planned by some person who thinks people will be attracted to his music/TV show/art/ etc,

But say 40 years from now, the new generation will come and say how lame we were, how did we like that music, so on and so forth. And they will eventually fall into some group with their own scene and such. Why would something that is though to be so good by so many people, not nearly as good to people 40 years later? Especially with pop culture, most people my age would not want to listen to pop music of yesteryear for any length of time because the style is not recognizable with our cultures identify , and thus lame.

I think there can be several contributers, but they don't provide a complete answer,

1) people naturally want to discover and want new rather than old.

2)technology makes old cultures seem primitive or non comparable. As internet and the cell phone have for this generation,


But I cannot find a true hypothesis fo the reason that my thinking of 80s pop music sucks. For the most part,



What do you think, ?

It is because the same song gets old after awhile.

Here's some new sound.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRVOOwFNp5U]ILL MIND OF HOPSIN 5 #hopsin - YouTube[/ame]

Not just music,

Our words, our clothes, our tv shows,..

This is all speculation, but i think popularity is what makes the music "better"/ even more popular. Conformity is a natural instinct, as whatever stands out is more likely to be noticed in the natural world. Pop music is only popular, because its popular..sounds a little redundant doesnt it?
A feel like a lot of people dont even know what they enjoy when it comes to music. They just listen to whats on the radio/mtv and go along with it. Then once the popular opinion shifts and the new "thing" is in, everyone jumps on the bandwagon. And thus, the shit music that was once popular is no longer so, and the "stigma" or w/e behind it is gone.
What a strange society we live in .
All i know is that classics will always be classics, no matter what is considered popular music at the time.

I think this phenomenon might have run it's course because of YouTube, torrenting, cloud saving and PC storage in general.

An awful lot of music has been lost simply because they were recorded on inferior (to the incoming generation) storage devices. First it was vinyl, when tape and CD came along vinyl players disappeared from mainstream/easy access markets, then when the current generation (us, I'd say late 80's/early 90's births) came along, we got PC's and laptops and iPods and free access to music thanks to our innate ability to adopt new technology (something our parent lack).

Now all that music that's on YouTube, hosted on hundreds of different sites and saved on millions of hard-drives around the world, it isn't just going to disappear and people will always have access to it.

Good music will never die. idc from what era, but I understand your point about commercialism and such.

This is all speculation, but i think popularity is what makes the music "better"/ even more popular. Conformity is a natural instinct, as whatever stands out is more likely to be noticed in the natural world. Pop music is only popular, because its popular..sounds a little redundant doesnt it?
A feel like a lot of people dont even know what they enjoy when it comes to music. They just listen to whats on the radio/mtv and go along with it. Then once the popular opinion shifts and the new "thing" is in, everyone jumps on the bandwagon. And thus, the shit music that was once popular is no longer so, and the "stigma" or w/e behind it is gone.
What a strange society we live in .
All i know is that classics will always be classics, no matter what is considered popular music at the time.

That's when individual taste comes in, independent people usually are free thinkers that shift away from what's "popular or what's "hot".

Maybe it has to do with right brain and perception when it comes to music appreciation but don't get me wrong popularity can be a good thing but depends on the topic and the subject, if the song is from an impoverished country but created from hard-working musicians then it deserves to be known. If the people are tired of superficiality, then it means time to explore.

Well it's important to remember there is no good or bad music, we ourselves decide what music is good and bad, but really that is just our opinion it isn't actually good music, it is just music.

I think the O.P is on to something though about us not actually liking things but just sort of going with the crowd. If hip hop is seen to be cool to listen to then you can decide you like hip hop so you can be cool also and add it your ego. Then when someone asks you what music you like you say hip hop, then someone might put on a country song and ask you what you think and you may very well dismiss it within 10 seconds because 1. It's not hip hop and 2. Country is uncool. I think that's how it works, our ego decides what we will like so as to boost itself and it's image in others.

Having said that there are also other reasons that you can like music, such as connection with the artist. Understanding what they're expressing and connecting it with your own experiences can make somebody your favourite artist. Or just admiring the talent that it took to make that piece of music. Heck you might just like certain music because it is good to dance too.

However I definitely think our choices of what things we like are heavily influenced by our egos. I mean say tomorrow morning you hear a great tracks with amazing instrumental parts a great beat and then some deeply emotional lyrics that you connect too. You think "wow, this song is great". Then the radio host says "and that was the latest hit by Justin Bieber". Your ego then arrives and says Woops! I wasn't meant to like this and then you trick yourself to not like it because you had already labelled Justin Bieber as an artist you dont like and somebody who is uncool.

This is coming from someone who doesn't listen to regular radio:
YouTube has been my friend because I used to listen to music just because it was on the radio. Once I got online, that all changed. All of a sudden, I found people like Abney Park, Voltaire, Sabaton, Folkearth, Tyr, Heidevolk, Forefather, Earth---basically all sorts of music that I wouldn't have heard otherwise. It's not popular music (at least here in the states), but yet I still like it better than what the radio says is popular/good music.

Here's to not going with the crowd and finding out which music you like, not what the radio tells you to like.
*puff

Edited by Nepherti, 24 July 2012 - 01:27 PM.
forgot to puff and pass

Interesting as I was thinking about this yesterday. If a mass collective of humans enjoy something, you'd think that it must be popular, right? Otherwise, why would the majority like it? And if you don't like something, you might be perceived as an outsider or 'different.'

Like, what if everything got twisted the other way? The most popular groups were viewed as just being alright or nothing special while the relatively unknown groups would be chart-topping superstars. Hmmmmm.

We are told what is cool by the media.

But not everyone listens