Correct: at one point, they were essentially the same. Parallel development occurred as a result of white performers not wanting to be caught dead playing in the same styles as black performers. So they called it something else, which eventually led to divergent genre conventions–hence the two obviously distinct genres (or supergenres) of blues and country.
That isn’t theft, per se, but the stereotype of white people always stealing black music is amusing enough that I try to invoke it whenever possible.
Why do people always say “stay free” after they’ve made some ludicrous generalization?
Are you seriously trying to argue that mainstream music is not the most popular? give me a underground artist that is just as successful as justin beiber.
I just scanned the whole thread to make sure, and no. Neither I, nor apparently anybody else here, has made anything that remotely resembles this argument.
Once you become mainstream your not longer underground so that’s kind of impossible to say. If I cared I could probably think up a number of artists who started underground and became mainstream but i don’t give enough of a fuck to bother.
All music has sound. The vast majority of music is divided by a pulse. To say that most people like music for two of its most universal features is such a huge generalization that it has basically no content. In other words, it’s ludicrous.
You also still haven’t explained “stay free”. Nobody in this thread has said anything remotely free. I’m beginning to think that this phrase is the Internet equivalent of pounding your chest with your fists.
I’m sure 90% of most artist were underground at some point. Tons of them have a first album under lesser known labels, went under different names, or have completely different styles than their mainstream iterations. It’s actually quite fun to go back and look at an artist catalog. A lot of times (for music collectors) it’s fun to get their rare first album. It can get quite pricey trying to track them down, since for whatever reason the albums are usually out of print. This is probably due to the bigger mainstream record company trying to bury their former underground image.
He’s say Hipsters and Underground artists are free because they arn’t extremely popular. He’s not calling out people in the thread.
Still pretty dumb.
Certainly, I was mainly referring to people who popular before they where popular. No one gives a shit about Billy Joel when he was in Attila despite that being “underground”
Lol idk if you’re trying to be a smart ass or just fishing for likes. Ofc it has sound who the hell doesn’t know that? i’m saying that most people just like catchy beats or a hook they could careless about the lyrical value of the music. Bitches and hoes and talking about cars and jewelry is fine for a majority of people, which is TRUE.
Some artist were a lot better underground. I can’t think of many artist who got better after they went mainstream. One such example is No Doubt, who I believe first album was her first. Jay Z was pretty popular in the underground scene, and his first album was actually considered his best (which is less mainstream than his later work). Bands like Disturb first albums have a different style, but not necessarily better. I know I had a really hard time listening to Disturb lesser known Torment album. Bands like Cradle Of Filth have a great pre mainstream/big record label catalog.
I’m certainly no underground hipster. But I can say a ton of artist were better when they were underground. Some artist really established themselves very well before ever hitting mainstream (Jay Z and Nas). And for some people their underground releases are just a footnote in their catalog (Incubus, Disturbed, Cold).
Yea, and that’s cool (I like No Doubts earlier work myself), it’s just not really what i was saying. You seem to have misunderstood me. Homeboy said “Name an underground artist who is as popular as Justin Beiber.” If your as popular as Justin Beiber your ass isn’t underground anymore, which is what I was saying. You seem to be reading into something that I didn’t say.
sorry at work and doing about 3 things at once. Yeah, I would say anyone as popular as Justin Bieber wouldn’t be underground. Though I do define underground as someone who makes music and exist outside of corporate music marketing sphere. I would have thought some artist existed like that at one time, but these days there is such a lockdown in mainstream, that it’s hard to breathe if you don’t follow the mode. Still I think there are artist with a great fan base who have never been mainstream. A lot of metal bands have international fanbases and sellout American shows all the time, but haven’t had a video on MTV in years (or if they have a video, it’s during off hours). So you can be quite established strickly on underground support. But with so much pirating it’s VERY hard to make money being underground. In the 90s I think this was more possible.
I see what you’re getting at, but I don’t think there’s any specific feature of commercial music (beats, hooks, whatever) that people universally glom onto like lemmings. It’s more of a matter of formative musical experiences.
In my observation, if a piece of music reaches the average listener, it’s usually because of its similarity to something else the listener already likes, which can be anything. Some bands, such as Airbourne, have built their entire career on this.
Many people develop their values early on (again, the specific values aren’t really relevant) and those values get cemented hard and fast. Ergo, if it’s the beat that gets them, it’s not because the beat is intrinsically appealing anything like that, but because the specific beat is congruent enough with some earlier music experience they’ve had. If it weren’t, they would reject it.
This is why I have trouble with classifying artists and specific pieces of music as being “mainstream” or “underground”. In my opinion, “mainstream” is a formal thing. You can have an artist that relatively few people know about, but who plays utterly mainstream music–because it conforms to stylistic standards that a lot of people would be prepared to accept if they were exposed to it.
On the flipside, I think “underground” is a matter of challenging people’s assumptions and tastes. Most people aren’t interested in constantly search for something just accessible enough to understand, but different enough to expand that understanding. They’d rather stick to what they know, and their tastes stay one-dimensional.
This is a topic I could just wall of text my post. But it’s not worth it, as why put in effort to a topic that is about shit?
I’ll just say this, majority of people that I come across, all have bad taste in music, and are very close minded, and will, in defense state how successful these “artists” are by not the “music” it self but by the amount of fame and money they are getting. I very rarely talk about music to people. What’s the point.