I feel global political oppression or global wars usually produce great music but Macklemore might be the peak.
Nothing against him, some of his songs are good, but I expected real rage inducing stuff with everything going on. Or is this just the state of music as a whole?
Zeal and Ardor.
An absolute top tier band that stand for human rights and who’s lyrics reflect their beliefs.
Created by a black metal artist from Sweden who made one of the best black metal albums of the past 5 years, who have since released banger after banger.
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/racist-4chan-comment-album/
Also seconded/thirded on Run the Jewels. “Close your eyes and count to fuck” is on the forever playlist.
Kneecap
Bob Vylan
Both got in trouble for speaking out about the Palestinian genocide.
100% agree with you.
I AIN’T JUST A VILLIAN I’M THE MOTHERFUCKEN MAN
It’s king gizzard y’all sleeping
They’re basically the Pink Floyd of our generation. Too bad they’ll never have the same reach as PF or older bands due to the heavy current cultural fragmentation.
RTJ?
RTJ4 coming out right when the pandemic and George Floyd being murdered was magical. That album is straight gas. Saying this as a 48 year old white dude.
And then the tour getting cancelled for COVID and then Zack fucking his ankle was a real bummer.
Run the Jewels
👉🤛
I listen to a lot of weird punk and am not particularly good at knowing what’s popular, but I’d guess Kendrick Lamar, Childish Gambino and/or Run the Jewels?
RTJ is so fucking good at bringing that class conscious fire in the belly that RATM did. To be honest though, I think acts like Brass Against are keeping the music and the message alive and deserve a lot more visibility.
Brass against is so much fun!
(Admittedly, I have a soft spot for brass acts like March Fourth n Too Many Zoos.)
Fully agree, RTJ is probably the closest in terms of RATM fire but sadly generally figure them as the least popular of the three? (Though I am ignorant as hell about what’s popular)
I hadn’t heard of those two, loving them both already! I love brass mixed into other music but I’ve never been much of a ska fan, which is the first place you usually expect to get that. It’s hard to know where to look and I’m always delighted to find it.
Stuff like Gwar’s Saddam A-Go-Go (even when Brockie was poking fun at ska he did it well) and N.A.S.A.'s Spacious Thoughts where the brass takes an already heavy sound and makes it soar - it gives me life every time.
Haven’t heard Spacious Thoughts, sounds like a fun time, I’ll blare some while working today!
Oddly, I dug ska growing up but my more recent delve into brass bands are no doubt the result of my buddy watching Treme and getting really into New Orleans brass! So, if you’re looking for more, for me that was a great jumping off point to the likes of the Dirty Dozen Brass band and the Rebirth Brass band.
It’s just one track from an otherwise great album. Still can’t recommend it enough - it’s a Kool Keith and Tom Waits collab.
Hadn’t heard ol Tom Waits in forever, that was great! Thanks!
😁
The algorithm won’t boost anything trying to rage against the machine. Gotta make generic bullshit to get clicks. Only way to make money these days is to get clicks
The “algorithm” is not some conspiranoic mastermind, it just serves whatever retains the most attention and generates clicks for advertisers. It’s users who don’t want to listen to <insert your favorite rebel> because they prefer bland pop or whatever kids listen to these days.
Algorithms are definitely biased to push whatever agenda they want.
That’s what I said. The agenda they want just happens to be “money”, not whatever political conspiracy every political group comes up with.
So you’re saying that no one listens to music that isn’t spoon-fed to them?
My friend, algos won’t show me Swedish power metal, I gotta go find it. No one waited for Rage to come on the radio, you sought it out at the record store or from friends that had copied demo tapes and mix tapes.
algos won’t show me Swedish power metal
Any algorithm that won’t let someone discover Sabaton, is a defective algorithm.
No idea about today, but Pandora used to be cool for this in the “Music Genome Project” days.
Ahhh, yes Pandora. The Good Ol’ Days.
And I’m the only algorithm I need for finding Swedish power metal, because I put in the hours to find what I like. But, admittedly, my taste in music is generously called “eclectic” by some, and “trash” by my loved ones, so there’s no algorithm that’s ever even believed I was a real person and not just 3 raccoons in a trench coat.
Jesus Christ you people will bitch about anything.
Please explain to me how an algorithm is worse than having to bribe execs to get on the radio and wait for the song to be played. And then if lucky it’ll get played 40 times in repeat.
I’m sure this will be a coherent answer 🙄.
You’re exactly right.
WTF algorithm was there to serve us on demand copying mix and demo tapes? We had to touch physical media to get the songs. It took effort, sometimes $5 in gas money, a stack of blank tapes at home, and working two-deck stereo.
Not just for Rage-type alt music and punk, but the entire early hip-hop and rap scenes were almost exclusively bootlegged and home-made.
This isn’t about “kids today have it so easy” - this is about good songs overcoming massive headwinds to get popular and simply heard. Music discovery was word of mouth, rumors, and who had what on hand. The thrill of the hunt got you amazing results.
Right now there’s probably someone making killer music and posting to YT or peertube with like 3 views because everyone just accepts the algo slop and no one looks for the gems.
Right now there’s probably someone making killer music and posting to YT or peertube with like 3 views because everyone just accepts the algo slop and no one looks for the gems.
Oh hey look, it’s me!
Are you looking for the gems? Or making the gems? Either way, you’re doing the Lord’s work.
Making them! https://jimmyhalliday.bandcamp.com/
Holy shit, your band is fucking fire!
Edit: I listened to your whole album and it’s great. Reminds me of the early 2000s Fat Wreck Chords era when punk was honest and real, but also fun. Like some NoFX/MXPX stuff plus shades of this band named King Kong but louder. Thanks for linking to it!
Then you might be surprised to learn that there is no band, just me! I played and sang all the parts except for drums, those I made with Hydrogen. I did all of that using mostly open-source tools, all in my living room!
Right now there’s probably someone making killer music and posting to YT or peertube with like 3 views because everyone just accepts the algo slop and no one looks for the gems
Respectfully, i think this is the wrong conclusion. There are more sophisticated listeners today than there have ever been and sub-genre communities are great at spotting new gems. But while the number of listeners grew linearly, the number of bands has grown exponentially, making discoverability very difficult to achieve. That’s not anyone’s fault unless you consider musicians are at fault for creating so many good bands.
Absolutely fair point, and I agree with you to some degree. I imagine that it’s somewhere in the middle, where bands have flooded the space so that if no technical means exists for discovery, we’ve traded off friction points. Instead of the 90’s version where people would drive 40 minutes to the cool reord store in the next town over, now discerning listeners looking for gems have to wade through more and more bands they don’t like. It’s no one’s fault, it’s just how it is.
the ’90s* version
Nobody tell this guy about mps3 🤣
None of that went away. Music discovery is easier than ever. Sharing music is a link and you’re done. Either you’ve forgotten or are too young to remember the same artists played over and over again.
However you got here, your understanding of the music industry pre internet is rose tinted at best.
Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch! I was there when MP3s were new. If it wasn’t for a HD crash in 2003, I would still have MP3s from the 90s.
Plus, I was agreeing with you. WTF?
I’m not talking about sharing in particular, I’m talking about friction involved in discovery. You have to know someone to share the link, even today. So someone is out there spending 10 hours a day listening to random stuff on YT just to get something to share, not waiting around for the algorithm to give them music.
If it wasn’t for a HD crash in 2003, I would still have MP3s from the 90s.
You just made me sad thinking about the huge music library I used to have. I’ve recently started downloading again, but my tastes were so different back then I don’t think I’ll ever remember it all.
Lolwut.
Artists like Bob Vylan, Lambrini Girls, Narcissist Cookbook, Cheap Perfume, The Oozes, Problem Patterns and even Lil Darkie and many more are ones I’d never have found without Spotify suggestions. That and discovering some classics like Anti-Flag, Bad Religion, Dead Kennedys, Against Me!, Crass, ZSK would never have happened without algo suggestions.
Generic bullshit doesn’t even get clicks, the most outraging things get clicks, protest songs and politically charged shit does, just like the above, it just happens to be leftist music. Also check out Refused.
It’s crazy we live in a time where there is music that isn’t some poetic wishy washy love song top 40 studio bullshit which is all you would’ve known about before, but there’s music that actually references material current events that happen, and then there’s old classics that are so much easier to find thanks to discoverability via streaming.
There’s obviously a problem with the inherent wealth transfer where both indie musicians and listeners pay Spotify, and now they want to cut out the middleman (the musician) entirely, but we absolutely must not go back to monoculture offline bs mandated by some fat cat studio exec Epstein list member looking ass.
Edit: I posted in another comment, but if anyone is interested in leftist, political, anti-capitalist and progressive music more generally I maintain a playlist here and I’d love suggestions: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5rYZABdJf5H8XmliZ9ZTIW?pi=KIskSDh8T--mY
top 40 studio bullshit which is all you would’ve known about before
While I agree with you overall, this just isn’t true.
We had university radio which would play whatever the DJ was into, because it wasn’t programmed.
We had local record stores, which while stocked a lot of top 40, would also bring in albums from small and indie bands that would never get played on radio. They would play it in the store, and have listening stations with headphones so you could listen to an album before you bought it, because you would not have heard it on the radio.
We had clubs that would book bands from everywhere. The club I hung out at had a band every night of the week, and no matter when you went, you would hear someone new.
The music was out there. You just had to get your ass out of the house to find it.
Edit: Also, top 40 stations played what was selling. They were not the problem, it was the stations that were not top 40 that were playing the pablum for the masses, and when it would sell, then it would appear on a top 40 station. By definition, a top 40 station played the 40 biggest selling singles of the previous week. They didn’t pick what was sold.
I often heard great bands show up in top 40 because they somehow managed to break through to the masses. I remember when Pink Floyd released an album in the 90s, and the first single on the album got played on the top 40 station because it was selling. This being a time when groups like Ace of Bass, Salt-n-Pepa and Boyz II Men were popular and what a lot of people were listening to. Right there nestled in the hip-hop and dance music was Pink Floyd. Again, because it was selling.
Edit 2: I picked Pink Floyd because it stood out. At that time, in the 90s, it was not a band that young people listened to much of unless they were really into prog rock, classic rock or blazed all the time.
We had local record stores
Keyword being “local”. We had no record stores. Which ones were there stocked mostly overpriced Beatles represses. They still do to this day.
We had university radio which would play whatever the DJ was into, because it wasn’t programmed.
We too, and the DJ had dogshit taste and played random generic autotune rap.
would also bring in albums from small and indie bands
Ah yes, the small and indie bands that could afford to checks notes - press on actual honest to god vinyl.
We had clubs that would book bands from everywhere. The club I hung out at had a band every night of the week, and no matter when you went, you would hear someone new.
No, you had clubs. We had fuckall and a half and what was there was for the bourgeoisie cisheteronormative folks to listen to bland dance music in and fry out their brains on molly that was 90% caffeine and 10% undiscovered synthetic that will kill you.
None of it was about the music, and of course it wasn’t - it was a place for cliques to flex fashion.
If you lived in some kind of fantastical Life Is Strange-esque world - I’m happy for you, really, truly, and I’d like to hear more stories, but most of us didn’t, at least not those of us born after '97.
Nowadays discovering music is really quite a lot simpler, there’s no one you gotta know, there’s no place you have to know to go to, there’s no subcultures you gotta be part of, there’s nowhere you have to be to know specific artists.
You’re completely unbound by your immediate geography, whether you’re in Pakistan or one of those places ‘Jesus of Suburbia’ was about or a dense European city, all you need is an internet connection, which even in extreme poverty is much more affordable than going much of anywhere IRL.
Even if I lived in ye olden times, there’s no way in hell I would’ve known about even bands from the time like Cleaners from Venus or like 13th Floor Elevators, and in my own time I wouldn’t have known about Sweet Trip or Cats Millionaire, and I love how much there is and how much more is left to discover, all without needing to be part of something or being somewhere, it’s more democratic, and more fitting for a global world.
You’re making a lot of bold assumptions, none of which are true.
Keyword being “local”. We had no record stores. Which ones were there stocked mostly overpriced Beatles represses. They still do to this day.
So you had them, and they were shitty. Not quite the same thing as not having them. Did you ever ask if they could special order? The store I used to go to carried music zines that catered to a variety of tastes, and they would talk about any number of new albums and bands that were doing the rounds. If a band we saw live had a new release listed in one of them, we would go to the store and order it.
We too, and the DJ had dogshit taste and played random generic autotune rap.
So they had a single DJ that worked 24/7? And since you mention autotune, which doesn’t become prominent until the 2000s, you clearly have no clue, because it was already possible to discover new music then without having to hunt it down.
Ah yes, the small and indie bands that could afford to checks notes - press on actual honest to god vinyl.
There was, let me check notes… cassettes. Bands used to record music in their living room with a cheap 4 track, and put them on cassette.
And we had these really cool dual cassette radios, which you could one button copy to a blank cassette. So many of my music collection that I bought from bands I saw came from the band using one of these to copy their tapes.
https://u-mercari-images.mercdn.net/photos/m83247247555_1.jpg
I had probably a half dozen carrying cases full of albums of various music.
No, you had clubs. We had fuckall and a half and what was there was for the bourgeoisie cisheteronormative folks to listen to bland dance music in and fry out their brains on molly that was 90% caffeine and 10% undiscovered synthetic that will kill you.
Just because you lived in a shitty place, doesn’t mean your experience was universal. The city I lived in was so small, we had a single bar that catered to everything outside of mainstream. Gay, goth, punk and metalheads… all in the same place. It was not uncommon to hear a Sepultra song, followed by Bauhaus or the Pet Shop Boys or Skinny Puppy.
If you lived in some kind of fantastical Life Is Strange-esque world - I’m happy for you, really, truly, and I’d like to hear more stories, but most of us didn’t, at least not those of us born after '97.
In 1997, I was downloading music from the Internet from IRC. From album releases to bootlegs some guy at a show made holding up a tape recorder. You could also take CDs out from libraries and rip them to mp3 for long term storage. I would keep CDs full of mps, that I would then burn to CDs (because MP3 players didn’t exist yet) so we could listen to them. If you were lucky, you would get 128kbit, 44khz, but we would settle for 64kbit or 96 if it was what we could get.
If you were born after 1997 and you couldn’t find music you liked, that was a you problem. It was out there if you went looking for it.
Nowadays discovering music is really quite a lot simpler, there’s no one you gotta know, there’s no place you have to know to go to, there’s no subcultures you gotta be part of, there’s nowhere you have to be to know specific artists.
And if you were born after 1997, that’s been true your entire life. As long as the Internet has existed, there have been people putting music outside of the mainstream online. I used to DJ for an Internet radio station. We started in 2001 (and is still going), and went out of our way to discover new music. The founder was a musician himself, and wanted to spotlight lesser known music. We played anything from any drama, and had a robust request engine that people used to request music. We pre-recorded podcasts for play so long ago, it pre-dated the term podcast.
You’re completely unbound by your immediate geography, whether you’re in Pakistan or one of those places ‘Jesus of Suburbia’ was about or a dense European city, all you need is an internet connection, which even in extreme poverty is much more affordable than going much of anywhere IRL.
Even if I lived in ye olden times, there’s no way in hell I would’ve known about even bands from the time like Cleaners from Venus or like 13th Floor Elevators, and in my own time I wouldn’t have known about Sweet Trip or Cats Millionaire, and I love how much there is and how much more is left to discover, all without needing to be part of something or being somewhere, it’s more democratic, and more fitting for a global world.
It’s awesome you mention Cleaners from Venus, because they distributed their music on cassettes by mail order from listings in zines and word of mouth.
I’m not really going to respond to all that because I’d just be restating the same thing over and over. I’ll focus on one point:
Yes I’m more than aware of how Cleaners of Venus distributed their music.
That’s my entire point - they’re a very much niche band essentially unknown in their time - and I would have never, in a million years - known about their distribution method, or known of them at all, if it wasn’t on Wikipedia and on the internet and their music wasn’t easily torrented or streamed.
Even if they were less niche, and sold their records in stores: stores are very very expensive, anything meatspace is very very expensive due to rent costs of the actual precious physical space, they have to make their stock count, and that means catering to the mass market.
If such stores even exist - which they essentially don’t and when they did they were few and far between and not exactly record stores - more something like HMV, they catered to the mass market first because they are giant mega corps and dgaf about anything but the bottom line.
The internet - anyone could post anything there. Any music, any news about any new music, and anyone could access it from anywhere.
So If you literally believe that finding music is easier via counting on random zines and special orders in magical vinyl record stores that exist as far as I’m concerned - in fiction only, and when most countries in the world didn’t even have such a concept, than via the internet which is available everywhere at all times to everyone globally, you’re insane and I can’t help you.
That is an insane, obviously incorrect position to hold and if you can’t see that, you can’t be made to see it with any arguments anyone could present.
I think that must be it because you made another truly psychotic claim here:
There was, let me check notes… cassettes. Bands used to record music in their living room with a cheap 4 track, and put them on cassette.
Cleaners from Venus have 261k monthly listeners on Spotify. That means they’d need 216,000 cassettes. They’d also need the logistics and distribution to ship them all over the world to simply even come close to the reach they have now, to even be hypothetically obtainable.
Just because you lived in a shitty place, doesn’t mean your experience was universal. The city I lived in was so small, we had a single bar that catered to everything outside of mainstream. Gay, goth, punk and metalheads… all in the same place. It was not uncommon to hear a Sepultra song, followed by Bauhaus or the Pet Shop Boys or Skinny Puppy.
Of course it’s not universal. But it is more universal, because most of the world are not in one of like, three-ish Western European countries and the 10 or so sane cities in the United States. I’m sorry that causes your narrative of the world and how things used to be and/or are to be incorrect, but it’s the simple truth.
What was universal? Top 40 hits played on TV and Radio. That was pretty much everywhere. That is - until the internet and now you could be a Wavves fan in Russia, and I’m sorry the thought is so offensive to you.
Did you completely miss the point that I was talking about pre-internet days? In my first response to you, I literally talked about an album release in the 90s.
Maybe your entire experience in life isn’t as old as the pants I’m wearing right now, but the world existed before you did.
Yes you demented moron I think I am aware that the world existed before the internet and before I did, especially since I mention music that was made before I was born? Stop huffing the asbestos for a moment and read and re-read my post until you understand it, you absolute cretin.
I am pretty old and I barely knew the top 40 wishy washy back then… If you are interested in different it was there, streaming helps some, and true a lot is at your finger tips, but most people will still drop into a top 40.
Spotify doesn’t even have much of the music I listen to, I find it mostly useless so there is that.
I agree, but that’s on the users and their choices. Most people just dgaf about music anymore, it’s been “surpassed” by tiktoks in their mind. Video killed the radio star etc etc.
The paternalistic studio system limited both discoverability and the potential creativity and integrity of artists, and I’m glad it’s gone, most music I listen to either would not have existed, or I would’ve never found it without streaming.
It’s funny, I find a good chunk of music I listen to is just plain unavailable anywhere else for purchase, piracy or streaming.
It doesn’t if you don’t use services and algorithyms… But damn crap like Spotify is popular. I would never, but it’s like they hand it out when you turn 5 and say this is the default!
I haven’t used it for a while, but I remember Spotify recommending some pretty neat and niche stuff. It just really depends what you feed it to begin with.
If you start with “Popular top 40 corporate-bred pop artist of the month”, it will swiftly taylor the algorithm to more of the same, and once it’s got an idea it mostly goes one direction and it’s really difficult to get it to recommend other styles that aren’t Harry.
Fun puns and anecdotal evidence aside: Spotify sucks especially because of how it pays artists next to nothing.
I personally skim Freegal from my local library, Bandcamp on Fridays, and buy MP3s from 7 Digital if I want to support the artist. (I don’t know 7 Digital’s revenue take, but I at least get to own the music forever, and in FLAC if I want!)
Good protest music is coming out now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZYB5v69n7w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpNDaMc02Eg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlIREcAu0PI
More mainstream artists like Macklemore, Bob Vylan, Kneecap are also out there fighting the good fight.
Check out Jesse Welles for more folky protest music.
He also has non-protest music too, but some good recent protest and political songs include:
Love this!
I feel like we need to define ‘this generation’. Are we talking young people, currently popular artists? Because I’m at the age where you realize that you’re not that young anymore xD
Apart from that I’d like to mention Doechii. Some of her songs are about black trauma and reflection on her live
Kneecap
It’s hard for me to think of one as many artists may come out with a couple political songs, but it isn’t necessarily their whole discography.
Macklemore and Childish Gambino come to mind for me as both have had political songs and somewhat politically active.
100 Gecs maybe? Great as they are, I doubt it tbh. This gen is spoiled with choice more so than any before them (those lucky ducks). The internet-boom turned this game right on it’s side and media companies are still trying to figure out how to get back to business as usual. Sure, they’ve got their superstar acts like Swift and Lamar, but even those two huge names are vocal about rejecting that same old order in a way that just wasn’t feasible for similar acts a couple decades ago.
I think trying to find one singular act like your Nirvanas or Madonnas of the past just isn’t going to work from now on. These days, tastes and takes are just too splintered to reach a satisfying consensus on something like this.
I’ve had this conversation with one of my older friends. We used to have a lot more of a monoculture when it came to media. You could joke about last night’s popular TV shows because nearly everyone you knew was watching them.
There just wasn’t as much stuff being produced at the time. Now, you can always be listening to something new, 24/7, and you still won’t even begin to tap the potential of “what’s popular”. And once you step outside the US, that blows up to a whole new proportion.
They’re not so prolific or relevant now but I feel Rise Against deserves a mention. I did my senior essay on their work in high school and honestly it changed a lot of my political opinions doing research/listening for that.
I almost forgot, rise against and Tom Morello did this song live together: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5hLetyUToI
Ha, cool! I need to give them a more thorough listen.
I wonder who else’s first exposure to them was that incredible “Urban Ninja” video that was really popular when YouTube was cool…20 years ago 😨
IDLES
Muse, maybe? Or even just those bands from the past again. Nirvana and Soundgarden and shit are constantly used in gen z tiktok memes.
But this generation is also more outside the box with where their content is coming from. There are musicians on Tiktok that are not present literally anywhwre else and have yet to release commercial albums I know are at least particularly popular on the platform from everyone I know who actually uses tiktok.
casual Muse fan and listened to a few RATM songs, I guess? Muse still do political songs but even their old songs isn’t as charged as RATM old songs. That’s the era where when they were smaller they’d be more daring is my reasoning for that comparison.
When Muse returned to perform in Malaysia on the WOTP tour, heard rumors that they took out We Are Fucking Fucked upon request. But even when I fainted for the last 4 songs listening back to the setlist that song doesn’t seem to fit IMO
edit: I’d l0ve to explore TikTok musicians but the problem is they’re on TikTok. still holding on not making an account there
