I like your old stuff better than your new stuff

Do you possess all the albums from all the bands you mention? It's just that Black Sabbath (as an example) have had a few singers over time and I was wondering if you're familiar with all of them? I do know what you mean though. U2 haven't done what I would call a brilliant album for quite some time and that Bono is so far up his own...well, you get my drift! Did you know writers are running out of melodies? Think about it. There are only a few notes in the musical, er, spectrum aren't there? Eventually, over time there will be some repetitive stuff going on, which explains cover versions of course, as the writers can't be bothered thinking up new stuff because they can't... ...unless he's Tony Clarkin from Magnum!

I'm not that much interested in music, at least not the sort most people listen to. But I reckon Bill can make pretty much anything interesting, so I'll give it a go. I've tried reading through all the comments first, & I can't say I saw one mention of the Bee Gees! Didn't they grow up in Queensland? What's going on? I reckon some of their later stuff is better than some of their earlier stuff. I tried to comment on this discussion weeks ago, but My Lot found something wrong with my posting & wiped everything. Hope it works this time. Had no idea what I wrote, but I couldn't see anything wrong with it. I think a lot of today's bands are just copying the older ones with nothing really genuinely outstandingly original anymore. A classic example would be those boys from Perth - Empire of the Sun, I think they're called. They take sixties & seventies music & just put it in a blender. You can actually sing along to part of the original music in their songs... they don't even try to disguise it! Remember how Spiks [sic, for My Lot violation acceptance] & Specks picked up Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree from Men At Work's big hit? Now those guys at least gave it a good shot at making it look like their own. I think a lot of what has gone wrong is that artists are no longer being paid very well for their albums due to the ease of their work being able to be ripped off the internet. Whatddayareckon, Bill?

I'm an 'oldies but goodies' fan, Don't care much for the new music that's out nowadays. I have always been ab ELVIS fan & i love the old country music. Don't care a thing about the music they call new country. It is not country music to me at all.

I think they do lose a certain amount of creativity...I enjoy those bands too. I think they might just be trying to hang on to what they know is good too. Sometimes the fear of failing is worse than not trying at all.

It might be because they changed their focus from being creative to making money. It's understandable really, it happens to all of us. When we're young we can live from almost nothing, as long as we're passionate. As we grow older, we need more financial stability and we start worrying about things. Our whole mentality changes, it's difficult to be the starving artist when you're middle-aged. Or maybe they just run out of ideas after giving their all on the first few albums. Maybe the band members have evolved in different directions or the line-up has changed. There could be many reasons.

i agree with you RawBill1. i am trying to think of a group that has had more than 4 albums and have managed to keep up the momentum. the rolling stones, rem, u2 etc, all seem to lose their karma after the big bucks start rolling in. still, we have our memories eh?

Journey is one of my favorite bands and has been since I was younger. I absolutely like their earlier work better, for a number of reasons - not the least of which is changing band members. The longer a band is around, the greater the likelihood that its member components will change. In Journey's case, Steve Perry was "the voice." They've had some good material since others took over lead vocals but Perry will always be the sound of Journey to me. Also, I listen to their newer material and I get this impression that they are just doing what they want now as opposed to what might be more popular, timely or well-received. For instance, after hearing a couple of tracks from the new material for their upcoming tour, I feel like it's becoming "the Neal Schon show" and not Journey. The new singer, Arnel Pineda (that they found via youtube), he really can sing and does an admirable job... but the band doesn't feel like a cohesive unit to me anymore. I also believe that, as a band ages, the members are often pulled towards individual ventures or they simply want to pursue other things in life... and it makes their music less about the sum of the parts as it is in the heyday of their success.

Interesting question. Even more interesting since your are still a young guy of 38. For any band wanting to survive more than a decade, they need to re-invent themselve in order to appeal to the next generation and its new taste in music. Very few can do that successfully. And more so, they cannot change their genre without offending their original fans. Madonna is actually the only person who has managed to stay at the top of her profession for the last 30 years by continually re-inventing herself, without offending her fans from her early beginnings. At 50, she would put to shame any 20 year old. The Beatles only lasted a decade. Paul McCartney tried to re-invent the wheel with Wings. But people went to see Paul McCartney, not Wings. Mick Jagger did a fairly good job at re-inventing himself during the eighties, which permitted the Rolling Stones to survive 40 years. The bottom line is that you have to be dedicated and be serious about it. It is a job and a business. If you start partying as soon as you made 10 million, by the time the party is over, so is your business. You cannot stop and make a comeback 5 years later. You have to stay with it. So if you look at all the famous bands of the past and all their great hits, most of them were at the top for less than 10 years. Solo singers actually last a lot longer, because they don't have the in-fighting that bands have between their members. Dozen of solo singers have survived 30 or 40 years in the past like Madonna is doing today. Many of the greats of the 50's were still singing on stage in the 80's. So to answer your question, the reason you don't like the latest music of your favourite bands, is because you are stuck with the music you liked as a teenager. And you are not the only one. 90% of the music I listen to is prior to 1980.

I have found this to be true many times as well. I think it is because their old stuff is just raw and honest. But then when they start getting more popular there is more pressure to be creative and they actually lose it by trying too hard. They are under the pressure to perform and lose some of the purity and honesty that they had before.