Why do most new songs sound alike?

[Matt Chase]

I'm just going to put on my asbestos suit before I type this, so feel free to flame away, but when was this supposed golden age when things were different?

I presume most people in this thread are talking about some type of country music but to be honest, outside of maybe the blues I can't think of a more homogenous, strictly compartmentalized form of music.

I'm too young to have heard "classic" country (40s, 50s and 60s) when it was released, so I can hear it with fresh ears free from any cultural context, and to tell the truth, most of it sounds the same. There are maybe a half dozen song templates that are strictly adhered to, and once you've heard the intro lick, you know exactly what's coming for the rest of the song. I spend a lot of days working from home listening to steel radio through my computer, and it's very rare that a song makes me sit up and take notice. Same intros, same turnarounds, same song structure and same lyrical themes. And these are the old 'classics'.

This is in no way taking away from the awesome musicianship of these guys, but how could musos this talented play the same I IV V progressions all day without going insane? What did they feel they could add to the genre by rerecording minor variations of the same few songs?

So I suspect what you guys are hearing is the sheen of modern recording or maybe you're attached to a certain era for other reasons, or maybe these older artists had a bit more of a publicly visible personality about them, but from where I sit, nothing has changed.

[Donny Hinson]

I spend a lot of days working from home listening to steel radio through my computer, and it's very rare that a song makes me sit up and take notice. Same intros, same turnarounds, same song structure and same lyrical themes. And these are the old 'classics'.

Matt, it's unfortunate you weren't around back in the '60s. Vocal styles, as well as those of the players behind them, were far more diverse than what you hear today. They were also far more different and diverse than what you hear on Steel Radio. Like stations today, that station is aimed at one demographic. Though they play music from the '60s, they're playing what their listeners request, and what they like, and that's not a true or complete portrayal of everything that was going on back then.

I think one of the great beauties of country music is the diversity you can get while using just 3 chords. The message in the lyrics is the same as that in the music...beauty through simplicity. Take Ray Price and Buck owens, two of the biggest male artists of that period. IMHO, one would be hard pressed to find two recent, popular, male artists today that are as diverse as Ray and Buck. They also hired, toured, and recorded with their own bands, something that is a true rarity today.

In the realm of steel guitarists, back in the '60s if you were listening to country radio, you might easily hear Buddy Emmons, Curly Chalker, Tom Brumley, Weldon Myrick, Pete Drake, Hal Rugg, Buddy Charleton, Lloyd Green, Jimmy Crawford, and Bob White...all in the same afternoon! When you went to see a country show, with the exception of a few artists like Johnny Cash, Sonny James, and Marty Robbins, you were almost guaranteed to find a pedal steel player. Back in those days, I did a lot of traveling from place to place with the bandleaders (seeking jobs), and the first question out of many clubowners mouths (even before they talked money) was..."Do you have a steel guitar?".

[John McGlothlin]

One of the forum members came by the house the other day and we were disscussing how music has changed over the years for the worst and how the new wave music or might I say...the sorry excuse for music has gotten away from a beautiful creation of art and has turned into a cheap way for greedy people to get rich. He appeard to be on my side and agreed 100% with me and then he sat down at my steel and said lets play a good down to earth song and I said to John...take off on a a good one. NOT NOT NOT he played a Judds song. In my opinion, this guy is only interested in playing these little 3 chord tunes that are popular today. The difference in John and me is the fact that I enjoy playing songs that are loaded with lots of chords that require the use of a lot of strings and pedals and levers and fingers. The more complicated the chords are to get, the better in my book. Learn the chords that Curly Chalker and Maureece Anderson and Zane Beck and Doug Jernigan and players like them learned. The music is already in the guitar buts its up to the guitarist to bring it out.

[Brint Hannay]

Matt, I, like many others here, am very fond of the "classic country" of the Fifties and Sixties, and don't like the current "country", but I think you are entirely correct that there was just as much "sameness" then as today. It's just that the stylistic formulas of those days appeal to me, and today's don't.

I also agree with Earnest that "sameness" is in the ear of the beholder. Someone who accepts, and enjoys, a general stylistic framework is attuned to the differences that occur within that microcosm, and doesn't feel that everything is the same, while someone who dislikes the overall style tunes out, sees with unfocused eyes, as it were, and it's all a blur.

Seems to me that country music, as represented by what was played on the radio, achieved its greatest diversity, for better or for worse, in the Eighties.

[Charley Wilder]

I think Johnny Cash pinned it down when he wrote "Country isn't a life anymore it's a lifestyle". And the producers play to the lifestyle. People aren't growing up hard down south like they used to. So it's all about riding around in pickup trucks wearing your cowboy hat, Honky Tonks, and, well, lifestyle. You see it up here in New Hampshire and we're quite a ways from dear old Dixie!
The middle to late 70's was a homogenized period also. The music was all pretty much producer driven. Steel players were complaining about being forced to play in E9 and copy the "hot" licks of the day. Hollywood still makes good movies but not as many of them as they used to. Nashville is the same. Some good tunes out there but you have to wade through a lot more mediocrity to find them these days.

[Eric Jaeger]

Computers give market researchers more sophisticated tools, but it's still the same process: "they like that? then let's give them more just like it". By definition market research will NEVER give you anything innovative or new. Impossible.

Ahmet Ertegun said that his job was to get up every morning, shave, put on his jacket and tie, and go find a genius.

But if all you care about if profitability, slavish repetition is a defensible business model (unfortunately). Just don't every confuse it with creativity.

-eric

[Richard Sinkler]

Uh, the same reason most old songs sound alike.

[Joe Drivdahl]

I agree with several of you. If you watch the old Opry shows with Hawkshaw Hawkins and the like, not only are the songs similar, they are the same songs many times. Its almost like there were only about a half dozen writers in Nashville at the time who were writing everything, and all the singers of the day were performing the same few tunes.

So I agree with you folks that said there is a template for a few songs in any generation, and then everyone just writes different words around the same basic chord progressions. Think of some of the Creedence tunes: Suzy Q, Heard it through the Grapevine, Run through the Jungle. I guess when something is working, you don't change it. Ride a good horse to death, as they say.

I just wish these songs today had lyrics that meant something, and the performers could bring that meaning out through feeling. But they don't, won't or can't seem to do that.

Janis Joplin did a lot of screaming, but at least she did with feeling.

[Matt Chase]

I suppose when you look at any genre of music in retrospect, rather than as it is being released, most of it tends to blend into a single grey mass. Stuff that was innovative when it came out gets swamped by all of the copycats who came later. If you didn't know it came first, you didn't know it was innovative. In a way, this is the more pure way to listen to music, as you are free from context and can just judge each song on its merits.

I'm sure there was a time each of these core country song templates was considered innovative, but what's remarkable to me is how little they've changed over the years. (And btw, I have listened to a lot of country music, not just the stuff on steel radio!).