Neil Young Hates the Sound of Today's Music
Monday, January 23, 2012 at 10:41AM
Wait! It's not some grumpy old man harrumphing about the kind of music the kids are making today. He means its sonic quality. I'm SO with him on this. From an interview with MTV:
I'm finding that I have a little bit of trouble with the quality of the sound of music today. I don't like it. It just makes me angry. Not the quality of the music, but we're in the 21st century and we have the worst sound that we've ever had. It's worse than a 78 [rpm record]. Where are our geniuses? What happened?"
If you're an artist and you created something and you knew the master was 100 percent great, but the consumer got 5 percent, would you be feeling good? I like to point that out to artists. That's why people listen to music differently today. It's all about the bottom and the beat driving everything, and that's because in the resolution of the music, there's nothing else you can really hear. The warmth and the depth at the high end is gone.
Right on, dude. Read more here.
Reader Comments (5)
Neil knows! That's why albums like Harvest still do something good for our soul.
Since the CD rose to prominence in the 80's, he's been beating this horse like crazy
But he has no problem licensing "Old man" to rap artists Redlight king (terrible). You may call it an old man trying to make a quick buck, I call it contributing to the problem.
So he's actually just an old man grumping about the SOUND of the music kids are making today. I don't suppose there's any chance his hearing isn't what it once was.....right?
They talk about choices. Well we all have a choice. Instead of an iPod...I still continue to listen to cassettes. End of story.