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Starship’s ‘We Built This City’: Really The Worst?


kitekrazy1

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14 hours ago, Byron Dickens said:

TV is the devil. 

Thanks to TV, it's now more important what the star looks like than the music.

The first MTV video was The Buggles, "Video Killed The Radio Star" and that was true. Now when I see auto-tune kings and queens doing soft-core porn with little if any musical content, it saddens me. I've nothing against soft-core porn if the music is there, but not as a substitute for the music itself.

OK, I'm showing my age (as if my avatar doesn't).

But I'm a musician, and all parts of the music, melody, harmony and rhythm are important to me. And the nuances in those three are what turn empty notes into music.

Listening to some of the one-chord songs with rap instead of melody or auto-tune vocals just doesn't do it for me. It makes the Starship song sound like a symphony. Not that there isn't any good new music, there is some out there, but the majority of the pop music is currently at a low level for actual musical content.

Insights, incites and a minor rant by Notes  ;)

 

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I remember during the Disco years (1970s) Johnny Carson dressed up as a preacher in front of a pulpit, opened a big bible-looking book and with a serious face and tone of voice and at a slow, deliberate pace read the lyrics to the Silver Convention song, "Get Up And Boogie"

(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
Boogie, boogie

(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
(That's right)
Boogie, boogie

(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
Boogie, boogie

(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie

I'd say "They just don't write them like that anymore" but Craigb just proved otherwise :D

Whenever I try to write a song, I'm always unhappy with the lyrics. Perhaps I set my standards too high.

Insights and incites by Notes

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Heh, I actually still remember that Tonight Show episode!  *Sigh...*

I also remember when he did Donna Summer's song I Feel Love:

Ooh, it's so good, it's so good
It's so good, it's so good
It's so good

Ooh, I'm in love, I'm in love
I'm in love, I'm in love
I'm in love

Ooh, I feel love, I feel love
I feel love, I feel love
I feel love

I feel love
I feel love

Ooh, fall and free, fall and free
Fall and free, fall and free
Fall and free

Ooh, you and me, you and me
You and me, you and me
You and me

Ooh, I feel love, I feel love
I feel love, I feel love
I feel love

I feel love
I feel love
I feel love
I feel love

Ooh, I got you, I got you
I got you, I got you
I got you

Ooh, what you do, what you do
What you do, what you do
What you do

Ooh, I feel love, I feel love
I feel love, I feel love
I feel love

I feel love
I feel love
I feel love
I feel love

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/27/2019 at 5:22 PM, kitekrazy said:

https://bestclassicbands.com/we-built-this-city-1-7-17/

 My guess is those that thought so had never experienced enough decades of music.  Maybe it's because it was not a one hit wonder band.  The must have missed Disco when just about every mainstream artist made a contribution to that genre.   Disco Duck was one of the worst things I've heard. In the 80's music become more visual and changed whether a song was great. 

"Disco Duck" was a joke, and obviously intended as such.

"We Built This City" was by no means a good song.  It didn't even rise to mediocre.   I might be able to list a hundred worse songs that were popular.

What really makes it so hated though, is the way that it embodies everything that was wrong with rock/pop in the 80s.  You've got the artificial peppiness, the mechanical rhythms, cheesy horn stabs, awkward synth fills.  You have anti-corporate lyrics in a song that was a symbol of corporate rock.  And fewer things are more 80s than crappy sellout music from bands that used to be good in the 70s.

Edited by Magic Russ
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On 8/23/2019 at 8:35 PM, Magic Russ said:

What really makes it so hated though, is the way that it embodies everything that was wrong with rock/pop in the 80s.  You've got the artificial peppiness, the mechanical rhythms, cheesy horn stabs, awkward synth fills.  You have anti-corporate lyrics in a song that was a symbol of corporate rock.  And fewer things are more 80s than crappy sellout music from bands that used to be good in the 70s.

Exactly why it's repulsive - but although cheesy there are worse out there.

The Black Eyed Peas auto-tuned and vocally quantized I Gotta Feeling never fails to irritate me a bit. There are people out there working for people who can sing without auto-tune. Let them do it.

End of minor rant

Notes

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If she wasn't already, Cher is going to He77 for starting the auto-tune popularity.  When I first got one of the original pitch correction units (Antares AVP-1 Pro) I couldn't believe that they actually called the extreme settings the "Cher Effect" in the manual!  

That said, I did use extreme settings a couple of times to prove that some friends couldn't sing... ?

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3 hours ago, Byron Dickens said:

Curious  thing is that Cher can actually sing and doesn't need it.

Exactly!

I forget who it was (Madonna?) but, after hearing Cher's song, they tried to use the effect and couldn't because they were too on-key.  LOL - like THAT happens much any more! ?

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19 hours ago, Byron Dickens said:

Curious  thing is that Cher can actually sing and doesn't need it.

I read that when she went into the session she hadn't sung in a very, very long time. She was out of practice, her voice was out of shape, she had a lack of control and that made her intonation terrible. So they used auto-tune to fix it. I forget where I read that so I can't say for sure it was a trusted source.

 

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42 minutes ago, Notes_Norton said:

I read that when she went into the session she hadn't sung in a very, very long time. She was out of practice, her voice was out of shape, she had a lack of control and that made her intonation terrible. So they used auto-tune to fix it. I forget where I read that so I can't say for sure it was a trusted source.

 

I saw an interview with one of the engineers (or maybe the producers) who recorded it - he said Cher's pitch was so close to dead on most of the time, they actually had to use a pitch shifter to put it OUT of tune to get most out of the effect.

It's hard to know what to believe nowadays !

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4 hours ago, msmcleod said:

I saw an interview with one of the engineers (or maybe the producers) who recorded it - he said Cher's pitch was so close to dead on most of the time, they actually had to use a pitch shifter to put it OUT of tune to get most out of the effect.

It's hard to know what to believe nowadays !

It is hard.

That could be a cover up after the first anti-auto-tune wave years ago when singers were saying "I don't need it", or it could be the truth.

I guess it doesn't matter, what matters is IMHO auto-tune is the most abused technology in the recording industry.

I have nothing against Cher except that song. All in all she's a decent singer.

Notes

 

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On 8/25/2019 at 12:43 PM, craigb said:

If she wasn't already, Cher is going to He77 for starting the auto-tune popularity.  When I first got one of the original pitch correction units (Antares AVP-1 Pro) I couldn't believe that they actually called the extreme settings the "Cher Effect" in the manual!  

That said, I did use extreme settings a couple of times to prove that some friends couldn't sing... ?

The sad state of pop vocals also owes a lot to Alanis, as well as American Idol.

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