Am I the only person on the forum that enjoys modern pop/rap/country music?

[Henry]

With the exception of smooth jazz, I just cannot get into the music of today. In terms of pop/rock music, the best era for me remains the late 70s-mid 90s, although I also liked select artists and albums from as recent as 2005.

As for country, I just don't buy into the stereotype of all Midwesterners liking the genre. In fact, I hate it with a passion.

[JayhawkCO]

I listen to, and enjoy lots of modern country music, as well as a large amount of modern pop. My favorite/most listened to artist, OneRepublic, has a good amount of modern pop music in their Human album (2021).

Those dudes used to be regulars at one of the restaurants I ran. Super nice guys. We had a random Pandora station playing one night and one of their songs came on and they just started belting it out in the middle of the restaurant.

[OCGuy81]

My daughter is a big T Swift fan, and I've fallen into the vortex of liking her music.  It's incredibly catchy!

As for modern rap and country?  Well....

I think rap really hit its peak in the early to mid 90s when you had the emergence of rappers like Dr. Dre, Snoop, Tupac, Biggie, the Wu-Tang Clan, etc.  The west coast vs east coast rap feud helped add a layer of entertainment to it, but overall it was just solid! Great lyrics, catchy beats, I enjoyed it immensely.  There's still talented hip hop acts out there, but I think the peak of the genre is in the rearview.

Country?? Well, I'm a bit old school here.  There are still a handful of country artists I like, such as Eric Church, Morgan Wallen, Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood, Cole Swindell. But I think a lot of it has become increasingly meat headed.  Hey gurl....get up in my truck.  Acts like Florida Georgia Line are what I think is "bro country".

[thspfc]

Most of what I listen to is 2010-present, though I have songs on my playlist as old as 1976.

[JayhawkCO]

Most of what I listen to is 2010-present, though I have songs on my playlist as old as 1976.

Heh. I have songs on my playlist from 1723.

[bandit957]

I have my MP3 library very meticulously catalogued. I got that idea from shows like 'American Top 40' and from when I worked on my college radio station. I wrote a program in FreeBASIC that creates playlists where the music is sorted by category. It uses something like a format wheel. It will alternate between modern rock, R&B, and other music. It also alternates between 1978-84, 1985-91, and other years. But every alternating track is a wildcard, which could be from any category or year. It also makes a playlist log, so songs that were recently played won't come up again for a while.

I think the last time I used it, it said the average year for my music was 1986. But 1983 is my favorite year for '80s music.

[hbelkins]

Meanwhile, I'm over here waiting for Metallica's "72 Seasons" album to hit the stores.

"Modern country" -- often derisively referred to as "bro country" and personified by Florida Georgia Line?

I grew up listening to Johnny Cash and to be honest, the last country music I really got into was early Garth Brooks, Randy Travis, and the Kentucky Headhunters in the 1990s.

[Bruce]

I do not enjoy songs about longing for a pickup truck or whatever fashion brand is in with certain groups.

I do enjoy other songs from those genres that at least have some substance or are fun to listen to. I've also got plenty of indie artists in my algorithm-recommended playlists when I tire of what I already have in my library.

[JayhawkCO]

Meanwhile, I'm over here waiting for Metallica's "72 Seasons" album to hit the stores.

"Modern country" -- often derisively referred to as "bro country" and personified by Florida Georgia Line?

I grew up listening to Johnny Cash and to be honest, the last country music I really got into was early Garth Brooks, Randy Travis, and the Kentucky Headhunters in the 1990s.

I listen to very little country, but can listen to Johnny Cash or Garth Brooks any time. Almost nothing else appeals to me unless it dips into the bluegrass side of things.

[Big John]

Most of what I listen to is 2010-present, though I have songs on my playlist as old as 1976.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLqfXlIq6RE

[triplemultiplex]

Country and rap share a feature that puts me off: lyrics extolling ignorance.
Not every song of course, there are some hip hop songs with smart lyrics and every so often I can find a country song with something intelligent to say, but enough to stereotype the genres as celebrating being an ignoramus.

[bugo]

I still think of the 2000's as "modern music" (maybe because I listened to so much 70's and 80's music growing up), but if I use a definition of 2010's/2020's for modern, here are some artists I like, sorted by genre:
- Bedroom Pop: Jay Som
- Dream Pop: Atmos Bloom, Beach Fossils, Beach House, Castlebeat, Day Wave, Fazerdaze, Hazel English, Lunar Isles, No Vacation, Real Estate, Ruby Haunt, Swimming Tapes, Turnover, Wild Nothing
- Indie Rock: Arcade Fire, Boy Pablo, Death Cab for Cutie, Goth Babe, Kings of Leon, Mac DeMarco, The National, Of Monsters and Men, Softer Still
- Chillwave (not 100% sure, there's no Wikipedia article for these): Attom, EMBRZ
- Country: Chris Stapleton, Colter Wall, Taylor Swift
- Deep House: Lane 8, Ocula, Sultan and Shepard
- Electropop/house: Madeon, Porter Robinson
- Folk: Gregory Alan Isakov
- Lofi: Nom Tunes, Pr4ntik, Project AER, Refeeld, Tophat Panda, Yoann Garel
- Psychedelic Pop/Rock: Tame Impala
- Shoegaze: DIIV, Slowdive, Whirr
- Synthwave: Com Truise
- Tropical House: Kygo

Who gives a fuck about genre? If you like it, listen to it. When you try to put everything in neat little boxes, you'll often find that they don't fit.

[Scott5114]

Who gives a fuck about genre? If you like it, listen to it. When you try to put everything in neat little boxes, you'll often find that they don't fit.

Right? I apparently have some sort of internal criteria for whether I like a song or not (I can't articulate most of it, but one of them is a good bassline). If a song 'ticks all the boxes' I'll add it to my rotation, regardless of what genre it is or when it was released.

[bm7]

I listen to modern music, although it's mainly rock, metal, or electronic. Pretty much all of the music I listen to is from after 2000.

Who gives a fuck about genre? If you like it, listen to it. When you try to put everything in neat little boxes, you'll often find that they don't fit.

Genres make it so you can easily find similar music. If you like artist X, you can find out what genre they are considered, and find other artists of that genre. And in the case of 7/8's post, it's much more useful for somebody reading it to know what kind of music an artist makes. One genre I listen to is chillwave, and I've heard of Attom, but not EMBRZ so I'll look them up later. If he just listed all of those artists as one wall of text, I would have no idea if any of the artists that I haven't heard of are something I might be interested in and wouldn't have searched any of them up.

I do agree that music often doesn't easily fit into any particular genre. I'd even argue that most music could fit into at least 2 genres. But categorizing music into vague categories is much better in my opinion than not doing it at all.

[7/8]

Who gives a fuck about genre? If you like it, listen to it. When you try to put everything in neat little boxes, you'll often find that they don't fit.

Genres make it so you can easily find similar music. If you like artist X, you can find out what genre they are considered, and find other artists of that genre. And in the case of 7/8's post, it's much more useful for somebody reading it to know what kind of music an artist makes. One genre I listen to is chillwave, and I've heard of Attom, but not EMBRZ so I'll look them up later. If he just listed all of those artists as one wall of text, I would have no idea if any of the artists that I haven't heard of are something I might be interested in and wouldn't have searched any of them up.

I do agree that music often doesn't easily fit into any particular genre. I'd even argue that most music could fit into at least 2 genres. But categorizing music into vague categories is much better in my opinion than not doing it at all.

Thank you, yes I thought of it as a helpful way to show people the general style of music each artist plays, since many of them aren't too well known. I didn't intend to imply that one should limit their music taste by genre.

Regarding EMBRZ, a few songs I would recommend are Where You Are, Rise, Lights, Heartlines, and the "Spirit Reset" EP. If you have a few artist suggestions for me I'd be happy to hear some.

[Roadgeekteen]

Who gives a fuck about genre? If you like it, listen to it. When you try to put everything in neat little boxes, you'll often find that they don't fit.

Right? I apparently have some sort of internal criteria for whether I like a song or not (I can't articulate most of it, but one of them is a good bassline). If a song 'ticks all the boxes' I'll add it to my rotation, regardless of what genre it is or when it was released.

I also don't care about genre. Pop, rock, rap, country, classical... if I like a song, I listen to it.

[thspfc]

I listen to, and enjoy lots of modern country music, as well as a large amount of modern pop. My favorite/most listened to artist, OneRepublic, has a good amount of modern pop music in their Human album (2021).

Those dudes used to be regulars at one of the restaurants I ran. Super nice guys. We had a random Pandora station playing one night and one of their songs came on and they just started belting it out in the middle of the restaurant.

I Lived is in my top 10 songs of all time.

Country and rap share a feature that puts me off: lyrics extolling ignorance.
Not every song of course, there are some hip hop songs with smart lyrics and every so often I can find a country song with something intelligent to say, but enough to stereotype the genres as celebrating being an ignoramus.

There's so much bad rap music that the good is hard to find. And IMO, there's hardly any rappers who consistently make good songs - even the most popular ones have one or two songs I like, and I've listened to their other stuff but it's just not good (Kendrick, Kanye, Travis Scott, 50 Cent, Youngboy fall in that category for me).

[1995hoo]

The thing about genre is that it's often somewhat vague or unapparent to me what a given genre is. For example, the Gaslight Anthem are unquestionably a rock band, yet some of the various tagging services characterize them as "alternative." I'm not really even sure what "alternative" means, and I think it's somewhat amorphous because once upon a time REM were considered alternative, yet they unquestionably became mainstream in the late 1980s/early 1990s at the height of their popularity.

[Hunty2022]

I listen to, and enjoy lots of modern country music, as well as a large amount of modern pop. My favorite/most listened to artist, OneRepublic, has a good amount of modern pop music in their Human album (2021).

Those dudes used to be regulars at one of the restaurants I ran. Super nice guys. We had a random Pandora station playing one night and one of their songs came on and they just started belting it out in the middle of the restaurant.

I Lived is in my top 10 songs of all time.

I Lived is in my top 1 song of all time. 

[golden eagle]

I like some of Taylor's music. I like her current hit, Anti-Hero and songs from her 1989 Album and the song Willow from 2020 Evermore album.

Most modern music isn't that good. There isn't much beyond Post Malone, Doja Cat and Lizzo that I care about.

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

I'm the only one here that has ever been President of a Blues (music) Society.
So there.