"Crap for the masses" - What is that exactly?

[loverocket]

when you follow a DJ and love his tracks (example Axwell) and then David Guetta gets popular with his basic three chord electro crap and then Axwell starts making three chord electro crap it's easy to see the crap for the masses. Axwell was trying to be "real" but he likes money too. When his ego (and Angello and Ingrosso) says "you can be rich too man", it's hard to not "sellout".

Good house music is too complex for the masses. The masses are not meant for house music. They are meant for radio fluff on their way to work. Well, David Guetta made radio fluff electro crap and it worked. And Usher, Flo Rida, Pit Bull and Rihanna are now making house. Congratulations !

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[Era 7]

Good house music is too complex for the masses. The masses are not meant for house music. They are meant for radio fluff on their way to work. Well, David Guetta made radio fluff electro crap and it worked.

yeah. you gotta be sophisticated n stuff to listen to house. you know. it is hard being in the house elite but somebody has to set itself apart from the plebs.

[Jack Bastard]

yeah. you gotta be sophisticated n stuff to listen to house. you know. it is hard being in the house elite but somebody has to set itself apart from the plebs.

That's not true though, I'd like to think my fellow residents and I play pretty authentic house music and our night is very popular in the small city it's based in, especially with younger clubbers who would normally be the target demographic for dross like SHM.

Just the same as ever there isn't the same level of exposure for the better music, and if people don't know any better then it's not really their fault.

[loverocket]

In Miami we have the huge superclubs that fly in super DJ's to play crap for the masses and then we have the little indie clubs that think they are so cool, when really they don't have a clue. Unfortunately, only the gay clubs get it right here.

[smiTTTen]

I always thought this was interesting. Mr Oizo's Flat Beat. Take away the video and you have a clearly non-commercial track designed for people who liked to "proper" electronic music.



I had friends of my parents telling me how much they "loved" the record. They promise it wasn't just the video Senior Directors of large corporations suddenly loving a track which quickly become number one in the UK because of....

[Jack Bastard]

Exactly, you can be underground and accessible. It's not the same as churning out lowest common denominator edm.

[scamo]

This is an interesting statement and it is similar to saying a song is "crap music for the masses".

Good house music is too complex for the masses.

What makes good house music complex or rather too complex for the masses? What is good house music at all? And what is too simplistic that makes "crap music" something only for the masses? Is there really a "only 3-chords is crap" in music? Aren't a lot of very good rock songs (popular and not) based on three basic chords?

I want to understand the differences musically. Can anyone point the differences out with clear examples in a musical comparison and with factually based musical arguments? Or is it really down to personal tastes in the end, what crap is and what isn't?

scamo

[Jack Bastard]

It's nothing to do with complexity imo, some of the best house tracks are very stripped down. I think the feel of the drums is a lot of the house sound.

[Miec]

One thing that separates "true" house music from house-like pop music is song structure. While those tunes from Guetta feat. random R&B artist, Calvin Harris and so many others borrow Tempo (128 bpm) and Instrumentation (dominant 4/4 bass drum, clap on the 2 and 4, hi-hats on the 8ths, Avicii-esque synths) from House music but when it comes to song structure, they are a lot closer to Rock.

They nearly all follow a verse - chorus - verse - chorus - bridge - chorus - chorus scheme that essentially hasn't changed since the Beatles. "Real" House music on the other hand has a drastically different structure based on elements being added or removed at the beginning of every phrase (I think someone else can explain this better than I can) leading to tracks that are 6 to 15 minutes long.
And if you think about it, those Mainstream artists hardly have another chance since they must be suitable to be played at radio stations and thus are not allowed to exceed 3 to 4 minutes in length. And since the "mainstream" radio listener doesn't want to hear anything different to the accepted scheme, it's very rare that Radio Edits of longer house tracks reach the same popularity as those produced to the Rock scheme. Levels being the only exception I can think of at the moment.

Also, Vocals are very different in house music and mainstream sound-a-likes. While real house mostly (there are exceptions... talking about Jack and his groove) use vocals in a repetitive sense to add to the track (more like an instrument), mainstream tracks try to tell some kind of story (how irrelevant it may be). You could say, that house music are "tracks" in the original sense of the word, while Guetta, Calvin Harris & Co. produce "songs".

That is not a new phenomenon by the way, not at all. Look at early Hip-Hop that was largely based around sampling and scratching and how nearly all chart-topping hip-hop since the late 90s incorporated the scheme mentioned above.

Sure, you can produce exceptional music within that framework, but you are a lot more limited in options where you can stand out. In Rock music it was either about great lyrics or singers with great voices, but within what is called "crap for the masses" now, there isn't anything extraordinary. It's basically auto-tuned mediocre singers, singing about how much they drank and who they fucked last night and that simply isn't enough to impress musically. And since some househeads are really scared by the sheer popularity of that stuff they try to portray it as inferior to "the real stuff". And again that's nothing new. I'm sure you could hear some punk fans referring to Blink182 or Offspring as "crap for the masses" in the 90s.

In the end, I think it's an understandable reaction to defend the music you love by trying to create a distinction. But instead of trying to distinguish in the way i tried above it's done by portraying one form of music as qualitatively superior. And the recent events around DJs getting kicked off the decks show, that there is a misunderstanding with Club Owners and promoters who think that people who listen to house-like Pop want to listen to House music. So, it is necessary to find different names, but I'm not the one to judge if "crap for the masses" is the right way to express it.

[Sample Seven]

I am really, really, really sick of the notion that just because something is popular, it's bad.