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Grace Fox83 said:Why would average American taste be considered good?🤷
Yeah, we've all heard about Motown! Diana Ross and The Supremes, Michael Jackson, the Jackson 5, Lionel Richie...
I don't really have a strong opinion on it; quality music is just quality music, whether it comes from Motown or whoever else.😉
Happy now?😁
Well, the US is basically the birthplace of rock & roll, R&B, country, evergreen hits, and so on. I guess it's because they didn't have a heavy classical tradition, so their listeners—or at least they used to—had better taste, which maybe leads to having the best "average" taste.
Music today feels like trash, honestly. People just watch it instead of actually listening to it. You see these adult film stars popping up on music channels pretending to be singers, like Britney Spears or Beyoncé. It’s all about showing off skin; the songs and the vocals are just terrible.
Back in the sixties, the competition and the sheer quality of the music was insane. You had The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Phil Spector, Motown, and all those legendary Black artists led by Aretha Franklin, Burt Bacharach (though who even remembers him these days?), Elvis Presley, Dusty Springfield, and more. What we have now is just a big zero.
It’s actually kind of depressing that nobody is chiming in here. Is the taste in this country really that primitive? It feels like there isn't even a hint of refined sensibility—not even a basic, average American sense of musical appreciation.
Anyway, here are some tracks from the Motown vault. Most of these hit number one or two on the charts, except for the first one I'm listing;
What Becomes of the Brokenhearted
Baby Love
Dancing in the Streets
Where Did Our Love Go
Mr. Postman
My Guy
My Girl
Just My Imagination
Reach Out I'll Be There
I Can't Help Myself
Touch Me in the Morning
Upside Down
Endless Love
I'll Be There
Never Can Say Goodbye
Do any of these songs actually mean anything to you guys? Maybe you know a cover version or two? How would you rate the musicianship on the original recordings?
Just say something, I guess. Even if you don't know a whole lot about it.
Since nobody seems to be chiming in, I guess I’ll kick things off since I started this thread. Motown was this record label based out of Detroit, and from about '60 to '73, they had this incredibly specific, unmistakable sound. They pretty much exclusively signed Black artists back then, and honestly, that label paved the way for almost every major Black superstar we see today, like Beyoncé or Alicia Keys.
Motown churned out hundreds of hits—just top-tier stuff—with an roster that included The Supremes (who I think were the greatest female group ever, having twelve number one hits), The Temptations, The Miracles, The Four Tops, Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, The Jackson 5, The Commodores, Lionel Richie, and so on.
Apparently, when The Beatles were at their peak, John Lennon got so fed up with his producer, Martin, that he actually demanded to know why their songs didn't sound half as good as those Motown tracks. And Bob Dylan once went as far as to say Smokey Robinson of The Miracles was basically the greatest living American poet.
A lot of songs from the Motown catalog get covered, too—like Wild's version of You Keep Me Hangin' On, or Bruce Springsteen doing War, or Phil Collins covering You Can't Hurry Love, and so on. Most of them feel like pretty mediocre imitations to me.
I mean, I suspect Motown represents the absolute peak of pop-rock, and compared to those legendary artists and those phenomenal musicians coming out of Detroit, most modern music just feels like total garbage.
I wonder if anyone in America actually digs the Motown sound, or if people even realize what that whole vibe is actually about.