Writes piano-bar musician Jesse Rifkin, in "I perform at a piano bar. The most requested song might surprise you. So long 'Piano Man.' Chappell Roan’s ode to a gay bar now draws the most requests" (WaPo).
One thing Rifkin seems blind to is TikTok. At least for "Take Me Home Country Roads," one reason the old song is known today is through extreme repetition on TikTok.
Then there's this. There are 6 ranked examples here. And this one is an animation with the audio track in the original and stunningly refreshing John Denver version. Here's a 15-year-old boy. And a cowboy. Here are Colt fans in Germany.@beats.209 | Part 1 | #takemehomecountryroads #johndenver #healingvibes #singinthecar #musiclover #musicheals #goodmusic #popcountry #viralvideo #explore #cover #coversong #fyp #foryou #fypシ ♬ original sound - |Songs|
And here's something else I found on TikTok. It was reposted there, without naming the performers, so I'm giving you the YouTube that's their own account:
I'm not saying Rifkin is wrong. "Take Me Home, Country Roads" is probably chosen for all that repetition because it feels universal and joyful. I just think he's missing a big part of why some great old songs are known by younger people. New songs also become familiar through this form of repetition. It's not everyone singing at the same time, but everyone can sing that new song sequentially.
ADDED: If you want to understand the context of that "Merlin" singing in the TikTok with the ranked examples, you can watch this spoiler from the movie "Kingsman: The Golden Circle." It's quite something:
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82 కామెంట్లు:
Great voices!
Sweet Caroline should be thrown down the deepest mine shaft on Earth and the entrance dynamited into oblivion.
He is not wrong about the Chappell Roan song, working with young people I have noticed how it works like this where everyone joins in.
Well, everyone without a stick up their ass.
There is no real rebellion in music anymore its the zombie drone
“Sweet Caroline should be thrown down the deepest mine shaft on Earth and the entrance dynamited into oblivion.”
Not until we dig deeper to make room for “Country Roads”.
Every song those three kids do is beautiful.
John Denver was more than talent. He was a special gift.
Today we are featuring Tempe, AZ based family band Lifein3D for the first time on Cover Nation! Such a beautiful rendition with incredible harmonies of John Denver's classic song "Country Roads"!! I
John Denver = great.
Bon Jovi = embarrassing.
"Well, everyone without a stick up their ass."
That's an ironic way to put it.
Isn't one major difference the decline of broadcast radio and what might be called forced exposure? Back in the day, there would be several genre radio stations in each market. Even if underground AOR was your thing, for example, FM wasn't always always available in the car. So you listened to pop hits on the AM car radio. Crossovers thus formed these near universal, anthemic hits everyone knew at the time and stuck with them for life.
While representing progress in many respects, hasn't increased personal selection of music due to technology fractured this process of convergence?
Are we producing anthemic songs? We might be it's just no one knows them since we don't really have Top 40 radio anymore. Songs become anthemic because everyone knows them due to repetition*, something you just don't get on music services like Spotify.
*Heavy repetition, like in the Top 40 days when they'd play the hits at least once every hour.
had to look up chapel roan.
ugh - vapid. so so so vapid.
With the Lifein3D YouTube video, where are the microphones placed to get audio line that? Hmmm. Impossible.
It’s all about defining group boundaries and defining the people outside of your group as inferior, whether it’s about music or politics, which is why it’s important to some people to confuse musical taste with worth as a person.
In the late '80's, I worked the 50th alumni class reunion at my private university. People didn't want to listen to recordings, they wanted to stand by the piano and sing from a college songbook. Even then, I remember thinking "What will we do in 50 years? we don't share anything like this as classmates."
If I knew any Taylor Swift or Kendrick Lamar songs there would probably be plenty of under age 30 people who could sing along with me.
Back in the day it was the radio was the primary way of getting music. By the late 80’s formats were so tightly programmed that you ignore new music. Now one self programs.
The only way a song breaks through now is through movies or as pump up music at sporting events.
I can name oneTaylor Swift song and was blissfully unaware of Chappell Roan until a few minutes ago. It’s obvious they have talent but why choose to listen to them when you have Ella or Linda Ronstadt?
Since I anm ignorant is the song writing any better? Is there anything written in the last 40 years that is good enough to be included in The Great American Songbook?
It's a tradition for the fans to all sing "Country Roads" after the annual NFL game in Frankfurt, Germany. Not quite "Sweet Caroline" at Fenway, but close.
If not, why would that be bad?
Three overplayed good songs I can remember quickly:
Light My Fire
In a Gadda da Vida/Stairway to Heaven\
Fun, Fun, Fun
Sweet caroline?! So full of sugar - diabetics should avoid at all costs. I'm sure chicks like it.
When will all the edgy performers (or their fans) learn that the edge has become dull and jagged?
Deepest Neil Diamond Lyric:
"I am, " I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair
Thats what happens when your chair is listening to the beatles and not you.
"And a rock feels no pain
And an island never cries"
Truth.
Taylor Swift has a very mediocre voice. Her songs are mildly catchy at best. I really don't understand the hype at all.
but - whatever.
Kai,
That's four songs
Jason and the Nashville Scorchers did it. In the Star Community Bar or Exit Inn, I don’t know how the roofs stayed on.
Perhaps--at long last--the Age of the Dreaded Rock Anthem is drawing to a close.
Studies and surveys find Americans in the 2010s and 2020s are increasingly unlikely to have cross-ideology friendships, to live near neighbors who disagree politically, or to date across party lines."
That is because in the past both parties at least pretended to be American.
But the Democrat party has openly embraced trans-nationalism as their ideology and they are trying to destroy the people who oppose them.
The people who oppose them are Americans who built this country and want to give that country to their kids.
NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...
Are we producing anthemic songs? We might be it's just no one knows them since we don't really have Top 40 radio anymore. Songs become anthemic because everyone knows them due to repetition*, something you just don't get on music services like Spotify.
*Heavy repetition, like in the Top 40 days when they'd play the hits at least once every hour.
This.
There is 10-100 times as much good music coming out now as there was in the top 40 days.
You can really produce your own music now if you spend a bit of time at it.
There is little oomph is the music
"Take Me Home, Country Roads" (not "Road") is dear to and in the soul of anyone who heard it while being off to war for a year. And, yeah, did we ever sing along! Didn't even have to be from West Virginia, ya know?...
It is said that ‘monoculture’ is dead, and we have the algorithm to thank for it. The algorithm is better than Orwell’s big brother, in that we don’t have to learn to love it, the algorithm learns from us, whatever that is, and feeds it back to us.
I seem to remember "I Love This Bar" being pretty universally popular, until a certain group of people got a stick up their asses about Toby Keith.
At a child's 7 year old birthday party held 2 doors away from me in Los Angeles last month, the children sang at least 20 choruses of The Pink Pony Club. Homosexuality isn't being normalized. It's being valorized.
The algorithm is the god we’ve always wanted.
Is a stick better than the usual probing device?
Asking for Mark…
“Then I saw her face
Now I’m a believer”
Neil wasn’t so bad.
Its catchy
At least he didn’t rhyme diplomat with Siamese cat…
Is it that Paul who never had time for a wife and Davey who is in the Navy for life were not gay enough?
i was thinking about this (sort of this,) this morning.
it USED TO BE, that kids dreamed of becoming rock and roll stars.
[if I only had a good guitar and a big amp..
.. I'll put an ad in the paper..
Get a few other guys who want to play as much as I do..]
nowadays, kids dream of becoming enfluencers on you tube or tiktok.
No One listens to the radio. People listen to spotify or pandora (or their own mp3's).
The ONLY music that "people" know is OLD music..
"new music" either doesn't exist, or is Completely segmented.
Who's going to be at the Super Bowl halftime this year?
not anyone I've ever heard of, not anyone i EVER WILL hear of.
Anyway, my point is that you tube video killed the rock and roll star.
The Massive Star that is
ps: i STILL buy new music.
The last i bought was Miranda Lambert's Postcards from Texas
The three before that were Kpop that i ordered from Seoul.
not likely that many of you could sing along with any of those.
I remember when my oldest came home from his first semester at college, having taken an American popular music course as a general education requirement, and made us all listen to some of what he had heard for pretty much the first time there. Midnight Train to Georgia was one of those songs - it had not been in my parents' musical lexicon, so I'd never exposed my kids to it. Now it, and several others that he played for us that Christmas, make regular appearances in our kitchen when we're all together.
On the subject of young children wanting to play Pink Pony Club over and over, we have a friend who, like my husband, simply doesn't listen to the lyrics of songs. Once, at a neighborhood party at our clubhouse, her daughter, then in elementary school, asked her if she could request Anaconda of the DJ - she told her to go ahead. (The girl asked permission because she knew the song was inappropriate in some fashion, but she didn't really understand how.) The DJ shrugged and played it, and a bunch of the rest of us were like, "What the hell? This is a family party!" Only then did our friend actually listen to the words. She'd just been bopping along to the beat.
The Toots and the Maytals version is even better than the original.
"West Jamaica....my ole mama..." CC, JSM
"Not even the chair."
I remember as kids, we thought Neil Diamond was talking about the "the chair" as the electric chair -- the epitome of deterrence -- not dissuading him.
What chair then? With all that drama, there was no way we could see an adult that worked-up over a chair in his apartment, because... it was not listening to him?
Is a song about a gay bar really the most requested song --outside of NYC and a few other LGBTQ Meccas? But I guess that's Rifkin's point. In a society so individualistic, fragmented, and polarized people aren't going to sing the same songs.
In the Great American Songbook days, urbanites could enjoy songs about the Wabash or the Suwannee as well as Cole Porter and Jerome Kern tunes. In the rock era, a common youth culture tied people together. Now there are a few crossover attempts like "Old Town Road" a few years back, but nothing really catches fire. The bigger problem may be that people are too involved with their screens and private lives to "Dance like nobody's watching; love like you've never been hurt, and sing like nobody's listening."
--- Kai, That's four songs
In a Gadda Da Vida and Stairway to Heaven are the same song. In a Gadda Da Vida being proto-Stairway to Heaven.
Somewhat anthemic, shoulda been a big hit…
“Put my money in your meter, baby, so it won't run down
But you caught me in the squeeze play on the cheesy side of town
Throw me a dime, throw me a line
'Cause there's a fat man in the bathtub with the blues
I hear you moan, I hear you moan, I hear you moan”
My Juanita, my sweet taquito!
"we have a friend who, like my husband, simply doesn't listen to the lyrics of songs."
That would be me.
Just as Led Zeppelin is the same name as Iron Butterfly.
It's not so bad that many commenters seem to have a stick up their ass, it's that they seem to enjoy pulling it out and waving it around in front of everybody.
Nuttin’ from nuttin’, but Billy Joel is a HACK.
I think lyrics ruin the music.
Shush your mouth
Here's maybe a little-known fact... at least it was little-known to me until last October.
Every one of the 7.2 million visitors to the traditional Munich Oktoberfest... and I mean EVERYONE, has a deep and abiding love for Sweet Caroline, and can belt out the verses on command in each of the twenty or so gigantic beer tents that dot the Thereseinwiese.
Live bands in the center of the tents (which hold up to 10,000 beer drinkers) play music throughout the day, and regularly break into the "standards", of which Sweet Caroline is one. You haven't seen anything until you've seen 10,000 Germans -- young and old alike -- deliriously and happily swaying in unison and singing out "SWEET CAROLINE, BUMP BUMP BAH, GOOD TIMES NEVER FELT SO GOOD... SO GOOD SO GOOD SO GOOD!!"
I've been there, I've witnessed it... and yes, I sang along.
You can look it up.
Sort of a mondegreen but I always think of the lyrics to Pink Pony Club as being sung by a stripper.
Note to self: Never attend the Munich Oktoberfest.
Does it sound better in german
A queer pop icon with a hit song about a gay bar? I guess we now know who'll be the halftime entertainment for the 2027 Super Bowl.
A queer pop icon with a hit song about a gay bar? I guess we now know who'll be the halftime entertainment for the 2027 Super Bowl.
Only if they've gotten over being mad at her for refusing to endorse Kamala Harris. She angered many on the Left by telling fans to not look to her for political advice, but to read the news and make up their own minds.
"I'm gonna keep on dancing at the
Pink Pony Club...."
How do you not sing along? It's fun. Also kind of an earworm and now that the song is in my head, it will be there all day. Thanks, Althouse.
I was watching an episode of NCIS's 23rd season last night and the climatic moment and the emotional moment was everyone singing "Take Me Home Country Roads."
Dagwood, doesn't Trump famously dance to a gay anthem about cruising for guys up at the Y?
"we have a friend who, like my husband, simply doesn't listen to the lyrics of songs."
That would be me.
Hell, I have played in bands where we wrote the songs and I sang backup and I never learned the words when I wasn't singing.
Wheeler Walker Jr has the best song ever about a gay bar. I dare the NFL to invite him for halftime:
https://youtu.be/9aVQtPQ9NLo?si=RPwUmt6cDZnZfgrr
CC, JSM
No love for 'Mony Mony'? GET SMART .... READ BOOKS!!!
Trump doesn’t give shot if you’re gay, just don’t be an asshole.
These pop songs I have shored against my ruins
As requested;
Hands
Touchin' hands
Reachin' out
Touching me, touchin' you
Sweet Caroline
Good times never seemed so good
I've been inclined
To believe they never would
"In a Gadda Da Vida and Stairway to Heaven are the same song. In a Gadda Da Vida being proto-Stairway to Heaven."
Well a, well a, well a, heavenly angel
I want you for my girl
When I kissed your sweet, sweet lips
I knew that you were out of this world
I'll build a stairway to heaven
I'll climb to the highest star
I'll build a stairway to heaven
Cause heaven is where you are
Yeah, but Stairway doesn't have the elephant solo like the long version of In a Gadda does.
You guys are whacked
The Beat Farmers thought “Stairway to Heaven” ripped off the them from Gilligan’s Island
the theme
I don't have the majority taste in music. I've always hated Neil Diamond, I think he's a hack. Simple simon lyrics, and mediocre everything else. He's the Irving Berlin (Not wait Irving Cohen) of rock and roll.
That 10000 Germans would love him just proves my point.
"Dagwood, doesn't Trump famously dance to a gay anthem about cruising for guys up at the Y?"
Why do so many on the left have such a fixation on this? YMCA was played at nearly every wedding reception I attended in the 70s/80s. Nobody thought it was a gay anthem.
You should probably deal with your homosexual issues sooner rather than later.
Martin short sings an Irving Berlin song that was never published = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhxe9O2Qd8M
well they loved david hasselhof
Rick Beato has a few videos that are related. (If you aren't familiar with him, he is a really sharp musician, producer, and teacher. He interviews major stars as musicians, not as celebrities, and he also has a lot of videos on topics ranging from music theory to the business of music.)
Not in any particular order:
Why Are Bands Mysteriously Disappearing?
The Death of Music Genres
The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse
Today’s Lyrics Are Pathetically Bad
So "Wet Ass Pussy" hasn't drawn us all together?
My musical tastes are eclectic and different from most. But I find the championing of one's musical tastes over another as about the stupidest thing I can imagine. It takes a special kind of dipshit to insist or even suggest "your" music is better than another's.
I never cared for Neil Diamond that much, although I have a fondness to his Hot August Night album, recorded live at the Greek. A truly excellent recording, in a technical sense.
I did always wonder how a 40+-year old Neil Diamond song ended up being sung at college football games.
OTOH, there's a video of Diamond (now not performing due to illness) attending a musical about his music and having a microphone and singing the first verse or so of Sweet Caroline. *sniff*
I am long past the dating age, but that doesn't mean I agree with everything the Coffee Meets Bagel crowd says. Why does anyone ever get in a long line at Starbucks to purchase exotic espresso coffee drinks when a cup of black coffee from a K-Cup of Folgers has all of the caffeine you ever need? As for bagels, Starbucks doesn't sell them because real bagels are not simply baked. They are first boiled and shaped to make them chewy.
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