hey, welcome to 12tone! on May 28th, fellow
music YouTuber Rick Beato did a livestream called "Why Today's Music Is So BORING. The Regression of Musical Innovation." *inhale, then sigh* alright. fine. let's go. (tick, tick, tick, tick, tock) this video is sponsored by Skillshare! right off the bat, I want to be really clear
about my intentions here, because despite how this probably looks, I'm not actually
trying to start a fight with Rick Beato. that wouldn't be a productive use of anyone's
time. this is YouTube, so no matter what I say some
of y'all are gonna read this as a declaration of war, but that's not what I'm going for. I don't have a problem with Rick's work in
general. this particular livestream, though, presents
a misguided, myopic, and under-informed view of modern music, a topic I care very deeply
about, and as of this recording it's been seen by over 750 thousand people, many of
whom won't have the necessary background to recognize just how empty it really is. a lot of folks are gonna walk away from it
with some pretty deep misconceptions about the state of modern music, and my interest
here is in reducing that damage. to be clear, though, I'm not interested in
attacking Rick Beato as a person or as a creator: I don't know him, and it would be wildly inappropriate
to speculate on his motivations. however, I do think someone needs to address
the arguments he's making, because they're not good, and that's what I intend to do. or, I'll do my best, because despite the provocative
title, the 30-minute stream contains very little in the way of actual arguments. he only ever mentions two modern songs by
name: Leave Before You Love Me, by Marshmello and the Jonas Brothers, and Leave The Door
Open, by Bruno Mars. he also references a Justin Bieber song from
a previous video, but I'm not sure which one. and he doesn't really talk much about them,
either, besides observing that the melody from the Jonas Brothers song sounds a lot
like Lost In Love by Air Supply which, yeah, he's not wrong. beyond that, though, he doesn't really try
to prove these songs are bad: he mostly takes that for granted. instead, he seems much more interested in
proving that old songs are good, playing a bunch of his favorites on guitar to demonstrate
that they use the good chords. and this is a good segue into my first point,
which is that Rick is ignoring a phenomenon called the sieve of time. basically, in any historical moment, a lot
of things are happening. this is true in every field, but for our purposes,
what matters is that there's always lots of music being made. as time passes, though, we as a society forget
about most of it. the farther we get from that moment, the more
of its music we leave behind, until we're left with just the things that we've collectively
decided are the most important and most worth remembering. like, let's go back 30 years to 1991. this
was a huge year in the world of rock music. it saw the release of the Chili Peppers' Blood
Sugar Sex Magik, REM's Out Of Time, U2's Achtung Baby, Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger, Metallica's
Black Album, Pearl Jam's Ten, Smashing Pumpkins' Gish, Green Day's Kerplunk, and, of course,
Nevermind, the Nirvana record. all of those are considered classics today, and with so
many heavy hitters in the same year, the race for the number one single must've been fierce,
right? so who won? Smells Like Teen Spirit? Give It Away? Alive? no, the number one single in 1991 was Everything
I Do I Do It for You, by Bryan Adams, off the soundtrack for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. it sounds like this: (bang) and if you're
not, personally, Bryan Adams, there's a good chance this is the first time you've ever
heard it. 30 years ago, though, it topped the Billboard
Hot 100 for 7 straight weeks. all the evidence indicates that this song
was everywhere, but it just didn't have any real staying power. now, to be clear, I'm not saying those rock
albums weren't popular. they were. most of them sold well. Nevermind in particular sold really well. my point is that they weren't alone. it would've been very difficult to predict
from sales figures and radio play which ones would still be relevant three decades later. that sort of insight is only available in
retrospect, and when we're looking at today's music, we simply haven't had time to go through
that process yet. we don't know which songs are gonna have staying
power until we've given them a chance to stay. as such, comparing the songs that are popular
now to the songs you still remember from decades ago is comparing apples to oranges. of course, the process by which we determine
what's worth remembering is a lot more complicated than just picking the best songs: there's
a reason, for instance, that all 9 of the bands I mentioned from 1991 are fronted by
white men. but one factor in that calculation is innovation. we tend to remember when things change. that's part of why 1991 is such an important
year: it was the mainstream arrival of grunge, a tectonic shift in the rock music landscape. this means the things we remember are often
not all that representative of mainstream popular music at the time. if they were, they wouldn't be worth remembering. seriously, Wikipedia has Billboard's year-end
top singles lists going back to 1946. go read some of those and see how many things
you recognize. but as for Rick's actual argument, it seems
to be mostly that modern music uses fewer and simpler chords, which results in simpler
melodies. his central complaint is that songs these
days seem to rely exclusively on just four chords from the same key, which we never used
to do. (Ain't No Sunshine plays) ok, but that's not
fair. (Any Way You Want It plays) yeah but that's
Journey, obviously Journey doesn't count. (Heart-Shaped Box plays) ah, no, that one's
only three chords, that's different. (Eleanor Rigby plays) and that's two, but
ok, fine. at least we can all agree that a song with
only one chord would be really boring, right? (Chain Of Fools plays) alright, seriously,
whoever keeps playing these while I'm trying to talk needs to calm down. you are not helping. ok, so.. I have two major problems with this argument. the first is that it's a bait-and-switch:
he's conflating musical complexity with harmonic and melodic complexity. that is, he's saying how innovative a song
is can be measured by looking at its notes and chords. this is a fairly common mistake
among people who went to music school, and I think the way we teach music theory encourages
it, but it's still wrong. there's all sorts of ways to do interesting
stuff with music. you can experiment with rhythms, orchestration,
layering, song form… modern popular music especially likes experimenting with production
and sound design, because we have all sorts of tools for that now that literally didn't
exist when most of the songs Rick mentions were made. if you want to know more about that, I'd recommend
the blog Top 40 Theory, run by music theorist Dr. Asaf Peres, where he outlines a lot of
the interesting theory going on in modern pop music. like, consider this: (Montero plays) or this:
(Pay Your Way In Pain plays) or this: (NDA plays) those were all released in 2021 by
Grammy-winning artists, they all got radio play, and I'd argue that all of them are doing
something interesting. and that's not even getting into all the fascinating
things musicians like dodie and Andrew Huang are doing with the medium of YouTube. now, am I cherry-picking examples? yeah, absolutely, but so was Rick. the point
is, there's still plenty of cool stuff out there, if you actually bother to look for
it. and the thing that's frustrating about this
is that Western music has been experimenting primarily with harmony for literally centuries. the entire Romantic period was basically just
one long, increasingly complicated chord progression, and once they were done, jazz picked up the
football and ran even further with it. harmonically speaking, most of the old songs
Rick mentioned are dead simple compared to what artists like John Coltrane and Thelonious
Monk were doing decades earlier. like, sure, it's cool that Black Hole Sun
uses sus chords, but have you seen Giant Steps? that thing's in three keys at the same time. but innovation isn't just about pushing the
same boundary over and over. it's also about finding new boundaries, new
frontiers that haven't already been mined for all they're worth. are there still clever things left to do with
chords? of course, and modern music is doing some of them: as I've already argued in multiple
videos, the evolving language of chord loops is a perfect example of harmonic innovation
in a modern popular context. but even if a song isn't doing anything complicated
with its chords, that doesn't mean it isn't doing anything complicated at all. the deeper issue, though, is the implication
that more complicated music is better in the first place. now, this isn't entirely wrong: if I were
to, say, play quarter note Cs on a piano for four minutes, that wouldn't make a very good
song… ok, I'll stop. but it goes the other way, too: if complexity
always made things better, we'd all be listening to Ferneyhough, and if you didn't get that
reference, here's a taste. (bang) that's what pure musical innovation
sounds like, and I'm not saying it's bad, but it's pretty impenetrable. making music that other people can relate
to is a balancing act between complexity and familiarity. in order for your audience to
care that you broke their expectations, you've gotta give them something to expect. different genres, cultures, movements, and
scenes have approached this balance differently. some of them are more complex overall, while
others invest their complexity in just a few areas. this is one of the reasons melodies have gotten
simpler: to stay out of the production's way. and here's the thing: I'm pretty sure Rick
knows all this. I wanted more context for the argument he
was making, and since the stream was a follow-up to his previous video, where he reacted to
the top ten songs on iTunes, I went and watched that. given the level of negativity in his stream,
I assumed he was gonna hate all these songs, but… he didn't. of the 10 tracks he listened
to, he was overwhelmingly positive about 8 of them, and still had plenty of nice things
to say about the other 2. throughout the video, he praised the songs'
productions, their rhythms, their performances, and on more than one occasion, their melodies. in fact, I'd like to play you a clip from
that video, and when I do, I want you to remember that literally his only argument for why modern
music is boring is that it uses simple chord progressions. with that in mind, here's what
he had to say about Cover Me In Sunshine, by P!nk and Willow Sage Hart: (RICK: I hate
to say it, I just love those kind of chord progressions. I know that they've been played a million
times, right? but I'm just a sucker every time I hear those. they're just so amazing. [plays chords] it's just so satisfying, even
though it's in a billion other songs, but that's a good song.) and to be clear, I'm not cherry picking here. I didn't dig through dozens of Rick's videos
to find this quote. it's in literally the last thing he published
before the livestream. it had to have been fresh on his mind. now, I said I wasn't gonna question his motives,
and I'm not. I don't think he's trying to trick you, or
lie about his beliefs, but I do think it's important to recognize that, once you strip
away the context of an improvised rant about how modern music sucks and simple progressions
are boring, he doesn't actually seem to mind them. he has a theoretical preference for complexity,
but apparently not an aesthetic one. and that's the danger of applying music theory carelessly:
it's easy to convince yourself that things you like are bad, not because there's anything
wrong with them, but because they don't play by the rules we made up. but ok, let's say modern music is getting
less innovative, and while we're at it, let's say that's a bad thing. how did it happen? I'll let Rick explain: (RICK: nobody ever
wants to take a chance. writers don't want to take a chance. and this started happening in the early 2000s
when A&R people that sign bands, when money started to go down in the music industry,
they started hiring producers to go in and write with artists, 'cause they didn't feel
like the artists were good enough writers.) and that's all true. or, rather, this isn't something I've researched
all that deeply, but it sounds reasonable, and it's an area Rick has a lot of personal
experience with, so I'm more than willing to take his word for it. but also, while Rick is probably right that
major labels don't like taking risks anymore, major labels just don't matter as much as
they used to. the last few decades have seen incredible
advances in the quality and affordability of music technology, for both production and
distribution. it's easier than it's ever been to make a
studio-quality album by yourself in your bedroom and release it to the entire world, for free,
on platforms like YouTube, Spotify, and Bandcamp. that's how Lil Nas X made Old Town Road: he's
signed with Columbia now, but originally he just published the song himself on Tiktok,
and it became the number one single of 2019. new, innovative artists don't need a major
label contract to get their work out there anymore, so many of them are just bypassing
that system entirely. acts like St. Vincent, clipping., 100 Gecs,
mxmtoon, and Amanda Palmer either self-publish or work with smaller, independent labels that
give them more freedom and creative control, and they've managed to leverage that distribution
technology to build massive fanbases anyway. heck, Bad Bunny has more monthly listeners
on Spotify right now than Taylor Swift does, and his record label doesn't even have a wikipedia
page. and sure, the majors still dominate the tops of the charts, for the most part,
and yes, independent labels have been a thing for a long time, but with the rise of the
internet, the music market has grown increasingly segmented. that's part of why the money dried up for
major labels in the first place. we live in a golden age of music accessibility,
but if all you're doing is looking at top 10 lists, you're missing out on all sorts
of interesting stuff going on just beneath the surface. but even if we do restrict ourselves to just
the majors, there's still innovation. like, consider the 2016 album Lemonade. it's a sprawling concept album with songs
from all sorts of genres, recorded in 11 different studios, with dozens of collaborators. it had a budget of well over a million dollars,
very little promotion prior to its release, and they even made an hour-long film to go
along with it. by any reasonable estimation, it was a huge
risk, but Columbia was still willing to take it, because, well, it's Beyonce. they knew they could count on her to sell
records, so they let her do whatever she wanted, and the end result was probably one of the
greatest albums of all time. seriously, if you haven't listened to Lemonade,
do yourself a favor and check it out. and this has pretty much always been a thing:
if you go back to early Beatles records like Please Please Me, they're not that different
from the rock and roll that was already popular in the early 60s. by the time they were working
on the White Album, though, they knew they could make literally anything and people would
buy it, so they did, and they did. and it doesn't just work for established artists,
either: people like Billie Eilish and Lil Nas X, who have a huge breakout performance
with a clear artistic voice, put themselves in a strong position to continue doing their
thing. so yes, major labels do pressure artists to
conform to currently popular norms. they always have, and yeah, that sucks. but that doesn't mean exciting new artists
can't break through and make their voices heard. so why do I care? why make this video when I know it's just
gonna get me in trouble and start a fight I really, really don't want? well, over the years, music theory YouTubers,
myself included, have made lots of videos criticizing traditional music academia. and
that's a good thing: these are conversations we need to be having, and the public deserves
to be a part of them. but if we're gonna throw stones, we need to
get our own house in order. if we want scholarly respect, we need to hold
ourselves to standards of scholarly rigor. if we present ourselves as experts, we have
to do the necessary work to actually be experts, and when we fail to do that, we have to hold
each other accountable. that's what scholars do. so I'm not saying Rick Beato is a bad or lazy
person, but I am saying this was a bad and lazy video that went viral by reinforcing
some of his audience's worst biases. you may not like the Jonas Brothers, but to imply
that's all modern music has to offer betrays a deep lack of familiarity with the actual
landscape of modern music. I mentioned that modern music loves experimenting
with production, but production is… hard. it can be really hard to figure out where
to get started, but fortunately, that's the sort of thing that Skillshare is great at. they've got all sorts of awesome classes about
music production and related skills like mixing and mastering. one of my favorites is called Inside The Studio,
where Grammy-winning producer Focus… takes you through his process of developing tracks
and collaborating with artists to make great music. it's like a guided tour of how a producer
thinks about their work, and it lays out all the things you need to consider in order to
do that work yourself. and that's just one of thousands of classes
on Skillshare, covering things like songwriting, instrument skills, and non-musical stuff like
cooking. and right now, there's no risk to trying it: the first 1000 12tone viewers to
click the link in the description will get a free month of Skillshare Premium, so you
can check out all those classes for free. and hey, thanks for watching, thanks to our
Patreon patrons for making these videos possible, and extra special thanks to this video's Featured
Patrons, Susan Jones and Jill Sundgaard. if you want to help out, and help us pick
the next song we analyze too, there's a link to our Patreon on screen now. oh, and don't forget to like, share, comment,
subscribe, and above all, keep on rockin'.
I always think when electric guitars, keyboards and synths started becoming the norm , there was probably some boomer like this going around crying about the "real instruments". Was it though?
I actually just watched that beato video about 8 hours ago. I often say “aw, c’mon Rick”, and other similar things. But in this case, I’d have to take his side with this argument, generally speaking. Hit music in beato’s time was certainly more dexterous. If that music is fine french cuisine, cardi b is certainly like, a hot dog. But if I’m at a baseball game, maybe I don’t want confit de canard. I like sound design, I like innovative sounds. But as far as hit music goes, there really is a lack of movement right now. Rick’s selling his courses that teach that. He’s certainly biased, though I tend to agree with him on this topic.
came here to say fuck rick beato dude is a total weiner
12Tone’s video was well-thought out and I hope beato will respond somehow with a good argument but I doubt he will.
IT'S QUANTIZED!!!
Gold video, great content.
Great video man