Music getting flat...

[ImpactBreaker]

It's funny, a few years ago, I'd listen to songs I liked for months and I'd love them for months/years. I've been noticing that as years pass by, while I still love music, I can only keep on listening to a particular new song I love for over a few weeks until it quickly becomes flat, uninteresting. Sometimes it happens in just a little more than a week, like coldplay's new CD Mylo Xyloto, which I absolutely loved at the first listens (I love coldplay, and I thought this is one of the best albums they've released), but it quickly became flat in just 2 to 3 weeks (and I didn't even overplay it). I wish the good songs wouldn't become so flat so fast.

Anyone face anything simillar?

[susiowong]

Yes. I wonder if it has to do with being exposed to much more music now than I did back in the day. I would become very attached to songs and constantly listen to them without tiring. Nowadays I might become attached for a while before tiring of it.

Makes me sad.

[LONJJONG]

Of course. When I listened to Super Junior's Sorry Sorry and SNSD's Gee, I was like "OMG!! This is the most catchy song ever!!!!"
Now, I don't even have the song in my phone.
But I like their new songs!

[isthisLOL?]

It happens when you are oversaturated with music, everybody experiences it after a few years. It has nothing to do with music changing or being exposed to more music nowadays, it's simply knowing more music and having more experience with that music, so you're not as easy to impress anymore.

[ImpactBreaker]

Originally Posted by isthisLOL?

It happens when you are oversaturated with music, everybody experiences it after a few years. It has nothing to do with music changing or being exposed to more music nowadays, it's simply knowing more music and having more experience with that music, so you're not as easy to impress anymore.

Yeah, that's sort of the impression I'm getting. Music is all about emotion, and I believe after getting oversaturated (as you meant) over time, you sort of begin to rationalize more than feel it. Once the surprise initial thrill of a new song sounding pretty cool is over, there doesn't linger much emotional attraction to it anymore. I'm also not sure if it's just my mood since in other parts of my life things are feeling sort of flat as well, so I guess it might be interfering as a whole, but I brought the issue about music specifically because I've noticed it happened more gradually and progressively and less fluctuating than the other aspects (I've been watching and enjoying a some TV series and a playing a few games recently though, so it's not just like I'm uninterested in hobbies as a whole, though). I just wonder if going a few months without listening to any music would actually have any positive effect in that, but then I doubt I'd be able to do that LOL

[elaniel]

This is the reason I got into Jpop many years ago. I found English music very bland, generic, or didn't interest me for an extended period of time.

I still am a huge fan of artists like Sarah McLachlan and Sheryl Crow, as they do something different than many others. Plus their voices are certainly unique and beautiful.

JPop I found the compositions of the songs to be very unique and a lot of effort is put into them being as important as the lyrics. It takes music for me to that next level.

[ll moments ll]

i got that way with J-pop and Asian music in general lately. i tend to get over songs that have been released somewhat recently. i switched over to English music and i *love* finding new stuff to listen to.

i think i just needed a break from everything J-pop since it sort of ruled my life for a while. i still follow it, of course, but it's refreshing to seek new artists and sounds that are different from your norm. i'll probably get back into my J-pop groove when i'm tired of English music, haha.

[yves918]

That happens quite a lot with me. For example, I only really started listening to Ayumi a little over a month ago and saw on my Last.fm that I racked up over 1000 plays in less than three weeks. But in the past couple of weeks, I haven't been playing nearly as many Ayumi songs. I know, though, that if I don't listen to any more Ayumi for about a month, then it'll be as if I was discovering her music again when I start to listen to it again. That has happened to me with many other artists.

[letter]

I think it's best to build one's way up the music ladder if possible--it makes the experience more interesting. When you start at the bottom with little knowledge and then enter new fields with an open mind. Every time you are surprised and every time you are impressed. However, once you have reached that one place that blows your mind, you'll find that everything after it sounds bland and simple. I'm that way with Beethoven. But I have a "divided" mindset, a separate room for classical music, and I've learnt to approach pop with a different attitude. I also look for something else in it, something different from what I get from classical music. So I get annoyed when an artist I like tries out something new, something that for me is above their ability and they're better off doing what they're really good at. I'd rather have a pop singer work on a good pop song--if they get it right, I'm going to be impressed. Classical music done by pop stars is never going to be good enough for those who are familiar with the genius of Beethoven or Mozart. A well-produced song in the world of pop, that's a different matter.

I like the classical arrangement of kanariya, but we're never going to see Ayu playing the piano whilst singing it.

[Aditmi Krisnasaki ~II~]

yeah, it happens to me sometimes. But now that I discover ADELE and Madonna's musics, honestly, I never get tired of tired of their songs! Really.

They've been on the top of my playlist for like 4-6 months. Their music is just so diverse one from another (pretty much like Ayu's only that in English so I can understand it) and it's like opening my eyes 'bout how many interesting music genres I haven't been interested to find out / hear to.

So yeah, I guess music is never flat, ever. It's just about "how" we look at it.

[Andrenekoi]

Originally Posted by ImpactBreaker

Yeah, that's sort of the impression I'm getting. Music is all about emotion, and I believe after getting oversaturated (as you meant) over time, you sort of begin to rationalize more than feel it. Once the surprise initial thrill of a new song sounding pretty cool is over, there doesn't linger much emotional attraction to it anymore. I'm also not sure if it's just my mood since in other parts of my life things are feeling sort of flat as well, so I guess it might be interfering as a whole, but I brought the issue about music specifically because I've noticed it happened more gradually and progressively and less fluctuating than the other aspects (I've been watching and enjoying a some TV series and a playing a few games recently though, so it's not just like I'm uninterested in hobbies as a whole, though). I just wonder if going a few months without listening to any music would actually have any positive effect in that, but then I doubt I'd be able to do that LOL

The older you get, the harder it gets for you to be impressed, as isthisLOL pointed... no creative work is 100% original, and on every area there are the main rules to do a certain piece of work with a certain result... once u r exposed to enough material, u get familiar with those rules (even if u don't openly know or think about them) and it's natural that stuff feels less interesting...

That's why people tend to have the first material they felt in love with as their favorite and to ignore or dislike most of stuff done after it...

[kotora]

Any music would be good after getting drunk, including flat music.

[AyumiAi]

I have to agree about losing interest quickly, but I think it's because im exposed to so much music that every week i have about 30 new songs on my itunes and I just generally only play my recently added play list because I hated before when I added songs and never listened to them so now I make sure I listen to every song I add for a good 10 days before moving on, so every time songs are always coming theres always something new and the old songs feel old... but I don't think its the quality it's just the over exposure to music, as well as the fact that before you heard songs when you got home on your speakers or radio, but now you have your phone/ipod all the time songs are everywhere you go, but music has always been pre dominant everywher so im not sure how much this is the case, but good music NEVER tires me, I keep on going back to Ayu's FIVE and I can listen to each song on that non stop on replay for hours even to this day, along with all of her music really it's quite incredible and many western artists as well

[Coelacanth]

When I overplay songs... if I truly feel that it is a good song, I will revisit it again at some point in my life. Truly good songs always stand the test of time.

The problem I have now with music is that I feel like it's just so difficult to discover new music these days. First of all, I don't have the time for it. The Internet now is already so cluttered with music, especially on YouTube with all the amateur musicians, it's hard to sift through all the nonsense to find stuff you actually enjoy. The digital era blows.

[wildconnetta]

The only exciting new artists that I have heard are iamamiwhoami and Lana Del Rey, just saying

[hayasaki]

Plus, the fact that most songs nowadays just sound the same, adds to the irony.

[isthisLOL?]

Originally Posted by hayasaki

Plus, the fact that most songs nowadays just sound the same, adds to the irony.

Thinking that has only happened recently is naive. Mainstream music has always been a bunch of generic stuff, especially since the 60s. In the 80s everybody sounded like Madonna, now in the mid-00s we had the Electro-RnB wave and now we have Electropop and(in Japan) cutesy pop. Right now it's only worse than usual in Japan with all the girlgroups and boygroups around, everywhere else it's the same it has always been.

[CHE.R.RY]

Yeah I had the same exact thing happen with Coldplay's new album ...I thought I was the only one. Either way, this kind of thing happens to me ALL THE TIME...I just attribute it to me having the constant need to find new & fresh music. I get tired of the same music pretty quickly....It's kind of frustrating really.

[susiowong]

Originally Posted by isthisLOL?

It happens when you are oversaturated with music, everybody experiences it after a few years. It has nothing to do with music changing or being exposed to more music nowadays, it's simply knowing more music and having more experience with that music, so you're not as easy to impress anymore.

Ah, that explains it perfectly.

Originally Posted by kotora

Any music would be good after getting drunk, including flat music.

I gotta disagree; I tend to dislike a lot of music when I'm drunk, even ones I like a lot. Weird effect.

[NintendoHTF1242]

Meh, I thought music was flat when I was a J-Pop freak. Then I realized how great mainstream music was in America and started blasting that. Idk it's hard for me to really find music "flat" If I don't feel like listening to a certain genre, I've got 100+ artists for a totally different genre to listen to.