Today in class we discussed the differences between modern music and music from previous decades, and how that fits into aesthetics and the difference between idealism and realism. Modern music is extremely compressed, especially in comparison with songs from the 30’s-50’s, no matter how many new instruments are added to the song, no matter how the singer changes their voice, whether they belt or start to sing more softly, the volume of the song really doesn’t change that much. Which is weird and unnatural when you think about it, but I realized when comparing songs like Havana, Firework, and Fight Song, that it’s what I’ve gotten used to, and my mind automatically classifies anything as not having that quality as dated and older. Older music is more dynamic in volume, you can really tell that singers back then had to rely on more talent than a lot of popular singers today, but I also realized I can’t understand them very well, their voices and the clarity of the lyrics are drowned out by the instruments and the noise that comes from recording in a lot of older songs. So even though the argument could be made that the lyrics from older songs ‘mean’ more than newer lyrics, it doesn’t really make much of a difference to me if I can’t understand them. The argument could be made that this change in music could be associated with a change in demand for attention by people; as our lives become busier music is no longer an activity that takes our full attention, we’d much rather be able to complete other tasks while also listening to our favorite songs. I really think this trend of more compressed music is due to what I read in the readings for this class, that it comes from musicians trying to make their tracks louder and louder until they couldn’t make it any louder and so they had to compress the whole thing. I think people of my younger generation generally like modern music more than older music because it’s what we’ve grown up with, and is familiar to us.