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Neil Young Slams Modern Music


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Neil Young slams sound quality of modern music

Published Sunday, Jan 22 2012, 10:42pm EST | By Tara

Neil Young has blasted the sound quality of music in the 21st century.

The 'Heart of Gold' singer has

again said that he is not a fan of modern compressed music

"I'm finding that I have a little bit of trouble with the quality of the sound of music today," Young told MTV News.

"I don't like it. It just makes me angry. Not the quality of the music, but we're in the 21st century and we have the worst sound that we've ever had," he continued. "It's worse than a 78 [rpm record]. Where are our geniuses? What happened?

"If you're an artist and you created something and you knew the master was 100% great, but the consumer got 5%, would you be feeling good?" Young added. "I like to point that out to artists."

"That's why people listen to music differently today," he explained. "It's all about the bottom and the beat driving everything, and that's because in the resolution of the music, there's nothing else you can really hear. The warmth and the depth at the high end is

In the past, Young planned to release his entire back catalog on Blu-ray to have it available in high audio quality, adding that "putting on a headphone and listening to an MP3 is like hell".

On the inclusion of bundled MP3s in the long-awaited release of The Archives Vol. 1 1963-1972 box-set in 2009, Young added: "Apple has made music into wallpaper, so what can I tell you?

"As a matter of fact, there's a thing that comes in the box where you can have this whole set on MP3 for nothing. It's worth it."

Young will release a book of his memoirs this year.

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Foo's latest album was all recorded analog...how many Grammys is that up for?

Neil's right...he once said with analog you can hear the crackle of every tube.

There's nothing like analog recordings,it's simply the best format imo.

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I think it's cool that he's been taking the lead on this, and he's been known like Todd Rundgren and Peter Gabriel to stay on the cutting edge of technology, which sometimes winds up affecting their music for better or worse.

There should be no need for music to be compressed once they start putting 1-2 TB players out.

He sounds like he's talking about producers and engineers being the geniuses, not the artists.

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Ah, yes, Loudness war. Death Magnetic and, especially, A Looking In A View being the prime examples of how this affects our music.

yeah death magnetic was really bad it was so distorted.

as some have said analog is stil the best and neil young is right on the money on this :thumbsup:

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I don't blame him. The worst listener fatigue I ever had was listening to Lady Gaga's Born This Way all the way though - constant bass and beats slamming into me for over an hour. It makes it hard to differentiate the songs after a while.

That's a decent album.

It was better when Neil Young said this; 'Back then people closed their eyes and listened to music. Today there's a lot of images that go with the music. A lot of music is crap and it's all commercial and the images are all trying to sell the record.'

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I don't blame him. The worst listener fatigue I ever had was listening to Lady Gaga's Born This Way all the way though - constant bass and beats slamming into me for over an hour. It makes it hard to differentiate the songs after a while.

That's a decent album.

It was better when Neil Young said this; 'Back then people closed their eyes and listened to music. Today there's a lot of images that go with the music. A lot of music is crap and it's all commercial and the images are all trying to sell the record.'

He played the music video game and continues to, but either tried to make them entertaining or make you think. I'm pretty sure he used some of those music video directors to learn from for himself.

He's def. one of the most prolific artists out there and has free rein with the record company to put out what he wants, how he wants. But he does it by working on archive stuff at the same time he works on new stuff, but prioritizes new over old. He had trouble with Geffen back in the day, but in hindsight, makes sense he wanted to go down country roads for a while.

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I love music, but the production side is something I've never really thought about. I did listen to Death Magnetic, and something did feel wrong, and upon reading reviews discovered all of this stuff. Neil Young is my favourite non-Beatles musician of all time, and so I always welcome hearing something from him :) I think it was in the same interview that he said he likes Mumford and Sons, which is also a win for me!!!

xXx

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