Talent: Today and Yesterday, a discussion

[postscript]

In the New Zealand Tour 2008 thread post 70, Belinda mentioned she was continually singing that she was 'Going on a Summer Holiday' to annoy her work colleagues.

Thinking on Cliff Richards' London Transport red double decker bus I expressed the opinion that I was appalled at how seemingly easily we were entertained!

This was obviously leading me 'off topic', so before i got myself into trouble I started this thread as follows. Have standards improved over the years? Are the 'Young Ones of Today' more talented than a generation ago and if so, why? Opportunities are greater? But that wouldn't determine talent... necessarily?

Why is it that so much talent in all sorts of directions seems to be emerging from the ever getting younger 'younger generation'? Is it lack of earlier awareness? Simply that tastes have changed so we see new things with brighter eyes? Is it that our own viewer's eyes are better educated and therefore we have become more discerning? But that wouldn't explain the degree to which those 'better educated eyes' perceive so much extra talent. Is it simply that I 'hit a moment of observation and there really is nothing of worth in the question I pose?

Comments?

Peter S.

[stevemacdonald]

Peter, several months ago I noted how there appeared to be a bumper crop of spectacular singers born between 1986 and 1989. I believe the world-beating talents come along rarely, but when they do, it's as if in droves. Maybe there was something acutely favorable in the universe for these singers to emerge as they did, when they did.

Ironically, such bumper crops also foster heightened awareness of talent in the relatively mediocre, such that the right coaches/producers can bring out the best in more singers because they know exactly what to strive for.

I believe that Hayley is perhaps the finest singer of her generation. I also suspect that, by raising the bar, she has inspired many others to improve their game accordingly.

Cultural evolution is at stake here. All of humanity's discernment is gradually shifting toward better standards as centuries pass. Talents like Hayley will pique and tweak our collective appreciation for great singing, occasionally resulting in an overload of what's worth enjoying.

[roger]

Hi Peter,

I think this could develop into a very interesting debate. First of all, I don't think we can generalize to the point where we can say that young people are more (or less) talented now than used to be the case. There were talented youngsters when we were in our teens but the majority showed no great talent, and the same is true today.

Going back much further in time, there was a young talented kid in the fair city of Salzburg who could play a piano at the age of two. But because there was no television, nor even radio in those days, young Mozart was not able to display his talent beyond his own immediate neighbourhood. These days, we even have some new-fangled platform called the internet (whatever that is!) and so the world at large is far more likely to become aware of young (and older) talent.

What I believe is changing is the individual listeners' personal taste and their opinion of what is "good music". Earlier this evening, I saw two minutes of a quiz programme in which a contestant failed to answer a question on pop music. He commented that, at his age (I guess he may have been about 60), he was unlikely to know anything about pop. Why not, I wonder? What does it have to do with age?

So, I think our tastes, our perception, perhaps even our tolerance, and certainly the opportunity to experience new talent is constantly changing more than the amount of talent itself.

Roger

[milewalker]

roger said:

Hi Peter,

I think this could develop into a very interesting debate. First of all, I don't think we can generalize to the point where we can say that young people are more (or less) talented now than used to be the case. There were talented youngsters when we were in our teens but the majority showed no great talent, and the same is true today.

What I believe is changing is the individual listeners' personal taste and their opinion of what is "good music". Earlier this evening, I saw two minutes of a quiz programme in which a contestant failed to answer a question on pop music. He commented that, at his age (I guess he may have been about 60), he was unlikely to know anything about pop. Why not, I wonder? What does it have to do with age?

So, I think our tastes, our perception, perhaps even our tolerance, and certainly the opportunity to experience new talent is constantly changing more than the amount of talent itself.

Roger

Hello all - here are a few more or less random observations which may (or may not) be relevant to this discussion.

I suspect that I agree with Roger (sorry Roger ) that talent is no more or less common than it has ever been in the past. I might add that not only are there more outlets to discover talent, but also simply more people as well. It is a simple concept which might get overlooked that a one-in a-million talent is twice as likely to emerge if the population is twice as large.

I think that one other thing has changed in the past fifty years or so which also affects the definition of talent. Call it the visualization of music. The emergence of movies, then television, and of course the modern internet video makes it at least as important to *see* the artist. This in turn explains the appeal of someone like Britney to such a mass audience - and whether you like her or not, there is no denying that seeing her is a much different experience than merely listening to her CD's. To the degree that she is visual appealing, she is also talented (IMHO)

One issue with a discussion like this is that it would, I think be surprisingly difficult to get an actual consensus of what "talent" and things like "good music" are in the general population. On this site, we have coalesced around a single specific singer, which in turn suggests that our music tastes probably overlap to some extent - this is more problematic when dealing with the world audience as a whole.

However, because our tastes have changed and the world has changed as well, I would hesitate to say that our standards are "better" now than they were say 200 years ago. I know of no objective way to measure that. We probably do know more about the world. Educuation systems in Western countries may be better than they once were - and this in turn may help more nascent talent to develop. But no two people - even on a site like this - will ever agree entirely on what talent is and what is good music is - or even what constitutes good taste in music.

Roger - the world changes rather quickly - in particular as it manifests itself through pop culture. As we get older, human nature is such that we increasingly resist change - even when it is good for us, like the acquisition of new knowledge. This is probably a topic of its own - but I think that this is the reason why older people as a group may tend to fall behind (or simply dismiss outright) pop culture.

Jon

[roger]

milewalker said:

...it would, I think be surprisingly difficult to get an actual consensus of what "talent" and things like "good music" are in the general population.

So do I, Jon. As an example, I was once walking through my local shopping mall where piped music was being played. A lady, perhaps in her 30s was overheard to say, "why do they have to play that? It's so dreary". The piece was Pachelbel's Canon which I find quite beautiful. But as you suggest, we will never get a consensus on that.

Roger

[martindn]

It is interesting to remember that nowadays more people have the opportunity to hear a greater range of music than at any time in the past. If Hayley had been born 200 years earlier, you and I would probably have never heard of her. Or even if we had, we would almost certainly never have heard her sing.
Nowadays the best artists can travel the world, their voices and performances can be recorded and the recordings bought in every major town and city in the world.
Also, modern travel and communications means that a promising artist can get the best advice and training, to help them make the most of their natural talent.
All of this means that the ordinary person has the opportunity to hear the best music according to their taste, performed by the worlds best artists. So those with an interest in music have the chance to become far more educated and discerning than ever.
Taste is probably not the only arbiter though. There are technical standards in singing that are generally agreed distinguish a "good" singer from a poor one. Being able to sing in tune, vocal range, control, power, expressiveness, phrasing and diction are all important, and can be compared irrespective of the style of singing. That being said, quite a lot of very successful singers are quite deficient in some of those areas.
Hayley's technical standards are impeccable, I'm sure you will agree, but despite that some people would rather listen to other singers with far lower standards in that respect. So there is more too it than that.
I think that there are different ways of listening to music. And music can appeal to us in different ways. And some people either don't enjoy music or don't have an ear for it ..For example people might have opinions on music because

I like so-and-so because he/she is good looking.
I like so-and-so because he/she is sexy
I like this music because it has a beat and you can dance to it.
I like this song because I identify with the lyrics
I like this song, even though the singer/songwriter can't sing
I like this song because it is original and different

All of these sell records, none say anything about the quality of the singing. I think only a minority of record buyers would say they buy music because the technical standard of the singing is high. I wouldn't even quote that as the main reason I enjoy Hayley's music, there is more to it than that and if asked I would use words like "beauty", "emotion|" and "spirituality", but those are very subjective. I have no idea why I experience these things, and why some other people do not. It is hard to know why some people don't get the same pleasure from listening to Hayley that I do. "Are they deaf" I wonder? But no, I think they just don't listen to her in the same way that I do. Perhaps they have different expectations of how "good" music should affect them.
I listen to many different kinds of music, and I think I listen to them in different ways. I do not expect the same kind of experience from Hayley as from Led Zeppelin for example. But I enjoy both, and I think it is a question of learning how to listen to different kinds of music. If you have never learned how to listen to rock music for example, you won't understand it and won't enjoy it, and in some cases,(the band Yes comes to mind), the learning curve can be quite long (but worth it) and many will give up before they get to the point where they have learned how to enjoy it.
I have exactly that problem with most jazz. I have never much liked it, but perhaps if I had the patience to listen to a lot more I would learn how to enjoy it.

Martin

[roger]

Okay, I admit it. I was more talented yesterday than I am today!

And with that, it's goodnight from me!


Roger

[milewalker]

Hello all,

Peter mentioned above that the age of emerging artists seems to be getting younger and younger, I am minded of a quote from Simon Cowell a year or so back to the effect that "12 is the new 20". Two very different demographic groups have emerged as important in the past 20 years - tweens and baby boomers. For very different reasons, young singers (very different young singers at times) do quite well in both groups. A part of the perception of a greater amount of talent simply lies in the fact that the markets are distributing more of it for public consumption. I think that this picture is more complex than this actually, but this is already long enough.....

Martin - I am not surprised that some people like Hayley (or any other singer) and some people dont. I think that talent as it reveals itself in a singer is a lot more than simply voice - more basically it is the ability to establish an emotional connection with an audience through the performance of a song. As such the listener is just as important to the process as the singer is.

Jon

[postscript]

Steady on Martin, your reply no 5, this thread started in the context of Cliff Richard's lifetime. Yes, if you want to go that far back, or course modern communications generally have put us in a different world, but taking the era from the 50s it is the 'type' of technology rather than the influence of technology on civilisation that has changed. The principle of 'world news' availability has not changed that much over those years.

Peter S.

[milewalker]

postscript said:

Steady on Martin, your reply no 5, this thread started in the context of Cliff Richard's lifetime. Yes, if you want to go that far back, or course modern communications generally have put us in a different world, but taking the era from the 50s it is the 'type' of technology rather than the influence of technology on civilisation that has changed. The principle of 'world news' availability has not changed that much over those years.

Peter S.

Peter,

While I think you are right about the principle of world news availability, in practice there may be as many as 1000 times as many available sources of such information than there were 50 years ago. Because there has been an expoential expansion of those sources I suspect that cumulatively they have quite an impact on just how many people today are listening to what music. An analogy might be the concept of the personal computer - it certainly existed "in principle" in the mid 1970's, but it wasnt until early this century that people like my aunt were using them.

The concept of electronic music and the download did not exist 50 years ago. Neither did the concept of "video on demand".

Actually I think that technology has had a profound impact on modern culture with effects that have manifested themselves by degrees over time. This discussion in my opinion is but a sort of microcosm of the whole - but this is not the place for that wider discussion.

Jon

[James]

martindn said:

I think only a minority of record buyers would say they buy music because the technical standard of the singing is high. I wouldn't even quote that as the main reason I enjoy Hayley's music, there is more to it than that and if asked I would use words like "beauty", "emotion" and "spirituality", but those are very subjective.

Martin,

Thanks for your interesting and very well put post.

I would argue that the very best people today in many fields are actually more talented than those of yesterday in a purely technical sense, be it music, other arts, sport etc. Partly this would be due to scientific development and medical advances such as studies over vocal/instrumental technique and partly because there is a greater wealth other people's training and experiences to learn from.

However, technique and talent do not equate to success for many of the reasons you outline in your post and many of the more successful artists of today possess little of what I would determine to be genuine talent. The advent of MTV unfortunately for some shifted the boundaries and placed an increasing reliance on looks, image and marketing over talent to the point where mediocrity can bring huge success. I guess I would say the average talent of today's artists is probably less than the average talent of the smaller number of successful artists of yesterday, but the best of today are actually better than those of yesterday.

With more modern music such as electric guitar, despite the reputation of say Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, they possess nowhere near the talent in technical terms of todays virtuoso guitarists. That's not to say one or other is better - the viewpoint may be clouded by older people with rose tinted specs thinking nothing could ever be as good as things from their era.

Which brings us onto Hayley. I'm sure there are better technical singers out there, but none who quite connect with me as much as she can with her voice. I think that may in part be due to her lack of formal training, and so the voice is very pure, natural and emotional. I heard Lesley Garrett sing some contemporary songs a few years ago and while technically she is very impressive, her interpretations left me feeling cold as she did not have the emotion to go with the technique.

It may be that someone can connect without having the technical ability as Martin says. In no way could you call Axl Rose a great singer, but to me his voice displays far greater emotion than many "better" singers. Bob Dylan barely sung a note in his career but still connected with many people.

By the way Martin, I have to agree, I could never get into Jazz either!

James

[socalboy]

james said:

It may be that someone can connect without having the technical ability as Martin says. In no way could you call Axl Rose a great singer, but to me his voice displays far greater emotion than many "better" singers. Bob Dylan barely sung a note in his career but still connected with many people.

I think too of Mark Knopfler who has said of his own voice that it's down to a whisper and a growl. Yet, I would listen to him chanting a grocery list because I know he will bring something to it that no one else can.

I think the "appeal" of any singer is inestimable and impervious to technical analysis. There are those on top who I find baffling, and lesser stars whose inability to flourish is equally puzzling. American Idol (and its international counterparts) tries for a kind of talent scorecard, and while some of its winners do find brief careers, most flame out.

One thing I have noted is that while my parents and I shared almost no musical interests, my teenage sons and I listen to a lot of the same artists. Don't know if that's a generational shift or a musical one, but I find it true of many of my friends as well.