Tony Bennett: The songs that are written today, most of them are terrible
Tony Bennett is a living legend at 87 years old. The guy grew up during some of the best years in popular music, the swing and jazz years in the 30s and 40s, and he went on to become a crooner in the 50s and 60s. He’s still making music with the young artist today as part of his Duets series, featuring current hitmakers like John Legend, Lady Gaga, Carrie Underwood, and Josh Grobin. So what does Bennett think about modern music? He thinks it sucks, but he lays the blame on the record industry, which is skewing too young in his opinion.
Bennett made these comments in a radio interview with BBC4. You can hear Tony’s interview on the BBC’s website and below, and the National Enquirer transcribed a lot of it for us. Here’s more:
In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s “Today Programme”, the 87-year-old singer pulled no punches, flatly stating that: “The songs that are written today, most of them are terrible,” and that “It’s a very bad period, musically, throughout the world for popular music…
“The corporations took it over and they want to make so much money and they don’t care whether the public likes it or not,” he said. “They think the public is ignorant, so their attitude is, ‘Don’t give them anything intelligent, because it won’t sell.’
“I grew up in an era where the record companies just sold records to everybody, and the whole family bought songs.” Bennett continued. “Today, record companies are failing because they are putting their accent just on the young, and I think that’s rather silly.
“They’re missing out on thousands of people that would love to buy records but they don’t buy them because they don’t have a lasting quality.”
But Bennett’s disappointment with the state of today’s music biz isn’t stopping him from staying current – or planning an upcoming collaboration of jazz duets with Lady Gaga later this year.
“I still have a lot to learn,” He said. “I’m concentrating on learning a lot more about music.”
Bennett has been on the Columbia label for most of his career, so doesn’t have to worry about burning bridges at this point. I love how matter-of-fact he is and I agree with him, especially after sitting through most of Lady Gaga’s bizarre video for her new song yesterday. The video, and the song, were a cacophonous mess to me. Not all of Gaga’s songs suck, but many of them do. Of course I think that some of the best years in music were the late 80s and early 90s, but that’s when I came of age. It seems like everyone loves the music that was popular when they were in high school and college.
Honestly I like to think that don’t pay much attention to popular music, but when I watch the Grammys every year I know most of the artists and I’m blown away by the performances. I do like Imagine Dragons, a friend got me into them, and I also enjoy Macklemore (I know but I like him! I downloaded his album) and Adele. There’s good music still coming out, but it seems like the exception not the rule. There’s more than enough dance party autotune crap to go around. Consider how most of it must sound to Tony Bennett, who’s been making timeless music for most of his long life.
Here’s the audio of Tony’s interview:
Here’s just the audio of Tony doing “The Lady Is a Tramp” with Lady Gaga. You can see the full video here.
Here’s a live performance of “Smile”
And here’s Tony in a classic performance of his signature song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” also featuring Judy Garland. She starts to sing around 2:00 in.
Photo credit: WENN.com and Getty Images
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