You needed to get out more after Y2K.

-Also Gen X

No reason a Gen Xer shouldn't like those. DCFC/Postal Service and 311 are all basically 90s bands. Childish Gambino is good. They're just musically stunted.

For the same reason you don't show all your cards in poker.

Sometimes the do (or did) release a single before hand to stir up some buzz, but you don't want the consumer to have a good idea what they're investing in.

Some people are going to buy the album the day it's released no matter what, just because of brand loyalty. If you release two singles before hand and the band has changed their sound or that album just sucks, you're going to lose sales from your main base.

Back in the day, albums and singles were aimed at two different audiences. People who bought albums almost never bought singles (except for b-sides) and vice versa. Singles people are always going to buy singles, seldom albums. If you tip your cards too early, you risk cutting into your album sales.

Same with the middle ground, you want them to buy the album because you make more. The promise is there's a whole album that sounds the same and if you release too many singles before hand, they know that's not the case (I'm looking at you Pablo Honey).

If a second single off Pablo Honey had been released after Creep and the music buying public realized that song was the exception and not the style of the album, the album sales wouldn't have been as strong as they were releasing the album first.

Maybe Spinning Away

Check out the Hackensaw Boys. One of the best modern groups playing that style.

Saw them in a small club before they released their first album. Loved how they took pieces of Joy Division, Killing Joke, Bauhaus and early Sisters of Mercy and mixed it into a snap shot of that era.

Ran into them in an after hours club after the show. Lead singer is hands down the nicest musician I've ever met. We touched on their influences but spent most of the night talking about relationships, old rnb and reggae music and the innovations that came out of it.

Great guys, good music.

King Black Acid

Friday I'm in Love on Wish by the Cure. The whole album is continuing their trend as maturing as artists but that song is blatantly aimed at being a radio hit and a throw back to their earlier sound.

Not saying it's a horrible song, but the album would have been stronger without it.

People seem under the misconception that at one time you could turn on the radio and hear nothing but rock on every station.

That world never existed.

This was more popular than most early rock and roll.
This charted higher than Hendrix.
This charted higher than the Sex Pistols.
This charted higher than Nirvana.
Even a rock heavy year like 1994, this was still the highest selling, most played song.

Rock is almost never as popular as pop, never has been. Might get a couple of singles up there, but more years than not, the top of the charts are usually dominated by pop or easy listening.

Difference between rock and pop is pop does better at the time, but good rock stays forever. Rock is just as important now as it ever was.

When you listen to it year by year, it's harder not to notice. Even groups that were more upbeat took a negative turn there for awhile.

I totally stumbled on it though. Had way more time to listen to music during lockdown and was doing it year by year.

2011 - this is so fun, I love this music.
2013 - this is great, I'm having fun.
2017 - This is horrible, why is everyone suddenly so pissy....oooooohhhh. Got it.

Hear me out, I've been listening to a lot of indie playlist for the past few years and I noticed a distinct trend.

The music between 2008-2014 has a lot of folk and mellow songs and a fun side to it. Lots of upbeat music.

Now, while trends tend to come in opposites (maybe music getting harder as new bands rebelling against all the folk and millennial whoops) I did notice that everything starts getting edgier around 2015.

It's almost like something happened in 2016 that got people simultaneously mad, upset, depressed and very angry. Like some event there triggered people and put them in a really bad mood. Something that made people very negative.

I also noticed that around 2021, music started getting brighter and less tense. Like everyone was getting in a better mood for some reason.

Soulseek. Buy a t-shirt or some merch directly from the band's website to offset a guilty conscience, they'll make more money that way than they would streaming their material anyways.

Try the Jesus and Mary Chain - Automatic. You've probably heard a lot of bands heavily influenced by them, it's good to go back to the source.

DIIV does not get talked about enough.

Pretty common, if nothing else to pretend that you hate mainstream.

You've got two camps; the whole "corporate rock sucks" ideology and the "it's cool to hate popular things" state of mind. Especially if their loyalty to a specific genre becomes part of their "persona," they tend to reject anything outside of what's acceptable in their inner circles.

Most will eventually outgrow it though. Can't tell you how many people I know from high school who were proto-goths now get excited about upcoming Def Leppard concerts (or other groups they sure as hell wouldn't have listened to as a teen).

Maybe throw John Lee Hooker, Al Green and Howlin' Wolf in there but that's a great list!

Little earlier but the only Cure song I'd heard was Just Like Heaven and I hated it. A friend played me The Kiss and that opened me up a little, but it wasn't until I heard their earlier, post punk work that I realized how amazing they were.

Probably. They used to be available on CD but I'm willing to bet they're on Spotify too.

Motown, Atlantic Records and Stax all have RnB boxsets that are great intros to wet your whistle and introduce you to a wide arrange of artists you can check out separately afterwards.

No offense but you're describing an obsession. You don't need to be doing anything to feed it further. You need to be doing something to take your mind off of her, not just another channel to continue to dwell. Take up sports, play video games, start an emu farm or a meth lab. Whatever it takes that isn't her but keeps your mind occupied.

>The Fratellis

I'll see your Fratellis and up you one Jon Fratelli (his solo work). I'm still on various artist kick, but whenever anything he's part of pops up, I pretty much like it. This guy gets rock and roll and I need to spend sometime checking out his catalogue.

The Cure, Wish, End.

I don't know but maybe this list will help you. I hope it helps and good luck.

Edit; this song was a direct response to someone being groomed.

Bleach03 is an amazing group. Three tiny little Japanese girls who hit harder than most American punk and metal groups do.