Headscratchers/Music

The following musicians/genres have bugged enough tropers to merit their own Headscratchers pages. Please be sure to place Headscratchers for these musicians on the appropriate page.

General Headscratchers for Music are listed below. Please make sure you are not duplicating an existing Headscratcher before adding a new one. New entries should go on the bottom of the page, and no complaining.

How is it that all humans automatically recognize music as music? All other animals seem to just hear meaningless noise. Does this mean other animals recognize things as music that we just take as meaningless noise? How is it that we categorize whalesong and birdsong as "music," but nothing else? Why have we, as a species, developed this complex form of expressing ourselves for no purpose other than entertainment? This has Just Bugged Me for as long as I can remember.
- Bigger brain. It's like asking why we're the only species to have developed written language. We just do.
  - It may be an urban myth, but lots of animals have been said to be calmed by classical music.
  - It's not an urban myth. Many of our dogs have loved it. Some of them have regularly sung along by howling.
  - My cat can tell the difference between tuneless whistling and whistling that follows an actual melody. She strongly prefers the latter.
  - There was a recent Wired article that showed that some species of monkeys enjoyed music that had been made up of sampled monkey sounds.
- There's some research that suggests that the human love of music works with the same part of the brain that birds use when interpreting bird songs, and that our ability to sing came before our ability to speak. One theory is that humans once used mating and territorial songs to communicate with each other just like birds, and that, since civilization and language has done away with that need, we've cranked our musical ability way Up to Eleven and adapted it for a whole new purpose.
  - Then again, maybe it's not for a whole new purpose...
- "It remains to be understood why humans have developed this particular predisposition."
  - The predisposition being talked about is dancing.

The findings, based on a study of 120 infants between 5 months and 2 years old, suggest that humans may be born with a predisposition to move rhythmically in response to music.

- - - Read the book This Is Your Brain on Music, folks. It delves very insightfully and fascinatingly into the mystery.
    - Basically, the same part of the brain that analyzes rhythm is that same part that controls movement. This is why upbeat music makes people want to dance more. Upbeats are harder to follow than downbeats, which means the brain needs to work harder, meaning that people instinctively move.
Why are albums released first in Japan, and only later in the rest of the world?
- What now?
- I think you're thinking of video games.
- Nah, he has a point. It really depends on the type of music. Things like glam metal (such as TNT) always get released in Japan before other regions, because glam metal practically shaped the Japanese rock industry. Germans Love David Hasselhoff.
- More importantly, why do albums get extra tracks when released in Japan?
  - Because CDs are more expensive in Japan. Putting bonus tracks on the Japanese versions gives them incentive to buy local instead of importing the cheaper international releases. It's a bummer for the rest of us, but what are ya gonna do.
Why don't the backing bands for generic manufactured pop artists go off and make their own music?
- 1) They may well prefer just to earn a good buck making the music rather than risk going solo 2) Being a solid musician is not necessarily enough to make it in the pop music world. There is a reason why David Bowie made it as a a solo artist and Mick Ronson (despite his talent as a producer/instrumentalist/arranger) didn't.
- Also, who is to say that they aren't trying? Lots of these musicians are in more than one band and play a variety of instruments in various venues.
- Possibly because they're butt -fugly.
- Let's not forget two facts here: 1. Instrumental ability does not equal songwriting creativity, and 2. Mainstream music is 90% dictated by marketing. A lot of the time they're just not marketable enough.
Why does almost every musician sing in an American accent? Why can't they change it up occasionally? It seems like people did used to sing in non-American accents regularly (the Beatles sang in English accents quite often, Syd Barrett sang for Pink Floyd with an English accent, Harry Belafonte even affected a West Indies accent even though he was American) but it fell out of fashion somehow.
- Speaking ~~out of my ass~~ as an American, I think it as has something to do with America being a very visible audience and having slightly xenophobic attitudes. Either that or perhaps many artists are simply influenced by American singers.
  - It varies. Some people do sing in almost comically different accents from their speaking voices (e.g., Elton John), and most of the early British rock bands used more American pronunciation (although usually not using rhotic accents). However, British bands in the 80s (the ones that used synthesizers) used British accents, and this was so much a part of that genre that Germans like Alphaville and Norwegians like a-ha imitated British accents rather than American. So maybe it's just an extension of how a genre gets associated with an accent, like the weird accent used for choral singing and the Southern US accent used for country.
  - Ah, to hear a Canadian sing in a Southern accent...
    - Actually, it's been proved that the American accent is the easiest accent to sing in. To be honest, it's not really an 'American accent', it's more like a 'universal pop accent'. British singers who attempt to use their native accent tend to have to strain their voice more than they would need to if they were singing using the American-type accent. Think about it, the way you pronounce words tends to be slightly different when you sing, as your mouth and vocal chords have to move differently to produce different pitches and sounds. This is coming from a Brit who sings a lot, and I can tell you, singing 'My Heart Will Go On' while attempting to sound like Lily Allen is not fun in the slightest.
- If a singer's got any training, they've likely been taught to sing without an accent, just as newscasters have to learn to speak with a neutral accent.
- There are more than a few American singers who affect a quasi-British delivery (Billy Corgan comes to mind).
Why don't more musicians do rock/metal stuff with orchestral backing? Metallica did it with S&M, and I consider that the best album I own, bar none. Even if that's a minority opinion, it has to be worth a try, to see if it works for other bands.
- There's actually a ton of bands that do that, most of them just aren't very mainstream (at least in the US). If you mean why don't more of your typical (non-symphonic) rock/metal bands do it, probably has to do with funds. Orchestras ain't cheap, and the record label is holding the purse strings.
"World" music. I do enjoy listening to tunes from all over the globe, but why this term? To this troper's ears, "world music" seems to means "music that isn't from the West and sounds foreign enough" - wouldn't that be kind of exclusionary? I mean, wouldn't someone from Africa/Asia/wherever else scoff at the idea of some Westerner calling his traditional music "world music"? And despite the effect of American pop culture on the rest of the world, would you hear those in said places referring to Western pop music as "world music"?
- That particular label is primarily for commercial/marketing purposes: a way of gathering to together a broad range of musics connected by a similar audience, rather than by any intrinsic quality. See also: "Pop," "Folk," "Traditional."
- It's also a good catch-all for a lot of music that fuses together a lot of different styles. There's a trope for that, something about Zydeco Punk Rockabilly.
What exactly is the difference between synthpop and electropop?
- It's synthpop with extra emphasis on the electronic production. It's also more minimalistic, and has a bit of a colder and more robotic sound to it. It's just a synthpop sub-genre.
As an actual Fridge Logic example, if Alternative Rock is for all intents and purposes mainstream in terms of popularity amongst the various rock genres, what is it an alternative to? I can understand what The Sex Pistols were an alternative to (Progressive Rock) and what the like of Nirvana were an alternative to (Hair Metal), but if alt rock is the most mainstream type of rock music at the moment, why does it still bear this name?
- Artifact Title.
- Classical Music. Hey, it's true.
- Alternative Music.
- Nowadays it's mostly an alternative to pop and hip-hop music.
  - But what is it actually? It doesn't seem to have anything that defines it's sound other than being rock music.
Why is it that Dark Neoclassical is listed as a subgenre of Darkwave on The Other Wiki? I know that a lot of groups use synths to create that sound, but what about groups who create this type of music with acoustic instruments?
- Probably a sort of "subgenre by association" thing, like how Neofolk developed out of the Industrial scene despite many Neofolk bands' sound having nothing to do with actual industrial music. Still doesn't quite make sense.
It's really not enough to warrant its own page but... It's Raining Men is a song sung by a group of women. As in, females. They're excited--soaking wet, even--about how many guys they can pick up. It's all about girls on the prowl. WHY IS THIS SONG NOW A GAY ANTHEM!? I'm bisexual myself and this still boggles the living crap out of me.
- It's not terribly uncommon for the male gay community to adopt female anthems, or to identify with the female's traditional role in romantic situations. See "I Will Survive" for a perfect example.
- Maybe more gay men know that it was written by Paul Shaffer?
Why do some classically trained singers have a hard time listening to singing by artists who... aren't (like a lot of Alternative Rock), but others have no problem?
- For the same reason most painters aren't impressed by stick doodles. It's still art, and you can't objectively say something as subjectively as art is bad, it's just to someone who has spent years honing their skills it looks/sounds sloppy and amateurish.
- Also, it's entirely possible that the singers you're talking about have perfect pitch, in which case it will (to them) sound objectively wrong, and in some cases painful.
- This article seems curiously appropriate to this discussion: http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2010/07/ask-a-real-musician-5-classic-male-metal-singers/.
- A given singer may be compared very favorably to Mick Jagger yet very poorly to Enrico Caruso. Probably there's a distinction between singers who are willing to appreciate other genres' vocal styles on their own merits, and singers who instinctively evaluate all music by (admittedly tried-and-true) classical techniques. File under Values Dissonance, perhaps.
In the Metal Church song "Little Boy", during the break at about 4:20, there is a song sample produced to sound like it's coming from a passing radio. Can anyone place what song the sample is from? This Troper hasn't ever been able to find it, though it does sound like Mike Howe's voice singing.