Spyke

What is your favorite 100% non political "just nice music" music artist?

I'll start. System of a Down.

Recently it seems like some people are JUST NOW realizing that Bring me the horizon is not Christian friendly and I wonder how many other artists can we put into the bag of "Wait, they were political this whole time?"

View original on lemmy.ml
lemmy.ml

This thread has been reported to us. I've temporarily made the decision to keep it (other mods; feel free to override). While the question could have been phrased a hell of a lot better ("what are your favourite bands that people don't get the real meaning of?"), its a valid question and doesn't quite fall into the "offensive" rule.

Community: please stay civil. The fact that a song can be political does not mean it is worth debating if it's politics are correct. If discussion significantly devolves into personal attacks, bans will be issued regardless of partisanship.

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lemmy.world

Off topic: I love how clear you are in your articulation. I wish to develop this skill some day . If you don't mind me asking, how would one develop such a skill?

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Evanreply
lemmy.ml

I must confess that you're the first person to tell that to me — English class was always a disaster! The only thing I can point to is practice: I have a blog here that I write at regularly. The other component might be luck? They say that a broken clock is right twice a day and I'm inclined to agree.

In any case, thank you!

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Aww yall are cute :) eloquence is a skill one must practice regularly. I agree you are quite good at typing out shit

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feddit.nl

Gotta love how so many MAGAites are bopping to Rage Against the Machine, without realizing that they themselves are part of the most vile and extreme version of the machine. They just latched on to the "fuck you, I won't do what you tell me" from "Killing in the Name" without that single grain of self awareness necessary to connect the only two dots there are.

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stemboltsreply
programming.dev

He's the one who likes all our pretty songs
And he likes to sing along
And he likes to shoot his gun
But he knows not what it means
And I say 'yeah'

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neidu2reply
feddit.nl

Unrelated to this thread, but that chorus is among my favorite duets. Dave and Kurts voices mesh so incredibly well.

And I do like shooting guns... wait...

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Sydreply

I always thought it was "To be in love" instead of "and I say 'yeah'" until now. I never really understood that lyric, which is kinda ironic.

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Their media literacy is effectively zero. They're the reason there are like 6 dogshit transformers movies that glorify the military, racism, and womanizing.

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You aren't spreading anything, nobody on this platform legitimately wants Trump, and you aren't going to convince a bunch of leftists to vote for Trump.

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We are aware rednecks and Nazis exist.

We're also aware we defeated you the first two times and we'll defeat you again if we need to. 🤷‍♂️

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EarWormreply
lemmy.world

What do you mean? They're just songs about nice things, like bringing your own beer to a party, jumping on a pogo stick and shimmying until the break of dawn, yeah. Oh, and cocaine. Lots of cocaine.

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neidu2reply
feddit.nl

"Everybody" knows that song, and thinks of it as a harmless party song. "Nobody" has heard their earlier stuff which alternates between punk and anarchism-pop.

If I remember correctly, they emerged from the blue collar punk scene, and draws a lot of their political views from there.

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Nothing special to see or hear in any of the following: their earlier stuff, their later stuff, tracks 2–12 on the same album, the 10,000 word essay in the liner notes, their followup single, etc.

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lemm.ee

I've always understood SoaD to be overtly political, with songs like Prison Song, Attack, BYOB, A.D.D., and on and on... I listened to them for a long time because I enjoyed the music, but when I gave more than two seconds to think about the lyrics, I immediately understood them to be political in nature (which I actually enjoyed and appreciated more).

When I want non-political music, I almost avoid lyrics entirely, or listen to old-timey songs about broken hearts and love. I particularly enjoy early jazz guitar like Billy Banks, or The Ink Spots. Or some good EDM like Jaded and Noizu.

There's a bit of politics in so much lyrical music, even if it is less transparent, seemingly nonsensical stuff. I do enjoy a good revelation about some bands, though. Like the amount of veterans my age that listen to Lamb of God but are very enthusiastic about military service and God and country types, or as has been mentioned in the thread already, that whole thing with Rage Against the Machine. I feel like SoaD falls into this category a lot too, with these particular people.

There are certainly moments of social commentary in RHCP songs, but I do enjoy Frusciante's and Flea's musical prowess to a degree that I don't care at all what they're saying at times, and just very much enjoy the tunes.

Edit: After reading replies in here, I oughta mention I'm wrong and political music doesn't actually exist.

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The most hilarious part is the drummer stating that most SoaD music is not about politics, and people only think it is because of Serj’s activism

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feddit.de

Is this satire? SoaD is one of the most political bands I know?

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lemmy.world

I loved his music until he admitted that all of it was Al-generated.

I also loved it afterwards, but I loved it until then too.

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That joke is a testament to the ubiquity of sans-serif fonts these days.

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Thavronreply
lemmy.ca

I can't tell if you're kidding but I'm pretty sure he meant Al as in Uppercase A and lowercase L. As in "Weird Al"

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lemmy.world

WHY. DO. THEY ALWAYS SEND THE POOR. (Repeat a dozen or so times)

Sorry but no way they are non political. That's just one example from a more well known song. Haven't they publicly spoken on the Armenian genocide, too? If you need to separate your art from your politics, perhaps you should re review your politics. It's inherent in most aspects of life.

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Yeah lmao, SOAD is one of the most political musical performers in history. And that shouldn't be a bad thing. Music is art and art is expressive. If you have nothing to say with your art, then you're just trying to manufacture a commodity to be purchased. And I have nothing against that either because artists gotta eat, but there is a pretty big difference between passionate artistic expression and trying to make something that will sell.

Tangentially, it's also hilarious to me when people on the right throw so much hate at artists and art schools and the uselessness of art, but both expect art to be good and available and are surprised to learn that the best artists tend to be leftists. Like yeah, no shit, your group discourages art and artists; it's no wonder you don't produce much good art. Plus conservatism as an ideal is basically "things are good as is" while the best art is critical of the status quo and is meant to inspire. What's inspirational about "things are pretty good"? Imagine telling a story with no arc or conflict, just keep things the way they are. Snooze. Nobody dances or cries or moshes or beams when they're just content.

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Yeah I was about to say, System of a Down is largely a political band. Serj Tankian never ever lets down the fact that he has to remind people of the Armenian Genocide and why not? The whole band is Armenian. A lot of their songs is referencing political issues.

So to say they're non-political would be saying the same if they replaced SOAD with Rage Against the Machine.

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I've been listening to punk for 30 years now. I'm so glad politics have never made their way into the scene.

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Wait. You said "non political music" (as if that were a thing) and then you say SoaD???! Please read their lyrics. They are full of politics. From war protests to the Armenian genocide to anti-science and pseudo-science weirdness.

Music is always political.

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lemmy.ca

The BMTH thing to me is hilarious. Their first popular single was “Pray for Plagues”, where Oli is asking God to burn this world to the ground, for fucks sake. I guess those fans discovered them post-deathcore and mostly know their singles without reading the lyrics too much, or at all? I genuinely don’t know how else they’d get this idea it’s a Christian friendly band lol

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lemmy.ml

The BMTH thing to me is hilarious

  • Should I save 1½ seconds typing?

  • If that makes my post incomprehensible?

I'll never understand how people decide that trade-off is a good one.

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folkravreply
lemmy.ca

It’s a direct answer to the main post, which mentions two bands, and this one is one of them. I thought the context implied the reference, visibly it didn’t, so I’m sorry for that. No need for the snark.

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fedia.io

Serious discussion: Rise Against.

Taking the title literally: Alestorm.

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I'd put Willie Nelson in there, in large part because a lot of country listeners are right-wing and completely oblivious.

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Wait a minute, you're telling me you listen and think about things? I bet you even wear glasses. Someone needs a bit more Pol Pot in their lives. /s

For those who haven't seen it, I recommend the movie The Killing Fields. If you prefer music, listen to "Holiday in Cambodia". Same topic in both pieces of media.

Ever listen to the (Tony Hawk Pro Skater OST) song Police Truck by the Dead Kennedys? Nice lil diddy about police brutality.

And every 2pac song was talking about what we would consider "modern issues" 35 years ago. But no, all this "woke" stuff just showed up yesterday..

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Gojira. It’s just angry noise and there’s no words to be heard, and even if there were lyrics they’d be in some strange dead language

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lemmy.world

You g.. got a pen? Write this down:

Jazz for appreciating pro instrumentalists

EDM for work out

Classical for relaxing, getting job done

5

As a country fan you don’t really expect much from modern country singers so sturgill Simpson might be a good pick.

I remember a while back he was snubbed from the CMAs so he busked outside of the event and called trump a “fascist fucking pig” while taking donations for the ACLU.

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fedia.io

If you want a music artist that is guaranteed to not come out in support of some political view, you should probably pick a dead one.

Alternately, you could sign up to udio.com or suno.com and generate some of your own. Since it's an AI making the music you can be sure it holds no opinions.

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Since it's an AI making the music you can be sure it holds no opinions.

That is a very popular, but also very dangerous misconception. AI has all the same biases and opinions as the dataset it was trained on (and thus also those of the engineer who picked said dataset). Even if you just YOLO it by training it on "everything" and hoping it'll average out, whatever biases society itself as a whole has, the AI will happily perpetuate.

For example, folks wanted to reduce judge bias in criminal sentencing, so they created an AI... and then trained it on historical sentences. Guess what happened?


In reality, if you want to create an unbiased AI, you've got to go out of your way to carefully curate the dataset to deliberately remove bias, and almost nobody is doing that.

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Green Day for sure. Although I did recently see a conservative post online, “when did Green Day start singing about politics,” so maybe they’ve gotten political…

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