Is it just me, or does most new music suck ass?

No, not anything can be given artistic meaning. I think that decency requires us to dismiss a painting of an extremely perverse pornographic act as unworthy of the title of art.

You are right, though, that there are plenty of subjects that can either be presented meaninglessly or be given much meaning in the right light. The standards I refer to above define what "the right light" is. It is not whatever anyone wants it to be.

Certainly it might not be art, but I don't think you can flat-out say that it cannot be.

Maybe not in some abstract philosophical sense removed from all reality, but when we are talking about looking at an actual work in front of me, I certainly can.

But the example you gave was non-specific. Your argument cannot therefore be specific.

Well, the standards I refer to have been debated and refined over centuries. I don't think I can type fast enough to post all of the arguments before I die. Maybe in my next life...

If it matters anymore, I daresay that OK Computer is the best album to have come out in the last 5 years or so.

I just downloaded it, going to check it out. Downloaded Kid A too

Where's Riverview? I've lived in Vero Beach for the last 12 years...

Cool.

Near Tampa.

Ahh, Kid A. Everything In Its Right Place is a great song.

As for the whole art debate, the authour determins what it is.

Several great artists have shown thier expression of depression in thier art, it is an emotion and therefore can be expressed, it's great that you like to be optimistic and say art should be all happy and beautiful, but who defines beauty? Edvard Munch, Edward Hopper, great artists who express alienation and isolation in thier paintings. If you think that negative energy cannot be art, then perhaps you don't understand art.

I don't know...I always listened to 'creep' as sort of a sarcastic song in a way.

Yes, I reccomend Ok Computer, an excellent album indeed!

In my opinion, certainly not the best album in the last five years, but good nonetheless.

As for your comment that todays music cannot match the artistic complexity of old music, that is completely obsurd. It is like saying that old books are always better than new books, I hate it when people say things like this. Shakespeare is half the writer of Garcia Marquez or, Kafka, or Camus. In my opinion.

New can be just as good as old, age is and should not be a factor.

Like I tried to say before, good art ranges somewhere in between the ideal and actual human experience. There most definitely CAN be good art that is depressing (DSOM). The good stuff still focuses on the intensity of the emotion, not describing how some guy is sad because he got his bike stolen, but reaching for the ideal form of the emotion. Shakespeare's tragedies were meant to be as gripping and as, well, tragic as possible. His tragedies are studied because they are so full of the characteristics that make us realize the full potential for tragedy: mainly irony, knowledge that the audience was privvy to that could have easily solved everything, blah blah. I think that merely bitching about stuff is a cop-out because there is always plenty of stuff to bitch about, and many times no creative effort is being put into the story.

I am by no means saying that older stuff is automatically better, I think that is dumb. For as much good music as there was in the 60's and 70's, there was PLENTY of crap. But you have to admit that culture goes in cycles of good periods and bad periods. Why could we not be in an artistic dry spell, where very little good art or, in this case, music, is being made? I think we are. These cycles have occurred all throughout history, why not now?

Many people say that all of the older stuff is better merely because they have plenty of people analyzing it and much has been written about how or why one should appreciate it, while the new stuff is unexplored and actually takes some sense of what is good and an analytical ability for an individual to recognize the good, since nobody has already come to a consensus on it. I am not one of these people incapable of adapting. I appreciate classical music, but I can still appreciate Pink Floyd, which is only 40 years old. Hell, I can even appreciate songs that are being released as we speak, so I do not lack the ability to recognize good music, I'm just saying there is a lot less of it coming out right now than in the time of Floyd.

By the way, in your opinion, what IS the best album to come out in the last 5 years? I can't think of a good one...

You say we're in a dry spell. I personally think the music coming out now is vastly superior to that which came out forty years ago. This is called a difference of opinions.