History Headscratchers / Music

* Headcsratchers/ArianaGrande

* Headscratchers/KidzBop

* Headscratchers/PeggyLee

* {{Headscratchers/Musicians}}
* {{Headscratchers/Music Theory}}
* Headscratchers/KateNash

* Headscratchers/{{Rap}}

* Headscratchers/SteamPoweredGiraffe

[[/index]]

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''.
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* 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 UpToEleven and adapted it for a whole new purpose.
*** Then again, maybe it's not for a ''whole'' new [[IntercourseWithYou purpose]]...
** [[http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35880077/ns/health-kids_and_parenting/ "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. GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff.
** 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?
*** Download the foreign versions (and if I ever meet him, slap Music/MarilynManson for all the exclusive tracks all over the world, then give him a bearhug).
* Why don't the backing bands for generic manufactured pop artists go off and [[StartMyOwn 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 Music/DavidBowie 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.
** [[SarcasmMode Possibly because they're]] [[WhatMeasureIsANonCute butt]][[HollywoodHomely -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.
** Marketing will change with the times. It's ranged from good voice in the 60s-90s to sound effects and dub step.
** Jimmy Page was a renowned sessions guitarist and contributed to a surprising number of hits in TheSixties, but it still took him six or seven years to work up the confidence to try to make it on his own account. And even then his first try, in the last incarnation of Music/TheYardbirds, collapsed in acrimony, poverty and public indifference. If they hadn't rebranded with the ironic name of Music/LedZeppelin, he'd have remained obscure. Music/10CC was also born out of songwriters and sessions men who'd spent most of the 1960's playing for other people. And they wondered if it would work out, too.
** A lot of them do actually write, record and release their own music, but that doesn't mean that all of them achieve blockbuster success. Session musicians typically have their own bands or their own individual musical pursuits, but they may not be particularly marketable from a commercial standpoint, or it may just be a labour of love and not something they want to turn into a major career, or they might have career interests beyond pop stardom, or they might just simply be happy with a steady paycheck in a work environment that can be rather inconsistent.
* 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 [[strike: 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 [[SmallReferencePools American singers]].
*** I don't think that the accent people sing in affects the way most Americans feel about a musician. There are a lot of singers that are very popular in America that have large variety of accents. For instance, Shakira, Rihanna, Lorde.
*** 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).
** i assume you mean English music? most music that is in other languages use different accents, Japanese music comes to mind
** Music/TheBeatles spoke to this in their very first American press conference: Paul: The Liverpool accent - so, the way you say some of the words. You know, you say GRASS instead of GRAHHSS, and that sounds a bit American. So there ya go.
*** Also: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/explainer/2012/11/skyfall_theme_song_by_adele_why_do_british_singers_sound_american.html
* 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 [[SymphonicMetal 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.
** Sometimes the intention, while good, is let down by lack of good material, good tunes or just sheer lack of musical talent. Using an orchestra suggests there is enough depth and dimension in the musical concept to justify it. When it doesn't - it falls flat and only highlights the failings - it can even be seen as overblown and pretentious. Who, as a for instance, remembers Music/TheMoodyBlues' album ''Days Of Future Past'' which matched progressive rock band to a full concert orchestra - except for the one redeeming and truly magnificent standout track ''Nights In White Satin''? The rest is just... a time capsule of late 1960's lift music.
** Also, ThreeChordsAndTheTruth. Some bands simply don't want to do that kind of thing.
* "World" music. I do enjoy listening to tunes from all over the globe, but why this term? To [[{{Tropers/Myles}} 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.
** I dunno about exclusionary; if anything it's actually quite a broad and expansive term, really, perhaps even overly so. "World" suggests an international scope, music which can come from anywhere, a huge range of musical traditions from all over the globe.
** It's just a shorthand. Most stuff that typically gets sorted into "world music" is likely to have niche appeal at best in other countries, since it's generally traditional / folk music that doesn't necessarily translate well or have much of an audience outside of its original cultural contexts (and the stuff that ''does'' translate might more easily get sorted into "Pop", "Rock", "Electronic", "Hip-Hop" or whatever). Most stores almost certainly won't carry enough of it to really make it worth setting aside entire sections specifically to cater for, say, Burundian men's folk music or Vietnamese ''nhã nhạc'', so the examples that do make it through get sorted into "world music" so that the people who are looking for that kind of music can find it all in one place. As for people scoffing at this, they probably would -- but then, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if a lot of western music generally has limited appeal in non-western cultures and so has something similar happen to it as well. It's a cultural thing.
* 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 FridgeLogic example, if AlternativeRock 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 Music/SexPistols were an alternative to (ProgressiveRock) and what the like of {{Music/Nirvana}} were an alternative to (HairMetal), but if alt rock is the most mainstream type of rock music at the moment, why does it still bear this name?
** ArtifactTitle.
** Classical Music. Hey, it's ''[[MathematiciansAnswer 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.
*** Originally it was something that wasn't traditional rock'n'roll. Nowadays it's just a marketing term that's lost all meaning.
* Why is it that Dark Neoclassical is listed as a subgenre of DarkWave on Wiki/TheOtherWiki? 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.
** Not to mention that many, many songs are sung by the opposite sex than the supposed narrator. "Spanish Lady" is obviously supposed to be from the viewpoint of a traveling man (most likely a merchant or soldier), but is most often sung by a woman/women. From this, we get the possible funny implication of a lesbian woman watching the Spanish lady. In a similar way, 'Raining Men' is about being excited about the availability of attractive men; that it's sung by a woman is immaterial.
** It's also worth noting that the Weather Girls first came to prominence as backup singers for Sylvester, a famously CampGay disco singer. They were probably well aware of what kind of anthems became popular with the gay crowd, so the gay subtext may have been intentional to begin with.
** What bugs me about the song is the line implying that men have to be [[AllGirlsWantBadBoys 'rough and tough and strong and mean' to be appealing...]]
* Why do 80's music channels still play Milli Vanilli despite the duo being frauds?
** Any music channel that purports to play '80s music yet also plays Milli Vanilli IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED. END OF. Milli Vanilli didn't start charting until 1990, which is not a year from the 1980s. NOT AT ALL. Back away from those fraudulent "'80s music channels" NOW and look for some that actually play music from the 1980s.
** Hugely entertaining tangential rant aside, the troper above appears to be mistaken; according to Wiki/TheOtherWiki, the first US album credited to Milli Vanilli was released in 1989, they'd been releasing and charting (in Europe at least) since 1988, so it's perfectly valid for a 1980s music channel to play (some of) their music. To address the actual question, the duo who the songs are credited to are frauds, but the songs themselves still exist; it's not like someone destroyed all copies when the truth came out or it's illegal to play those songs or anything. Most music stations buy the rights to play a whole load of songs as part of a package rather than individually, particular when it comes to 'golden oldie' style hits, and they just get shoved on in the rotation along with the others, since who cares that much about a has-been Eighties/Nineties pop band who turned out to be lip-synching?
** What I cannot understand is that there have always been this sort of artists in the music industry, so why did Milli Vanilli get the massive backlash?
*** On the release it explicitly states that "Milli Vanilli are Rob Pilatus and Fab Morvan." False Advertising, in short.
* 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 ValuesDissonance, perhaps.
** It's the generational gap. The only classical singers that I know still exist today are Lana del Rey and Jackie Evancho.
* I am quite confused by how doujin music industry works:
** How much time does a doujin music singer spend on music recording? Several doujin singers ''appear as vocals in multiple albums by multiple circles'' in events which are spaced approximately 3 months in between.
** How does the circle membership work? In the VGMdb, I saw singers who are tied to one circle somehow manages to appear in music works outside of the circles they are associated in. Plus, Mitani Nana somehow manages to have an album tied to ''her own name'' rather than a circle. She may not be tied to a circle, but that makes me wonder how she managed to do it.
* How do musicians get away with mentioning brand names without any legal problems? How did Men at Work get in trouble in "Down Under" for using a few phrases from "Kookaburra," yet they mention Vegemite and not get in trouble with Kraft Foods? How did Music/BarenakedLadies talk about ''Manga/SailorMoon'' in "One Week" and not have Creator/ToeiAnimation on their tails? Did Music/DeathCabForCutie get permission from the Greyhound Bus Company for "Soul Meets Body"?
** The brand owners simply may not have considered it worth pursuing, especially in cases where a brand is so commonly referred to in everyday discussion that it almost borders on generic (as Vegemite is in Australia and Greyhound is in America) or if it's just a single mention. Quoting a substantial part of another work, however, may potentially be getting into areas of potential plagiarism. Also possible is that the brand owners might not have noticed the reference; after all, the owners of "Kookaburra" didn't notice that Men At Work had borrowed from them until 2008, twenty-eight years after the song was first released.
** It seems that mentioning brands and products in lyrics is fine - it's actually putting the brand name in the song's title (or making it part of a band name or album title) can lead to trouble. For instance, Music/TheyMightBeGiants' "AKA Driver" was originally going to be called "Nyquil Driver" until the label informed them of a potential legal issue: They had to change the title, but in the chorus they're still very clearly singing "hey, Nyquil driver" (though even then they had to avoid actually printing the lyrics in the liner notes so the word "Nyquil" wouldn't appear anywhere in the packaging). The idea is that lyrics are free speech, but a song is also a "product", and putting the name of an existing product in your product's name causes confusion. Hypothetically, one could maybe release a whole song with lyrics insulting and/or protesting a company by name as long as there was a NonAppearingTitle or just one that didn't have the name of the company in it.
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* As an actual FridgeLogic example, if AlternativeRock 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 TheSexPistols were an alternative to (ProgressiveRock) and what the like of {{Music/Nirvana}} were an alternative to (HairMetal), but if alt rock is the most mainstream type of rock music at the moment, why does it still bear this name?

* Headscratchers/GrungeBands

* Headscratchers/PandoraRadio

* Headscratchers/JustinBieber

** The brand owners simply may not / might not have considered it worth pursuing, especially in cases where a brand is so commonly referred to in everyday discussion that it almost borders on generic (as Vegemite is in Australia and Greyhound is in America) or if it's just a single mention. Quoting a substantial part of another work, however, may potentially be getting into areas of potential plagiarism. Also possible is that the brand owners might not have noticed the reference; after all, the owners of "Kookaburra" didn't notice that Men At Work had borrowed from them until 2008, twenty-eight years after the song was first released.

* Why is it that Dark Neoclassical is listed as a subgenre of DarkWave on TheOtherWiki? 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?

** Hugely entertaining tangential rant aside, the troper above appears to be mistaken; according to TheOtherWiki, the first US album credited to Milli Vanilli was released in 1989, they'd been releasing and charting (in Europe at least) since 1988, so it's perfectly valid for a 1980s music channel to play (some of) their music. To address the actual question, the duo who the songs are credited to are frauds, but the songs themselves still exist; it's not like someone destroyed all copies when the truth came out or it's illegal to play those songs or anything. Most music stations buy the rights to play a whole load of songs as part of a package rather than individually, particular when it comes to 'golden oldie' style hits, and they just get shoved on in the rotation along with the others, since who cares that much about a has-been Eighties/Nineties pop band who turned out to be lip-synching?

** It's just a shorthand. Most stuff that typically gets sorted into "world music" is likely to have niche appeal at best in other countries, since it's generally traditional / folk music that doesn't necessarily translate well or have much of an audience outside of its original cultural contexts (and the stuff that ''does'' translate might more easily get sorted into "Pop", "Rock", "Electro" or whatever). Most stores almost certainly won't carry enough of it to really make it worth setting aside entire sections specifically to cater for, say, Burundian men's folk music or Vietnamese ''nhã nhạc'', so the examples that do make it through get sorted into "world music" so that the people who are looking for that kind of music can find it all in one place. As for people scoffing at this, they probably would -- but then, I wouldn't be entirely surprised if a lot of western music generally has limited appeal in non-western cultures and so has something similar happen to it as well. It's a cultural thing.

*** Download the foreign versions (and if I ever meet him, slap MarilynManson for all the exclusive tracks all over the world, then give him a bearhug).