Ask Lemmy

ITT: people who have severely underestimated Mozart's musical capacities and contributions.

Mozart is a musician that is studied by nearly any professional musician. There are historians, musical scholars, and museums dedicated to him. He's a household name across the world. He established a period of music. As a teenager, he deciphered a 12 min choral piece with multiple groups and solos after hearing it once and by memory wrote it down later that night (he heard it a 2nd time a few days later for minor corrections). When he presented the score to the clergy, they said he got one note wrong. After investigation, Mozart heard it right. The musician's score was off by a note. Could any popular musician mentioned here decipher just a 6 min song of 4 instrument band after hearing it once with pen and paper ready? Imagine telling any music legend now, "Hey, you're off by a half a step on the 3rd note of bar 28 of your own song."

Comparing an awesome popular singer, guitarist, or band to him is like comparing your friend that got a job at NASA to Einstein. There is no modern Mozart. There have been greats since Mozart, but there haven't been any Mozarts since Mozart. I say this as a Beethoven fan. Mozart was the only Mozart. He was so good, that his name became a title for great musician: Mozart. No one listed in this thread is anywhere near being a Mozart.

King Gizzard. They love weird-ass time signatures (look up the ridiculousness that is Crumbling Castle for an example), polyrhythms, unconventional tuning, and such. They hop from one genre to another, they probably have one of the highest album-to-year ratios in music (not including live and demo albums), sometimes they're serious, sometimes they're silly, sometimes they're silly-serious. The biggest blow to them however, is that nothing they make is truly a "masterpiece". It all ranges from "good" to "great" but nothing they've made is really a "masterpiece". Maybe in time they'll make a true masterpiece, but nothing yet quite qualifies imo.

The other nomination I'd make is Devin Townsend. Where King Gizzard is extremely prolific but doesn't make masterpieces, Devin Townsend takes his time and makes masterpieces. Despite its silliness, Ziltoid the Omniscient is one of the best, if not the best, metal albums, period. It's an album so good that even my parents, who don't like metal, have songs they enjoy from the album. Empath is a stunning blend of metal, electronic, prog, praise & worship/gospel,^1 and god knows what else. The man just does things and they come out amazing.

^1 Afaik Devin Townsend's not a Christian, sorry to any Christian peeps hoping for good Christian music. He just incorporated that sound into the album.

Jacob Collier

You ever seen that post about how classical music is closest to metal? Well Kerry King is our modern day Mozart.

David Bowie, few have his range and talent.

This is the kind of question that makes me hate my mortality, because culture is so scattered and vast and changing so rapidly these days that it seems difficult to imagine anything "modern" lasting for hundreds more years, and we'll never actually be able to know the answer.

Kevin MacLeod.

If you are going to compare you should add the context of each, and by adding the context Mozart was a genius and cannot be compared.

I'm learning lots of good music here, but I was really hoping Surfan Stevens was a surf-rock cover artist of Sufjan Stevens and Cat Stevens.

I'm going to go with Steven Wilson for this. Mostly because he and Mozart have an undeniable talent, many of their fans consider them to be some type of visionary savant, and despite the broad agreement toward that perspective I still find both of their outputs to be broadly incredibly dull.

Squarepusher cones to mind

Ramin Djawadi no contest.

I would say David Gilmour. Pink Floyd music comes to mind for having some pretty symphonic sounds.

Maybe someone like John Oliva

Alpine Universe is pretty damn good, I thought it was a band until I looked them up on Instagram and found out it was one dude that multi-tracks his voice and plays multiple instruments. I watched a few of his production videos and was amazed.

Freddy Mercury and David Bowie are up there in that podium.

ZUN.

Everyone, if everyone could live the lives they want to without starving.

The fact that Miles Davis or Duke Ellington haven't shown up yet makes me question the musical diversity of Lemmy.

Ben Folds. He's got classical, jazz and rock chops, with a full helping of the wit and mischief in his lyrics.

Dwayne Rudolph Goettel (Skinny Puppy) Peter Christopherson (Psychic TV, Coil, Throbbing Gristle)

If we change this question to generational, instead of "modern times", those two would fit into Gen X.

Richard Wright (Pink Floyd) Ray Manzarek (Doors) Elton John

For the "Boomers".

Tori Amos Trent Reznor Atticus Ross

For the Millenials.

I'm sure there's many more from those 3 generations. But they have my vote.

Incredible Polo

Jack Antonoff has some incredible talent. He's written and produced a lot of iconic pop music.

Louis Cole has a great understanding of music structure and plays around with it very well

Well, Mozart was a composer, so I don't know what parallels you're drawing from to compare hin to Weird Al or Surfan [sic] Stevens. If we're talking strictly in terms of best living musicians, Joanna Newsom is probably the best songwriter of the past fifty years, and in my opinion, the second place isn't even close.

No planet on which Sufjan Stevens is a Mozart.

Uncontroversial:

Radiohead

David Bowie

Daft punk

Controversial:

Kanye

Terrible person, but then again that wasn't the question.

Justin Timberlake has dropped hit after hit for almost 30 years and hasn't had any real controversies along the way.