Why Is Most
Music So Bad Today?
© 2006 BestShowTicketsLasVegas.com
"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
~ Charles H. Duell, Commissioner of the US Patent
Office in 1899.
"Children nowadays are tyrants. They contradict
their parents, gobble their food and tyrannize their
teachers." ~ Socrates
Why is popular music so bad today? I mean, I'm not
that old, but jeez, the music of today, with only
a few rare exceptions, kinda stinks. Some would say
that when New Year's Eve 1979 ended, we were ushered
into an era of lame music that we still haven't escaped
from today.
I grew up in the 80's and remember listening to the
Beatles, John Lennon, Simon
& Garfunkel, Roger
Waters and Pink Floyd, the Rolling
Stones, Bob
Marley, and David Bowie, to name a few, with my
brothers or my dad. I remember seeing album covers
strewn about my brother's bedroom. Albums, not CD's.
(If you're a really young reader, albums are like
CD's in that they're flat and round, but black, and
a lot bigger. The get scratched and don't work just
like CD's though).
Some say that the 60's were a turbulent time in the
U.S. and the world and thus created a perfect environment
and culture for innovative and creative music. But
let's face it. These days are pretty turbulent as
well. So where's the Crosby,
Still, Nash and Young of today to sing about our
involvement in Iraq? Or where is the Paul
Simon of today to protest the government's stance
on stem cell research? All we've gotten recently is
the new Paris Hilton CD. Paris Hilton? Isn't she just
famous for being famous? And her new CD actually got
some good reviews.
Before anyone accuses me of painting a broad brush
stroke condemning all music after the 70's, let me
say that in more recent times there has been a small
amount of good stuff like Phish or Midnite, and even
politically-minded music such as U2, but no where
near the creative amount of earlier times.
I remember when the Dixi
Chicks came out against President Bush and the
Iraq war. While not a bad band, they're hardly going
to achieve iconic status. And they paid dearly at
the hands of big business for their outspoken views.
That's a far cry from the politically-charged days
of Woodstock where many artists were speaking out,
and changing things.
If you think about it, there are only a select few
artists or bands that can regularly sell out huge
arenas today. These are the icons. And the vast majority
of those artists are bands from before the 80's! Between
last summer and this summer, here are some of the
really big concert
ticket sellers: The
Rolling Stones, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, Paul
McCartney, Barbra
Streisand, Eric
Clapton and The
Eagles.
I recently read an article that suggested that music
and tour promoters, large venue owners and ticket
companies are all worried about concert sales taking
a plunge after the legendary artists stop touring.
They realize it's going to be hard to sell out big
arenas after the dinosaurs become extinct. Who are
the artists of today who will reach that status tomorrow?
In a recent interview with Joe Walsh on Sirius Radio
Joe said there is not nearly as much improvisational
rock anymore. And I agree. When asked what bands he
thought were decent these days, he couldn't think
of any for a while, and then finally said he thought
the Goo
Goo Dolls were good. Hmmm.
Maybe I'm some kind of curmudgeon, but Top 40 today
is just not as good as it used to be. Is Kevin Federline
really talented? I just found out recently that his
nickname is K-Fed. How about fed up? I think K-Fed,
J-Lo, X-tina (Christina Aguilera, no joke) and A-Rod
all need to get together ASAP and rethink their feeble
nicknames, just an FYI.
Here are the top 5 songs right now in the Summer
of 2006:
- Fergie - London Bridge
- Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
- Nelly Furtado Featuring Timbaland - Promiscuous
- The Pussycat Dolls Featuring Snoop Dogg - Buttons
- Panic!
At The Disco - I Write Sins Not Tragedies
And here were the top 5 albums of 2005:
- Mariah
Carey - The Emancipation of Mimi
- 50
Cent - The Massacre
- Kelly
Clarkson - Breakaway
- Green Day - American Idiot
- The
Black Eyed Peas - Monkey Business
Here are the top 5 albums of 1976:
- Peter Frampton - Frampton Comes Alive
- Fleetwood Mac - Fleetwood Mac
- Wings - Wings At The Speed Of Sound
- Eagles - Eagles Greatest Hits 1971-1975
- Chicago - Chicago IX Greatest Hits
And here are the top 5 albums of 1966
- Original Soundtrack The Sound Of Music
- The Beatles - Revolver
- The Beatles - Rubber Soul
- The Rolling
Stones - Aftermath
- The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
Is it just me, or is there a glaring difference between
the two 21st Century lists and the second two 20th
Century lists? To be fair, I actually own Monkey Business
and I like it. Also, Green Day is decent. Admittedly,
Wings isn't the best Paul
McCartney music around, but it is Sir Paul after
all, and Chicago and The Beach Boys are a little weak.
But overall, the lists just don't compare.
The music industry itself has changed so drastically
that I think that is one of the main reasons there
is such a chasm between today's music and the creations
of yesteryear. Like sports and medicine, music in
another industry that has been a casualty of big business
and American capitalism.
No longer does the actual music quality drive the
industry. Instead, the people with the money and power
at the record companies notice some bad music selling
well to young people for example, and therefore decide
that from then on they're only going to find and promote
that type of bad music since it made a few bucks.
They've totally stopped listening to the music and
instead only listen to the dollars.
No longer does the music they create determine the
success of a band. Instead, entertainment conglomerates
tell fans what to listen to, and that determines the
success. They do this because they have such a strangle
hold on the media. We only have the illusion of choice
now. A vicious circle has begun where the whole industry
is inexorably spinning down, unable to find purchase
on the sides of some slimy corporate funnel, circling
downward uncontrollably into the abyss of painfully
bad music.
Some bands occasionally slip through the vortex relatively
intact, sidestepping the almost institutionalized
process of "making it" set in place by music
executives. Phish is a great example of this. They
became hugely successful in spite of the music industry.
Because they were so good and so tenacious in touring
and jamming, they attracted a large fan base. The
sheer numbers of eventual fans Phish had gave them
a power that most artists today can't have. Most other
artists have to do what the people with the purse
strings tell them to do. And that often makes for
bad music. Unfortunately, Phish isn't even together
any more. But they're a rare exception in that they
came after the 70's and were highly creative and improvisational.
Another thing that contributes to the poor music
of today is technology. These days, Hollywood actors
who can't sing can have singing careers. The engineers
touch up their voices, and use every digital sound
technique there is to make an average product sellable,
just like the magazines airbrush the models and actresses,
trimming years off to complete the illusion. There
are many ways in which the music engineers can do
this in the studio and even for artists on tour.
Ashlee
Simpson is a good example of this. First, we saw
her on Saturday Night Live getting caught lip-sinking.
Then I heard a recent interview where Joe Walsh's
daughter, Lucy Walsh, admitted that as Ashlee's keyboard
player, she always doubled Ashlee's voice while on
tour.
I know that in any era there's going to be silly
music acts like Ashlee Simpson, Kevin Federline and
Paris Hilton. I realize that during Bob
Dylan's time there were lots of feeble yet famous
music artists then too. My complaint is that it seems
like in any other era there was at least enough really
fantastic and original music being created to balance
things out.
Let's go backwards. We've looked at the popular music
of the 21st Century a little in the lists above and
I don't see any really original music in there at
all. Some may argue that the grunge era of the 90's
produced some great and original music. I argue that
almost all of that music was so heavily influenced
by the rock of the 60's and 70's that it really wasn't
that original at all.
The music of the 80's matched the hair and clothes
of the time, lame. The synthesizer was new then, but
the music was reasonably bad, and certainly not timeless.
But then we come to the 70's and 60's. Those are the
decades that last held any hope for people like me
who long for fresh, original, creative and improvisational
music.
In 1899 the Commissioner of the US Patent Office
wrote "Everything that can be invented has been
invented." Alright, maybe he was a little off.
But in a way, everything that seems new is really
just new combinations of existing things. Music is
no different. I'm hoping that we return to the days
when the combinations of beats, rhythms, harmonies
and melodies become as creative as they were in the
60's and 70's.
But maybe things haven't changed much since even
Socrates' times. He thought kids were tyrants, as
if his generation was the last of a dying breed of
angelic children. Maybe he just didn't understand
the kids of his era, and maybe I'm the same way.
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