そしてこれにつづく...
~~~
Alright, so today I'm just going to vent a bit of my frustrations here about the current state of the pop music industry.
I've been so frustrated with the decline in music quality over the years. It's become so much trash nowadays that it is almost embarrassing to listen to some of the songs that are coming out. There is no such thing as the conscious musician anymore, just mindless pop singers and dancers. These "singers" sing songs that become majour hits, break records and earn them various awards that they honestly don't deserve. Take for instance the current chart topper, TiK ToK by Ke$ha. It's been at the number 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles charts since the 2nd of January, a little over a month by now. It has broken the number of US digital sales for a female artist since 2003 and also the record for Billboards Pop Songs radio airplay chart by getting more than 11,224 plays in a week. This being a song about getting drunk, partying it up and just plain getting wasted by the end of the night. Then you've got others like Lady Gaga, Flo Rida, David Guetta and the list goes on. Even acts that have been around for a while take note of this current trend and "dumb-down" their musical content to an all-time low to get to an all-time high point in their career, e.g. The Black Eyed Peas.
Since my taste in music centres around RnB, Hip-Hop and maybe a bit of pop, I'll be centralising my discussion around it. So then, let's compare the songs from the past few years to the classics from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and maybe up until the 90s. In the 50s you'd have influential artists like Nat King Cole, Ray Charles, Elvis Presley. The 60s brought The Beatles, the whole Motown label, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones. In the 70s you have Stevie Wonder, The Jackson 5, AC/DC, Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye. In the 80s there was Michael Jackson, Prince, Whitney Housten, Janet Jackson, Luther Vandross, Run D.M.C., Beastie Boys, NWA. 90s had Boyz II Men, Tony! Toni! Tone!, Usher, D'Angelo, Aaliyah, R. Kelly, TLC, Seal, Brandy, Monica, Toni Braxton, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston. And then even in the early 2000s, we had acts like Ne-yo, Chris Brown, Kanye West, Alicia Keys, Craig David. Over that long history of music, music slowly degraded to the state that it is in now.
These days, there are hardly any songs that could be considered classics 20-30 years in the future. For example, where are the songs these days that are like; Unforgettable/Mona Lisa/Smile/Fly Me To The Moon by Nat King Cole, Georgia On My Mind/Hit The Road Jack by Ray Charles, Ain't No Mountain High Enough/I Heard It Through The Grapevine by Marvin Gaye and Co., Isn't She Lovely/Superstition/Higher Ground/I Just Called To Say I Love You by Stevie Wonder. Nothing that has come out within the past few years can compare musically to these true artists or any of their musical creations and adaptions. How can you compare Lady Gaga's Bad Romance to Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing, or Flo Rida's Low to Common's I Love H.E.R., or Ke$ha's Tik Tok to Michael Jackson's Thriller. There is no comparison artistically. It's now all about partying hard, having crazy sex and getting trashed. It's a shame really.
I haven't even started yet, I could say so much more but I haven't. It's something that has been bothering me for so long and I hope that things can only get better now. Otherwise I'll just have to stick to these classic songs and just ignore the stupidity of the industry for the time being. Glad to atleast get some of that off my chest haha.
~~~
Alright, so today I'm just going to vent a bit of my frustrations here about the current state of the pop music industry.
I've been so frustrated with the decline in music quality over the years. It's become so much trash nowadays that it is almost embarrassing to listen to some of the songs that are coming out. There is no such thing as the conscious musician anymore, just mindless pop singers and dancers. These "singers" sing songs that become majour hits, break records and earn them various awards that they honestly don't deserve. Take for instance the current chart topper, TiK ToK by Ke$ha. It's been at the number 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles charts since the 2nd of January, a little over a month by now. It has broken the number of US digital sales for a female artist since 2003 and also the record for Billboards Pop Songs radio airplay chart by getting more than 11,224 plays in a week. This being a song about getting drunk, partying it up and just plain getting wasted by the end of the night. Then you've got others like Lady Gaga, Flo Rida, David Guetta and the list goes on. Even acts that have been around for a while take note of this current trend and "dumb-down" their musical content to an all-time low to get to an all-time high point in their career, e.g. The Black Eyed Peas.
Since my taste in music centres around RnB, Hip-Hop and maybe a bit of pop, I'll be centralising my discussion around it. So then, let's compare the songs from the past few years to the classics from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and maybe up until the 90s. In the 50s you'd have influential artists like Nat King Cole, Ray Charles, Elvis Presley. The 60s brought The Beatles, the whole Motown label, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones. In the 70s you have Stevie Wonder, The Jackson 5, AC/DC, Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye. In the 80s there was Michael Jackson, Prince, Whitney Housten, Janet Jackson, Luther Vandross, Run D.M.C., Beastie Boys, NWA. 90s had Boyz II Men, Tony! Toni! Tone!, Usher, D'Angelo, Aaliyah, R. Kelly, TLC, Seal, Brandy, Monica, Toni Braxton, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston. And then even in the early 2000s, we had acts like Ne-yo, Chris Brown, Kanye West, Alicia Keys, Craig David. Over that long history of music, music slowly degraded to the state that it is in now.
These days, there are hardly any songs that could be considered classics 20-30 years in the future. For example, where are the songs these days that are like; Unforgettable/Mona Lisa/Smile/Fly Me To The Moon by Nat King Cole, Georgia On My Mind/Hit The Road Jack by Ray Charles, Ain't No Mountain High Enough/I Heard It Through The Grapevine by Marvin Gaye and Co., Isn't She Lovely/Superstition/Higher Ground/I Just Called To Say I Love You by Stevie Wonder. Nothing that has come out within the past few years can compare musically to these true artists or any of their musical creations and adaptions. How can you compare Lady Gaga's Bad Romance to Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing, or Flo Rida's Low to Common's I Love H.E.R., or Ke$ha's Tik Tok to Michael Jackson's Thriller. There is no comparison artistically. It's now all about partying hard, having crazy sex and getting trashed. It's a shame really.
I haven't even started yet, I could say so much more but I haven't. It's something that has been bothering me for so long and I hope that things can only get better now. Otherwise I'll just have to stick to these classic songs and just ignore the stupidity of the industry for the time being. Glad to atleast get some of that off my chest haha.
~~~
...この醜い脳裏
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