Monday, May 28, 2012

This new "Pop Culture"

"Can you tell me what happened to Michael Jackson
And MTV trading music for acting
Avril Lavigne's on the cover of Maxim"

-Flop Culture by FM Static









I have one question. What has happened to music today? It seems that, while music is getting easier and easier to obtain and listen to, the quality of music today is getting worse and worse.
First of all, who decided that instead of having actually good singers, many singers now auto-tune their voice. I don't want to hear the T-1000 singing, I want an actual real life human-being showing me that they have some form of talent not given to them by some man made machine. Could you see Frank Sinatra using auto-tune to perfect his voice? No, CAUSE IT'S ALREADY BEAUTIFUL!!!

Now, another thing that bothers me about music is how some types of music can be so repetitive. Take rap for example, why is every song about fornicating with female dogs, obtaining money in an illegal manner, or utilizing a certain illegal plant. Granted there are a few rap songs that stray from this conformity but that is only a 4% chance. The use of media as similes in rap songs is also a frequent occurance, mainly of the movie Inception. I was in a friends car and we were listening to rap on her ipod and for five songs in a row is made a reference the Inception. Why? Do you really need to talk about another person's dreams that much. Are you Edward Cullen???

One more thing that I have learned from rap music is that if you want to be famous then all one must do is create a completely obnoxious dance that requires nothing more than one to lean back and forth while standing completely still. This makes absolutely no sense to me. These songs aren't even that good. They just repeat the exact same words over and over. The only joy I can get is from the many bands that choose to make fun of this abhorrent choice of music style. One of these songs that I have recently stumbled upon is performed by the band Family Force 5. In their latest cd they have a song called "Wobble". In it they state that they have created a new dance where one hits their knees together and swings their arms around themselves like they're "hugging themselves." This song brings me such delight while the video brings me even more:



I also wish music provided something more thought provoking than a few random beats or lines half-hazardly thrown together in order to rhyme. Some songs just do not make any sense or when they try to make a song into something sweet but inturn end up doing the opposite. An example of this is the new British backstreet boys band called One Direction, specifically with their song "What Makes You Beautiful". Now if you've never heard the song before you may be wondering, "What makes her beautiful?" Luckily for you I will tell you without you having to look up the song. Ready for it? Insecurity. That's what makes her beautiful. You don't actually find that out until the end of the song when they say "You don't know you're beautiful/That's what makes you beautiful". Honestly for me, I like a girl that knows she's beautiful. I don't want to have to tell her that everyday. I want to tell her that because I love her, not because she needs to be reminded. Now there's is a different song with the same them that I think states how beautiful a girl is much better. It is "Will You Return?" by The Avette Brothers. Towards the end of the song the singer repeats "I wish you’d see yourself as beautiful as I see you. Why can’t you see yourself as beautiful as I see you?" The difference in this song is that it wants the girl to understand she's beautiful.

After explaining to my friend why I disliked the One Direction song her reply was, "So. It's fun to dance too." And that is what this music industry has reduced us too. Songs that are "fun to dance too." Not songs that hold any value to them. Why do we even bother putting words in to songs anymore or bother having them make sense as long as they rhyme. It's all the same, right? What makes music beautiful? Not much anymore.

-Beaded Harmony

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