Okay. I love music. It is arguably my greatest passion. And I’m sure I’m not the only one. Music triggers something primal inside us, a desire that activates when we hear a simple guitar strumming to a 100 piece orchestra.
Which brings me to my point. Today, with all the music coming out rapid-fire in all forms, videos, concerts, CD’s, MP3′s, why is my need for music unsatisfied by the offerings of Virgin Radio? We’ll start with the songwriting. This should be the backbone of a song, what defines it, the pure essence of the music. There are two aspects, the lyrics and then the instrumental. Both are equally important, in my books. Unfortunately, todays artists beg to differ. A prime example would be Bruno Mars’ latest single, The Lazy Song. I believe that the title surmises the quality fairly well. This song was lazy from inception. It is a song about nothing. He is singing, but the words don’t tell a story, they don’t have any meaning. And then the music in the background. It too has been perverted by the menace of modern music that I like to call the ClapTrack, a clever play on claptrap. It too is one of the laziest things you can do with a song, and today it is nearly more overused than autotune, a device used by nearly all the artists on the Billboard Top 40.
On a side note, another thing that bothers me is that today, the band doesn’t get any recognition. Today, we have Justin Bieber and the Unknowns. Who can tell me who the drummer for Taylor Swift is? Who is the bassist for Ke$ha? Back in the 70′s, 80′s, 90′s even, you had groups. Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, AC/DC. The entire band was a unit, no one person was more important than another. We’ve lost this, because the current mindset is this: 1, the band isn’t as important as the singer, or 2, artists don’t need a band anymore. Instead they get the drum track they need from their MacBook and are ready to go.
I’m going to address that point there. Without the band, you don’t have a vehicle for your songs unless you want to kick it solo with an acoustic guitar. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but if these people are helping rocket you to stardom, acknowledge their existence please? Selena Gomez, believe it or not, has done this. She campaigned long and hard with her record company to just be called ‘The Scene’, but finally, in order to get more recognition for her and her band, she added her name at the beginning to become ‘Selena Gomez and the Scene.’ Now, I don’t like her music much, mainly because her songs don’t have any soul. But she is intent on not being the only one with fame. She recognises the contributions of her band, and for that she has earned my respect.
As for the whole MacBook issue, the end result is that all the singles coming out from Rihanna to Ke$ha, they all sound the same. It’s the same electro-pop dance groove that will spend fifteen minutes at the top of the charts and then be relegated to the dustbin of history. So why are todays youth still gobbling it down like leftover pizza? This question remains unanswered.
Back to the main point. Lazy songwriting seems to be the epitome of the problem. You have a simple, three chord riff, or failing that, a whole bunch of electronic noise followed by an obnoxious beat generated by a drum machine. Then, over every last second of the instrumental, you hear either stereotypical adolescent musings or words without meaning. And yes, I did say every last second for a reason.
There are no blank spaces in music anymore. Apart from the occasional eight bar guitar solo, every bit of music is covered up by singing. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy singing along. But music needs blank spaces, man. Let it be fifteen seconds between verses or a minute long intro, the instrumental is just as important as the lyrics. We’ve lost that along the way too.
Lastly, the artificial polish on music today is sickening as well. The old process included recording everything onto analogue tape and then editing it together with a razor blade. Now, you record everything into a computer and put it into Pro Tools. If you played a wrong note, you don’t have to go back and play it again, because you know one more time is such a huge trial. Instead, you use Pro Tools to erase all the mistakes. You can even arrange the drum beats to be within a sixteenth of a second of where they need to be. And this ruins the soul of the music. Sure, it sounds good, but it sounds thin. It’s too perfect. That’s why the only way to experience a band now is to see them live. Because the album is a computer-generated version of the band. No grit, no grunt, just laziness.
Music these days sucks. Laziness has corrupted the industry. And it seems like it will just keep getting worse.
