One of the essential circumstances of existence you as a person needs to become comfortable with is that everyone hates you and loves to bitch about everything you’re doing wrong. Now, were you the only target of such intellectual subjectivism, it wouldn’t be much of an issue. I mean, who are you, right? Just some apathetic bystander with a predilection for reading web-based commentaries involving the opinions of exceedingly handsome professional internet personalities? Please. The problem is that EVERYONE has a bone to pick with EVERYONE. Today I want to talk about a subject that invokes some of the most scathing and righteous debate of the modern day- Who has the worst music and why? Everyone and their brother know exactly who the most creative and inspiring act in the industry are; who’s pushing the boundaries and expanding the musical frontier. And believe you me, they’ve got the time and energy to tell you who it is and why they’re better than that shit you listen to. Go see what I mean- hop on YouTube and name-drop someone you dig in a comment ANYWHERE. You’ll be berated by a well rehearsed lecture about how your idols are unoriginal sell outs with no creative juices while so-and-so are virtuosos with merits the size of Batman’s cock before you can say “Superman’s cock.” What strikes me as odd is this- Everyone criticizes everyone for the same crimes which everyone is guilty of.
Everyone’s pissed off that some band or genre is either a clone or just downright uninspired. But the reality of it is the amount of “new” music we’ve seen in our lifetime could fit on a DVD. Pop, rock, electronic, metal- it’s all slowing down. For every one original endeavor represented by talented and driven individuals, there are twenty garage bands that somehow broke into the industry on power chords and spirit. These kids, I don’t care in what genre, basically pick up an instrument and learn the basic principles of music, then stylize it with hollow lyrics and ship it out on demos. Most pop songs are built on progressions so generic they’re used as exercises in beginner’s music books. And don’t even get me started on the beaten dead horse that is the “emo” scene, where it’s borderline taboo to write anything outside the constraints of sticking to the image. Ironic for a subculture so bent on breaking away from anything that could be correlated with any sort of “norm.”
My point is, no one’s doing anything new anymore. The masses are being sold the same record over and over again dressed up to look like different genres and experiences, but everyone’s making the same songs they have been for decades and it’s slowing further still. Personally, I’m worried we’ll never recover from grunge, which taught us that a cultural phenomenon can be created from apathy (Wiggidy wiggidy whaaaat?). People have lost sight of two of the most important parts of making thoughtful music- the jam and the process of experimentation. What do I mean by these? Well, for the former, I mean no one fully appreciates the joy found in seriously digging into a groove anymore. It’s all about the performance and the packaging; so many bobbing heads are insincere these days. As for the latter, it should speak for itself. When was the last time you saw a talented and creative individual hop onstage and try new things, move outside his comfort zone, and arrive at something new and surprising? Not recently enough, I submit, because audiences have come to hold lax standards, to expect too little from artists. I say, it’s time for a crackdown across the board. In every genre, from every studio, we need to demand more. More thought, more feeling, more meaning, because with a powerful enough to create the unity that music can and currently isn’t, we could already be changing the world.
“We just need to throw some new ideas in. We will eventually get out of this closed off circle we are part of.”
-Between the Buried and Me
People have built their cliques on counterculture, humorously enough, people no longer even think the counterculture is real (Which, make no mistake, It isn't), Counterculture *IS* culture, We're all just deranged hipsters convinced that we're the ones pushing society to the limits while we swill PBR out of Jimmy Hoffa 4 Teamsterz cups playing "House Rules" beerpong like the next guys. The world has become New York, Everyone is a New Yorker, (Perhaps people from Texas aren't, but I hesitate to call anything from Texas 'people' as that implies a base level of human dignity) We're all so sucked up in our own novels that we can't see whats really happening. What we need is real collaboration, we need an eye-opening moment in our era, The era of the Digital Generation has become so wrapped up in making ourselves accepted in the corrupt human community that we're willing to accept any vaguely romantic ambiguous sugar-coated pop song as divine truth and offer our bodies as sacrifice before the gods of the American Way. They say a cynic is just a man who is used to making accurate observations, but maybe its us cynics who have fucked up the worst, Maybe its all really happening out there bringing people together over the experience of the creation of a creative work, Having truely human moments together and experiencing something greater than greed or fame or ass or whatever other contrived materialistic reason we slave to our capitalistic masters, but simply create for the joy of creation. Unlikely, You can determine the results of any human endeavor keeping only one thing in mind "Which is more essentially human, Fear or Laziness", and all signifigant works have emerged from those two human elements alone, Now that pop music has created a nauseatingly comfortable environment, devoid of creativity and sterilized with ambiguous (and frankly seemingly uncomfortable) sex metaphors involving disco sticks (Let me take a moment to say fuck you lady gaga). The perfect environment for stagnancy has emerged, Where you can be popular at just about fuck all everything, but the fame flies away fast and leaves you jonesing for more. So I guess I have to ask what the fuck to expect exactly, Justin Bieber coming out with an experimental Folk/Electronica album? Fat chance for our contemporary music 'idols' to seriously take the idea of Musical experimentation seriously. We'll let the marijuana haze drift out and let the apathy of the 21st century creep right in.
ReplyDeleteBravo, Kyl.
ReplyDelete