What' Music?

So, in lieu of the recent Grammy Awards (I know, I'm a tad late) I thought I'd talk about today's music scene. I was discussing this last week with the writer of Sansiracy/my boyfriend. We were talking about the mainstream music that is out there today, and our general consensus was "what music?" Or perhaps, a more appropriate question is "where did the good stuff go?"

Really though, where did the good music go? I feel a lot of the stuff out on the radio today is not really music. It's people kind of chanting along with the beat and you don't really even know if that's really them singing anymore because of all the technological advances made in the production side of music. You can now alter one's voice so drastically that it doesn't even sound like their original voice at all. And not only one artist is doing it, A LARGE MAJORITY of 'artists' are doing it these days making the music sound less unique.

Whatever happened to the days where people were trying to trail blaze their way through the music industry? Where did the art of singing go? Where did the reviews that said "_______ has a unique sound...". It's gone because a lot of music sounds the same. And to make matters worse, there are artists that are ultimately recycling their own beat. They're taking an old beat, adding two new tricks and BHAM! a new track? Whaaa? How is that a new track when i just heard that two years ago?!

I then started to ask the question, "are today's music artists really artists anymore? What art are they trying to portray? Can you even say that today's artists are musicians too? Can they read music? Do they even know what the key of C is? Or do they just listed to their production director and mimic that not even knowing what note they're singing?!" Yes, there are those artists that are really artists who know how to play a musical instrument, who do, in fact write their own music, and know what a musical bar is? Do they know what 3/4 time is? How many beats there would be per measure?" and the list of questions goes on and on and on. I feel like a lot of "artists" today just read the words on a sheet of paper and put their own melody to it without even knowing what notes they're singing.

I think there are a number of factors that feed into this. Well first of all, society's standard of what good music is has significantly lowered. The lyricists of today are not nearly as eloquent and creative as the greats once were. Our language is drastically changing. We now speak in acronyms and abbreviations. Upcoming generations will no longer know how to spell words properly because they're so used to abbreviating everything. All of this affects how we see and perceive music.

I would also like to look at the lack of music programs in schools. Those budget cuts have negatively affected the music scene. Kids don't even know what a french horn looks like anymore or anything. They don't know how to read music, know what major and minor chords are, etc. Therefore, i think they won't know a bad tune from a good tune.

I could easily go on and on about this. My point is there is a lost art of music out there. I know I'm going to raise my kids to be musically intelligent. And hopefully the upcoming generations will raise the bar and increase the standards of what "good mainstream" music is. Yes, the definition of music is changing, but i can't say that I particularly like where it's going.

What do you think of music today? Who is your favorite artist/band? Do you, like me, yearn for the music of the 90's and early 2000's?

Well for your musical plug for the day, here's a classic track from, what I have dubbed, "the golden years" of music. Enjoy!


Thanks for listening!
...until next time...