Music For The Masses
I know a lot of people that like to talk about how the music industry is in a terrible state. How “popular” music is all dull, monotonous, uninspiring pap and no one is doing enough to fix it.
I’m really not that convinced.
We all know that Simon Cowell is Satan’s role model – that he makes a fortune exploiting idiots. But is he the cause of the state of the industry?
No.
You’re probably assuming that the idiots I just referred to are the poor, dumb contestants on his abortion of a reality show. Well, that’s only 1% of them. The rest are the general public. The Great British Population.
Last year’s final was watched by 20 million people. One third of the country’s population and TWO thirds of everyone that was watching TV in it’s timeslot. This is always a good statistic to have in the arsenal when people reel out the argument that not THAT many people watch. That it’s all down to the viewers voting multiple times and really, only a tiny percentage of the public are interested in it.
That’s simply not true.
We are surrounded by idiots.
The majority of the general public think that the absolute height of musical talent is being able to just carry a tune – to rattle off a song that someone else wrote without going out of tune … and of course, to do it whilst half naked, girating like a drunken prostitute in a Dutch window.
It amazes me that half way through the series of one of these shitty shows, when Cheryl Cole decided to perform, everyone’s immediate reaction was …
“THAT’s showed them how it’s done! Wow! She’s BRILLIANT!”
Fuck off.
At the start of the 80’s, it seemed like all the people with influence in the music industry all made a bet with each other, much like the $1 bet in the Eddie Murphy movie, Trading Places. It’s as though they bet that within 10 years, they could take a country full of people with taste – people that were fans of classic rock, motown, progressive rock, funk, reggae … and turn them into mindless proles that would step over their own grandmother for Rick Astley’s latest single.
And the sad thing is, they succeeded.
All emphasis was taken away from the talent of good songwriting, musicianship and performance and we were left with a lot of pretty people singing the most horrendous, meaningless crap ever produced.
Boy/Girl bands were the biggest offenders of course, but they were nowhere near the only ones. The situation has deteriorated ever since and we are left with a bombardment of bad karaoke singers filling the charts, the radio waves and our ears on a daily basis.
It’s gotten to the point that no one actually knows what good music is anymore. They THINK they know, but they simply don’t.
It has been drummed into everyone that a song is only good if it goes:
Intro-Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Bridge-Chorus-Fade
Any variation from that set pattern is met with a look of bewilderment and disgust.
“What do you mean, it’s instrumental?”
You may as well spit in their face as present them with something that will be different in any way to the last song they heard. Music is no longer listened to. It’s just droning on in the background, unimportant. And THAT is the real reason behind the decline in standards.
The X Factor is back. And with it, the same few people will come out of the woodwork and say that it’s destroying the music industry. No doubt another campaign to keep the winner off the top of the charts will succeed again this year. But is that the answer?
The X Factor is a symptom of the disease, not the cause. What we need is a re-education of the masses as to what music is FOR. Music is about emotion. If the only thing that passes through your mind while a song is on is an image of the incredibly hot singer girating in hot pants, then the music itself is not moving you.
The really sad thing is that there is a lot of excellent, groundbreaking music to be found if you are willing to look past the “recommended single of the week” in iTunes. Whatever your taste, there is something excellent for you. It takes practically no effort.
We are 2 generations into this atrocious swamp of mindless music. The truly talented people will not last forever. Sooner or later the only people left making music will have no idea why Led Zeppelin were so good. Or why a live Prince or Pink Floyd show can still outsell any other act on the planet. We will be left with a crop of Arctic Monkey and Coldplay clones.
I really can’t believe that anyone with a soul would want that to happen.
MisterShouty 