RANT!
So today, I decided I'm just going to rant and rave about one of my favourite things! Music! Now this is all my personal opinion. I'm going to talk about my beliefs and my opinions on music and the industry. There will be no pictures in this rant, just me and my wonderful text.
So let's begin. I'll be honest, I'm not very open minded when it comes to music. Well I shouldn't say that. I'm open minded, but I'm very set in my ways. I do enjoy a fairly large spectrum of music. This ranges from punk, hard rock, film score, and more. But my main obsession is Metal. Metal has a lot of stereotypes associated with it, but I'm not going to get into those.. because the problem with stereotypes is that.. well they're stereotypes, stereotypes are great misconceptions of what the genre and it's people actually are. Especially since Metal as a whole is made up of various other genres such ass blues, classical, and many others. I enjoy metal the most because of this fact. Metal has a very wide range, as do other genres, but metal remains to be unique. Of course there are a lot of bands in the genre today that tend to be and sound exactly the same.. The worst part is, a lot of these bands are big now. This annoys me.
The mainstream music scene saddens me greatly, because there is a lot of unheard talent out there that is unique and doesn't get the chance to be heard.
The first problem I'm going to state is the pop culture phenomenon.. American Idol.
I watched the first season of American Idol, and maybe even the second season, because I was interested in what the judges had to say, and I wanted to see if people were any good. After that, I stopped watching and judging from my point of view, because I realized that none of these people are being judged correctly, and there are so many "pop" singers today, that it's hard to actually know who they are. I honestly could not tell the difference between Lady Gaga and Kesha or whatever their names are. This could be due to that I'm not really immersed in the media, and don't really care about these artists. But the reason I don't care who they are is because neither of them were unique to me. This is the case with American Idol. All of the contestants sound the same, all of the people who win you either don't really hear about, or they sound exactly like another artist.. Usually the person that wins will sound like the person who won last year.
Another problem I have with this is that all of the contestants are judged mainly on their voice... Their range, wether or not they understand pitch and can control their voice in that way. Yes, they are good singers obviously... But, are they good songwriters? I really could care less how high of notes you can hit. Ya, it's impressive, but you don't get famous and successful from performing someone elses material... That's what these contestants are judged on! How good they can sing someone elses work! What kind of competition is that? These people should be forced to write their own material and sing their own material. Because the people who win, could very well be an amazing singer, but could be a horrible song writer... I'll give you an example of Clay Aiken from one of the earlier seasons... He is not a good song writer.. "If I was Invisible"? His single sounded more like he was being a stalker than anything. I know some of these performers have other people writing the songs.. and they should be to blame for being bad. Than that still just emphasizes the point that, they're not writing their own stuff... They don't deserve it.
I feel very strongly about this obviously, and I refuse to watch the competition, or any other competition that relies on people performing songs from other people. It's the same thing I think about with musicians. Ya, you can play guitar really fast, but can you write something with that? I consider myself to be a fairly rounded guitarist, more average really. I know my limits and I know what I'm capable of, and I can properly apply that to my writing, if something I write is more difficult for me, than I learn how to do it. I think of myself to be a fairly good songwriter, I write music all of the time, I probably have 3-4 albums worth right now of material. These people that are on American Idol and similar shows have probably never written a song in their lives. If you can sing, but can't write, well.. I'm sorry, but you don't deserve to be famous and successful, maybe you can be a vocal coach or something. People who get big from other peoples material, and people who get big through American Idol are taking the places of people that have real talent. The music industry seems to be a little lazy from my point of view. Let's just have a competition and let the nation decide. The more popular they are the better they must be right?
WRONG! Over half of the population is probably tone deaf, and they choose the person they feel has the best personality or is the best eye candy. I'm just angry and sad that the music industry has fallen so far that they just keep making copies of singers. Once one singer gets older and people like them a little less, they pop out another one! Hence why American Idol has so many fucking awful seasons.
I could go on about how bad the industry is today.. but, what about the good? Well, the good of the music industry is the older music. There are some new good artists today, but these artists are no where near as popular as most of the mainstream pop copies. 70's music, 80's music, 90's music, and a little bit of modern music, and even further back. Back in these decades, people didn't even have to know how to sing! Singing was a point of view, a style of the voice. Some people spoke to their songs, some people yelled to their songs, and some people sang with heat, anger, and emotion. This is the good music. These people can write good music, which is very rare in todays society. The problem with music, is that it's a very personal thing to those who are greatly immersed into it and have strong opinions. But a lot of society just listen to what's popular because, they think it must be good if it's popular. These are the people I call drones.. Because they don't try and discover what kind of music they like, they fall into social norms and expectations. Their friend listens to Katy Perry.. so they listen to her too. That being said, I don't really like Katy Perry, but she is actually an artist I can pick out on the radio, so she must be doing something right. So maybe that was a bad example. But people mostly listen to the music their friends like. I know because I used to be the same way, and in High School it was considered "cool" to listen to Iron Maiden, even though people didn't properly understand or respect just how good Iron Maiden was. I know this because they would always talk about the same select songs that were sooooo good. Ya those songs are good, but there's more than just their "popular" songs. Most songs that are popular aren't the best, because music is such a personal thing, other songs besides the singles etc. will resonate much better than others.
I believe my opinion on music is very insightful. No, I don't listen to everything, but I don't like everything, and music is a very personal taste. Music is, and should be emotional and really reflect the kind of person you are. Which brings me to my main point about music. The disrespect of certain genres. There are different genres that I will not listen to, because I honestly just can't stand it and the musicians associated with it... One of those being Country music... Country music is by no means unique in any way in my opinion.. It's predictable, all of the singers sound the same, and it's just not unique, if you've herd one country song you've heard them all, technically and lyrically.
I'm a strong believer that there is no such thing as bad music. There's not, because there will always be some people that like a certain style. Whether that be country, rap, metal, rock, jazz, etc. etc. You can't say one genre is bad, because there will always be someone there to defend it. Country as I said before, I really hate. But the fact is, is that it does resonate with some people, regardless of my technical, insightful, educated opinion on it. So if you're going to talk about music with someone.. Please leave your ignorance at the door. We all have our reasons for liking something, just because our opinion differs doesn't mean we're right about it. That's the thing about opinions, there is no right opinion in anything, because every opinion is personal and mainly relies on likes and dislikes, and everyone has different like's and dislikes.
I could keep going on the topic, but I think I'm going to end my rant there. On another note, there is a battle of the bands happening in May, in my home town of Miramichi!
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| I did this all by myself :) |
