Posted on 07/21/2010 6:57:44 AM PDT by Kaslin
Every so often, I like to switch the radio in my minivan to a pop or rock station and sing along with whatever is playing, just to impress my teenagers. This isn't difficult, considering how many songs from the 70's and 80's still populate radio playlists. (Please, someone, recognize that Boston's "More Than a Feeling" was a bad song back in 1976 when it first came out.)
Of course, today’s pop songs have only one or two lyrical phrases that you can pick up within seconds, so in the span of a stoplight, you belt the chorus as though you really know it.
You could say it’s a little parenting mind game — a parlor trick to dispel the myth that moms are hopelessly uncool.
But I don't do this to flaunt that I’m a middle-aged hipster. Instead, I like to remind my children that I'm paying attention to what's out there.
I won't lie — staying on top of pop culture, especially music and lyrics, gets more difficult as I get older. For one thing, much of it just sounds like noise. Compared to the music from my era, today's songs are the soundtrack to a headache. (Wow. My fingers moved across the keyboard and out came my parents.)
A simple Google search of popular music from my 18th summer recalls "Miss You" by the Rolling Stones, "Three Times a Lady" by the Commodores, and "Boogie Oogie Oogie" by A Taste of Honey. Not exactly classics, but mildly melodic nonetheless.
Fast forward to this summer's notable pop music releases. There's the mind numbing "Alejandro" by Lady Gaga, depicted in an 8-minute music video that is so laden with graphic sex and blasphemous Christian and Catholic imagery even MTV.com asked, "Does Lady Gaga's 'Alejandro' video go too far?"
Hmmm…she wears a shiny red nun’s habit, swallows a rosary, simulates sex with a dozen or so nearly naked men and ends the video with militaristic marching and what looks like a rape scene. I vote yes, MTV.
I wish Lady Gaga's latest "artistic" effort was the most offensive one we’ll see and hear this summer, but that distinction will have to go to the self-styled terrorist sympathizer "M.I.A.," a native Sri Lankan Tamil known on her British passport as Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam.
Maya has captured the imagination of a fawning media and the pop music elite, which has allowed her to catapult to superstardom as a singer/songwriter despite the fact that, by her own admission, she's not a musician and doesn’t know how to sing.
Never mind those pesky details. Maya is an "artist." Music is just one of many media through which she expresses her cultural and political points of view.
And just what are those? Well, for starters, she is an outspoken apologist for terrorists who employ suicide bombings to kill innocent civilians and advance their ideological pursuits.
You'll be amazed to discover, though, just how jaunty a tune you can produce while singing about such gruesome themes. This summer, with the release of her latest album, "Maya," fans can get out the disco ball and bust a move to "Lovealot" while singing along with these lyrics:
Like a Taliban trucker eatin’ boiled-up yucca,
Get my eyes done like I’m in a black burka,
Been through s--t, yeah it's a f---a',
But now I make tunes, say shuck-a-lucka-lucka.
I fight the ones that fight me.
I really love a lot, I really love a lot.
I really love a lot, I really love a lot.
Cleaver artist that she is, Maya drops the letter "t" at the end of the words "a lot," as Brits often do, so that the chorus sounds just like "I really love Allah."
Such a great follow up to her ironic (and nauseatingly violent) "Born Free," whose music video features a paramilitary unit wearing American flag badges chasing a busload of red headed boys and young men across a desert and ultimately murdering them.
You can watch that video on YouTube.com, and you should, because your teenager probably already has.
Rocketing to success in only six years, Maya’s fame and fortune have produced predictable results. She's engaged to an American millionaire, Seagram's heir Ben Bronfman, and along with their 1-year-old son, the couple live in the wealthy enclave of Brentwood, Calif., far from the threat of those suicide bombers she so admires.
In our free country, Maya may pollute the culture with deranged drivel such as this.
But savvy parents ought to apply skills of media literacy and talk to their kids about the messages this "artist" freely conveys to the young people who are simply singing along.
“Today’s music ain’t got the same soul....”
Breaking Benjamin “Breath”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ3qJmgktS0
30 Seconds to Mars “This Is War”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nqeskhP3aU&feature=related
I don’t allow that “noise” or whore stuff in this house.
Music becomes more infantile as people become more infantile. I call it deevolution. It’s observable in most areas of life.
I think a new rendition of “The Day the Music Died” by Don McClean is in order. Only this time, it will not be about Buddy Holly. It will really be about music dying. I don’t care if I sound like my parents but today’s music is not even understandable. It’s not even music, just drivel. There’s a few good tunes I’ve heard here and there and there’s always country music, but overall, the pop music today is truly garbage. I didn’t like disco in the 70’s, but I could at least say it was music...
What is your problem with Boston?
I blame music videos, with the advent of MTV, it all became about image, not the music, make a cool video, and nobody cares if the song sucks. Video, really did kill the radio star.
Lol. My friends and I have a great time talking about exactly that! I cannot believe how often it happens to me.
I do believe that was the 1st video MTV aired. Ironic, isn’t it.
I swear if I hear one more song with that god-forsaken “Auto Tune”, I’m going to take a flamethrower to something.
It's like rain on your wedding day...
Music is not even close to being dead, you just have to work harder to find it.
Again, pimping for my friend Richard Taylor here of rrradio.com (also available as a podcast on iTunes).
Roots rock, guitar driven, honest music by largely unsigned bands. Plenty enough country sounds to keep us all happy.
Sorry, what’s “auto tune”? I have to admit, the only radio I listen to, for the past few years, is talk radio.
When I listen to music, it’s my cd’s that I have burned, with all my favorite songs.
Although, I did catch a new song this morning on Fox & Friends. She was an American Idol participant (don’t watch it) and the song is called “I Am America”.
Total Tea Party song......very catchy tune as well!
You’re probably going to laugh, but I just saw Weird Al in Concert, and I must say, it’s probably the best concert I’ve seen in a long time. His band was top-notch, and he certainly has more talent than most of the acts he parodies.
Auto Tune is basically computer-enhanced vocals that make the vocals “on key” even if the singer can’t sing worth a lick.
I vote for bringing back old school funk. Dazz Band, Cameo, War, SOS Band, Earth Wind & Fire. “Freakshow on the Dancefloor.” “Let it Whip.” That’s when music was really fun. I made a mix of Funk Essentials and played it at my last party... everybody was up dancing.
****I swear if I hear one more song with that god-forsaken “Auto Tune”, I’m going to take a flamethrower to something.****
Excellent description - the same old monotonous da da da da with incomprehensible lyrics. It’s worse than tinnitus!!!
I love Weird Al's parodies. There's one he did about a Bob Dylan song that was especially hysterical.
I agree. One other thing it did, killed any musicians career that did not look good in front of the camera. Does anyone think that Van Morrison would have gotten a second look if he had come up in the age of video? Short and dumpy is not the look they go for nowadays...
Today to get good music station, you need satellite radio.
Every so often, when home and my teenage children are nearby, I go to youtube and show a video of a “Classic Rock” band from the 70’s or 80’s. They are amazed to see that, way back then, bands actually had the skill to play instruments and sing.
Right now, my kids are all the rage for Queen. I showed them the Queen gig from the 1985 Live Aid Concert from Wembley Stadium: if you haven’t seen it before, do yourself a favor — one of the greatest live acts ever!
"Trapped in the Drive-Thru" is my favorite, especially if you're familiar with R Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet."
I swear if I hear one more song with that god-forsaken “Auto Tune”, I’m going to take a flamethrower to something.
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Might I suggest the auto tune device?
Was listening to Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night last night on the way home from practicing with the band, missed guitar notes, a little out of tune singing, God it was beautiful. The album’s pretty good, too.
Ooooooh. Gees, back in the day, a singer used to have to be able to sing.
I mainly listen to music by dead white guys.
Not only that, but before, when studio time was at a premium, you had to have musicians who could get things right on the first take.
I’m finding that a good source for interesting music is what various TV shows incorporate as songs to be played over silent (or near-silent) sequences in their shows. ‘Lost’, ‘Bones’, and ‘NCIS’ are three that have used particularly enjoyable music in addition to their crackerjack instrumental music.
But as others say, there really is good music, it’s just that hardly any of it gets played on the major radio stations, which seem to all have a 300-song playlist, particularly the hit country stations. I actually leave the room if ‘Why Don’t You Stay’ comes on.
I don’t get the fascination with Alejandro. I saw the video, and to me it’s simply Gaga jumping the shark. Her other videos had the sex and shock thing going to some extent, and they were often pretty good. The Paparazzi video was genius. But Alejandro goes so over the top that it becomes numbing, ridiculous, a parody of the sex/shock video genre.
It wasn’t shocking. It was laughable. What could have been an interesting and artistic 1930s sci-fi styled video became a bad sex joke.
Bullcrap.
Excellent guitar solos and vocal harmonies. That song defines an era.
My problems with Boston: 1. That they ever existed. 2. Every song sounds exactly alike. 3. They were overplayed 30-something years ago, and they’re overplayed today.
Me, too, though also some dead white gals (Clara Schumann, for instance).
Then again, what about people like Brian Wilson. He’s not quite dead, but his stuff since the turn of the millenium has been pretty good (SMiLE, Lucky Old Sun, live albums). I’m hoping he keeps on going because he’s managed to somehow go back through the window and start all over again. Which is pretty nice to consider: any one of us might be just as resourceful.
I guess everybody had their band that they hated back in the day, mine was Styx. I never got why they were so popular. Dennis DeYoung had to be the most queer-sounding singer ever. They were the essence of suck.
I’ll agree about Styx, with the stipulation that the “suck” started in earnest when Dennis DeYoung took over the band and they started pumping out all those gross “concept albums.” Before about ‘79, Tommy Shaw and James Young had some decent collaborations. DeYoung turned them into a pure bubble gum band.
I am listening to Dvorak in my office now; though lately I have been on a Sinatra Capitol Years kick.
Quite often Weird Al songs are better than the originals. “Smells like Nirvana,” “Gump” and “Amish Paradise” come to mind.
You’re lucky. I’d love to see Weird Al in concert. I’ve been a fan ever since I first heard “Another One Rides the Bus” on Dr. Demento way back when.
Well, that and some cash for payola.
You forgot to mention Danny Elfman of "Oingo Boingo" who scores all of the Tim Burton movies.
You’d prefer Gag-a?
And lest anyone think that its a racial thing, the last concert I went to a few years ago was Earth, Wind, and Fire. Man that was good stuff, you just cant get it anymore...
It wasn't that way in the beginning. Music videos in the early to mid 80’s were fantastic and cutting edge. I loved em. I used to watch MTV almost constantly - I even had my stereo hooked up to my TV so I could have hi-fi with the videos.
The problem began when MTV was accused of racism by not showing enough black music videos. MTV, predictably, bent over backwards to add as many black artists as it could, most of them rap artists whose vulgarity even then was disgusting. Once that ball started rolling, it was nothing more than a contest to see who could out-vulgar the other. At that point, I said goodbye to MTV and never looked back.
Re your post #8, I agree that it is not music but is instead “drivel.” I would go a bit further and say that it’s more akin to noise. These ears can detect no melody, the basis for music.
This is in contrast to the hits of the 50s and 60s, almost all of which had a distinctive melody.
You can do what they guy behind Gorillaz did, create a virtual band. Okay, he's not short and dumpy, and had previous success as the frontman for Blur, but you get the idea.
1. Tom Scholz named the band after the douchiest city in Boston.
2. You can only hear "Long Time" or "More than a Feeling" about 10,000 times on the local "classic rock" station before you start taking hostages.
I still think that his parody of “Oh Ricky” with Judy Tenuta, with Al in the role of Ricky Ricardo, is one of the funniest things I ever saw on television as a child.
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