The feeling that I get when I start driving and realize that I forgot my auxiliary or iPod cord is indescribable. You mean I have to listen to the radio?
It’s a sad realization, because when radio stations aren’t playing commercials, they’re playing songs that deserve to be put into commercials-that is, in the background and completely unheard until the end of the pitch.
Nowadays it seems that if it has a beat, some funky computer noises, or words with nonexistent meanings, then it’s a hit song. So apparently any person can become a music icon as long as he has a computer program that lets him record, an electronic drum kit that consists of buttons and not drum heads, and a fourth grade reading level.
Music is an art form and should be treated as one. An artist’s job is to create something powerful, meaningful, beautiful, or life changing. For a musician this isn’t done with paint but rather with sound and a message.
When I listen to music, I expect to be either amazed by what I hear or captured by the words that are being sung.
Song lyrics should be poetry, but a lot of modern songs either make up words to rhyme or repeat the same word over and over again because, hey, it rhymes, right?
Another problem is the level of talent of modern day performers. The downfall of modern music is called auto-tune, or the ability to make a voice on key through computer programing. You can tell when a voice is being auto-tuned; it sounds unnatural and robotic.
Take T-Pain, for example. The classic T-Pain vocals are testament to the fact that he cannot sing. So why is he a performer, if the performance is being done by a computer?
Another example of music trickery is lip-syncing, and I’ve been to plenty of concerts where I questioned if what I was hearing was really that person on stage singing. A well-known example is Ashlee Simpson on “Saturday Night Live.” She completely screwed up, and it was blatantly obvious.
But even if it is not obvious, a good rule of thumb is if the live singer’s lips look like they do in a lip-synced music video, then someone backstage probably pulled the song up on YouTube and piped it through the sound system.
It doesn’t matter what genre-rap or rock-the artists should be musicians and should be able to perform their songs live without help from pre-recorded tracks.
There are thousands of undiscovered talents in this world that deserve to be discovered, but the job market is being oversaturated by performers who can’t truly perform. Many people have a passion and love for orchestrating a song, but there are more people with global recognition who have their songs written and orchestrated for them.
Why listen to the people who are only in it for the money? And why not listen to the people who are in it for the music?
Wednesday, June 25, 2025