Most of Today's Music Sucks (Feb 21, 2008)

While the RIAA continues to crack down on people illegally sharing copyrighted music because the CD sales are dropping instead of increasing, the reason is simple: today's pop music sucks.

The record stores are selling so few CDs that they're closing shops because the CDs that they're trying to sell all suck. Nobody wants to waste their money on music that sucks. They would rather download it for free, listen to it, then delete it from their hard drives, never bothering with the act that they thought sucked ever again. Illegal downloads helped save the person money so that they can spend the money on a CD that doesn't suck, if they can find one at all.

Many of today's one-hit wonders are nothing more than short-term hitters and quitters. The big four record labels don't care about nurturing the acts anymore. They're not promoting the non-stars that have talent and appeal to older music fans. Instead, they're promoting the acts that appeal to teenagers, who are supposedly their intended target, but the teenagers for the most part are not big spenders on music, don't listen to the radio, and don't really care for the kind of music that speaks down at them. Teenagers aren't dumb. They know where to get better music nowadays.

The record companies should be promoting acts that appeal to people with money to spend, music for the mature music fan, who grew up on quality music when they were once young. You know what quality music is, right? Labels? Clear Channel? Ever heard of Bo Diddley? The Beatles? Chuck Berry? The Rolling Stones? Temptations? Credence Clearwater Revival? Led Zeppelin? Devo? You get the idea.

What are the labels coming up with? What are the radio stations playing? Nothing but crap. Look who's on Billboard's charts today. Do any of these acts ring a bell? Flo Rida? Chris Brown? Timbaland? Yael Naim? Sean Kingston? Buck Cherry? Webbie, Lil' Phat & Lil' Boosie? Colbie Callat? J. Holiday? Finger Eleven? Lupe Fiasco? Keyshia Cole? None of these names ring a bell. Nome of these names mean a thing.

I'll admit. Only Rhianna's song "Don't Stop The Music" is any good among the other songs that I heard samples from but just don't rock my world. Alicia Keys also rings a bell, but her voice sounds as rough as sandpaper.

Here's a scary song title: "Love Song" by Sara Bareilles. Frightening, isn't it? There's more to life than writing about love. How about writing some songs for us geeks, eh?

Another scary song: "Kiss Kiss" by Chris Brown? UGH!

Here's something that doesn't exist: "Sweetest Girl" by Wyclef Jean Featuring Akon, Lil Wayne & Niia. Trust me. None of the girls I met online or in San Diego are anywhere sweet!

Snoop Dog is back, but to me, all of his best stuff was in the early 90s.

Fergie has been on for years, but I don't know any of her songs that stuck in my head.

Miley Cyrus I heard a dance mix of on ipartyradio.com recently, but her songs are flat and ordinary. I prefer songs with major chords like C, G, and F instead of songs that are mostly minor.

I've noticed Taylor Swift's name on the allaccess.com trade website a lot lately. None of her music matters either.

Jordin Sparks? Wasn't she on some Idol show? I can't recall.

I heard Linkin Park on the alternative rock stations for years. Most of them stink. Their song "Shadow of the Day" is a direct ripoff of U2's "With or Without You."

This is what's wrong with the music industry. None of the samples I heard are anywhere as good as the music from the 50s-80s were back then. This must be a decade of dud music. With Clear Channel ruining top 40 radio, we get meaningless music that is big one week but forgettable the next, instead of good music week after week that remains big for years.

But thank God for the Internet and mp3 downloads. Clear Channel and the record labels didn't see this upcoming technology coming while Clear Channel and Jacor were buying up radio stations and homogenizing their playlists and the record labels started hiring indies to pay the radio stations to play their bland acts. Once Napster took off in the late 90s, music downloads became enshrined into our culture, helping music fans discover new music that radio and the labels continue to ignore, even a decade after its inception.

Napster and its successors helped music fans rediscover the kinds of songs that radio has shunned and recharges the fans with music that they once or would have enjoyed if radio simply bothered to play them.

And Clear Channel is still wondering why their listeners are down? The record labels are wondering why their CD sales are down? It's the quality, stupid, plain and simple.

Course of Nature released a CD this past month, but didn't do too well on the Billboard charts. I don't think it even cracked the Top 200 album chart. A lot of the band's music sounds too homogenized for my taste. Haven't they ever heard of the classic rock bands of the 60s and 70s? They're not rocking or rolling. Their music sounds flat. The band should study Led Zeppelin and Van Halen and get some ideas on how to compose a real rock and roll song.

Course of Nature should do some research and listen to the classics of Lynard Skynard, ZZ Top, Steve Miller, Black Sabbath, The Allman Brothers, The Kinks, and even The Beatles. Come up with their own original riffs and lyrics and not steal directly from them, or from the other clone bands.

Go back to the 60s and 70s classic rodk, you'll hear unique and flamboyant riffs, crazy melodies, screaming croons, outrageousness, and unpredictability. Today's music is nothing more than a drum machine from Magix Music Maker with karaoke singers in the foregrond. Boring!

Most any old band has albums full of quality material, even the non-hits sound decent. Today's albums have one good song if you're lucky, but most albums are devoid of even one decent song, hit or non-hit.

By comparison, looking at the current Top 200 album chart, people are continously snatching up CDs of Justin Timberlake, Feist, Sugarland, Timbaland, Buckcherry, Daughtry, Taylor Swift, and Hannah Montana. almost or more than a year after their releases. Nickelback and Carrie's CDs has been on the chart for over two years! All of them must have debut in the top 20 part of the chart.

In this dull decade of music, cookie cutter bands play the same chords, use the same themes, write 8th-grade level lyrics, mediocre vocal abilities, underproduction of the music, and lack originality. They're playing the same 4 chords, tell no real story or message, and find nothing better to do than to rip off the heritage talents like Rick James and others by using riffs and basslines from other people's songs.

By comparison, in the land of dementia, there's a lot of original ideas being used, witty lyrics, fun melodies, and catchy riffs.

We're seeing oldies radio from the 50s-70s disappearring from radio stations nationwide, so we now have to subscribe to XM or Sirius to listen to the music from a time when music was once created for adults to enjoy. As a kid in the 60s, I didn't care. All I wanted to watch were cartoons. Kids aren't in the marketing plans for the record industry anyway. Now that I'm pushing 50, I'm enjoying the kind of music that I once didn't care about including Al Jolson, Glenn Miller, Frank Sinatra, as well as the classic rockers.

Today, it's the same thing. As an adult, I don't care about today's music aimed at the kids. I might have if they were created and released 40 years ago.

In a bizarre range of TV selections, my occasional viewing includes the extremes of, get this, Lawrence Welk and Hannah Montana. Watch Lawrence Welk reruns on KPBS for some examples on how mature music can be lyrically written and composed. This is some of what top 40 music is missing today. Music for adults. Not the sleepy stuff you find on the radio. Produce some upbeat fun music for mature people, people over 35, people with money to spend on CDs instead of XM. Watch Hannah Montana for examples on how to create and produce a TV show that has wide appeal. Create some shows that people can watch together. This is why Hannah is marketably successful. She's like The Archies 40 years later, and I do remember when the Archies were hot when I was a kid. Hannah is the same thing. Oddly enough, Welk died months before Miley (aka Hannah) was born in the same year: 1992.

People today are flocking to music stations of the past to hear "70's classic rock", "80's music", "new wave", "old school", "disco", "British invasion", "doo wop", "50's rockabilly", "40's swing", and more to listen to music from a time when Clear Channel and the big four didn't dominate the music landscape of today and didn't homogenize the sounds.

Let's face it, people don't like today's selection of music on the radio and in CD stores. Now we're using American Idol to select the next big artists. What happened to using your own senses to pick out the talents? This is why there's so much mediocre or bad talent on the radio today.

Radio continues on its downward spiral by shunning comedy and dance music, and favoring boring and bland genres such as corporate rap, light modern rock, fake punk, slow R&B songs, and other monotonous mush that can't be related to.

We get people who still like Queen, Pink Floyd, The Who, Deep Purple, and Def Leppard instead of Good Charlotte and Queens of the Stone Age, and these people are in their teens in 2008!

One of the few rock bands from the 00's that stuck was Darkness, whose music was reminiscent of 70s rock like Boston or Queen. Other bands include White Stripes, Jet, and others that rock like AC/DC once did.

HD Radio has been a flop because radio is sucking big time. Nobody cares to listen to a boring format in HD. They'd rather listen to exciting formats in HD, or an exciting format in Low Definition, but not a boring format, HD or LD.

The download music revolution has turned the record industry and Clear Channel upside down. Sales have fallen. Listeners have fallen. Downloads are up. Sales to independent artists are up. Listening to downloaded music is up. Best Buy and Wal Mart are the only big stores that carry CDs, and both of them are crappy at best, with a narrow selection of music that often eschews music of my taste. Comedy is limited to Jeff Foxworthy and Weird Al Yankovic. This is why I don't buy CDs in the stores anymore.

There's far more comedy than what the big box department stores are offering. That's why I shop for them at Amazon and other independent artists's websites.

What Sophie FM lacks is depth in rock music research. All of the bands that they play are pop flavored shit! Nothing but light fluff 24/7. This is why it's flopping in the ratings!

Stations need to do some research and come up with some innovative rock bands who championed classic rock artists as influences instead of emo and fake punk idols that disappearred overnight. People want good music. They wan't real instruments. They want meaningful lyrics. They want mature ideas but not NC17-rated ideas. People want the new classic rock as well as the old classic rock becuse that kind of music freaking rules, period. People are still humming the melodies and singing the catch lyrics of the songs from 40 years ago today. I'm even dreaming of Beatles songs in the background.

When it comes to real guitar playing, singing, and mature lyrics that crosses boundaries from rock to country to folk to even dementia, only a few could achieve that feat, and he is the late Johnny Cash. Nothing, absolutely nothing that he has ever sung, written, or composed is worse than the best song a crappy pop punk of the 00's band came up with. You listen to a Johnny Cash song and he makes you think. You listen to Maroon 5 and you're put to sleep.

That's the way it is today for music. Nobody is acknowledging that the system is broken and they're shooting themselves in the foot by continuously homogenizing the sounds of today into forgettable nonexcitement. Haven't the executives of the radio stations and record labels ever heard of music when they were once kids or were they too busy watching Smurfs and People's Court in the 80s when they were kids, while radio and the labels were putting out quality music in the 80s? Obviously, not.

Today's music doesn't have the riches that the golden era of music once did, but back then, the golden era had only record stores and terrestrial radio stations to get music from, and that was it. No satellite, internet, downloads, or podcasting services existed back then, but the music was good for all ages to enjoy and didn't suffer from demogrpahic meddling like what today's music is today.

You can cut the prices down and down to $5 but people won't buy them if they suck. I'll pay $15 for a quality album with well-produced and written material from beginning to end.

The record labels suck. Clear Channel sucks. Anyone disagree with this? Do you agree? What do you think?