30DTC: Day Sixteen: Cochlear Malnutrition
Day 16 - Your views on mainstream music.
There’s no question of it…everybody I know likes to hate on mainstream music, at least a little bit. We hear something absolutely, mind-blowingly terrible come out on the radio, and every type of person we don’t like just gets totally, totally into it.They carry moronic slogans and push these so-called musicians on pedestals and worship these creatures with their hearts and souls.
These people’s very livelihood and happiness seems to stem from these artists, and the artists themselves aren’t necessarily bad musicians usually, but the question remains as to why most mainstream music is viewed as “art” rather than “convenience noise”.
It’s fast food for your ears, at best. Like fast food, we all have that one musician that happens to be a guilty favorite. It’s in no way, shape, or form “good for you”, but you usually consume it anyway because you feel that you NEED it. A desire for music is in many ways similar to the fundamental need of hunger for food. It sustains a human being.
Mainstream music is made to be easily consumed so that people will buy into it in a multitude of ways. You don’t put art in a Chevy commercial, and you don’t put any of the true musical geniuses of the past century at Times Square on New Years Eve. That music isn’t intended to be enjoyed that way.
With all that being said, I don’t really enjoy most mainstream music and mainstream culture unless I can find a purpose in particular artists and their work. For example, I’m just going to come out and say it, I hate Lady Gaga. Oh, she’s attractive, and she’s certainly a decent singer, but I fail to see any sort of artistic representation in her work at all. It’s all aesthetic white noise, from her style to her sound to the clothes that she wears. She can write a pretty song, but she’ll never have a magnum opus that rings through the centuries.
A good way of viewing everything that’s wrong with the mainstream these days can be conceptualized by the following.
In a time before digital downloads ruined the music industry and trying to “Top the Music Charts” were meaningless endeavors, artists poured their hearts and souls into their work. A poor song or bad piece was, by extension, a poor representation of the artist themselves. After all, music was their lifeblood. It’s what put food on their table, so they had to individually dive into their own genius in order to prosper. It was a beautifully brutal and competitive field as musicians tried to constantly top one another. This was art being created for the sake of prosperity and living, this was art created to be recognized throughout history.
Mainstream music has very little of this these days. Have you gone out and bought an album recently, only to have maybe one really solid single, like five okay songs, and three really crappy ones? And there was no central theme tying the album together, aside from the black hole that was your heart after listening to it?
It isn’t that this music gets made anymore. It does. It’s just that it seems to rarely get the recognition it truly deserves. The spoils usually go to a mediocre artist that managed to sell more albums and more tickets to anyone else. It is competitive music in terms of financial gain, rather than the original pursuit of ingenuity. Things like AutoTunes level the playing field anymore. A musician doesn’t even have to be good to get 7 million dollars for some single. Everything you hate about the fakeness of the beauty and fashion industries is directly applied to modern music. Most of it is a horrible, horrible lie.
The tragedy is, people will continue to buy into shitty artists. The system is set up that way, because this system works for record labels, and this system is easy. Why listen to music that challenges your soul or terrifies you, or moves you emotionally to the brink of tears, when you can put some poppy bullshit on and act like everything is totally fine?
And so, we turn to music that isn’t so celebrated in the spotlight. Some of it is totally terrible as well, but for different reasons. Many artists can’t make it in the mainstream because they’re peddling a song that no one wants to buy, for various reasons, both good and bad. (From that musician’s perspective.)
I will be honest and say that this does inspire an awful lot of elitism and snobbery. For example, I won’t listen to most dubstep because I think 90% of the stuff out there is just garbage for bros that like to listen to Skrillex and smoke K2. So, I don’t associate with that kind of music after listening to it, because I don’t like it, and I don’t like what it represents. My own actions have made myself a vocal, elitist prick about it.
But then there are artists such as Pretty Lights, Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Daft Punk, Queen, Pink Floyd, Trent Reznor, and Sun. They disregarded traditional sound to pioneer something very new at their time, and some of these bands even disregarded aesthetics entirely in the pursuit of genius. A great example of this is Pink Floyd’s A Saucerful of Secrets, and this recording shows points that are absolutely terrifying to listen to. On the other hand, there are parts of it so stunningly beautiful, that one could argue that it’s the best piece of music written within the past couple hundred years.
So, I guess my point is, fuck music that is easy and accessible. Fuck these so-called bands such as Nickelback. Fuck all of that. Listen to music that genuinely excites and challenges you. Listen to music that shakes you to your core, and rattles your soul.
And don’t be afraid to admit that sometimes, it’s okay to listen to mainstream music, too. It’s okay to like bands that your elitist friends don’t like sometimes. For example, I will love Fall Out Boy until the day I die.
There, I said it.
