State of Music

I don’t really hide how I feel about music in our era. Most of it is garbage. Britney can’t sing, most ‘alternative’ bands sound the same and have a very lazy sound to them (Nickelback, Buckcherry, Hinder, Shinedown, etc.), and then there is Lady Gaga, whose songs are absolute crap. I mean the worst. They are stupid and make no sense. What the hell? But I digress. It’s because of the degradation of real music and the rise of club music that live concerts are suffering. Most bands suck live because everything they do is processed.

I got to thinking about this last night when Incubus was on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien. I was never a big fan of Incubus until I saw the live about two years ago. The show was really great. Lots of energy and the vocals were just as strong live as they are on the CD. The band has a lot of talent and it shows. More live shows should be like that; but they are not.

A couple of examples: Britney Spears- garbage. Doesn’t really sing. Taylor Swift- her vocals aren’t nearly as strong live as they are on CD. Maybe that comes with age. Kayne West- Have you heard him do one of his new songs live? There’s a reason they are distorted on the CD. Lady Gaga- Well, I can’t actually bash her. I looked her up on YouTube and she is actually very good. Her songs are just stupid. But I’m getting off topic.

I guess the point of this rant is that music is in a sorry state. It’s partially due to the fact more emphasis is put on looks because video is just as much a part of music as the music itself, and that is a dirty shame. Now we have hot people who can’t sing or people who ‘fit the look’ but have no talent. It’s more about image than it is about the music. The other part is that with technology, producers can make anything sound good, so they don’t really need to be good. We need more people like Incubus who can put their money where their mouth is- or maybe more fittingly, put their mouth where their money is.