Respect Authority

The question “why does music suck so much now?” is hardly a new one, and its use of the word “now” has always been relative to who is asking the question. Miley Cyrus fans will someday ask, when music has been reduced to no more than a looping vocal comprised of reality show soundbites on top of some stock Garageband instrumentation (this should happen in about 6 months, tops), “why does music suck so much now?” while she’s the whole reason people who listened to the terrible crap that was popular in the 90s are asking the very same question today. Hell, music has probably always sucked; it all depends on what version of suck you were brought up with.

Nonetheless, like pop culture at large, music does seem at least a little bit less genuine than it ever was before. This is, obviously, a rather ambiguous claim to make considering the music industry has been manufacturing pop hits since way before you were able to say, “The Monkees!” However, compared to the days of yore when music was a closed industry limited to those who actually had talent or could, as a bare minimum and in the case of the entire punk rock movement, fake it pretty well. Today, you don’t even need to pretend to be good — in fact, plenty of people have built successful careers on the foundation that they are just outright bad musicians. Oh, and that reminds me, have you heard Limp Bizkit is reuniting?

Creating music has become so accessible, thanks to the digital era and all its whirring, buzzing toys, that everyone can make some if they’re so inclined, including a great many people who have no business doing so. There’s no progressiveness anymore, except for in the smallest of indie artists (and by that I don’t mean “indie” bands who are actually on major labels), because everybody’s just chasing the latest trend — conforming as closely as possible to whatever made the most money last. And that is why Teddy Pain can now retire happily, as he was featured on literally every rap single produced in 2008. In fact, rap can now be defined exclusively as, “a song which features T-Pain in the chorus.”

When it comes down to it, pop music has become nothing more than dance music, and all dance music requires is a catchy beat and a vocal hook that gets stuck in your head for days, even if that infectiousness relies on the fact that it’s completely inane, or more often, annoying to the point of violating some of the terms of the Geneva Convention. Case in point, John Mayer’s latest studies in the wonders of producing a rap single:

Now, lest I jeopardize any of my precious cool points by posting a John Mayer video, I must clarify that I am not a fan of the man’s music… mostly because I find incessant guitar noodling to be one of the most boring forms of masturbation. Seriously, at least dogs humping shit is funny. Nonetheless, he proves a point with this quick exercise: today, anyone can make a song, with very little difficulty, that somebody will enjoy. There are, after all, actual living, breathing Aqua fans out there somewhere.