Music Today

We are presently mired in a time where popular music is a vapid wasteland completely devoid of any substantive quality, and where today’s musical artists are talentless replicants of one another equally vacant of any musical ability. Mili Vanilli and Vanilla Ice would have fit in very nicely during this period. The music industry is in a slump, record sales have been steadily declining over the past several years, and there are many good reasons why.

Remember the plethora of talentless boy bands out there that were so fabricated, synthetic, and animatronic that they would have impressed Walt Disney. They were so shallow and contrived that they made Cher, Michael Jackson, Pamela Anderson, and Elizabeth Taylor feel like genuine people. Was there a single member from any of these bands that could play one musical instrument? Did any of those groups write their own songs? They needed only to rely on their tired choreography and the fickleness of teenage girls to achieve success.

Then you had the solo girl acts: Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, Jessica Simpson, Vitamin C, etc., etc. I don't think music producers could have squeezed in a few more clones into the music scene. I was always unable to tell them apart. What musical talent did any of them possess? Those chicks made the Spice Girls look like The Bangles.

There is still this Eminem punk whose bratty and defiant sneer makes the impulse to smack the magazine cover that he is on a fervent and uncontrollable one. You have to wonder where society is headed when someone like this gains notoriety in the media and develops a large fan base. If you have ever seen him in an interview, then you know the minimal amount of cognitive ability his brain holds is exhausted trying merely to generate enough power to keep his mouth moving and forming words. His head is so vacant that he makes Forest Gump look like Powder.

Now you can jump onto the bland wagon and turn over to BET where you will see a multitude of rap and R&B groups who not only all look and act alike, but who’s music is indistinguishable as well. They all have the same dance moves, video direction, and sound. Urban music and trends are getting old and these guys are supposed to be on the cutting edge (i.e. the trendsetters)! The R&B girl trio groups who, again, are carbon copies of one another, are no better. It is as though they all borrow the same drum machine, which is stuck on the same setting, and hire the same person to direct all of their videos. Where is the ingenuity? Where are the risk takers? It seems like pure conformity run amuck.

This travesty and grotesque lack of talent in the music industry is a real tragedy because I truly believe that music is the greatest invention of humankind. It provides an enormous source of spirituality, and when written by true musical geniuses, and performed by talented and gifted people, it can deliver its listener to a place of divine enlightenment that even the most ardent religious patron would envy and find commendable.

What happened to the real musically talented geniuses? Where are today’s equivalents of the Beatles’, Pink Floyd’s, Jimmy Hendrix’s, and Miles Davis’? Why has the popularity of so many truly gifted artists like Phil Collins, Sting, and Prince waned? These people write their own songs and play their own instruments. For a time, one comparable artist was Moby. His music was inspiring, and he was a beacon of hope in a sea of despair. Okay, perhaps I am being a tad melodramatic here, but he did stand out in an industry replete with fakes, for a time. Unless more artists like this continue to appear onto the scene, the music business, and the pop genre in particular, will continue to wane.