Space Cadet Music: March 2011

"You, Me, & The Industry"

by Johnny McMahon

What the hell's wrong with pop music?1?

Generally speaking...nothing. In our current context...a great deal! But I'm getting way ahead of myself.

Popular music has historically been just that, music that the general populous has chosen to listen to more than any other. I have no objections what so ever to the concept of pop music, because anything can be "pop", and it is often the very thing that defines a generation. What I do have an objection to, is a growing trend that I've noticed during my life time, which is the formulaic and systematic approach to what I'll refer to as, "Industry Pop." A trend that highlights what I feel are some of our greatest weaknesses as a society.

I'll define industry pop as popular music that hasn't been selected by the people, but rather, for the people. Selected for the people by industry executives and analysts based off of focus groups, data analysis, and tried and true formulas of what sells, all to push music, not for the sake of music, or creativity, but for the sole purpose of selling product.

Consumerism is very much a part of the fabric of American society. Supply and demand. Bounty and scarcity. And just like the ecosystem that is our economy, so is landscape of the music industry. There are the mega malls, and super duper markets. The mom & pop shops, niche boutiques, and everything in between. These two ecosystems are both driven by the inherent need for an end product, be it physical or auditory, and the sale of that product.

Keeping in mind both of these intertwined ecosystems are as complex as they are fragile, I'm going to attempt to explain my position on why I believe main stream "industry pop" is partly to blame for our current trend of social degradation. I'll state my case against "big media" and the manufacturing of celebrities, and try and draw parallels between how the music industry operates and how we as a society have been trending to conduct ourselves.

What is to follow will contain strong language, sweeping generalizations, inaccurate or completely made up statistics, unwarranted attacks on many of today's favorite "artists", and/or %94.5 opinion based observational commentary.

I start with what I use to consider (decades ago) to be one of the best sources of "real" music out there...MTV. Music television started in the early 80s as an outlet for the youth of America to have greater access to their favorite artists. Growing up, I remember the only way to see any artist other than on MTV, was the picture or two in the cassette tape jacket, or to actually be lucky enough to see them live in concert.

MTV revolutionized the way my generation viewed the people who made the music we listened to. We got the chance to glimpse their personalities, and their styles. We could see how they held themselves, and how much more amazing their songs became with an accompanying video. It was a golden age into the late 80s and early 90s, when MTV was putting out solid, entertaining, music related programming. When great music was being performed, not sold.

Moving into the mid to late 90s, after this "golden age," I started noticing a decline in the overall quality of music being aired on MTV, and generally less music...period. By the time the Micky Mouse Club kids (the N’Syncs & Britney Spearses of the world) had grown up and were given record deals, it was increasingly more & more difficult to find any redeeming qualities to music television.

Today, (though I haven't tuned in, in a few years) it has been left a shell of it's former self, letting some of it's many offshoot channels to pick up the slack of actually playing music videos. These days, they don't have to time to actually be music television, due to their cash cow shows that follow awful people around to film their wasteful existences somewhere on a shore, or off in the hills.

I feel popular music has been steadily loosing creativity, style, and originality since the late 80s, due in part to MTV's change in direction. And if you don't agree with me, how would you rate these songs?

~ Billie Jean by Michael Jackson

~ When Doves Cry by Prince

~ Another Brick in the Wall by Pink Floyd

~ The Macarena by Los Del Rio

~ One Sweet Day by Mariah Carey & Boyz II Men

~ Smooth by Santana & Rob Thomas

~ Boom Boom Pow by the Black Eyed Peas

~ Irreplaceable by Beyonce

~ Candy Shop by 50 Cent

See what I'm getting at? These were all in the top ten most popular songs of their decade, and honestly, I really feel bad for people in their late teens and early twenties, because this last decade of pop music was just terrible. And for the rest of their lives, that terrible music will partially define their generation.

Since I first began noticing this shift from music creation to music manufacturing, I've seen many trends that mimic, and even mirror traits of successful underground music. While I realize this is not a new idea, and has been done for decades in a verity of genres, never has it been done with sort of lackluster, half-assed, "That'll do", "What do we care? It's going to sell millions any ways," sort of attitude. Tracks along the lines of Flo Rida's "Right Round" or The Black Eyed Peas "The Time" are nothing short of monuments to successful laziness. Tracks like these make me some or all of the following:

~ want to break things

~ feel surprised that so many people are listening

~ want to deafen myself via screwdriver

~ fear for the future of main stream music

~ dance (if I've been drinking heavily)

~ hate myself (if I drunkenly danced to it)

~ wonder who's telling these artists & producers that this shit is acceptable

If I wanted to hear those lyrics, I'd listen to the originals. If I wanted to dance to that same beat, I'd listen to any one of thousands of electronic songs from 1995 to 2005. Maybe I'm pissed that I feel like I've been listening to the same song for decades, and people keep telling me it just came out. Maybe it's the same beats, and the same vocals that aren't saying anything of value, like talking about money, vanity, or simply regurgitating classic lyrics from decades ago, only worse. Or maybe it's the seemingly endless combinations of musical elements that keep getting thrown into the "industry blender" in a lazy attempt to see how many top 10 hits they can produce with those same pieces. Whatever the reason, these are the kind of things that keep me awake at night. These are things that keep my car radio and tv turned off about 98.3% of the time.

We now live in an instant age. If you have a smart phone, not only do you have 3 to 15 different ways for people to instantly communicate with you, but you have instant access to the latest...everything! News stories that are breaking as you read them. Music that was released today...that was produce last night. With this amount of instant everything, I feel like a few of the "safety nets" that use to filter out all the shit have fallen by the wayside, or simply have too much of a workload to keep up. Too an extent I think this can account for some of the industry's crap product. But with instantaneous production within an industry, laziness and greed tend not to be too far behind.

I think my friend Mike said it best when he said Carnation Instant Breakfast is partly to blame for the state of the music industry. They started the notion that anything can be instant, even breakfast, and I feel like the music industry selects some of their "artists" just like Carnation Instant Breakfast. They open the fridge still half asleep, grab the first thing they see, shake, and chug! It's content is mediocre, but you'll drink it cause you don't have to put much effort in, and it's right there for you.

I can't place the blame of the state of the music industry on a single party, for I feel it's far more complex than that. I feel the blame falls on three groups of people; industry executives, the producers & artists, and the consumers themselves.

I feel the executives play the part of the enabler. They're not the ones who are making the music, nor are they the one's directly contributing to make these albums "chart toppers". But what they are doing is giving the financial head nod to not only go ahead and create these plastic pop albums, but to promote the crap out of them, to make sure they get the highest return on their investment.

The producers and artists, both fortunately and unfortunately are mostly to blame for the current state of affairs in the industry. These people are constantly reaching into that familiar bag of winning formulas, and like an abstract painter, throwing them at the wall to see what sticks. The producers are especially to blame, cause I feel like lots of their "creative process" is taking beat A, adding synth B, and putting it behind who ever's "hot" at the time. It just seems horribly lazy to me.

Finally we come to the bottom of the totem pole, the consumer. The everyday listener. You might think, "How can you blame the consumer for buying the music they like?" Well in defense of this, I'll say that I've know plenty of people who will go and pick up just about every album that they hear on the radio, or see on MTV (back when they did music.) It's these people, and the unfortunate populous that don't really know that there is other great music out there that have made today's pop music, the most popular in history. It's the most readily accessible, and is constantly bombarding us from every angle of every major media outlet, so I can see why it becomes very hard to recognize that there is anything else out there. It's still not an excuse for not putting in the minimal effort to explore new musical horizons.

I see the laziness of artists, and the greed of executives as extremely damaging behavior, that has a much more profound effect on society than one might initially think. I feel these traits trickle down, and are transmitted through the music to general population below. Their perception becomes our reality. Their morals, and views of what's important become our own. Our view of their success and their status of being loved and accepted, strikes a cord with many, and the natural reaction is to follow. To emulate. Which brings me to the topic of the danger of celebrity.

Celebrities themselves are not normally dangerous creatures *cough cough*Mel Gibson*cough*...they are by themselves docile entities, but celebs can be unknowingly manipulated by the media. I'm not taking about being portrayed by the media in a certain light, I'm taking about being used by big media as an unknowing distraction from major social issues. How many people in 2009 knew about toxic levels of mercury in most of the world's fish population, or that within 5 years half of the east coast's drinking water may contain contain chemicals that have been proven to cause cancer and/or brain damage? I bet it's a lot smaller percentage than the amount of people that knew of Tiger Woods's affairs, Kanye's scene at the Grammies, or Chris Brown beating up his then girlfriend Rihanna. See my point?

I'm going to sound like a bit of a conspiracy theorist, but doesn't it seem like "big media" wants to keep us a bit too interested in the meaningless affairs of celebrities? Do I really need to know the latest on Justin Bieber's hair? Should I care who Miley Cyrus was spotted with out shopping for expensive cloths last Thursday? Not in the slightest, but I think the industry, big media, and major corporations feel it is important, because they want to make sure we hear these names over and over again. Why? So when these names that we hear, and these faces that we constantly see get behind a product, we buy. If we buy into them, we'll buy into whatever they're selling. My friend Jr brought this to my attention, when he said, "Why is it that every time I hear the name Beyonce, I think of Pepsi?" Scary huh?

Another worrying trend of big media is that to ensure the corporate foothold always has the highest stair to stand on, many media giant have been snatching up as many small media outlets as they can get their hands on. This ensures their artist, their product, will be heard as much as possible. But it hasn't just stopped with that. Their latest conquest has been to gain as much digital "real estate" as they possibly can. Social media sites like youtube, and facebook have opened new doors and new marketing opportunities for these corporate giants. We all saw it coming. We knew it was an inevitability. But it's still disappointing. Are you with me when I say I'm tired of being sold to constantly?

All that being said, I still have several, most specific issues with certain genres and artists of pop music I'd like to address. If you'll indulge me:

~ The Vocoder, better known as "Auto Tune": You're a miracle of science and technology. You can make anyone sing perfectly...like a robot. It's amazing...and it needs to stop! No bullshit, I truly have no idea what T-pain actually sounds like. We're tired of you. Go away.

~ Country musicians: Stop telling me that I'm unpatriotic because I don't like your music about how fuckin' cool our flag is, or how "free" we are. Between a dozen of you, you have 500 or so albums, and they all sound the same to me.

~ Emo-rockers: Stop sobbing into the mic, get out there and meet someone new, and then write about how awesome life is with this new person. I’m tired of your bitchin’.

~ Rap musicians: I don't give a fuck about how "hard" you are, or what drugs you use to "sling" in the streets. Even though you're telling me hate you for all the money your making, I don't, I hate you cause you sound like a douche bag...on the subject of douchebaggery,

~ Kanye West: Dude! Tune the ego down from 13 to a tolerable 10. We get it, you're a musical geneious...keep making brilliant music and stop being a pompous asshole. People will love you even more.

~ Lady Gaga: Oh, you wrote you’re latest song in 10 minutes? That’s not something you should be proud of, cause that means it took you ten minutes to copy the good parts of 4 songs other people wrote. And please stop telling people you’re a musician. Entertainer, yes. Musician, not so much. If you are a musician, pick up a damn instrument and play! Other than that, shut up!

~ Pop producers: Sampling is cool, but keep it at that. I've heard 6 full songs that I grew up with over the past few months that only have a slight change to the beat, new verses, and the exact same chorus. Wickid lazy! I have zero respect for you!

~ Thrash Metal bands: I can't understand a fuckin' word you're saying. Stop screaming, and annunciate!

~ Electronic artists: (What? Did you think I was going to leave them out?) It's true what people say about you. A lot of your music sound exactly the same. Lets try and keep it fresh, shall we?

Wooooo!...Man! I can't tell you how good it feels to get that out of my system! I've been carrying that around with me like a tumor, for years. And now I happily present you with the silver lining to this giant cloud of doom & gloom.

It’s not all bad! Pop music is not the downfall of humanity as we know it, and it’s certainly not the sole contributing factor that’s ripping our society apart. As I had stated above, I was going to be talking in sweeping generalizations, and I hope you understand that a lot of what I just wrote was nothing more than a cathartic release.

I’ll start by saying that I think there are an incredible amount of talented artist and producers out there that continually push the envelope of what’s musically possible. There are tons of insanely talented people in the industry that are consistently pushing music forward, and are leading this generation towards new musical horizons.

I’ll be the first to admit, that I will dance to pop music...A. because I love to dance, and B. because when I find myself in the presence of pop while intoxicated, the part of my brain that analytically picks it apart for it’s musical merits is far to busy drunkenly dancing to care about the originality of the beat, or the song structure. For those who don’t have an overactive musical mind, dance pop is great for sharing a couple of drinks with friends, dancing, and having a good time.

I’ll also admit, that for every genre that I’ve ragged on in this article, there are artist that I truly respect. Artists that are truly great musicians or have something brand new to bring to the scene. There are rappers who are awesome, emo-rockers, and thrash metal bands that I listen to on occasion, and yes, even country artists that I do respect for what they do.

I think the biggest part of this silver lining, is that there’s no accounting for taste. Everyone has, and is entitled to their own opinion. What you might like, I’m not a fan of. The song I think is the most beautiful in the entire world, you might not find it so...you’d be WRONG, but you’re entitled to your opinion. Only joking...

Like I had said, I wrote all this mostly to get it off my chest and to have my opinion of this complicated matter down in black and white. I also wrote this to share with all of you. To get you thinking about the music you hear, the music you choose to listen to, and the music that you come across in your every day travels. I wanted to write this to get a dialog started. To give you an idea of how powerful music can be, and how the music we hear can shape the landscape around us.

So now I’d like to leave this in your hands. I’ve said my piece on the matter. What are your thoughts? What is the impact that this, or any other kind of music has on you? How do you think pop music is effecting our society? What are your thoughts on the commercialization of music? How does all of this make you feel?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter. Please leave a comments below, on my facebook, or feel free to e-mail me @ SpaceCA18DET@gmail.com

Thanks for letting me share this with you. Peace.