Guest Blog: Today’s Music and Its Effect On My Generation

I asked for bloggers and now I have to own up to it. At least once a week I'll try and post a guest blog on top of my two. This week's blog comes from Darren, a buddy of mine that we affectionately call D-Bear. Any comments I make are in italics.

-Don Woods

I am not a music person. I don’t write songs or play an instrument. I couldn’t tell you anything about notes or pitch or anything technical like that, but what I do know about music is that the ear raping performed by today’s biggest artists is out of control. Is the noise on the radio today really called music? Music- the tones or sounds employed, occurring in single line (melody) or multiple lines (harmony) and sounded or to besounded by one or more voices or instruments, or both.

Now I ask you, when was the last time you heard an instrument or autotune-free voice on the radio?

Or they don't need anything to be just plain horrible.

At this time, you’re probably expecting me to promote my personal favorite genre of music. And I would except for the fact that I like any music, anything other than the ear rape is fine with me. I'll take any genre with some type of instrument or vocalist who does more than talk. In order for this new style to be popular, there must be something special about it. So, if it’s not about talking in an annoying voice over computer-generated beats that makes these artists unique, maybe it’s the lyrics.

You know when you’re writing paper (or a blog...) and you just bullshit the whole thing by saying the same thing fifty different ways? Modern lyrics are kind of like that, but instead of “Leonardo da Vinci was a renaissance man” it’s “I like to have sex with attractive women and get free money for doing it.” If you think Lil Wayne is clever you would probably shit bricks after hearing Bo Burnham.

Haters call me gay, but that aint hatin
Cause I'm not homophobic, my morals are straight and
If I'm in the closet then you are below me
Takin the b-a-t out of basement, homey

I wish music could stop at music, but it doesn’t. Taste has a way of spilling into every aspect of our lives. These atrocities, being the most popular now, spawn a generation of stupidity unlike any other. Maybe I’m seeing connections that aren’t there but it seems like every terrible music video posted on Facebook is accompanied by an even worse message full of useless symbols and pointless acronyms.

&&##<3 smdh <3##&&

The dumbness continues into TV, where shows on MTV and Vh1 further dull down any signs of intelligence in our youth (To be fair, Vh1 has always been more of an older person's channel. It's the elephant graveyard where music goes to die). All around you are kids saying they have swag, which is apparently attained by giving up all knowledge of anything important in exchange for copious amounts of clothing (I love the word copious). I’m embarrassed to be in a generation with such an idiotic group of people.

I have hope that this is just a passing phase and that one day it will all just be a sickening memory, but I’m not holding my breath. For now I’m just going to go on listening to real music, speaking like an intelligent life form and watching the Discovery Channel.

Planet Earth all day.

If this actually gets posted, big thanks to D. Woods for providing me with an outlet to express my ideas.

-Darren Pascavage