Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Why I dislike modern music
While my disdain for certain types of popular music, even some pretentious rock/punk bands, and most certainly chinese/japanese/korean (all oriental) pop music, might seem overly critical to the typical radio-follower, Agagooga's easily eclipses mine and comprehensively describes why modern music sucks....to him anyway.
Breathing
Some singers (usually female ones) seem to take pride in breathing (loudly) as much as they can in between notes, anywhere they want. Whether this is due to:
1) a lack of talent
2) stylistic flair
3) a genuine lack of breath because when they're supposed to be breathing, they choose instead of mutter or shout random words (heavy metal bands are especially fond of this)
is unknown, but either way it sounds horrible.
Case in point: Whitney Houston singing in an extract from "When You Believe". The bolded asterisks represent each loud breath taken by Whitney.
Similar-sounding songs
Perhaps it is just me, but for some reason I think that the Backstreet Boys' "Larger Than Life" and "I Want It That Way" sound very similar, and for some time I had difficulty distinguishing between the two. Moving to more objective measures of similarity, 'Quit playing games' and 'I want it that way' use the same drum machine, and have practically the same beat programming.
Other artistes with similar sounding songs: Michael learns to rock and Britney Spears.
Music Videos and fans' short attention span
Invented to counter the increasingly short attention spans of pop music fans, people in music videos prance around, stare at the camera and generally act like idiots. Especially bad are the music videos by Britney "Big Fake Boobs" Spears.
Frames from Gunther and the Sunshine Girls' "Ding Dong Song". What lesbians necking and groping each other's breasts has to do with touching Gunther's Tralala, I don't know. Maybe it makes them more hot for him.
During live performances, the ever-changing images present in music videos are not available to sate the audience's cravings for action and movement, so to compensate for this partially, artistes sometimes hire dancers to prance around in the background, dazzle audiences with frequent changes between various glitzy and impractical costumes (see Chinese pop concerts by female artistes), smash guitars or otherwise liven up the atmosphere.
Repetitive, meaningless lyrics and sounds
Many song writers endow their songs with simplistic, meaningless, and/or just ridiculous lyrics. Some are overly fond of certain words: "heart", "apart", "fire", "desire" and "dream".
Example: S.H.E's superstar
Others do not even bother to take that effort and instead either write in an abundance of "ooo"s, "yeah yeah yeah"s and other such noises, or repeat the same few words over and over again throughout the song.
Case in point: The starting of Fantasia Barrino's "I believe", where she goes: "Oh... Ohhhhhh... Oh..."
Listen to the WMA file (16s: 48kb)
Another example: The refrain in Eamon's "Fuck It" where he goes:
Oh oh
Uh huh yeah
Oh oh
Uh huh yeah
Oh oh
Uh huh yeah
Oh oh
Uh huh yeah
Read more gripes with modern music by Agagooga.
Breathing
Some singers (usually female ones) seem to take pride in breathing (loudly) as much as they can in between notes, anywhere they want. Whether this is due to:
1) a lack of talent
2) stylistic flair
3) a genuine lack of breath because when they're supposed to be breathing, they choose instead of mutter or shout random words (heavy metal bands are especially fond of this)
is unknown, but either way it sounds horrible.
Case in point: Whitney Houston singing in an extract from "When You Believe". The bolded asterisks represent each loud breath taken by Whitney.
Similar-sounding songs
Perhaps it is just me, but for some reason I think that the Backstreet Boys' "Larger Than Life" and "I Want It That Way" sound very similar, and for some time I had difficulty distinguishing between the two. Moving to more objective measures of similarity, 'Quit playing games' and 'I want it that way' use the same drum machine, and have practically the same beat programming.
Other artistes with similar sounding songs: Michael learns to rock and Britney Spears.
Music Videos and fans' short attention span
Invented to counter the increasingly short attention spans of pop music fans, people in music videos prance around, stare at the camera and generally act like idiots. Especially bad are the music videos by Britney "Big Fake Boobs" Spears.
Frames from Gunther and the Sunshine Girls' "Ding Dong Song". What lesbians necking and groping each other's breasts has to do with touching Gunther's Tralala, I don't know. Maybe it makes them more hot for him.
During live performances, the ever-changing images present in music videos are not available to sate the audience's cravings for action and movement, so to compensate for this partially, artistes sometimes hire dancers to prance around in the background, dazzle audiences with frequent changes between various glitzy and impractical costumes (see Chinese pop concerts by female artistes), smash guitars or otherwise liven up the atmosphere.
Repetitive, meaningless lyrics and sounds
Many song writers endow their songs with simplistic, meaningless, and/or just ridiculous lyrics. Some are overly fond of certain words: "heart", "apart", "fire", "desire" and "dream".
Example: S.H.E's superstar
Others do not even bother to take that effort and instead either write in an abundance of "ooo"s, "yeah yeah yeah"s and other such noises, or repeat the same few words over and over again throughout the song.
Case in point: The starting of Fantasia Barrino's "I believe", where she goes: "Oh... Ohhhhhh... Oh..."
Listen to the WMA file (16s: 48kb)
Another example: The refrain in Eamon's "Fuck It" where he goes:
Oh oh
Uh huh yeah
Oh oh
Uh huh yeah
Oh oh
Uh huh yeah
Oh oh
Uh huh yeah
Read more gripes with modern music by Agagooga.
Comments:
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YES. those who pair off "fire" and "desire" are so lazy, and I used to have a mental list of all the offenders (including The Happy Mondays, Kula Shaker, The Pixies [twice!!], The Backstreet Boys, Courtney Love, blah, blah, blah0.
Anyone who has both fire and desire on their mind could well be a pyromaniac. Just a thought.
And the second bulletin of the day is about the forthcoming Park of Jurassic Dinosaurs. A polite ripple of applause for the lovely ad you have put out. Now Channel 4 MUST consider it.
Did you see Rock School on Friday? Man, Gene Simmons, what a shithead. Only half the kids can be in the band? That means that the rest have to be groupies, makeup designers and roadies. I am OVERWHELMED by how derivative this has become. Wait till they find out that Gene is not actually a real teacher but a fat wash-up who can't pay the rent. I predict much more tomfoolery...
Anyone who has both fire and desire on their mind could well be a pyromaniac. Just a thought.
And the second bulletin of the day is about the forthcoming Park of Jurassic Dinosaurs. A polite ripple of applause for the lovely ad you have put out. Now Channel 4 MUST consider it.
Did you see Rock School on Friday? Man, Gene Simmons, what a shithead. Only half the kids can be in the band? That means that the rest have to be groupies, makeup designers and roadies. I am OVERWHELMED by how derivative this has become. Wait till they find out that Gene is not actually a real teacher but a fat wash-up who can't pay the rent. I predict much more tomfoolery...
Try being me at 16 sitting through an entire 3-hr car journey between S'pore and KL, listening to my sisters' marathon run of every major boyband album from the late 90's.... listening to "fireeee" and "desireee".
Being in S'pore on holiday now, I unfortunately am missing out on Rock School. But I see Gene is making good progress. I wonder which drug he will get them hooked on first?
PS: The Emperor is a God-AWFUL singer.
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Being in S'pore on holiday now, I unfortunately am missing out on Rock School. But I see Gene is making good progress. I wonder which drug he will get them hooked on first?
PS: The Emperor is a God-AWFUL singer.
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