I have a lot of thoughts bottled up that I've kind of been pouring out in rapid-fire succession over the past couple of days, which coincides with procrastinating for my English Paper. I don't even know why I thought of now to write this down (other than the procrastinating thing). Also, I'm listening to Reel Big Fish as I write this, which is literally the most happy-go-lucky music on the planet, so it'll be interesting for me to be angry while listening to it. But here goes...
While the issue of gay marriage has been unusually dormant over the past few weeks/months, the topic of whether to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has been a hot topic. To anyone who knows it, it's probably no secret that idealistically, I'm on the far left. It's not a conscious choice; I don't merely believe the things I do to conform to the Democratic lifestyle, I feel that form of ideology is phony and counter productive. People who believe something to fit the Democrat/Republican belief system is a waste, but it is much more productive to choose your political affiliation after deciding what you belief. But I digress...
I'm not very politically minded, but I never understood how "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was a debatable item. To me, it serves no discernible purpose. It seems more than logical to me to allow anyone who truly loves the country to join the armed forces and defend the cause he/she believes in.
I could never quite grasp what the hell bothered people about gays serving in the military, but to hear the ridiculous ignorance some people have towards gays serving is just mind boggling at times. And then to hear people like John McCain constantly contradicting himself is mortifying to me as someone who thinks the man should honor his past commitment to repealing it if he gets evidence that military members have no problem with allowing gays in the armed forces. I guess this is the topic that sprung this idea back in my head.
But I'll get back to gay marriage. The fact that the government is having to put up with so much resistance to repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" reminded me of the struggle with finally legalizing gay marriage and the ignorant resistant that is coming up against the cause. Simply put, I am for gay marriage. I see absolutely nothing wrong with allowing two people who love each other who don't fit the 'traditional' idea of marriage to be wed. More power to anyone who is truly committed to someone they love. It always saddens me how much opposition many heterosexuals put up to gay marriage. I am straight, and a gay getting married in no way affects me or anyone I know negatively. Why can't everyone have a chance to be happy.
I always hear the same reasons for why gays should not be allowed to marry. Perhaps the most used reason is the Bible. Yes, that Bible. The one written many, many, many years ago by people who may or may not have been insane about an all-powerful being that may or may not exist. But it's against gays getting married, so we should take their word for it. The Bible wasn't even written by God, so how we take its word so seriously surprises me. Furthermore, following the Bible, such an ancient book that took place in a world FAR different from our own, is ignorant. The world chances and we adapt to it. The Bible talks about stoning, yet do we stone people in America today? NO.
As humans, we believe in Progress. Slavery regrettably used to be legal in this country, but now it is no longer legal in this country, because we made progress. So why do we still not allow homosexuals to get married because that's what a really old book tells us is the right way to do things? Besides, there is such a thing as "seperation of Church and State", which means that the religion is separate from the law-making bodies that govern me. So furthermore, we're letting religion dictate this? Did I miss something?
Furthermore, it amazes me how much Republicans, who claim to love this country and what it stands for so much, would not want to see its biggest promise of equality used in full force. Allowing gays the right to marry is another way of offering another group of citizens of this country the opportunity to have freedom, and if anything Republicans love freedom so much that they should love this idea. We're merely hindering progress by being so close-minded.
My last point is this preposterous idea that legalizing homosexual marriage will somehow ruin the sanctity of marriage. Ah yes, so it has come down to this. We are worried about harming the sanctity of an institution that ends in divorce over half the time. People like Britney Spears have been married for 55 hours before getting a divorce. Yes, marriage is alive and well. Face it, the idea of true love has approached myth status. If anything, allowing gays to get married might, oh... I don't know... actually improve marriage. Maybe allowing two people who have fought so hard for the right to experience marriage will improve it. Fighting so hard for something makes it more precious when you achieve that satisfaction, no matter what the circumstances are. Maybe allowing gays to marriage will add some true love to marriage, or maybe it won't. But it can hardly hurt marriage any more than it has already been hurt.
Maybe I'm just naive, maybe I'm thinking too hard about this, or maybe I'm missing something. But to me, allowing gays to get married is a no-brainer. Who are we to deny someone the right to be happy because we are afraid to accept change and because we are only looking out for ourselves, not others. Then again, it's a puzzling world we live in...
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
My Thoughts on Pop Music
I recently thought of the perfect way to describe my distaste for mainstream pop music. I was so happy when the idea dawned on me, and I've been planning on writing these thoughts down. Then I decided to search the internet to see if it had been talked about before. Lo and behold, the has come up before... shocker (thank you Google). Anyway, I've still had a lot of feelings on pop music bottled up with the recent surge of terrible "music" that has struck the airwaves like a deadly plague.
The thought I had about pop likened it to fast food. There is a quote by a man named Marcus Eder, described as a rogue scholar and an angry liberal who wrote a book called, ""Pop music is like fast food. It's always available quickly and might even taste good while you're eating it...but eventually you're going to shit it out and see it for what it really is--all the packaging in the world can't cover up the fact that it's excrement."
I'd like to expand on his beliefs with some of my own observations. What I wanted to say originally is that pop music is like fast food, in that it's quick, always available, and you don't have to look far and wide to find it. It's shoved in your face, or should I say on your ears, every time you turn on the radio, much how like every time you turn on the television there's a commercial for McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger King. But this music, like this food, has little substance. Its availability does not make up for that fact. It takes hard work to find truly worthwhile music. You have to dig a little deeper, strain yourself a little more, like finding a truly good eating establishment with food that won't keep you in the bathroom for hours on end. In the end, the satisfaction of finding that truly worthwhile music, like that truly tasty food place, will be more than fulfilling.
Unfortunately, the masses don't want to go through the trouble. They are more than happy gobbling up the first catchy, brain-dead song the industry will throw at them and the radio will overplay and oversell. The problem with so much pop music is that it is mass produced to satisfy a wide group of people who aren't looking for anything other than a catchy beat and generic, recycled lyrics. Like Mr. Eder said, it's presented in a shiny packaged that's heavily glossed up to hide its major flaws and shortcomings and to convince you it's really wonderful.
The illusion of catchiness as a suitable substitute for style is disheartening for me. To me, music is an art form. It is absolutely inexcusable in my eyes to accept sacrificing the artistic component of music to make a product everyone will like. The excuse that music is "fun" and "catchy" as a reason why it is a good song boggles my mind. Ke$ha, Miley Cyrus, and Katy Perry are hardly talented. Don't get me wrong, they are fantastic pop musicians... because they know exactly how to succeed the same way people like N*Sync and Britney Spears knew the formula for becoming successful.
What about their songs is truly inspiring? The lyrics? I don't think so... unless you count the same generic words regurgitated over and over as progressive lyrics. The music itself holds no weight of its own. Music, like writing a book or painting, is art and should be cherished as such.
The point of my rambling is that I can't take when people say they have good musical taste and list off generic pop acts as something that is more than it is: terrible music covered up by high tech production (especially auto-tune... God I hate auto-tune) hoping to package it off to the masses as the newest "big thing". Look no further than Willow Smith's "Whip My Hair Back and Forth". The song is awful. Do you really think the 9-year-old wrote this damn song by herself? She is the daughter of two powerfully rich celebrities and probably had the finest people working on the song for her to recite. The lyrics are terribly brainless and the beat itself is mind-numbing.
I do want to stress that any person has all the right in the world to listen to Willow's song or Ke$ha's "We R Who We R" or Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" or 3Oh!3's... well, any terrible song they've ever written. But don't try to spin it as music gold when we've heard those tunes before, just like you shouldn't try to tell me that McDonald's is great food. It's not. You can enjoy it, you may enjoy it, no one should stop you from enjoying it, but don't act like it's good. I myself enjoy a couple of guilty pleasure songs/bands that I know are musically unimpressive (not to the extent of Willow Smith or Ke$ha, thankfully).
How many people talk about and listen to Thrice? Kevin Devine? Brand New? Rx Bandits? Streetlight Manifesto? Those musicians have talent. They dig deeper, they evolve, their music progresses from album to album and they always try to improve. Bands like Brand New had a formula that everyone loved, and they still changed their sound to challenge themselves without worrying about what others think. That's what pop music lacks; that conquest, that sense of discovery. Mainstream pop is complacent in its own filth. Ever listen to Vheissu by Thrice? I highly encourage that CD, because it represents the musical thought I wish you could find in the mainstream. Same goes to ...And the Battle Begun by the Rx Bandits, truly one of the greatest albums I have ever listened to in my entire life. And there are a ton of great bands I've never heard of and you've never heard of, but it's so gratifying to hear them and discover their music.
Before ending this rant, that's not to say all mainstream music is trash. There are musicians that will challenge the mainstream norm and expand on the formula most pop acts will rely on. It's just frustrating to wonder where they are sometimes.
Enjoy the music you listen to. God bless the artist for making the most money they can, that is well within their right to do so. But do know that there is good music beneath the surface. You just have to find it.
The thought I had about pop likened it to fast food. There is a quote by a man named Marcus Eder, described as a rogue scholar and an angry liberal who wrote a book called, ""Pop music is like fast food. It's always available quickly and might even taste good while you're eating it...but eventually you're going to shit it out and see it for what it really is--all the packaging in the world can't cover up the fact that it's excrement."
I'd like to expand on his beliefs with some of my own observations. What I wanted to say originally is that pop music is like fast food, in that it's quick, always available, and you don't have to look far and wide to find it. It's shoved in your face, or should I say on your ears, every time you turn on the radio, much how like every time you turn on the television there's a commercial for McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger King. But this music, like this food, has little substance. Its availability does not make up for that fact. It takes hard work to find truly worthwhile music. You have to dig a little deeper, strain yourself a little more, like finding a truly good eating establishment with food that won't keep you in the bathroom for hours on end. In the end, the satisfaction of finding that truly worthwhile music, like that truly tasty food place, will be more than fulfilling.
Unfortunately, the masses don't want to go through the trouble. They are more than happy gobbling up the first catchy, brain-dead song the industry will throw at them and the radio will overplay and oversell. The problem with so much pop music is that it is mass produced to satisfy a wide group of people who aren't looking for anything other than a catchy beat and generic, recycled lyrics. Like Mr. Eder said, it's presented in a shiny packaged that's heavily glossed up to hide its major flaws and shortcomings and to convince you it's really wonderful.
The illusion of catchiness as a suitable substitute for style is disheartening for me. To me, music is an art form. It is absolutely inexcusable in my eyes to accept sacrificing the artistic component of music to make a product everyone will like. The excuse that music is "fun" and "catchy" as a reason why it is a good song boggles my mind. Ke$ha, Miley Cyrus, and Katy Perry are hardly talented. Don't get me wrong, they are fantastic pop musicians... because they know exactly how to succeed the same way people like N*Sync and Britney Spears knew the formula for becoming successful.
What about their songs is truly inspiring? The lyrics? I don't think so... unless you count the same generic words regurgitated over and over as progressive lyrics. The music itself holds no weight of its own. Music, like writing a book or painting, is art and should be cherished as such.
The point of my rambling is that I can't take when people say they have good musical taste and list off generic pop acts as something that is more than it is: terrible music covered up by high tech production (especially auto-tune... God I hate auto-tune) hoping to package it off to the masses as the newest "big thing". Look no further than Willow Smith's "Whip My Hair Back and Forth". The song is awful. Do you really think the 9-year-old wrote this damn song by herself? She is the daughter of two powerfully rich celebrities and probably had the finest people working on the song for her to recite. The lyrics are terribly brainless and the beat itself is mind-numbing.
I do want to stress that any person has all the right in the world to listen to Willow's song or Ke$ha's "We R Who We R" or Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream" or 3Oh!3's... well, any terrible song they've ever written. But don't try to spin it as music gold when we've heard those tunes before, just like you shouldn't try to tell me that McDonald's is great food. It's not. You can enjoy it, you may enjoy it, no one should stop you from enjoying it, but don't act like it's good. I myself enjoy a couple of guilty pleasure songs/bands that I know are musically unimpressive (not to the extent of Willow Smith or Ke$ha, thankfully).
How many people talk about and listen to Thrice? Kevin Devine? Brand New? Rx Bandits? Streetlight Manifesto? Those musicians have talent. They dig deeper, they evolve, their music progresses from album to album and they always try to improve. Bands like Brand New had a formula that everyone loved, and they still changed their sound to challenge themselves without worrying about what others think. That's what pop music lacks; that conquest, that sense of discovery. Mainstream pop is complacent in its own filth. Ever listen to Vheissu by Thrice? I highly encourage that CD, because it represents the musical thought I wish you could find in the mainstream. Same goes to ...And the Battle Begun by the Rx Bandits, truly one of the greatest albums I have ever listened to in my entire life. And there are a ton of great bands I've never heard of and you've never heard of, but it's so gratifying to hear them and discover their music.
Before ending this rant, that's not to say all mainstream music is trash. There are musicians that will challenge the mainstream norm and expand on the formula most pop acts will rely on. It's just frustrating to wonder where they are sometimes.
Enjoy the music you listen to. God bless the artist for making the most money they can, that is well within their right to do so. But do know that there is good music beneath the surface. You just have to find it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
