Today’s “music” is for the feeling “good” about feeling bad generation

  

I have to admit that today’s—and frankly that of the last twenty years—version of “popular culture” in this country is a sad shadow of its former “greatness.” In popular music, the U.S. used to represent the “zeitgeist” of the latest and greatest. That is not true anymore. The American music scene has been stuck in a rut for the past two decades, and there is no indication of growth, ever. This rat I saw by a bus stop has more “moves” than anything going on these days:

 

We live in a world today where a pathological liar and megalomaniac like Elizabeth Holmes could possibly get away with her crimes because a jury will believe the story she and her defense team dreamed-up, portraying her as another weak-willed, “victimized” white female, terrorized and sexually-abused by a (dark-skinned) male who she herself used (because she needed to con someone with actual business acumen, with the promise of sex) while admitting to cheating on him with another “lover” on the side.

Meanwhile mass shootings make headlines nationally, but on local news there continues the dreary “if it bleeds, it leads” stories seemingly every day. Instead of discussing what motivates it, that topic is avoided save in general terms in order to avoid accusations and backlash. Nobody “marches” the streets to protest crime, particularly if it means looking at oneself in the mirror.

It’s a different world we live in today for certain. You have people who are self-obsessed to the point of thinking they are the center of the universe and what other people do or say is a threat to their egotism, and when you have a whole country of people like this, the truth about oneself is hard to come by.

Which brings me back to “art,” and specifically music, or what passes for it these days. “Popular” music in America was once something that people could listen or dance to where one could at least imagine the world as they wished it to be, not necessarily how it actually was—and provide some hope that it could be better. “Love” was something to aspire to, not something you expected from others but were unwilling to give yourself. In the Sixties and Seventies, not just love, but peace and goodwill were what many artists aspired to achieve with their music. It wasn’t always about that, of course; but at least in most of those cases negativity was avoided, and there was at least some recognition of one’s own failings—and if things were bad, they could get better if one tried hard enough.

But not anymore. We live in a world of “entitlement” and “privilege,” and it is always someone else’s “fault.” People are told how they are supposed to “feel” by political and social activists, and once going into something with an expectation of taking without giving, if you don’t get what you expected, or didn’t “feel good” afterward, then retribution is in the offing—whether accusations of “abuse” or justification for crime.

I’m not saying that today’s music created this negativity; it is simply a reflection of today’s society. There is plenty of irony in Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well”—a re-recording of a song almost a decade old which Swift did out of spite for her former manager—being the “longest” number one hit over Don McLean’s classic “American Pie”; “Pie’s” radio edit cut 4 minutes from the song, and people have to suffer Swift’s dreary, monotonous 10-minute whine about yet another ex-boyfriend. Swift has had how many? Two dozen? And only they are to “blame”? Yes, that is the world we live in now. Swift is so conceited with undeserved adulation that she once ignored protocol and embarrassed Prince William by forcing him to join her in a song on stage during a benefit concert in 2013.

 

But back to the McLean song. “American Pie”—the lyrics I can still recite from memory—was about what he thought was the dying of old-time rock-and-roll as represented by Buddy Holly, devolving into the “Satan’s spell” of the Rolling Stones and the Altamont Concert tragedy in 1969. But the Seventies was stereotyped as the “have a nice day” decade in music, although in fact it represented the peak in musical achievement in popular music, and music at its most eclectic. Although he might say the politically-correct things about today’s “music,” I’d say that McLean and many musicians of his generation would probably react to it in this way if forced to listen to it with no way to get out of the room:

 

 

 

 

Yes, if you haven’t gotten the message yet, I think most of today’s American “music” sucks; maybe if they added “sweetener” like strings to otherwise tuneless, hookless (Swift doesn’t know what a “hook” is) arrangements, maybe some of it could be tolerable, but that would be either too “expensive” or too “classical.” Most of the music that I “like” today is coming out of the UK; there are a few exceptions from this country, but those songs are not likely to be favorites of so-called critics who would call it “retro.”

 

No, we are told that tuneless, instrumentally-challenged “music” with depressing, boring whines “sung”  by people who can’t sing unless through an auto-tune device are “classic” by “music” critics who have no musical background or historical perspectives, but are forced to be marketers because there is nothing else for them to do. The fact that there are people who like this kind of “pop music” is only a statement on the state of society today. And don’t get me wrong: I hate even worse the vulgarity and proneness to promote negativity, criminality and even violence in rap/hip-hop “music.”

 

While there is little from today that I like, what is “old” can still be “new.” I’m still discovering previously buried gems like Kiki Dee’s Great Expectations from 1970, recorded with Motown’s fabled Funk Brothers. Somehow I think they could have done something different with the album cover design:

 

 

There was the obvious “expectation” that this would be a hit in America (it was in the UK), since most of the songs were cover versions of prior hits, which convinced me to purchase the Japanese release (Japan has been very good about releasing on CD old studio albums from the Seventies by soul artists). This record has been on the top of my preferred listening chart since March.

The record was hampered in the States for lack of an original hit song to power sales. But for someone like me who prefers the tight and tuneful single medium over albums, with every song here given the “classic” Motown treatment every cut is irresistible. To my ears, songs like “Love Makes the World Go Round,” "Love is a Warm Kind of Sorrow," the slowed-down version of the Stevie Wonder hit “For Once in My Life," and the haunting "Jimmy" are better than the originals; fans of “classic” Motown, or great music period, are certainly missing out on something special if they don’t have this record in their collection.

But then again, I suspect that today’s “music connoisseurs” would be reacting like this to anything with actual melodies, musical instrumentation, natural singing and positive vibes: