Which is not to say that I’m going to be discussing musical theory or anything of the sort, because I know less about musical theory than I know about the ins and outs of brain surgery.
Anyway, in recent years I’ve found that I dislike most of what I hear on the radio. This might be a sign of aging, or might be the way its always been, but I believe that there is a general consensus among critics and other people who are paid to say such things that in recent years, the vast majority of popular music sucks in a huge, gasping sort of way.
Again, though, this isn’t my field, so I’ll leave the explanations to the experts. Me, I’ve just found that I need to do more work to find music that I like, or else admit defeat and buy the albums that I didn’t get around to buying ten or twenty years ago.
1985 was a great year for music. It just was; trust me on this. Oh, I can certainly provide ample proof for that statement, but we’re all of similar age, right? So you know what I’m talking about. Anyway, it’s not only 1985, it’s just that ’85 was the apex.
Recently, I’ve found that 1995 was a pretty decent year, too. This is good, because it gives me hope for 2005. At the very least, Britney Spears should be posing for Playboy by then, which should make Cindy happy.
So, why 1995? Britpop. Not that I was a big fan of Oasis, but lots of other Britpop was just brilliant. I say this because I just picked up something of a Britpop anthology, Live Forever, and am enjoying my purchase immensely. Thirty-nine songs, and I have only seven to go. And only one bad one so far, which is a damn good average for such a collection. It even has two songs by Sleeper, which made me enormously happy at first, but the first song is mediocre. Ok, that’s not quite fair; I do like it, but it’s a cover of a Blondie song, and I just don’t care for Blondie much.
Yes, fine, Blondie is classic, they inspired everyone, they’re the basis for everything that came after, etc. I grew up hearing Blondie songs all the damn time, and I’m sick of them already, ok? I suppose the fact that I can listen to “Heart of Glass” without covering my ears and keening must mean that the song is absolutely wonderful, but I just can’t really appreciate it.
On the other hand, there are a few songs on the album that elicited an “Oh, yeah, I like that song!” response, when I didn’t recognize the song’s artist or title. That’s always a nice surprise. Like “Stars”, by Dubstar. I never would have connected the song itself to the band or title, but I do really like that song.
And, in a moment of perfection, “Setting Sun” by The Chemical Brothers came on just as I was about to perform the series of maneuvers that takes me from going slightly faster than the exactly the posted speed limit in the fast lane to a crawl behind merging idiots in the slow lane. It’s one of those songs that lets you see the path between the trucks that you otherwise couldn’t see with normal, non-fast-paced-loud-boomy-bass-snarling music. Which makes me think that owning an entire album by said brothers of chemical would not be in my best interest.
So, no, it’s not new music, and that probably violates some principle of pure, unsullied, music-buying…although I’m not sure how, it must offend someone. But it’s a lot of effort to hunt for the handful of non-terrible current bands, isn’t it? And it’s not just stubborn perversity on my part; it’s not some determination I have to hate everything new. Oh no, I’ve tried. Take Norah Jones, for instance. I wanted to like her, I really did. I did at first, in fact, but that luster faded ridiculously quickly. I don’t even listen to the radio much (but you knew that), so it’s not as though I was hearing her songs every few minutes. It’s just that she sounds good, but I quickly realized that her music isn’t “lulling” so much as “incredibly, numbingly boring.” I think this reversal was mostly due to a well-written review I read that said, basically, “Enh.” Except with more words, obviously.
A similar thing happened with Guns n’ Roses. I was actually starting to like their songs, until someone pointed out that Axl Rose doesn’t sing so much as whine. And, dammit, that person was right.
I recently purged my cd collection of the most embarrassing examples of past interest. Fortunately, selectivity in the past meant that it was a mere twenty cds. The most embarrasing was probably my Rush albums, simply because I really liked Rush, or at least tried very, very hard to convince myself that I liked them. But, damn, Rush’s lead singer is terrible. The guy commits assault whenever he gets near a microphone, and years of rationalizing that their drummer was really good or that the bass player was pretty good could excuse the fact that the singer is horrifically bad.
Sure, I still have a couple of albums by The Outfield, but they did have some very good songs. Unfortunately, those were completely unbalanced by truckloads of utter crap.
Of course, I only reveal this because I know that everyone else has similar, if not far greater, collections of musical atrocities.