Music - The Lost Art…

Oxford Defines music as: - vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion: IS THIS WHAT WE HAVE NOW??

Over the years we have seen music “develop” from orchestral grace to rock’n’roll to pop to electronic noise. Lost are the days where lyrics told stories and beats caressed eardrums. To be a musician back in the day, you had to be talented in many ways, be it lyrically, vocally or instrumentally. Today only a handful of artists still have the ability to write good lyrics and sing them with their own voices. 

As a person who grew up in the 90s and a fan of many a genre of music, I believe that today’s music has lost its soul. “Artists” like WILL.I.AM, PitBull, Nicky Minaj amongst others in my opinion have made millions on just throwing random words to catchy beats and it’s apparently ‘good music’. If you can afford to pay either of the people I mentioned earlier and get them to spit a few rhymes on your track, your pretty much guaranteed to be in the charts.

So in essence you don’t really need to be that creative or talented to write lyrics anymore, start a song with “Mr Worldwide, Mr 305” add some random Spanish, end it with “Miaaami” and you’re sorted.

Don’t even get me started on Miley Cyrus, what a waste of god given talent that girl is. Granted, these days sex sells pretty much every damn thing, but I’m sure there’s an ethical way to do things.  And she’s being compared to people like Madonna and Britney Spears?? Remind me again which one of these two smoked weed on public television???? Granted both Madonna and Britney are very controversial and by no means saints, but damn, Narcotics on TV?? I’m certain Billy Ray Cyrus, who happens to be a country music legend might have had a mini heart attack seeing his little girl do that. But hey, there’s no point crying about spilled milk now. The funny thing is, people always talk shit about rappers who smoke weed and this was hushed up.

I know that the younger generations would probably roll their eyes at me and say that I’m getting old and that I don’t understand music anymore. But people this is fact. A good example of the “Power of Pitbull”, is Jennifer Lopez. These two have released four or five songs together and have now been chosen to do a song for the FIFA World Cup called “We are one”.  The demo of this song sound horrendous, mind you it’s sung by some other guy, hopefully the actual song sounds better. Thus far it lacks the power and the passion of the previous World Cup songs.

Moving on to one of my favourite genres of music, Rap. Good lord! Where to even begin. Back in the day, legends like Eazy E, Ice Cube, Run Dmc, Coolio, Tupac Shakur and Biggie were awesome at the Rap game. I will go out a limb and say that if they were alive, they would still be better than most of the rappers today. How the hell did white guys become better rappers than black guys?? The answer, Eminem, the man is a lyrical genius and he will out rap almost anybody in the game right at this point. Marshall Mathers, Raps last hope! THANK YOU DRE!!!

People like 2 Chainez, Drake, Lil Wayne, Whiz Khalifa etc only rap about sex, money, cars and drugs. Now, I’m not saying the gangster rappers of old didn’t rap about the same stuff, I mean Snoop Dogg might as well have been born with a joint in his hand, and Dr Dre’s albums were called Chronic. But still, the new stuff in my opinion is just a bad imitation. The rhymes these guys spit don’t even make sense anymore. “I aint tupac, im the new pac” Lil Wayne said this. I’m sorry what?? There’s only one Tupac, and if he were alive to hear that statement, he’d have ripped this guy a new asshole. In the words of Ice Cube, " You just now learning the game, I taught it'

What do the majority of chart topping artists have in common? They can’t bloody well sing! Everything is auto tuned now. This is a question that people need to start asking record labels, why the hell do you give people record deals, IF THEY CANT SING?!?. Nicky Minaj once claimed that she is more talented than Mariah Carrey, seriously??? I swear the Botox has gone to her brain. Mariah Carrey has a vocal range that Nicky Minaj (wouldn’t be anywhere without Auto-Tune) couldn’t even dream of.  Auto Tune has destroyed the vocals in music. If not for people like Adele, Daughtry amongst others, music would have truly died by now.

Party goers these days all look like zombies, they’re on all kinds of drugs, they stand in rows, arbitrarily moving parts of their anatomy, while facing a ‘DJ’  whose hands will be stretched out, and the music?? It all sounds the same to me.  Whatever happened to dancing?? Back when we partied, it was all about meeting people, getting your drink on, and getting rejected by all the hot girls that you ask to dance. NOT being on drugs, staring at a DJ and standing next to each other. 

Comedian Russell Peters said, “I know a lot of you spend money to go see these so-called DJs who stand there in big arenas like this and their arms are in the air. They better be DJing with their dick right now, because if your arms are in the air who the hell is playing the music? Cos that’s like you spending money to come see me and I put a DVD on and stand there making hand hearts”.  Oh so true…

The worst thing about music these days, is that musical instruments have almost become obsolete, and that sucks.  Lyrics don’t make sense anymore, beats and baselines sounds exactly the same regardless of genre.

Back in the day, when artists like Freddie Mercury and Michael Jackson or Elvis and The Beatles before them, ruled stages and venues all over the world, music was amazing. 

It was almost a separate language that brought everyone together, regardless of cast, colour or creed. The 80s and 90s saw remarkable changes in music and pop culture, but still for all, nothing like what we have to deal with now. 

If anyone has any issues with anything I’ve said, feel free to comment, but remember this is just my humble opinion.