Here's good ole David Dale, frustrated by contemporary pop music's total inability to come up with a sophisticated lyric that tickles David Dale's fancy. The headline says 'the day the music died' but really, his complaint is about the poor abstraction and bad taste in the lyrics; and really can one blame him?
Australia's top-selling singles of the past 10 years (and typical lyrics)
❏ Party Rock Anthem, LMFAO (sold more than 800,000 copies): ''I'm runnin' through these hos like Drano, I got that devilish flow, no halo.''
❏ Somebody That I Used To Know, Gotye (700,000+): ''No, you didn't have to stoop so low, have your friends collect your records and then change your number.''
❏ Sexy and I Know It, LMFAO (600,000+): ''We headed to the bar, baby don't be nervous; no shoes, no shirt and I still get serviced.''
❏ Call Me Maybe, Carly Rae Jepsen (550,000+): ''You took your time with the call, I took no time with the fall; you gave me nothin' at all, but still you're in my way.''
❏ Moves Like Jagger, Maroon 5 (550,000+): ''You say I'm a kid, my ego is big; I don't give a shit and it goes like this.''
Admittedly, those lyrics look pretty bad. But if the group is called 'LFMAO' then maybe it's not quite right to be expecting lyrics of any depth or meaning. Or maybe the apparent banality is implicit to the times in which we find ourselves living? In which case, should we be surprised?
Still, the whole article brought me to think about the real death of music, and I have to say it is these reality TV singing contest shows like X Factor' and 'The Voice'. For the love of god, if there is one place music is being killed, it's on these TV shows where people who have no insight into the songs they're singing are judged on rather subjective, obscure, arcane performance points while session musicians pump out 2minute abridged versions of classic songs.
No, really, they're terrible, and they have nothing to do with the qualia that makes music good. It's freaking glorified Karaoke put to the service of TV stations and advertisers, dressed up as music, with semi-pro singers fronting for the execrable business. So if David Dale really wants to take a hatchet to the death of music that he liked, well, he can have a go at these awful shows, one of which produced Adele (to whom he gives a free pass). No, Mr. Dale, it's worse than that.
Once upon a time, there was rock music, and it had a shot at being something tat could really communicate something important. Then, the cultural mainstream bought into it and the record labels sold the artists down the river, ever in the search of wider profits. And to this end it was all about packaging and looks and style; not writing and performing - As Frank Zappa called it, the 'Garni de Jour' phenomenon. You slap a piece of burnt meat between two bits of bread, and it's a burger. You add a tired piece of parsley next to it, and that's 'Garni du Jour' - and somehow this dried bit of parsley is meant to make the whole dining experience better.
Frank Zappa also made the observation that people also hate music, but love the packaging. People say they like music, but what they really like is the 'Garni du Jour'; and if the mass market is saying that the music business is crazy to focus on the segment of the market that -*gasp*- is actually interested in music being music for the sake of music.
That's how music died - when the music business decided the 'Garni du Jour' was much more important than the quality of the meat in between the bread making up the burgers they were peddling. Similarly, all these reality TV singing contest shows are all judging on the 'Garni du Jour' elements of each of these singer's 'marketability'. If they win, they can go on to sing the incredibly insightful lyrics David Dale so detests. It's not about the music, it's not even about the lyrics. Truth be told, it's all about all those *stupid* performance notes handed out by the likes of Simon Cowell and the rest of those 'judges'.
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