Rant Corner: Pop music

New month, new rant corner.  Gotta vent my anger some way right?  This time around, it's pop music.  You might like pop music, you might hate it.  Personally, I find it bland, boring, and quite frankly kinda sad.  For as much money and effort is put into pop music, it's so...generic and so...homogeneous.  What I find even worse or perhaps disturbing is that artists that create really unique and textural complete songs seem to lose that edge when they become famous in the US.  It's like the status of being a pop music star makes artists completely pedestrian and unable to experiment musically.  Although unable to experiment might not be completely accurate.  More accurately I would say that being in the pop music limelight makes people so reticent to experimentation and failure that they churn out shitty music that all sounds the same.

But let's not just take my word for it.  Let's dive into some examples.  At the point of this post, Katy Perry is a famous singer who sings pretty shitty formulaic party pop music.  From "Hot n Cold" to "California Gurls", you get overly simple and repetitive messes of music.  While it's true they're dance worthy, so's this song by UK band Belleruche.  Almost annoyingly so though, her first few songs, namely "I Kissed a Girl" and "Ur so Gay", look them up if you don't know them, which made her famous are full of little tidbits of interesting things.  There's textural contrast and an almost out of place electronic sound in the latter.

But let's even get away from simply shitty overly simple pop music.  I think the real root to my anger towards pop music is the idolatry surrounding vocalists.  For whatever reason, no matter how famous of a guitarist or cellist or drummer you are, you are never going to be more famous than an arguably shitty singer.  However, this didn't used to be the case.  In days past we had the Jimi Hendrixes, the Pablo Casals and Jacqueline Du Pres, the Louis Armstrongs, and Scott Joplins of the world.  Nowadays, ask anyone for a famous musician that's active.  I can almost guarantee you that they'll pick a singer or a group focused on a singer like the way Maroon 5 is focused around Adam Levine.  Yea, sure you might get the odd answer from an electronic music buff who'll say Deadmau5 or Avicii or Pretty Lights, but for the greater populace, the only musicians are singers.  Where and when did we stop caring for the instrumentals that truly make music special?

I understand that the human voice is special to us.  After all, with a little practice anyone and everyone can sing.  The barrier to entry is so very low in comparison to playing an instrument.  What is it though that makes us revere and look up to singers the way we do?  I find myself enthralled in music more often when the background to a song is more engaging.  Pop music just sounds so stale and almost robotic in its cleanliness and distinction between vocals and background.  In the end, a human voice is just another vessel, another canvas with which we can paint music with.  This ridiculous fixation and obsession with individual singers needs to end.  When it does I think that pop music can make a step forward and stop being the shallow mess of overly used tropes where it currently festers like a pus filled boil popping disgusting slop over our ears.  Sorry if you like pop music, there are hidden gems but honestly they're almost not worth it.

--CsMiREK

Musical Discovery - Alexander Rybak

More European music!  This time I'll be covering Alexander Rybak.  Alexander Rybak is a Norwegian singer best known for his song 'Fairytale', a common title to be sure.  Alexander Rybak came to the limelight as the winner of Eurovision 2009 as the Norway representative, think American Idol kind of.  As a musician, Alexander Rybak makes prominent use of his ability to play the violin in a virtuosic manner.  Other than that, it's kind of generic pop, not to say that's a bad thing.  Personally I like the violin in his first album along with the kinda corny lyrics, all of which are in English.  On that note, I didn't actually like his second album but I might just have to go listen to it again.  After all, musical tastes change over time and things you once hated you might find you love now for no real reason.  Anyways enough preachy pseudo-wise nonsense.  Sorry this post was short and late, although I wonder if the post will still have the 2:00 AM timestamp...(I actually posted this around 5) Who knows anyways take care and see ya soon.

--CsMiREK

Top Tracks - Fantasy

This time around we come back to Top Tracks.  For this segment I will be covering the song 'Fantasy' by LAMA.  This song isn't the most out there or bizarre track in my library for sure but I hope you find it as enjoyable as I do.

The song is sung by the Japanese group LAMA which consists of a group of really well known (in Japan) artists who I guess came together and just started jamming.  To be honest, I don't actually like most of their songs but this one just works in my opinion.  Whether it's the piano line that starts off the song or the very distinctive male and female voices that just never seem to sing at the same time, everything just kinda fits.  The handful of pauses that cause dramatic effects.  The reiteration of the piano line creates a natural transition back to the male voice.  All of these end up being really standard and well used musical techniques.  Even so, though the song is not as adventurous as the electronic sound of 'Cybernetic Mariachi' or the synth-y sound of St. Vincent, the song still manages to put itself in an interesting musical space.  It isn't quite what we would associate in the US with as mainstream pop music, but it also doesn't sound as raw as indie music tends to be.  Overall, I just like the piece and whether I have quantifiable reasons as to why or why not don't matter that much to me.

More info on the song itself.  It was the ending to an anime (Japanese animated series) called UN-GO which aired in the fall of 2011 (October - December).  The anime itself was a supernatural detective type of show and in my opinion both the soundtrack and this song fit the style and vision of the show very well.  FYI, I might go into covering anime but that's still up in the air for now as I have plenty of music to talk about and other interesting things in store for the coming months.  I hope you enjoy the song and you enjoyed the post.  See ya next time.

*As a note, it is actually possible to find a full original version of this song streaming.  Just not on YouTube.

--CsMiREK

Musical Discovery - St. Vincent

Before we move onto other parts of the world with musical discovery, I have to talk about St. Vincent.  A relatively well known indie pop/rock artist, St. Vincent is one of my favorite current American artists.  St. Vincent is the stage name of the singer songwriter Annie Clark.  To date she has released three incredibly colorful and wonderfully different albums.

Her first album Marry Me is definitely the most accessible of the three albums that she's released.  With a strong pop sound coupled with a myriad of wildly different instrumentations, she forges a fun and enjoyable debut album.  Starting with 'Now, Now', her album throws interesting chords directly at the listener.  Paired with her voice, it's an experience that's just plain different from any current pop artist out there.  Getting to track 4 is the titular track Marry Me.  While not the most memorable track on the album, it makes awesome use of panning and is a completely solid song in its own right.  Chugging along is 'Paris Is Burning', which is perhaps the most popular and memorable track on the album.  To be fair, that exact song is how I got hooked into St. Vincent's sound back in 2008 and ever since I just always come back to the song.  With an awesome cello line and a surprisingly refreshing meter change from 4/4 to 3/4, it's just an awesome song that I could listen to for hours.  After that, the remaining songs kinda pale in comparison to me, but are each incredibly well thought out and good songs.

Musical Discovery - Ellie Goulding

To start off musical discovery, I wanted to highlight a relatively well known artist.  As I continue onwards, I am likely to go further into the obscure.  Regardless, this post is about the UK singer Ellie Goulding.

Most famous in the US for the song 'Lights', Goulding blends a powerful voice with elements most commonly associated with electronic dance music.  What's most interesting to me about Goulding is her ability to sing in multiple musical styles from having a soulful sound to a bright and distinctly pop sound.

The first of the two can be easily heard off her second album Halcyon in the track 'My Blood'.  I'll leave it up to you to go search for it online.  When you do listen to it, you'll realize what kind of range and depth her voice really has.  While I love musicians who can cultivate and master a particular kind of sound I also admire those who can create bridges between multiple styles to create wholly new styles.

For reference, if you want a distinctly more pop sound, listen to her first album Lights.  If you have fallen in love with her voice and can take a darker and more mature sound, pick up her second album Halcyon.  I hope you enjoyed this segment, the next one's on the punk rock group Rise Against.

--CsMiREK