Jake’s Weblog

   I recently had to partake in an activity in my English 140 Class in which we simulated the promotion of several different bands, and experimented with different advertising techniques to defend why our band was the most commercially marketable.  Afterwards a thought came to mind, and so I decided to run with it this week and see where it goes.  You see, music has seemingly taken a downward spiral in quality over the last few years.  I really see, from an amateur’s eyes, two distinct trends that define today’s music – crappiness and sex.  Look at your favorite bands from roughly a decade ago – how many of them are still around?  Not many.  Hansen and the Backstreet Boys aren’t too much of a loss in my personal opinion, but even the bigger rock groups like Stone Temple Pilots have fallen to pieces.  Guns N Roses is one of the few still around, and it’s not really GNR so much as Axl Rose and some hired lackeys.  Most of them had a ten-year run (if that) and deflated immediately after.  Why is this?  The reason is that record labels just don’t plan for longevity in bands anymore; they need a breakthrough album right off the bat, and so won’t let a band with a lot of potential develop its sound thoroughly.  The albums that do get through sound like crap, based around one or two hits and about eight tracks of fluff.  I honestly can think of only three bands I would label as “good” that have formed in the past few years.  They are Wolfmother, Velvet Revolver, and Jet.  I would also like to point out that Velvet Revolver is the only American band of the three, and it is composed of the former members of Guns N Roses’ original lineup with Stone Temple Pilots’ Scott Weiland on lead vocals.  A perfect example of this new wave of crappiness is Hinder’s Extreme Behavior – it sounds like crap.  I think just about every song on there involves some depressing, heartbreaking love ballad with cheesy lyrics and mass-produced instrumentation.  At least “Lips of an Angel” was a hit.  Yes, I admit it, I like “Lips of an Angel” – oh wait, I’m sorry – I liked it until they played it about 70 million times on the radio.  That’s the other thing; these companies find a hit to promote the album with, and then they completely kill it with continuous radio play.  But the record companies these days are focusing all their energy on making a bunch of little bombs that burn out fast before they get a chance to grow; it’s all about making money.  The days of decade-spanning career bands are virtually over; the Aerosmiths and Led Zeppelins are gone.  I guarantee Hinder will be done in ten years; probably in five.

   To cite Hinder’s debut album for my next case as well, the front cover displays a scantily clad woman in a very seductive pose…I wonder how many teenage boys bought the album for that reason alone.  The lyrics in the album often entail sex and drug abuse as well – in the case of “Get Stoned,” it entails both!  The simple fact is that in today’s world, sex sells.  Not necessarily a good or bad thing, but with so much of our music focusing on such…pleasurable…activities, what kind of affect is it having on the people listening to it.  Consider also the Pussycat Dolls and Fergie.  I guess some people find artists like this attractive – to me they just look like sluts, but you know, whatever sells albums, I guess.  I’m politically liberal, so I guess to the conservative definition, I’m supposed to think all this is OK.  I personally don’t have a huge problem with any of this content; I just think it’s an interesting point how over time, an artist’s success has become less about talent, and more about money and sex appeal.  It’s really pretty sad.