rickiep00h

Hm...

Well, we've all seem to kind of come to a consensus... although I'm not entirely sure what it is.

Pop music, as a genre, has some shining bright spots, but most of them aren't shining enough to the general public because they haven't been deemed as "cute" enough.

I'm talking about Phantom Planet, Greenwheel, Injected (although they're a little more rock), EchoBrain, Abandoned Pools, Flickerstick (I know, they were on vh1 forever, but they're CD still kicks ass).

I don't think it's a problem with there being no good bands, I think it's a problem with selling an image. If you look at Britney Spears, or Pristina Gaguilara, or Backstreet Boys, or whomever (even Faith Hill and all those little country prisses and young 'supergroups') you'll find that their fans rarely SAY they're music is good. No one sells music based on music anymore. Pink Floyd was the last band to really do that I think. (before tool) Correction: no one sells music based on music anymore and gets PAID for it like they deserve.

And I'll go on the record and say that most first albums by the "original" nu-metal bands like Korn, Staind, and Limp Bizkit were VERY good, until they got played to DEATH, and then Fred buckled under to money and sold out, and took Staind with him.

But now, all that whining is getting OLD. VERY old. It's not really BAD, it's just hearing the same shit OVER and OVER. I don't think music is killing music, I think corporate music is killing music. If you look at most major label bands, they're getting suckier and suckier as the days go by.

Weezer's albums are getting worse (and Rivers whines a lot, too, you know) but I still buy them. Korn's albums are getting worse, but I still listen to them. Metallica, as a group, seems to be figuring out how to suck more and more all the time, but I still like them. I think that most of what's wrong isn't non-originality of pop, it's taking the moments of originality, then packaging them and formatting them and mass producing "what works" until it's so sickeningly bad and overdone that nobody cares anymore.

Even the Beatles had songs that sucked... but they still produced good ones throughout their whole career. I think bands just get lazy now, and so do DJs and labels, and no one is afraid to take risks and do things that might not sell. Experimenting isn't an option to most bands anymore, because they've found enough money and done what works enough to make that money, that they really have no ambition anymore.

And then there's the ones that do it because they love it. Tool, etc.

But even that gets stale. Look at Pink Floyd.