By Kyle Young
Surveying today’s popular culture, one arrives at an astonishing and frightening conclusion: the majority of it sucks. We are dominated by a force more terrible than Orwell’s Big Brother, a force that eats away at the very substance of our society. It is a force commonly referred to as "pop music."
Many regard art as the pinnacle of any human society. What does it say of our society when the recipients of our best artist awards are hardly artists at all? What does your average pop star or group do to deserve the title "artist?"
They write virtually none of their lyrics, which are of little to no substance to begin with, their musical input approaches zero, they sing once in the studio and whenever they screw up producers can easily cover their mistakes. They lip sync at concerts and they dance.
So what are we left with? Dancers. Dancers who seldom even choreograph their own work. They no longer even pretend to be genuine artistic endeavors. Producers shamelessly make television programming out of the fabrication of these groups. These bands no longer grow and develop; they are engineered like some freakish incarnation of Frankenstein’s monster. And these are the recipients of our best artist awards. Not because they are artists mind you, but because they possess the uncanny ability to influence 12-year-olds to spend their parents’ money.
That’s right, the source of our cultural cancer is not the unwashed masses of teenyboppers, but the parents who fund their obsessions. By themselves, 12-year-olds are not a viable economic market worth exploiting. Few of them have the financial resources to purchase tickets to a Backstreet Boys concert.
The amount of money spent on pop music and paraphernalia reflects the fact that a large number of people with substantial incomes are behind these purchases.
Not that these parents seek to undermine music as an art form or give their children a false sense of what art is, they are simply trying to please their child by appeasing their confused and misdirected minds.
The problem is not that there is crap out there passing for music,
that will never change. The problem is the horrid stench of boy bands and would-be divas drown out artistically-inclined musicians.
Even the famed EdgeFest catastrophe Serial Joe made a genuine attempt at being artistic. That much is evident by how poorly they perform. The Moffatts have even gone so far as to play their own instruments. So why then is it so much to ask of those who claim to be artists, that they at least try to do something artistic?
Milli Vanilli was crucified for doing what Britney Spears does every day. The New Kids on the Block failed to last half as long as their modern clones. It seems things have gone from bad to worse. But what can we do to cure this festering illness?
Just say no.
The next time your little sister, your niece, even your own child asks you to buy them some form of pop music, sit them down, and explain the merits of actual music. They may not appreciate it now, but once they have reached an age of understanding they will know that it was for their own good, and they may even thank you.
Feedback on this article can be sent to opinions@gauntlet.ucalgary.ca.