"What Makes Good Music Good?"

Sometimes I get exhausted. As I write this, I have been working on web sites all day long...and, for some inexplicable reason, I have not touched the channel on the TV for about 5 hours. During that time, MTV was running something called "Buggles to Bizkit: 20 Years of MTV". I never really fully paid attention to what was going on...but the familiarity of much of the music occasionally pulled my attention from what I was engrossed in on the computer.
One thing kept ringing true as I watched: There seem to be no standards for what makes "good music" good anymore. As I grew up and grew to love music, I was aware that some music was intentionally well-crafted...while some was much less skillfully written, but generally well-intended nonetheless, and occasionally would reach the public consciousness for a time. As with much of what passes for popular music today, a lot of it gained attention because it offered forbidden fruit: naughty words or visual images, or at least documentation of bad behavior. But, even at that, there seemed to be at least some effort to "hook" the listener musically. And, if not musically, at least record producers tried to craft "a sound" for the record which would set it apart from the teeming masses of new releases.
Today, because it's business...and these bands are a huge investment, producers still labor to make a record that stands out somewhat...but where is the music? Whether it's rap or metal or rap core or whatever they are calling music these days, it has everything to do with sound texture and raunchy content...and little to do with music. Concerts are simply a reason to misbehave out of sight of "overprotective" parents. Drugs and premarital/extramarital sex are everyone's right, if not an obligation.
And what about pop music? It sells a ton, 'tis true...and some of the songs are even pretty well-crafted. But what sells now is pure image...all a function of very high-level marketing machines. Oh look....Britney is dating Justin! Is Christina really hot for Ricky? This is purely a culture of celebrity. I got so sick of it a couple years ago that I wrote a song about it:

Cult of Celebrity
How we love it...that 15-minute buzz
Can't explain it..well, it's just, you see, because
But did you hear who got locked up again?
Yeah, she wore it...and, what's worse, on Oscar night
Yeah, he swore it...that there was no nasty fight
Their agent's sayin' "Someday soon...", but when?
Can't wait til then...

CHORUS
We all put our pants on one leg at a time
And someday we'll all hit the grave
So jump right back in line
I'm cutting up my member card and gettin' myself free
From this cult of celebrity

They're extinct now...the mystic and the sage
How we trash it...the wisdom borne of age
Much more satisfied with our own rules...
Yeah, we crave it...so curvy yet so thin
How we worship...that 20-year-old skin
This pirate ship loves sparkle more than jewels
A ship of fools...

CHORUS

BRIDGE
Maybe we're made for something better
Maybe for something worth a damn
I've thought it through, I'm pretty sure I am...

CHORUS

I realize as I write these words that I sound like an old man...exactly what wore me out about my parents all those years ago. They just didn't understand. And I suppose I'm admitting that I don't, either. Amazingly, I actually think that there are things of significance in life. There is a good and a bad...even a right and a wrong. I believe there is a higher goal to living than just drawing breath and having fun. I believe in the value of love, of giving, of service.
My purpose in this is not to trash anyone in particular. This isn't about "bad guys"...even the high-level marketing types I referred to earlier are simply providing a service for which they're very well-paid. It's well-documented that they're giving us what we say we want...
Rather, my goal is simply to ask a question: Is art not supposed to reach for the higher self inside of us, to draw us toward nobility, toward beauty, toward truly transcendent values and truths?
I would suggest that, while art is a reflaction of humanity's condition (thus, I do see value, for example, in a song about abandonment and broken hearts), that its purpose is to point us to a higher reality...i.e., that there is something better. And I wonder: How much of the music we listen to these days goes in that direction?
I've been listening a lot lately to some of the music of James Taylor. Yep, it's 25-30 years old. It may be a little idealistic...I dunno, call it 'sappy' if you want. But there is a sense of caring about people, about valuing relationships, about willingness to cry with one another and bear one another's burdens. And isn't it interesting that he wrote most of the stuff I love the most as a very young man...just a little older than the pop stars of today?
Well, I guess, in contrast...maybe it's just too much for me to then have to listen to Eminem and Korn and Limp Bizkit bludgeoning the rest of the species with their coarseness and hatred...even if it's just an act...it just wears me out.
I want something more in my music. I want something better.
Maybe you do, too....

-cb-
8.4.01

P.S. - Kid Rock is now singing a song on TV...something like "If Kid Rock was President...". One of the first lines was: "I'd turn all the churches into strip clubs and watch the whole world parade...". Oh well....shoulda hit that OFF switch a few minutes sooner...