We know chart music is slowly turning the contents of our heads into Slush Puppies, but we’re ok wit
Giving in to music we know is awful is only encouraging horrendous artists to take advantage of us
In 2012 a study conducted by a bunch of glorified sound techies in Spain proved that the music you listen to is rubbish. It showed that modern pop songs only use a small variety of chords, melodies and instruments, which basically means it all sounds the same. So your Rihannas, your Justin Timberlakes, your Calvin Harrises, your Swedish House Mafias - they all might as well be one giant, chart music, not give a toss mega-morph because they're all playing the same four notes. But that's beside the point, isn't it? The point is, you like it. YOU like it. How can you like it?
But I can't solely blame most of the ejaculate in the charts for the standard of music today. It's its listeners, the recurring customers who should take the rap; genuinely real human beings - a vast majority of them too - continuously guaranteeing the success and prosperity of what they full well understand to be utter phallus produce. These people are the ones who molested Top of the Pops, and they're the ones making everyone stupider than David Cameron’s shiny chin.
But if your brain IS fully functioning and you CAN acknowledge that Nicki Minaj sounds like the abominable offspring of a malfunctioning robot and a sea lion, then why are you still listening? Your liking and downloading of this music is keeping it in the charts and, therefore, the accessible reach of the stupid and vulnerable.
The answer must be a combination of laziness and credulousness. Accepting poor pop for what it is – and more importantly – not expecting or demanding better is making music flaccid. And those who persist that they genuinely think it’s good, I don’t believe you. No one thinks pop music is good, even if ‘pop’ is short for ‘popular’. Most of it is just the theme tune to your typical nightclub and one-night-stand – things that are generally considered to be the pinnacle of social activity. God that just sounds awful. ‘Calvin Harris’s music is the theme tune of social outings.'
“But Ariana Grande’s music is catchy!” I hear you cry. So is gonorrhea. And if you take any inspiration from her recent song ‘Bang Bang’ gonorrhea is exactly what you’ll get. ‘Catchiness’ just isn’t a legitimate argument for willingly killing your brain cells. And it has been confirmed by various studies that there is a link between dreadful music and a person’s level of intelligence. Virgil Griffith (the creator of WikiScanner) for instance, found that dumber people are more likely to listen to Lil Wayne. Beyonce and Justin Timberlake were also pretty close to the numbskull mark – I’m sorry to tell you.
I realise I’m fighting a losing battle here, and that’s because music is a matter of taste. But when your taste is stoking the fire of an industry that takes advantage of you both financially and artistically, that’s when it’s ok to say: “No. Stop it, Sam Smith. Your voice isn’t groundbreaking. You’re just a prick.”
Then of course there’s the libidinous music videos, usually starring Cheryl Cole or Shakira, flouncing their pulchritudinous flesh around your television screen, making every 14+ year-old female insecure to the point of self-harm. And guess what, you’re fuelling this. The depressing reality of it is that you’re making it popular. Most of us know it’s slowly turning the contents of our heads into Slush Puppies, but we’re ok with that as long as we can gyrate to it in nightclubs.
What’s even more depressing is that it will never change. We don’t want it to, we ‘like’ it too much. We’re inevitably set for a future where everyone lives in tiny cubicles with TV screens and speakers for walls, playing through them the lifetime collection of Tinie Tempah. Fathers and mothers will look down at their children and say things like: “Tinie Tempah was one of the greatest musicians of all time, Billy”. Billy will then snort at them and turn his attention back to the music channel.
