Classics

I know I changed a lot over the last year. I think one of the biggest indications is the sort of music that I listen to now. I used to listen to mostly just the rock/alternative radio stations and I usually kept up pretty well with all of the new stuff coming out. During the year, though, I didn't really listen to the radio that much and now most of the time when I go to turn on the radio, I have to turn it back off again.

I know it sounds really cliche to say so, but I really don't LIKE much new music anymore. I can't stand whiny "rock" bands trying to make "political" statements any more than I can stand the same whiny bands finding new and creative ways to express their utter and complete misery with life, love, and existence in general.

Actually, that's not true at all. The problem is that creativity is so much LACKING. Not only do the songs actually sound the same, but the lyrics aren't nearly as expressive as they could be. I really don't think that the subject matter (love and war, and some sex, and some drugs) has changed that much over the past 30 or 40 years, but I do think that artists don't have the same spirit as perhaps others have in the past. (Talking about politics is fine, but one should at least do so artistically. Singing about a broken heart is fine, one should just make sure to say something more than "She fuckin' hates me" or some other equally clumsy phrase..)

A friend of mine recently let me borrow Green Day's American Idiot - and I have to say that I was pretty disappointed with it. From one standpoint, the band did an excellent job of making a rock "opera" - giving some sort of narrative and carrying a certain theme through an entire CD, making a cohesive product instead of a mere collection of songs. For that I give them credit, and also I'll admit that the concept of a pop-punk group making a rock opera in the first place was pretty cool. Finding the right combination of repetitive power chords and musical progressions couldn't have been easy.

However.

I personally can only listen to Billie Joe Armstrong's montonous voice for a certain amount of time before I feel like gouging my eyes (ears?) out with a rusty spork. One of the band's previous strengths, I thought, was their ability to take a certain culture and express it in a spirited and (semi)intelligent fashion. "10000 Light Years Away", "Who Wrote Holden Caufield", and "Basket Case" (actually, most of Dookie) were great because they captured the right sort of attitude without entirely becoming the attitutude. The songs still had...spunk? and they reflected an artist who was introspective enough to illuminate certain cultural attitudes while still maintaining enough sense and individuality to poke fun at them. And also the songs were not monotonous, and so the aforementioned voice was not nearly so grating.

I thought "Warning" was a great album, but one could sense that certain ideas were becoming a bit repetitive. "American Idiot", I felt, took those repetitive (and depressing) notions a few steps further. If "Warning" contained a tired thought, then "American Idiot" was the same tired thought after a year or three of sleepless, restless, burned out, obsession over the same. To me, the whole album sounded numb - it had none of the group's previous edge (will to live?)

Which brings me to my original point. I feel that a lot of current music is harping over the same depressed notions, and not expressing them very creatively. I'm not sure if maybe that's a reflection of a numb, jaded society (I'd prefer to think not...). I think that there is a interesting, useful way of expressing almost anything in music and it pains me, a lot, to see so many artists turning away from that creativity for something more crude (not necessarily sexually crude - just crude in an artless sense).

For example, after I listened to Green Day, I was at BestBuy. So I picked up Judy Collins' greatest hits, and Joni Mitchell's "Blue" album (also some Emerson, Lake, & Palmer). Blue is not at all a spunky, uplifting work, but it's a lot more heartfelt and feels a lot more human than the Green Day. I guess for some people it's probably *too* emotional or "soft" sounding, but in some ways it's a lot grittier than the alternative music one hears on the radio. And so for now, I'm happy with the classics.