Annoying Current Trends in Music I Can Live Without
Submitted by slipkid71 on Tue, 07/22/2003 - 05:48
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- Young up-and-coming "artists" making appearances on veteran musicians albums: This to me smacks of both a cynical attempt by a musician whose album sales have been declining and a desperate attempt to gain street credibility. Carlos Santana has ridden this to death, and the new Liz Phair album features an appearance by Avril Lavigne, easily the worst female singer to receive undue publicity since LaToya Jackson.
- Cover songs that are nothing more than note-for-note remakes: Look, if you're going to cover a song, at the very least mess with the arrangement of the damned song. If I want to hear it done like the original song, I'll play the original. Wanna know the best cover song ever? Jose Feliciano's version of "Light My Fire". A great example of reworking a great song into an even greater song.
- Porn Stars, the new groupies: Not that I have anything against porn, and it would be utterly hypocritical of me to do so, but it seems that unless you're not seen partying with porn stars or writhing in bed with one in a music video, you're just not cool enough. Sounds to me like most of the male musicians cavorting with female porn stars are trying to compensate for both a lack of talent and something else, if you know what I mean.
- Anything having to do with "American Idol": Boy, that "From Justin to Kelly" movie was a smash hit, wasn't it?
- Classic songs used in commercials whose meanings have absolutely nothing to do with the product pitched: As an example, I recently saw a commercial for a Nissan SUV, and the song sounded familiar to me. It occured to me immediately after the end of the commercial that the song was "Heroin" by the Velvet Underground! Uh, didn't anyone at Nissan's ad department catch that one? That was as bad as hearing "Pink Moon" by Nick Drake in a Volkswagen commercial.
Author Comments:
What do you think? Feel free to suggest more trends that bug the hell out of you.
When I was at a movie theater a little while back, I saw that the theater was offering a special promotion called "Lid Rock." Basically, if you ordered a large drink, the lid of the soda contained a mini-CD with music on it. The theater advertised that this week's CD contained two "hit songs" by the "latest pop sensation" Rachel Farris. The worst part was, they actually played these two wretched songs in the theater, forcing me to listen to them. BTW, if anyone out there has actually heard of this "new sensation" who has created these two "smash hits", please let me know, because no one I have talked to has.
It's bad enough you have to cough up almost $10 to watch a crap film, but now the theatres will subject you to crap music and crap videos before showing crap films.