A Rather Lengthy Post About Music and the Internet

Recently I acquired the Humble Music Bundle and have been listening through it, which spurred my viewing Jonathan Coulton’s website (Not because I wasn’t already a fan, but because I decided I’d like to check in on possibly purchasing some more of his music). I read a fairly recent blog post of his which was a response to two other articles (links in his post) about music piracy, and the direction the music industry is moving toward in general. Now the first Article by a 21 year old BBC Intern Emily begins with the premise that she is 21 years old, and grew up in a time where owning physical media was not really of any interest to her, or her generation as an entire topic, which got me thinking “How weird is it that I not only still covet music on a physical medium, but that I’m only 2 years older than Emily.” I don’t know that there’s a defined point in time where one generation ends and the next begins, but clearly 1990 was exactly when my particular worldview would no longer be present in any newly born humans, as though it was genetically bred out of the species. Regardless of my “Apparently my thought process is no longer relevant” grumpiness, I was also one to begin amassing a CD collection using birthday money when I was around 10-12 years old, as a point of fact: It is not easy to split your meager annual earnings between videogames and music as a child, or as an adult for that matter unless your scope of interest is remarkably narrow. Suffice it to say, I’ve actually gone into the nearly exclusively digital age of music kicking and screaming, having played guitar since I was rather young (about when I started building up my music collection) and having always wanted to be in some capacity paid to create music I was frequently in pure awe of the better put together albums I own, where there are interesting and detailed liner notes, lyric sheets, etc. all in the packaging with the music I wanted. I can say that as time has progressed, regardless of how broad my tastes have become over time, I probably buy less music per year now than I ever have. This is a sore subject to me, because I want to buy music, some of this stems from the fact that I have financial obligations that extend beyond putting gas in my car, but some of it I’m sure also stems from my overwhelming distaste for paying for more than I’m actually getting. Many artists, Rush, JoCo, MC Frontalot, and a slew of others I’m not going to plug right here put out great albums, worth listening to from start to finish several times over, however (and the irony of this is not lost on me) Metallica has not since Lars famously shat upon Napster so many years ago, not produced an album that I would deem worth my 10+ dollars. Metallica is not the only band guilty of this, the homogenization of pop music has actually been well documented and has, along with the increasing prevalence of auto-tune or other pitch correction software completely killed my ability to justify a purchase of most all “pop” music. That said, I don’t deny that some pop music is quite fun to listen to, but studies like the 2nd link there do help to explain why my brain feels like mush after 20 minutes of listening to pop radio in the car (don’t judge me, our only “rock” station up here is completely useless when Free Beer and Hot Wings ends). Groups like Nine Inch Nails were able to establish themselves (or slightly more accurately, Trent Reznor established himself) and release music for free for the last several years, while offering physical copies for money, and still turned a profit. The dynamic in the industry has changed drastically. There’s a great built in form of infrastructure for these indie artists to make money without record labels, which for Sony, Warner Bros, EMI, et al really sucks. For the artists, especially artists deemed “not commercially viable”, this is an exciting period in time. That’s not to say that every artist will make money, hell, it’s not to say that every artist who deserves your money will get it, but it does mean that there is a major shift in how things are done, and as a general topic I think that it’s for the better. I want to own the physical media, I want to go to shows, I want to hear new artists, experience new music on a regular basis, and I want the artists I like to succeed. In some ways Spotify, Pandora, LastFM, Grooveshark, et al help with that (doubly so when they actually pay royalties to the artists who they stream). I love that I am able to say “I want to listen to something like MC Frontalot, and have since learned of The Lab Rats, Flobots, Z-Trip, Schaffer the Darklord, and many other artists. I quite enjoy listening to solely by being willing to let my phone tell me what I might like. We’re also now able to live on a “try before you buy” system, where you can quickly search the internet for an artist you’ve heard in passing and come across the majority of their catalog to stream for little/no monetary commitment on your part, allowing you to decide if you value their musical contributions enough to pay for them. In the past, one would be saddled with entrusting their money to the artist in good faith that an album would contain more than the 1 or 2 tracks that they had heard on the radio that were interesting to them, or believe what magazine/newspaper reviews had to say about an artist and their albums. It has become much, much harder to play the consumer for a sucker, and while I still do like owning that nice fragile plastic disc with my music on it, I don’t know that I would have it any other way. TL;DR - I still like CDs and supporting my favorite artists. I support fewer artists now than I did before, not because I pirate music, but because I am able to listen to albums before I buy them; most of them are very shitty. It has been shown anecdotally that record labels have been demoted to superfluous middlemen. Streaming media services have allowed me to find many artists I like, and I would rather support the ones that actually pay the artists. Hooray music, support artists, go to shows. That is all.

Set Sail for the Lulz

Lulzsec was an organized group of hackers for approximately fifty days. They hacked a number of important, or at the very least high profile organizations. Their stated purpose: “For the lulz”, but was it? If one looks at the list of targets Lulzsec has effectively pursued would anyone honestly be able to say that they had no agenda aside from fun? Their recent list of targets includes, Sony, PBS, the CIA, Arizona state law enforcement, theEscapist, EVE Online, League of Legends, Bethesda software, a number ofpornographic websites, and a host of others.

A cursory glance at that list two stand out, the CIA and Arizona’s law enforcement websites being hacked are clearly not just “for the lulz”.  One who has been following news on the internet, rather than just drooling on their keyboards and playing flashgames would be quick to point out that PBS’s website being hacked was in response to a Frontline documentary about Wikileaks. Lulzsec has taken a great deal of responsibility for the PSN and additional Sony hacks, and given how many flaws there were in their security systems, I don’t blame them one bit. It could be considered a public service to point out such glaring holes in one's security. Their attacks on many others have been more annoying than properly offensive (denial of service attacks against the escapist, EVE online, and League of Legends), but they are still certainly frustrating to those who depend on those resources for income. 

Many people are referring to Lulzsec and Anonymous as “hacktivists”, so clearly this analysis that Lulzsec isn’t just in it “for the lulz” is a widespread understanding. It appears that despite their tenacious attacks on so many varying targets Lulzsec has officially announced recently that they will be disbanding, whether due to infighting, the international crackdown on hacking activity, or whatever other reasons can be concocted for Lulzsec to walk away from the limelight at the top of their game. Maybe the members of Lulzsec are content to return to Anonymous and return to their much larger group’s plans, or maybe it’s a show of unity, Shortly before Lulzsec announced that they would be dissolved they had begun publically partnering with Anonymous for future attacks, to build up a larger “army” of hackers and others devoted to disruptive or anarchistic activity. I’ve never felt a compulsion to delve into hacking myself, but I can certainly say that some of the things Lulzsec has stood for have been both newsworthy, and have been effective in knocking people off their high and mighty pedestal. My not being able to use any of the nice online features of my PS3 for quite some time notwithstanding, I can say that I generally support the “hacktivist” movement, though not necessarily the backlash that seems to be coming from it. For what it’s worth, I will leave you with both the Lulzsec mission statement, and a link to their final announcement:

“Hello, good day, and how are you? Splendid! We're LulzSec, a small team of lulzy individuals who feel the drabness of the cyber community is a burden on what matters: fun. Considering fun is now restricted to Friday, where we look forward to the weekend, weekend, we have now taken it upon ourselves to spread fun, fun, fun, throughout the entire calender year.”

Final Announcement

Writing about the Wii U? Mii too.

The Wii U is still likely over a year away, and the internet is already rife with speculation about the system. There are many concerns including the lack of announced launch titles, an issue that plagued the recently released 3DS as well, but there’s plenty of time for them to announce a fuller list of launch titles at next year’s E3 event. Then again, the good folks that all but singlehandedly kept me from exercising until I was entering high school could phone this one in and bank on the notion that an innovative controller and backwards compatibility will lead the system toward success despite its apparent lack of launch titles.

Certainly Nintendo has used the "Two screens are better than one" argument before and this is no different.  Nintendo has made some obvious upgrades over the Wii graphically, and they’re including a low resolution 6+” touch screen in the controller. Cynically speaking Nintendo has run back to the well of innovation to try to come up with a new system concept, but they found that they’ve dipped into the well too many times and now they have combined their two most recent successes into one super system. Optimistically speaking, one can have faith that while 3^rd parties may not have a clue what to do with this technology right away, Nintendo has been developing successful titles for both platforms individually, and should be able to make some absolutely spectacular games that mix up the fun.

Nintendo as a company has had their missteps, but with over a year to announce more launch titles, and with the speculative knowledge that Nintendo’s launch price in the US market will likely be under $300 (Nintendo strives to bring consoles to market at approximately $250), and the projected price per controller is being estimated at around $70 the system is going to enter the market at about the same price as the current generation consoles, which in and of itself isn’t enough to sell the system, but it’s certainly a good starting point, especially as they promise better online gaming support and full backwards compatibility with the Wii. 

The system has a lot of time to build up steam, but only time will tell what Nintendo is really going to accomplish with this system. Certainly the Wii U is going to be an upgrade over the current generation Nintendo console, but they will fall into the same trap they have with the Wii, once the competition comes to market, they will look two steps behind again. Innovation and some engaging exclusive titles have carried them through this generation, but they’ll need to bank on the same reasons for success in the next generation of gaming consoles as well. I for one am excited, but the console certainly has potential to fail. Innovation can only carry them so far. Sure the Wii U will have 1080p HD compatibility but we’ve got quite a bit of time to see what Nintendo’s new system will really be capable of, and while graphics are far from the top priority of some gamers, and most Indie game designers, they are a selling point to most of the core market.

What Can't We Wrap in as Rap?

Rap is far and away not my favorite genre of music. That is not to say that there’s anything wrong with rap, and there are some artists I do enjoy listening to, but it brings me to an interesting discussion I had recently with Kira from Roll the Dice and Play Nice. The debate came up as to whether Rap is more aptly defined by the musical style, or the vocal style. My position, and I feel it will be rather hard to make me budge here, is that the vocal style more strongly typifies the genre. The opposing point was used as Jay Z has available both acapella  versions and "instrumental" versions of some of his songs available. The instrumental tracks were listed as rap, while the acapella versions were not. This to me is baffling. Often the backing music for rap songs are built off of samples from other songs, sometimes a large portion of the hook is done this way as well. However, the lyrical style of much rap is wholly unique to the genre, excluding some rock artists integrating rap intotheir style.

That said, it caused something of a mental spark, Nas’ “I Can” contains large portions of Beethoven’s “Fur Elise”, with only a synth drum beat accompanying it through most of the song. Based on the assumption that rap can be typified by the instrumental backing, Nas would have inadvertently made Beethoven the first rap artist. Conceptually this is plausible, but let’s be real here, no one is going to call Ludwig Van Beethoven a hip-hop or rap artist, which invalidates the point provided by the notion that Jay Z’s instrumental tracks are qualified as rap, without a vocal track. Clearly there is some amount of ambiguity here, one could argue that the addition of the percussion makes it an entirely different song (though I don’t know that I would go that far), and it is doubtful that one would argue that Primer 55 is a rap group despite their stylized vocals. Certainly it is an amalgamation of the two needed to call music rap, however it is rather hard to argue that the instrumentation is enough to declare a track as rap, many rap songs may very well be equally qualified as pop music in the modern age based solely on instrumentation while it’s rather hard to argue that the vocals would match up with what we expect from rap much more.

Perhaps it is much more applicable to say that no one aspect of a song solely typifies the genre it comes from. However, some are certainly much more indicative of a song/album’s resting place in the record store, or for those of you that don’t believe in owning hard copies of albums, what search term returns the expected tracks on iTunes.

Sometimes You Just Can't Hack It

Sony as a company has had their share of interesting bumps in the road, but none quite as notable as the current security issues they’ve been having across the board. Security issues this year alone have included the over three week down time experienced by the Playstation Network, and a series of other information stealing attacks on their various other services. Sony-Ericsson recently experienced an attack levied solely by SQL-Injection (using standard SQL calls entered directly into text fields that will likely be processed into a database query). Various groups of hackers are being blamedfor the attacks, and with the speed of information being spread around the internet, the attacks are spreading, and growing in number. One of the strangest things that I’ve been reminded of by this whole affair is that this can all be pointed back to, and blamed upon Nintendo.

While Sony certainly cannot blame Nintendo for previous failures like the Betamax, which failed for a litany of reasons despite its smaller form factor, and higher video and audio quality when compared to VHS. Sony can blame their entry into the video gaming industry solely on a contract they had signed with Nintendo all the way back at the height of the Nintendo/Sega feud in the late '80s/early '90s. Nintendo signed contracts with both Phillips and Sony to develop a disc reading expansion utility for the SNES system. While to many gamers it is clear that this never came to fruition, the project with Sony was left to grow for a rather long time before it was officially cancelled. Sony had laid a great deal of the groundwork for what would become the original Playstation on Nintendo’s dime. Continuing forth from that Sony executives were staunchly against creating a game system of their own to rival Nintendo, but the lead engineer on the project persuaded (more accurately, he repeatedly goaded his bosses about how embarrassing it was that Nintendo had jilted them for a partnership with Phillips instead). Still Sony execs were against the console staunchly enough to move production to the Sony Music division.

Sony of course came out ahead in the short run, with the tremendous success of the Playstation, selling over 100million units, and the eventual success of the Playstation 2. The real trouble for Sony came in when the original Microsoft Xbox provided network support. Those of us who weren’t social enough to have friends over to play Mortal Kombat were no longer relegated to playing Diablo 2 on our PCs; we could go on Xbox live and troll games of Halo. This forced Sony’s hand in rushing their Playstation Network to market with an Ethernet adapter for the PS2. That early iteration was a poor implementation of the software, and hardly even a shell of what the current PSN is. Sony may have a huge gap in their understanding of security standards, but we wouldn’t even know it if their executives over 20 years ago weren’t so prideful as to demand they try to best Nintendo at their own game.

As a matter of complete disclosure, I own all three current generation systems, and probably play my PS3 more than the other two. I was not initially a fan of the PS3 for a number of reasons, but I did eventually cave in and buy one second hand. Sony has proved me wrong on a great number of things with this system, and I am rather pleased with my experience overall with the PS3, but I’m also not one to buy much DLC, so my credit card number wasn’t one of the many at risk. Don’t get this confused, I’m far from blaming Nintendo for Sony’s inept security, much more this is meant to demonstrate how one small action can eventually lead to monumental success, and subsequently embarrassing failure.

Danzig, DevilDriver, and my 2Cents

“This stage is too small and these monitors suck big d-ck,” The first words Glenn Danzig said to us after his  new lineup had charged through their first two tracks "Wotan's Procession"and "SkinCarver" on stage. The new Lineup for Danzig now includes drummer Johnny Kelly of Type O Negative fame, guitarist Tommy Victor of Prong , and bassist Steve Zing  who previously played with Danzig in Samhain . Danzig’s words are somewhat in opposition with the concert, while perhaps the stage at Northern Lights is too small, I’m not so sure as it seemed like Peter Steele had plenty of room up there, but given the several times we were subjected to the lovely squelch of microphone feedback during the course of the evening, maybe the monitors really were awful, but what’s more important is that despite that, Danzig’s set was excellent.

Danzig himself is starting to show his age in how he carries himself but he’s absolutely back in his wheelhouse with the newest album Deth Red Sabaoth. Having released several albums, his musical production has varied from his early work with Rick Ruben, which often was clearly blues influenced, through a long period of experimentation where Glenn regularly composed and recorded much of the instrumentation himself, the albums often showing his love of industrial metal in the veins of early Nine Inch Nails . Danzig has put together a great lineup, and they do an excellent job recreating their music live.

Of course, if all I’m talking about is the headliner, I’ve completely missed the point, haven’t I? DevilDriver, the product of Dez Fafara leaving Coal Chamber , has been touring with Danzig, and are perhaps the heavier of the two well known acts on the tour. DevilDriver has done very well for themselves, as Dez proclaimed proudly from stage, their new album "Beast" has made the billboard top 40 with no commercial airplay, and no traditional advertising. DevilDriver was exactly what one could expect from them live, they were heavy, loud, aggressive, and packed their set with songs. Dez perhaps decided to forego some stage banter to really give the crowd as much as they could. DevilDriver has grown away from their first album, which clearly has worked for them very well despite my disappointment in their having become somewhat more typical in their musical approach, toward a more straightforward metal sound from what was once billed as ragtime-metal fusion which was more evident in their syncopated rhythms and clever song structure in the self titled first album. They have however made quite a name for themselves in the metal market, and certainly were an excellent live show in their own right.

2Cents opened the show, and were pegged immediately. My friend and constant concert companion Jaye leaned toward me to proclaim that they wish whole heartedly to be Pantera. They even went so far as to cover the song "Strength Beyond Strength" to close out their set. 2Cents isn’t explicitly bad though, it appears that their album quality doesn’t shine through well to their live show, which may come with a bit of time. There is little more to say about them, they have talent, and appear comfortable with who they are as a band, but perhaps are feeling the pressure of touring with two groups with much more history and are trying a bit too hard.

Overall, despite some minor frustrations, the show was excellent and I’d happily go again if This same touring group were to pass through the capital region again.

Artist preview: Maria Linares

Okay, so music reviews are kind of trite. I certainly don’t care what others think of my favorite bands ? That said, I was introduced to an artist, Maria Linares, by my good friend over Throw the Dice and Play Nice who conveniently has written something of a more in depth look at Ms. Linares with a nice artist Q&A. Once you’ve finished reading this, head over to her blog and check it out.

Briefly, you should well get a bit of background, which can probably best be stolen directly from her personal website

“Maria Linares is a New York city based film Composer, Singer and Songwriter. She has written songs for Telemundo TV series and has composed and produced music for short films, television, jingles and multimedia projects.”

From what I’ve heard she tends to specialize in something of a stripped down one girl with a pretty voice, and one acoustic guitar type song, but as with any rule, there are exceptions within her freely available online catalog.

Maria’s strengths definitely come in her Spanish language music. That is not to take anything away from her English language work, as it is also quite good, but she just sounds more comfortable singing in Spanish, as well she should as a Colombian native. She isn’t going to draw a direct comparison to Shakira a fellow Colombia recording artists releasing English language work in the states. Maria’s music, or at least the majority of what I’ve been able to track down, is recorded with a simple accompaniment for her vocals, and this by no means is a bad thing. Her vocal work is meant to be the center piece to her recordings, and she does a great job of making it exactly that. She is a terrific songwriter, and can more than hold her own with many of today’s popular acts. The only question I have is why I haven’t been so fortunate as to hear this music before. I can’t say it’s what I want to listen to all of the time, but she certainly produces excellent music to relax and unwind to. Despite how beautiful it is I’m a rather heavy sleeper, so much so that I proudly own the Sonic Bomb alarm clock , and as such cannot listen to her soft acoustic tracks early in the morning. I can however enjoy her music, during the work day, once I’m good and awake, or while relaxing in the evening.

I am especially a fan of the track “La Princesa y el Dragón”  which is an excellent representation of what she can do vocally, and what kind of beautiful composition she produces.  Her English language track "Answers" is also an exceptional offering with similar styling to her well constructed Spanish language songs, though despite being well performed and well constructed the vocals feel just a bit forced. To her credit, if I were to sing in Spanish, my vocal line would sound tremendously more strained than hers ever will. She definitely has the talent to become more comfortable with her English language songwriting and can easily grow to being an even stronger artist than she is currently. I don’t know when she recorded “Answers” in relation to when she recorded her cover of Cindi Lauper's "Time after Time" but she does an excellent job with a song that has been redone by near countless artists.  Maria Linares’ cover stands strong against renditions done by more established acts, and can definitely go toe to toe with the original recording.

For what it’s worth, I am certainly eagerly awaiting the release of her full length album.

You See, First You Mine, Then You Craft

While the PSN has been down for over half a month now, I’ve recently picked up Minecraft. I’ve been playing both single player, and in a small multiplayer group for the past few days and thus far I have to say this game is simultaneously adicting, and undeniably pointless. I’m far from the first to feel a compulsion to write about this game but it has been an excellent source of entertainment since I finally cracked and joined the teaming masses that have taken to building underground hovels and elaborate block homes for themselves.

While the game isn’t much on story, in that there isn’t one, it is pretty high up there on the “Indie credibility”. It’s unique, if you can discount the game that it drew its primary inspiration from and it is infectious. I burned through 6 hours of my day playing before I even got off of my couch yesterday. One can certainly get lost in the game, but without a doubt, it’s worth taking a rather long look into the Minecraft wiki before you really dive into any real attempt at playing. The game certainly has its downsides including but not limited to: Surprisingly high system requirements (not that there are official requirements but that a computer over 3 years old will suffer playing a game that looks very much like it was written in the good old days of Doom, “Mobs” that seem to spawn right around when you’re trying to get on with something “important” (like building that ever crucial door so you can actually keep the monsters out of your personal dwelling), and the lack of a minimap.

That said, for every time the game seems to follow the pattern of lag, surround me with enemies, respawn in unfamiliar territory I get to enjoy a good chunk of time building a tower, or tunneling for valuable resources. As Yahtzee mentions in his video you really do need to create your own fun. You need a project, but you can certainly earn all of the resources required to build your highly elaborate new personal dwelling, or your absurd decorative sculpture. I can say that I am immensely happy to have finally stumbled upon this game, but I can also say that there would have been a post up almost 48 hours earlier if it weren’t for Minecraft.

Assuming that the sheer amount of improvement that could go into the game gets put in before it does leave beta, the game will be phenomenally polished, and noticeably more addicting than any MMO I’ve caved on, and played the 7 day trial for. I can say with great certainty that I enjoy Minecraft, and that I’ve yet to meet a person who’s played it, that doesn’t like it. Play the single player demo, get a handle on how things work, and then start in playing with your friends. The game is infectious, and you’ll burn through entre days before you realize that you’ve managed to accomplish nothing that can  be seen outside of the game you’re playing.

Sold out... So what?

Something that’s gone on my entire music conscious life is the complaint that people’s favorite bands "sold out".  This always kind of takes me aback. I’ve got no problem with artists trying to make money for writing music. Honestly, it amazes me that people will brand an artist negatively for success. I know once upon a time Green Day were just a bunch of kids hoping to get famous, but I can say confidently that albums like American Idiot fall right in line with some of my favorite albums released by a pop-punk band, which honestly they were from the get go. The biggest difference between Green Day in ’92 (that’s right kids, they’ve been playing music longer than ½ of you have been alive) and Green Day here in 2011? I can find their CDs in stores. If you walk into any music store now and ask where you can find “21^st Century Breakdown”  you’ll be guided to this nice little section full of Green Day CDs, including re-releases of their older albums like “Kerplunk” and their first major label album (blasphemy, apparently) “Dookie”

I’ve just never grasped the idea of wanting to keep a band you like a private thing. Don’t you want the band to be able to continue recording? Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could listen to your favorite underground band and hear everything clearly, rather than having the mix sound like they left it in the hands of their drummer at 3am on Sunday after a weekend long bender? I love music, which is exactly why I want to share it with people, it’s always especially exciting to introduce a friend to an artist they haven’t heard before, but why would you deny them that satisfaction? I’ve been a fan of the band Dommin since receiving a friend request from their singer Kris Dommin on myspace several years ago. When I heard that they had signed with Roadrunner records, my first thought wasn’t that they’d sold out, not that they were going to lose their artistic integrity, I was ecstatic that they had made it. I would be able to see Dommin in concert on their next tour because they were finally able to tour nationally. I saw then, and see now absolutely no down side to their major label status.  In case anyone is still beholden to the idea that Roadrunner is more like “the little label that could” than like the big labels they used to paint themselves as the cool alternative to, take a look at their artists page .

What gets to me, is that the people that complain about “sellouts” are also completely blind to bands that were all but manufactured for success. Paramore for example were all but put together by Atlantic records. In the end, who cares? They’re catchy, the music is pretty darn good (if not always eloquently written) and they are a major label construct. Paramore is signed to Peter Wentz's vanity label Fueled by Ramen because it would look better for them as an alternative rock than being signed to a major label like Atlantic. Their label had no bearing on me liking/not liking their music, how much would it have changed your perception of them if an album like “Riot” had been released without the minor label sticker? They got the same kind of promotion and the same kind of marketing and syndication that they would have gotten signed to Atlantic, Epic, Virgin, EMI, or Sony but they were able to keep the “alternative” feel all the way down to being signed to a little vanity label instead of a major label.

It’s just incredible to me that we as music fans get tied up to this stigma that if a band signs to a major label, they’re bad by default. the Offspring definitely "sold out" but then again, they went and did a lot of different things with their sound on the way, but in the end does it matter what label they’re on, or who else likes them?

The Other Kind of "Pop" Filter

Pop music has for a good long time been meant to be catchy, upbeat, and as the name implies popular. One thing that has become unfortunately popular with the advent of digital recording processes is auto-tune. I’ve got nothing against an artist fixing a take here, or using something to add a bit of flavor to a track in a new or innovative way, but it’s gotten to the point where our pop artists aren’t even singers. Our pop artists are just bodies in front of songs. Pop music went from being talented singers whose ambition was to become famous over an ambition to become accomplished singer/songwriters. 

I’m not saying everyone needs to be terrifically well rounded, and certainly a large number of people have established themselves as very popular artists without being particularly well rounded. However we are in the midst of a revolution of Milli Vanilli type acts. The difference between groups like Milli Vanilli and Ashee Simpson  and these modern pop artists is that the ones that are using auto-tune with such bold frequency is that when we hear vocal lines that clearly don’t belong to these artists, we accept it. When the boys in Milli Vanilli were caught there was a backlash, now if you’re auto-tuned to the point of ill recognition to the “singer’s” vocal line, you’re rewarded with a recording contract and a short skirt or tight pants. Ke$ha here exhibits her talent, but voluntarily will instead prefer to record songs like this and just get them fixed.

I may not have even become so frustrated with this trend until I was driving my fiancé’s Jeep a few weeks ago.  Two of the speakers in that car are blown, and having heard Ke$ha, Lady Gaga, etc. in my car (which has a nice, fully functional stereo) and then hearing them on blown speakers again for the first time in several months was an eye opener. These songs have gone through so many filters, and are so drastically digitized; I forgot the speakers were blown until I hit a song without much of these studio effects, but the biggest culprit is auto-tune. I like techno, and in fact have been playing with A Klokwork Kaos for the last few months, helping round out the sound and add some live instrumentation to the currently all electronic sound.  

What I really have to ask here is how does this happen? Most pop music recorded in the last few years has undergone such extensive filtering that it’s hardly music anymore. Last I checked, you need working speakers to hear music, but if you’re listening to pop radio you can get by with a couple of functioning coils and torn cones, you probably won’t even notice. The strangest thing about this, is that despite my distaste for how this has come around, I don’t hate this music, I just think that we’d be better off with artists  displaying their talents