Once upon a time, music was in direct affiliation with movements, passion, peace and love. Musicians such as John Lennon and Jimmy Page played their hearts out with songs they believed in. Now, a majority of mainstream music has been overcome by greed, laziness, and senseless music that makes a mockery of a great art.
So, what happened? Did musicians just decide to stop exploring and playing what they feel? I don’t think so. I think that corporations have tainted music with their greed because they want to take the easiest road to make money no matter what the cost. They will sign talentless musicians if they know it will make them a quick buck. They also try to change how musicians play and write their music to try to make them more appealing to a target audience or have them make their music sound more like the popular music at the time. This is ruining music because it does not allow artists to let their creativity flow and come up with something new, raw and great.
The sad thing is that some musicians today are fast to change their sound to gain popularity or to stay on top. They will listen to the corporations because they are almost forced to. When these corporations sign these musicians, they pretty much own their souls. They convince these musicians that they will become more popular if they change the way they play music and they introduce them to the dark side of the music industry.
Musicians today have people in suits telling them how to play their music. What do these people know about music? All they care about is how much money is in their bank account. These corporate suits are using musicians for their own well-being and provoking the fall of passion and the rising of greed in today’s music. They sell albums by making a “hit single” and releasing it before the rest of the album comes out to spark an interest in the album. People then go out and buy the album and realize the rest of the songs on the album are shoddy, thoughtless songs that were put together very quickly to fill the rest of the album and make some quick money. According to an article in the USA Today entitled “Kids are listening to their parents. Their parents’ music, that is,” “The complaint about many modern albums is that many only contain one good song and a lot of filler. So kids are turning to classic rock, where the whole album is solid.” Music is about money today and these producers could care less about the making of good music.
Musicians today are controlled by these producers and sometimes do not even get to make the major decisions concerning their work. If you don’t believe me, ask John Mayer. According to the September 2006 issue of Rolling Stone magazine, Mayer begged his record label to not release the song “Daughters” on his sophomore album “Heavier Things” – which was the only acoustic song on the album – because he thought the song made him sound like a “teeny-bopper-pleasing-softy.” There was a battle between Mayer and his record label, which Mayer quickly lost and the song appeared on the album. It is ridiculous when a musician cannot even control what their own album sounds like.
Music has lost passion and exploration and as an avid fan of music it makes me sick. Music is about self-expression, not money. It just proves true that money is the root of all evil and is capable of destroying anything.
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