What we’re left with after music died

Now I’m not talking about Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper.  I’m not talking about a specific plane crash that killed off the world’s good music.  And I don’t mean to sound like some hippie raving about the “good old days”, but even brain-fried hippies have a little sense to them.  One thing is for certain though, good music is dead.


            When I say “music” that’s a general term.  I’m sure good operas are still being written out there.  What I’m talking about is popular music, the kind that’s played on the big radio stations and have masses of people flocking to concerts over.  That’s the kind that was sadly killed.

            It didn’t happen in a day, like the song ‘American Pie’ claims.  In fact, after Holly, Valens and the Bopper were killed in the fifties, a lot of good music was born.  But let us take a trip through time and – like CSI – try and deduce when and how good music was killed.  After “the day the music died” in the fifties, a lot of good music was actually born.  Take the sixties; The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Byrds – all good bands, with creative riffs, that are still played today.  These paved the way for the seventies, where musicians like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix and the Eagles made it on the big stage. In my opinion, that was the height of good music, where songs like Stairway to Heaven would have made Mozart cringe in jealousy. 

Then we have the eighties, where there were still good up-and-coming musicians, but “pop” music had become widely popular.  Artists like Michael Jackson became the number one entertainers.  Now Jackson had some good songs, and I’m not saying he specifically killed good music, but he definitely had a hand in it.  Now that pop music was the big thing in the eighties, it caught like wildfire in the nineties, and with this, a new malicious idea was formed.

Boy bands and girl groups.  Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls, N’ Sync – groups with little talent that distracted audiences from this truth by choreographed dancing.  Along with this came hip-hop, rap, and more pop music with different styles.  What is the end result? What does it all come to?

A “band” that has got where it has solely because of the Disney marketing machine.  Someone’s brilliant idea that three brothers, who know how to hold a guitar in the right position, would be the biggest thing since the Beatles.  Now, I hate to compare the Jonas Brothers with the legendary Beatles, but the JoBros have pretty much done it, haven’t they?  Why? Because good music has died. 
   

Now, in modern music’s defense, you might argue that there are great singers like Celine Dion.  But that’s the key word there.  Singers.  Might as well be karaoke singers, they just sing words that someone wrote for them, in a tune someone else made up.  If it has a good beat, regardless of if the artist is a computer or not, that’s what people will listen to. 

What do I define as good music? Original music that can be recognized throughout the ages. This is why you hear classic rock radio stations playing music written half a century ago. Truly good songs don’t get chucked within a day, like an inattentive child with a new book. However, this exact good and original music that I’m talking about has been six feet under in a coffin for so long that most of us have forgotten it. 

Is it possible to resurrect good music?  Sure, if we can find some true musicians out there, and they are out there.  But producers will produce what’s popular out there and unfortunately, it’s all singers and no real musical talent.  We can always hope though, that one day good music will walk out of its grave and into the light.  If we can remember.