EITHER I'M GETTING OLD or TODAY'S MUSIC SUCKS...

      These days I swear that every new song being released is either autotuned or contains a sample or both. Is this what passes for originality these days? Has music become so much more about the look than the sound that singing ability has become completely irrelevant?

      I hate to break it to you so-called singers out there but the "autotuning effect" that makes your voice sound all robotic means your singing is out of tune. The goal is to NOT hear that effect. Autotuners would make great teach-yourself-to-sing machines since you could use them to find out if you're doing it right but to hear the effect in the final product means you sang it wrong. The effect should be a source of embarrassment, not pride. If your song's art requires the performer to sound robotic, that effect can be added in post. And yet the autotuner prevails in modern music. It's fucking frustrating.

      Sampling, though, is a far worse crime in my opinion. Of the literally trillions of possible music combinations that could be created, for some reason using another person's work is now a hallmark of music. It, I think, was first used in hip-hop which...I kinda got. I mean, old-school Doo-Wop was basically four or five kids singing in bathrooms or subways using their voices as instruments since they (presumably) could not afford actual instruments. It became a style. In that way, I can understand early rap using samples of current music as metronomes to rap with. If you couldn't afford instruments to compose your own music or simply didn't know anyone who actually played music, that's the way to make your art. However, while I would understand that in early rap, I don't understand how it continues to this day...over thirty years later. Once Run-DMC put out "Rock Box", which had its own music as the bed, that should've been the death knell for rappers using other artists' work to rap over and that was the EARLY 1980s.

      Early Rock and Roll had many singers/groups, but few songwriters. If you listen to the music of the early 1960s, you'll hear a lot of covers. That's the way it was at the time. But groups like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones showed that the performers could be both singers AND songwriters. They also made it difficult for newer groups to come out who were merely studio creations singing cover songs or songs which had been written for them. Groups like the Beatles and Rolling Stones helped usher in a demand for actual talents in the music business.

      But yet, sampling still continues and it annoys the fuck out of me. I remember liking "Cupid's Chokehold" by Gym Class Heroes until I learned that they had sampled "Breakfast in America" by Supertramp. Now I can't stand the song. Why would you do that? I'm annoyed that a group I still enjoy, The Offspring, have been sampling lately as well. A couple of examples are on the album Conspiracy of One. Thankfully, they're not essential to the song but it's still disappointing to hear that even they have gone that route. I guess sampling is good for the original artists as they are (hopefully) getting paid for this but it's still annoying.

      The music industry needs another "Nirvana" stat and by that, I don't mean another round of grunge music. That era has come and gone. What I mean is that we need a band to rise up and sweep aside the old regime. Nirvana killed 80s metal which by then had degenerated into Hair Bands, ushering in a new age. We need a new group that makes today's youth want to go out and learn how to play an instrument be it a guitar or piano and especially drums. I'm tired of beat-boxes. Listen to The Who and Led Zeppelin and you'll know why drummers are important. We need a new band who, if anything, sweeps aside these studio-created "artists" that have been proliferating on the Disney channel and American Idol and to, more importantly, sweep aside the various formulae studios have created for pop-music success that undoubtedly constrain up-and-coming artists.

      If anything, I want to believe, that even in this cable and internet age where we supposedly are more divided than ever over our options, that we can still come together over a singular topic. I hold up "viral videos" as an example of how we can still as a society be on the same page. One of Lady Gaga's videos has over 200 MILLION views so I don't think it impossible. It can't come soon enough. If I have to hear "Fireflies" by Owl City one more time.....