3-1-02 Note: Having just watched the 2002 Grammy Awards, this rant seems even more relevant than just two days ago. If that's the BEST we can do, there's something seriously wrong here...

MY RANT

It seems to me the music industry is enduring what might be considered an Anti-Renaissance.

Instead of breaking old molds and reaching for something higher out of exuberance and optimism, we have fallen into a desperate re-hashing of the familiar out of fear of failure.

Think about it. It takes somewhere around $500,000 to a million dollars these days to break a new artist. A&R guys are (understandably) scared they'll lose their jobs if they pick a turkey. So they intentionally search out SAFE material, i.e., stuff that "sounds like" what is already on the radio, already selling records.

This is the artistic equivalent of genetic inbreeding. Making the same more the same. And just like genetic inbreeding (e.g., making babies with your cousins), it eventually results in musical retardation.

Thus the current state of affairs in pop music.

In other words, because of the financial structure of our industry, we are selecting and promoting music that is more and more the SAME, i.e., that reinforces mediocrity and caters to the lowest common denominators of musical taste.

And THIS music is what the masses are TOLD to like. Don't think for a minute that people are really choosing their music anymore. It is really being shoved down our throats via the marketing machines that determine the music we even have to choose from. Radio airplay and shelf space at record stores are BOUGHT these days, not "earned". If you put pig dung on toast and launched a national advertising campaign saying it was a delicacy, I guarantee you people would develop a taste for it (or at least buy it and tell their friends how much they like it).

We are living in a time of immense spiritual hunger, and yet no one is singing about this on the radio (except implicitly, by singing about all the things we think we want that don't really fulfill us). Our airwaves are glutted with sound and noise that doesn't even TOUCH our real needs and yearnings, and in many cases even POLLUTE our hearts and minds.

The saddest thing about all this is that we are feeding ourselves this musical junk food, and we're not even noticing how sick of it we are. We've stopped expecting the music we listen to to truly MOVE us or nourish us at all. All we expect anymore is that it entertain us. And so we've got a lot of music around these days that, as someone else put it, "says very little, but says it very well". We all make fun of "easy listening" music, but that is EXACTLY what our airwaves are full of - only it comes in the form of drum loops and edgy guitars rather than grand pianos and schmaltzy violins.

So we're feeding ourselves a diet of musical pap and poison on a daily basis. Globally speaking, it seems to me that pop music in our culture is contributing to our downfall instead of to our resurrection.

What can be done? Well, for one thing, start expecting more from the music you take in. Be discriminating. Ask yourself "Is this music deepening me, nourishing me, awakening me, challenging me, moving me -- or is it just distracting and entertaining me?". "Is this music really saying something, or does it just 'sound good'?". If you do that, I predict your habits as a musical consumer will change radically.

And if you're an artist, start expecting more of yourself. Start expressing what you truly feel and aspire to through your music. Reach for something deeper inside yourself and put it out there, even if it doesn't "sound like" what you're hearing on the radio these days. And if you're in the music industry in some other capacity, start supporting the artists that have the courage to do so. Maybe it's actually possible for "artist development" to make a comeback.

Let's join together to start a Renaissance in the music industry. Because if we don't start doing something different, we're just going to get more of the SAME.

END OF RANT.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU'LL SETTLE FOR.
YOU JUST MIGHT GET IT.