The Loss of Good Music
One of the most distressing things for me is when I’m in the car, taking a ride, and put on the radio- because in 2016, I can go through the entire dial and not find a song I can even tolerate, let alone listen to. I will literally go through the entire dial and not find a single song I can stop on, and so I go through again and again. Now, I know, the easy thing for me to do would be to get satellite radio, and just listen to stations that play what I like, but that really shouldn’t be necessary. I like almost all kinds of music, so not pleasing me is pretty terrible.
It wasn’t always this way, but many of the best stations on FM radio have left FM radio in the New York/Philadelphia corridor over the past 20 years. Once upon a time, Philadelphia had two major rock stations in WYSP and WMMR, but now you only have Radio 104.5 always playing rock, and WMMR playing it when they’re done letting some dudes ramble all morning. KROQ in NYC has moved around the dial, and WFAN’s sports talk radio replaced the other rock station I used to listen to. Because like two companies now own all the radio stations, a lot of the good music has been replaced by the increasingly crappy top 40’s of the 2016 era. I love my hip-hop too, and that is an even bigger hot mess. Philadelphia’s 96.5 was once a renegade of a station, now it’s playing some Bieber. To be honest, across the dial, you get a dosage of Bieber, some dude crying into a microphone, and a lot of low talent pop.
I wish I could confine my disappointment to radio, but I can’t. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention MTV’s fall from grace, particularly with the VMA’s just a few days away. I’m amazed they still have the VMA’s, given that they don’t really play much in terms of music videos anymore. We’ve went from the days where artists spent as much time making a classic video, to the days where MTV is where you go for the latest version of “Jersey Shore” or to see Chanel West Coast. Hell, I actually long for the great songs with the weird videos that we don’t see anymore, unless we go on YouTube.
I guess what I’m getting at is my disappointment though with popular music in 2016- it sucks. The 1950’s gave us Elvis, the 1960’s gave us the Stones and Beatles, the 1970’s gave us Aerosmith and Bruce, the 1980’s gave us Madonna and U2, the 1990’s gave us the whole grunge and gangsta’ rap movements, and even the 2000’s gave us Eminem and Britney. Today? Yeah, exactly. The only rock bands I even really look forward to stuff from are the Red Hot Chili Peppers (founded in the 80's), Foo Fighters (founded in the 90's), and Black Keys (founded in the 2000's), other than the obvious classics (I went to see the Stones last year). My last four big concerts were Jay Z, the Dropkick Murphys, the Rolling Stones, and the Foo Fighters- none of whom are new. The new music just isn’t doing it for me.
Society needs new music, and to be fair, there are some good, younger bands. There aren’t enough though. Clear Channel, the fall of real MTV, and a less edgy society have conspired to leave us with a world where hip-hop is dominated by a rich kid from Toronto (who is admittedly not a tough guy type), rock bands who were huge in 1998, and not much else. Enough of this hipster era, let’s get some good music again.
