Sunseed Music

Usually people who love music want to like to write about music they love (for me that would be groups like Led Zeppelin, The Band, & Ween.) But sometimes it’s fun to talk about bad music. In fact in some ways it’s more fun. And it’s certainly much easier to find. Just check out these MySpace music reviews to see what I mean. It’s most disturbing for me that some of the most awful “artists” I’ve heard on MySpace is also among the most popular.

Hollywood Undead has to be the worst example of this. They are amazingly bad and even more amazingly popular. I know it’s nothing new for “the kids” to love crap music, but I think Hollywood Undead just takes that concept too far? Usually the really awful music in the past had some sort of musical quality to it. I mean Milli Vanilli may have been cheesey but it sure as hell was catchy at least.

But they certainly are not all alone in the big world of crap music.

How about country star Dierks Bentley? Have you heard this fluff? He’s amazingly awful. I had heard his name previously but had never listened to his music before as I have no interest in country pop but one day I came across his latest single “Feel That Fire” and I was just floored because it was so much worse than I thought it would be. And that’s saying quite a bit because I assumed it was be flat out terrible. But no, it’s far worse than that.

It’s no big deal that people are creating crap music. There’s nothing new about bad music. The big deal to me is that so many people actually think this is good music. Why is that? Why are people just so incredibly clueless about what constitutes quality?

American Idol is the easy to blame culprit. And I’m sure that does have a part to play. It’s taught people that the only thing that matters in music is having a pretty voice. This means these are people who have no way of understanding music with any depth or any real artistic value.

But really it must go much deeper than that. Of course it’s not like people being into awful music is a new thing. The masses are always attracted to the easy to swallow garbage that usually fills the top forty every week. And it’s the real music that real music lovers listen to and that lasts for years.

Obviously there will be no one listening to anyone from American Idol or Dierks Bentley in 20 years (except out of pure nostalgia or as a joke) while people will still be listening the music of true musical geniuses like Ween & The Rolling Stones.