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Article in our newspaper about today's music
Couldn't agree more:
1/20/04
Me against the Music
Dear Music,
It's over between us.
You've changed so much over the years. In high school, you used to be such a source of comfort for me. Whenever I was going through a rough time, you were always there to console me and help me forget whatever it was that was bothering me. In many ways you were like an aural version of Prozac, you seemed to always be the answer to everything.
Today, you've become a vapid hole of inane garbage. You've dedicated your life to appealing the masses by producing cheap bubblegum popstars such as Britney Spears and Hilary Duff. Your greed for money and obsession with pleasing the "big boys upstairs" has impaired your judgement. You can no longer distinguish the difference between quality music and factory-produced crap, talentless filth designed to make millions off of an audience who still isn't old enough to buy its own cigarettes or lottery tickets.
I miss the days when you had something real going on, when R and B wasn't all about little Michael Jackson wannabes in tank tops and hats, and hip-hop had more to sing about than milkshakes and Air Force Ones - times when music was actually based on the quality of a person's singing and not his/her ability to lip-sync into the microphone and dance at the same time. I miss the days when you actually mattered to people - times when people appreciated you for what you were and didn't determine your value by the amount of money you could make them.
I'm also tired of people judging me because of you. Whenever someone asks me, "What kind of music do you listen to?" I feel as if I'm on trial. If I answer anything remotely related to pop music, I'm automatically deemed as an imbecile - a dim-witted moron who couldn't tell the difference between Aerosmith and Good Charlotte if my life depended on it. If I answer the exact same question with some band that I really never even heard of before, I'm presented with a false sense of acceptance. It seems as if all the acceptable answers to that question here in San Diego all have to start with "the," such as The Strokes or The Pixies.
So it's over. It's not going to be easy, but I know somehow, I'll manage to survive without you. Despite what all those commercials on VH1 tell me, you are not my life. If anything, you've ruined my life. Over the years, I've based everything around you and you only ended up letting me down. And now I can no longer go on living my life pretending that I'm in love with you.
So goodbye Music. I hope you'll be better to the next generation of listeners than you were to me.
- Dee Dee Chew is a journalism major and assistant tempo editor for The Daily Aztec.
- This column does not necessarily reflect the views of The Daily Aztec
By Dee Dee Chew
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