On separating the wheat from the chaffe……what’s good music today?

Boy, really getting beat up on Facebook about a post I made about Justin Bieber and his latest single….said you couldn’t understand his lyrics and his vocals were distorted to the point where they really didn’t even sound like a human voice….is that still singing? Anyway, one of my good buddies mentioned that my 70-year-old grandfather probably wouldn’t have liked Led Zepplin back in the day either…..ya know what? I don’t really like Led Zepplin either….but I guess I am almost 70-years-old.

Anyway, you’re right when you say I’m not fond of most new “mainstream” music. With that said, I like nearly all genres of music as they existed in the past. While I enjoy progressive rock like Genesis and Yes, I also really admire Hank Williams and the old country guys. I like and enjoy a really wide range of “music” and always have. My wife is constantly surprised by what I pull out of the old record collection from time to time. But the new “pop” music is sort of beyond me. So, I’ll admit I’m a dinosaur on this one.

I’m going to tell you something, though. This new music won’t last. Like most stuff in our modern world, it’s here today, gone tomorrow. The music that my generation grew up with is still being played by bands today – because it was music that could be covered by lots and lots of other musicians. Most of the new popular music released today sure doesn’t sound like it would be easy to play because so much of it is electronic and digitally altered. Almost anybody today can put out a record and call themselves a musician.

And it’s like that in nearly all of the arts these days. I call myself a writer, but almost anyone can think they are a writer today…..you’ve got grammar check and spell check and you can be constantly revising and moving stuff around hither and yon. Certainly, almost anything is accepted as visual art in the modern era. Almost anything can be called an artform these days….

I’m not saying there aren’t some really talented people out there, but, in a lot of cases, it can be sort of hard to tell…..going back to Justin Bieber….I’ve heard his music a bunch of times, usually on the TV or radio, and I just don’t get it. I’m not even really sure what his actual voice sounds like, so don’t really know if he can sing or not. I usually can’t figure out what he’s singing so I’m not sure what he’s like as a songwriter…..I’m used to folks like the Beatles and Bob Dylan and Harry Chapin and Paul Simon…..is that the kind of stuff the Beebs is producing…..so that even though it sounds different, and my old ears don’t really like it, it’s still great songwriting. Do the Beebs and Beyonce and Cardi B and Drake write great lyrics….I’m ignorant on that front for sure.

I don’t know, people. I started playing music when I was a wee, small lad and have been listening to music for almost as long – I think I know and can recognize good stuff when I hear it. And if a lot of new music – at least the stuff that gets most of the airplay – doesn’t sound all that great to me. And if it’s actually really good stuff, like the work of truly great artists, then the whole music thing has experienced a complete and total paradigm shift over the last couple of generations. I think music is sort of like truth. And, as I believe there is absolute truth in most cases, I also think there is something called “absolute music”. It can come in many forms and sound like a lot of different things – but it’s still good or bad.