Is This Finally The End For Pop Music?
© Niall Fleming 2002 & Tim Steere 2003
Genre classification provided by Matthew West 2003
I certainly hope so, I don't see the point of so called popular music, in fact pop, techno, rap, garage & house music...why garage and house? Ooh maybe I'll go listen to a bit of conservatory or garden shed, yeah that sounds like a bloody brilliant idea, I don't think.
Kill, burn and destroy Pop!!! Deep in the minds of many delinquent idiots is a scary race of music which is lacking in talent. Lacking of a funky bass line. Lacking of any good qualities. This is known as 'pop music'.
This range of music makes no sense and is truly pointless. With these new so called 'artists' as Gareth Gates, Britney Spears, t.A.t.U, Justin Timberlake and more, the world of pop is getting scarier and scarier and basically a wave of mind controlling crap that will get kids dancing to it. Pop is short for popular, which i think is stupid because rock is equally.....no, more popular, than pop. So why the hell is pop still hanging around?
This is because of a race known as the townie. These 'brains of Britain' like to endulge their sick little minds with this computer generated drum beat called a dance track, and going 'eee-ya' all the way through the track. They then move on to such delights as Christina Milian and Britney Spears, while doing their make-up and covering their hair with enough hair spray to kill fourteen cows standing in a line with gas masks on. They get the false belief that they are actually good looking, and think they can be the next Britney Spears or some other manufactured crap pop band. This is a very dangerous race, I beg of you, do not approach them unless you have a gun.
Proper Music consists of a guitar! For god's sake if any townies are reading this, it's that thing with strings on it which sounds really good when you play it! Anyway.......
There is numerous good stuff around for instance Rock, Pop Rock, Punk, Ska, Emo, Metal and so forth. Wonderfully produced written (that's right townies they write it themselves!) music. With Punk ruled by Blink 182 and the Offspring, Ska is coming along nicely with Reel Big Fish, Jesse James, Less Than Jake and Whitmore. The undeniable quality of Red Hot Chili Peppers ruling the roost. Good up and coming bands like Sugarcult, Starting Line, Allister and The D4 is leaving the rock/punk/and so forth safe and secure.
But what about pop? Is pop dying? Judging by how many rock bands appear on Top of the Pops, and with bands like S Club splitting up, it appears the likes of Simon Cowell and Pete Waterman have cashed in on their last apparently decent pop band.....I hope.
- Techno
- What I hate about techno, is that it isn't music, it's just some seedy old bloke with a midi keyboard and a few reverberation effects, mixing a few silly noises together and expecting to come up with a half decent tune, and it doesn't work like that, it just sounds like a deranged budgie on speed, while being strangled by some kind of cat.
- Pop
- Most pop artists (and i use that term - artists - loosely) don't write any of their so called songs themselves, they use songwriters to do it for them and then all pop bands start to sound exactly the same cos they're all using the same bloody writer, and this is boring. Then you get the likes of Will Young and Gareth Gates, who don't even get a songwriter, all they release is covers of really old songs, often sounding far worse than the original, which probably wasn't all that big of a hit in the first place. Manufactured crap - that's all it is.
- Rap
- This is just funny...anything for a rhyme, it doesn't matter what the lyrics are, as long as they rhyme and you can shout them over a drum backing track apparently, and this is music? Music is supposed to mean something! It's only vaguely musical in some cases where the band in question has cobbled together a bit of a melody to shout along to.
- Garage
- How the hell do you describe garage? All I know is that I don't like it, it means nothing to me.
At least with rock, punk/punky rock, nu-metal, ska, emo & indie you actually get some decent lyrics and usually a well thought-out melody, that has actually been written by the band in question, perhaps with some help from professional songwriters take Avril Lavigne for example, she went to a songwriter to help her write better lyrics, but essentially all the words were her own, not wholly someone else's work like in the 'pop' world.
- Rock
- Usually associated with 80s rock bands, like Queen and The Rolling Stones for example, and many others. And more recently Foo Fighters. Also Oasis seem to be having a rocky streak at the mo', and Hundred Reasons with their indie rock sound
- Metal/Heavy Metal
- Iron Maiden, Tool, Metallica (rawk on!), Audioslave, Queens Of The Stone Age, and many others
- Punk (Punk Rock)
- The Sex Pistols(70s), Avril Lavigne, Blink 182, Sum 41 and Lit, (Green Day?). Cool music with a good beat, and funky bass lines galore (Dave's fave music methinks)
- Garage Rock (American Garage)
- The Hives, The Strokes, The Datsuns....it's a 'the' band convention lol
- Nu-Metal
- Bands like Lost Prophets, Linkin Park, Papa Roach, Korn's newer stuff, Slipknot etc. Original music from original bands, generally with a funky funky bass line.
- Ska
- My favourite genre at the moment! Brilliant bands like Reel Big Fish (Punky Ska), The Specials, Less Than Jake, Jesse James, Mustard Plug and from the 80s - Madness
- Emo
- How to define...this one's hard, here goes, nice thoughtful melodies with really emotional lyrics, very calming, although some would say the lyrics make you want to kill yourself, I myself find myself reminded that life's not so bad. Bands include Something Corporate *giggle*, Saves The Day and Dashboard Confessional.
- Grunge
- This underground genre was born in the early 90's, and will be forever defined by one of the most influential bands of all time, the unmistakeable Nirvana, others include Pearl Jam and Soundgarden.
- Industrial
- We can't decide how to define it, Matt says "it's a cross between metal and rock, but with more synths and a lot of electronic sounds and samples, sounds kinda industrial (duh!). Mostly from 1988 and the early 90's, sounds kinda angst ridden and has good lyrics". Bands include Nine Inch Nails, Rammstein and Skinny Puppy
- Indie
- Indefinable, but excellent music all the same, bands like Dido, The Stone Roses, Manic Street Preachers, Beth Orton, Coldplay, the Stereophonics, Ash, Blur, Oasis, Green Day (mixed genre), Feeder, etc. Plenty of thought has usually gone into the lyrics, and they can deal with with real life stuff. Songs about divorce and love and needing friends etc., stuff that actually gets in touch with the people, instead of anything that pops into the writers head (like in Rap). There are independent 'indie' record labels, Silvertone for example.
- Miscellaneous
- Bands with indefinable genres, but still rather good bands, Weezer, Primus, Incubus etc.
- Local Bands (local to Keighley, West Yorkshire)
- Breene, Random Hand, Reeved, Circus? etc.
- Local Bands (local to Abingdon, Oxford)
- Shouting Myke