What happened to all the good songs?
They just don’t make songs like they used to anymore…..Our generation is a deprived lot. It seems we are all constantly bombarded by annoyingly catchy but totally useless pop tunes over the radio. What happened to the good old days when a song was less about who sang it and how catchy and more about what the song is about, what it’s trying to convey?
Blame it on the Backstreet Boys, blame it on N’Sync, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, The Spice Girls, blame in on the entire 90’s generation of boy bands (they aren’t even a band! They should be called bunch of boys) and pop princesses who wooed and courted us with their brand of never ending love songs, proclaiming ‘I’ll never break your heart’, ‘Baby One More time’, as if you can’t love a person enough…….. ‘I’m a slave for you’…. Blame it on Los Del Rios, that bunch of old men who made all of us do the Macarena. I remember in secondary, there was always some new group in town promoting their hit single… Lets see, there was BSB, N’Sync, The Moffats, there was Human Nature, Bewitched, Steps, S Club 7, 911, Five, M2M, Smile, blah blah blah……….. and the list goes on and on, there were so many of them, and they all had only 1 hit single.. .the end.
But seriously, these few days, I find myself turning more to music from the olden days than listening to what’s on radio. Love songs have always dominated the airwaves… which is really ok. After all, love makes the world go round. But all they seem to sing is “I love you… ooohh.. I really love you….. lalaa…. I really really love you so much”. Have some depth for goodness sake! Change tack! If you notice, good songs never go away. When these song writers finally decide that they have no talent in song writing after all, they just rearrange those best loved evergreen songs and get the latest hunk or princess to sing it. Westlife was particularly good at this, relying almost entirely on the appeal of well established and much loved songs to get people to listen.
What gets me cooked up is not so much the tune, but more to the lyrics. Good lyrics touch you at a certain level. Isn’t it universal for us to be feeling a certain way, and find a song that brings out what we feel, exactly? Good lyrics speak to you, they convey the message across, but more powerfully, they convey the emotions across. Whatever the song is about, at the end of it, you feel what it wanted to say. Good lyrics have depth; it tells you more than just what is written. Sometimes you don’t even need real words..
Didn’t The Carpenters sing “Every shalalala…every wouwou, still shines. Every shingeling a ling….that their starting to sing, so fine. ” in Yesterday once more? Can you tell me what it means? Nothing! Its gibberish.. But for some very powerful reason, we understand the feelings behind it. We identify with the emotion behind it and we all sing along to it. It brings all of us down memory lane, and like the song title, we all thing about yesterday once more.
See what I mean? Now that’s a good song.
Plus, why are all the latest pop songs all love songs? Why are all the latest songs mostly about absolute nothing at all? I have listened to “Hips don’t lie” by Shakira over and over. Its catchy, just like the rest of the songs these days, but its really about nothing, just like the rest of the songs these says. I still don’t get what the song is supposed to mean. What about ‘In the Club’ by 50cents? Is it or is it not your birthday? What on Earth is Sean Paul saying when he ‘sings’? Of course, among the other top ten ‘catchy-but-don’t-mean-a-thing’ songs of the past decade was ‘Lemon tree’ by Fools Garden, ‘Macarena’ as earlier mentioned, “Who let the dogs out?” by Baha men (which should really be at the top of the list) and who could forget that totally nonsensical, supposedly back-masked, demon worshipping song ‘Asereje’ by Las Ketchup, complete with accompanying dance routine ala Macarena. These songs should come with a health hazard sign: “WARNING: Prolonged listening could lead to serious psychological disorders” Just look at me; I still have the lyrics to these songs stuck in my head after more than 5 years, and the more I try to forget, the more I remember.
In contrast, listen to songs like “Another day in paradise” by Phill Collins or “What a wonderful world” Neil Armstrong, “Take me home country road” John Denver, “Massachusetts” by Bee Gees, The Carpenters, The Beatles….etc etc There are so many, I just can’t list them all out. These songs are still around today. They don’t just sing about love songs, they sing about so many other emotions, so many parts of life that have not been given their due attention.
People who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s had such clear musical trends to relate to. From the hippie days of the 70’s to the disco days of the 80’s, they all had their icons of music. Bob Dylan, Jimmy Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, The Bee Gees, The Beatles, Lobo, Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams, The Supremes, The Osborne’s, The Jacksons, etc etc……… I’m just naming them from the top of my head….
What do people my age have? What are we supposed to tell our children in 2020? Songs from the 90’s and 2010’s…. oh yes…. There was 2Pac… he got shot… then there was Dr Dre… He wasn’t shot….. There was 50cent. Sold drugs, got shot, went to jail, recorded some rap tunes and became a millionaire… He’s a real role model. There was a confused rapper named Eminem who sang about killing his mother and wife. There was the Backstreet Boys and the rest of the cheesy boy bands… There was The Spice Girls with their catchy Brit-pop, but only had one successful album. I don’t know.. I’m lost. I really wonder how people are going to describe the 90’s and the first decade of this millennium in terms of music.
So many of us grew up listening to all these senseless pop songs; is it any wonder we are all a bunch of egg heads?
posted by Compulsive Blogger @ 1:23 am
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