What's wrong with music these days?

 I was in the car with my dad recently, and we were listening to NPR. A fine radio program by any means, but frankly, it get's rather dull from time-to-time. So I decided to switch the channel to the local Rock station. This station has everything from Soft Rock to Death Metal. Their range is somewhat astounding to be honest. The first song I heard was Renegades of Funk, by Rage Against the Machine. Now, this band is a kind of mix between Metal, and Rap. I hate Rap. I really, really hate it. Thankfully the song was almost over when I switched stations, so I didn't have to cut my own ears off.  
The next song was Far From Home, by Five Finger Death Punch (FFDP). Now usually I like this band, but lately they've been foraying into some slower songs. This hasn't been going too well in my opinion. They just aren't built for things like that. It seems to me that their songs have more meaning (so to speak), and are just...not boring when they're a bit faster, and angrier. It's just more fun.  
Next was the AC/DC song Shoot to Thrill. It's AC/DC. They've been around for a really long time, been making good music the entire, and generally holds the respect of most rock enthusiasts. So really there's nothing bad about that one. Moving on. 
The next song that played was Haifisch. If you're thinking that doesn't sound like it's English, you'd be right. It's a song from a German Industrial Metal band called Rammstein. Obviously the song is in German, but I don't think it's imperative that one knows what the heck they're saying. In fact, I rather like not knowing what they're talking about. It makes it far more engaging to listen to. I realize that doesn't make sense, but trust me. Just listen to them. They're worth it. Anyway, this song is very nice, because it's exactly what Rammstein is good at, and when they do that, they do it well. So, yeah, needless to say, I enjoyed this one. 
Okay, now right about now we're about to get home, and there's time for one more song or so. I was hoping for something good to top off the drive. No such luck. The resulting disaster made me never want to listen to music again. The song was All Summer Long, by Kid Rock. I'd heard about this guy before, and had purposefully been avoiding his music due to bad reviews. I thought I had a pretty good idea of how bad his music was going to be. It was worse. So much worse. It was derivative, ill written, and just generally bad. The thought of it makes me want to stab something. So, I'm going to stop typing before I start into a really bad rant. Perhaps at a later date. We'll have to see. 
 
Later peoples. Tell your family DarthOniXVIII says hello.

 I was in the car with my dad recently, and we were listening to NPR. A fine radio program by any means, but frankly, it get's rather dull from time-to-time. So I decided to switch the channel to the local Rock station. This station has everything from Soft Rock to Death Metal. Their range is somewhat astounding to be honest. The first song I heard was Renegades of Funk, by Rage Against the Machine. Now, this band is a kind of mix between Metal, and Rap. I hate Rap. I really, really hate it. Thankfully the song was almost over when I switched stations, so I didn't have to cut my own ears off.  
The next song was Far From Home, by Five Finger Death Punch (FFDP). Now usually I like this band, but lately they've been foraying into some slower songs. This hasn't been going too well in my opinion. They just aren't built for things like that. It seems to me that their songs have more meaning (so to speak), and are just...not boring when they're a bit faster, and angrier. It's just more fun.  
Next was the AC/DC song Shoot to Thrill. It's AC/DC. They've been around for a really long time, been making good music the entire, and generally holds the respect of most rock enthusiasts. So really there's nothing bad about that one. Moving on. 
The next song that played was Haifisch. If you're thinking that doesn't sound like it's English, you'd be right. It's a song from a German Industrial Metal band called Rammstein. Obviously the song is in German, but I don't think it's imperative that one knows what the heck they're saying. In fact, I rather like not knowing what they're talking about. It makes it far more engaging to listen to. I realize that doesn't make sense, but trust me. Just listen to them. They're worth it. Anyway, this song is very nice, because it's exactly what Rammstein is good at, and when they do that, they do it well. So, yeah, needless to say, I enjoyed this one. 
Okay, now right about now we're about to get home, and there's time for one more song or so. I was hoping for something good to top off the drive. No such luck. The resulting disaster made me never want to listen to music again. The song was All Summer Long, by Kid Rock. I'd heard about this guy before, and had purposefully been avoiding his music due to bad reviews. I thought I had a pretty good idea of how bad his music was going to be. It was worse. So much worse. It was derivative, ill written, and just generally bad. The thought of it makes me want to stab something. So, I'm going to stop typing before I start into a really bad rant. Perhaps at a later date. We'll have to see. 
 
Later peoples. Tell your family DarthOniXVIII says hello.

no one is more authentic than kid rock... 
and I think it might be what you like, because in my opinion music recently has been incredible, of course I listen to Indie singer/ songwriters, folk and alternative... but those are what I like.

Can Kid Rock be considered as part of "these days"? All I know is everyone who doesn't partake in much mainstream music has such a vast difference in preference that it's not even worth arguing.

" The first song I heard was Renegades of Funk, by Rage Against the Machine. Now, this band is a kind of mix between Metal, and Rap. I hate Rap. I really, really hate it. Thankfully the song was almost over when I switched stations, so I didn't have to cut my own ears off.    "

The worst thing about that Kid Rock song is that it is straight up Sweet Home Alabama with different (worse) lyrics. He mentions "listening to sweet home Alabama all summer long" as if referencing it himself makes it OK.

get off my porch! darn kids and your hula hoops

Look, to all the people ranting about how I dislike all this stuff: Deal with it. Just because our musical views are different doesn't mean you need to comment and start fussing about it. So calm down.

...isn't commenting sorta the point?

" @audiosnag: Commenting is for discussion. Not fussing about how our musical views are dissimilar. "

Stop listening to the radio.

" @audiosnag:  Well take out those fighting gloves 'cause I despise the  annoying rage against  the machine and that lousy god awful Zach de la Rocha voice .... and I hate it even more because I was forced to listen to it all the time  , thanks brother for that >:( Kid Rock these days???? I thought we were rid of him at the same year he came about "

I think the real problem is how schizo that radio station is.

So if we aren't allowed to say that it's not the music thats bad, it's that you don't like it, you only posted this on here so you could watch people agree with you?

" The worst thing about that Kid Rock song is that it is straight up Sweet Home Alabama with different (worse) lyrics. He mentions "listening to sweet home Alabama all summer long" as if referencing it himself makes it OK. "

" @audiosnag: Commenting is for discussion. Not fussing about how our musical views are dissimilar. "

What are you listening to the radio for? Burn a couple of cd's to listen to in the car and quit bitching.

" @Aetheldod said:

" @audiosnag:  Well take out those fighting gloves 'cause I despise the  annoying rage against  the machine and that lousy god awful Zach de la Rocha voice .... and I hate it even more because I was forced to listen to it all the time  , thanks brother for that >:( Kid Rock these days???? I thought we were rid of him at the same year he came about "

Ohhh thats it...thats IT. I know six different forms of fisticuffs and can kill a yak from 30 yards with a toaster. You're in for a proper thrashing sir. "

" The worst thing about that Kid Rock song is that it is straight up Sweet Home Alabama with different (worse) lyrics. He mentions "listening to sweet home Alabama all summer long" as if referencing it himself makes it OK. "

" @audiosnag said:

" @Aetheldod said:

" @audiosnag:  Well take out those fighting gloves 'cause I despise the  annoying rage against  the machine and that lousy god awful Zach de la Rocha voice .... and I hate it even more because I was forced to listen to it all the time  , thanks brother for that >:( Kid Rock these days???? I thought we were rid of him at the same year he came about "

Ohhh thats it...thats IT. I know six different forms of fisticuffs and can kill a yak from 30 yards with a toaster. You're in for a proper thrashing sir. "

Yeah, well I can kill a yak from 200 yards away, with MIND BULLETS! That's telekinesis holmes.  "

A. NPR is nowhere near being a decent radio station 
B. There is nothing wrong with music today. The songs you hear that are great classics were swimming in a pile of garbage pop in the past. Best example: listen to the 80's music. Find a decent band (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Cars, The Police, etc.) Now look at when one of their hits charted and compare it to others on that list. I guarantee there will be at least a dozen songs that never made it as a hit more than 5 years after they came out. That is being generous.

" The worst thing about that Kid Rock song is that it is straight up Sweet Home Alabama with different (worse) lyrics. He mentions "listening to sweet home Alabama all summer long" as if referencing it himself makes it OK. "

" @RollingZeppelin said:

" @audiosnag said:

" @Aetheldod said:

" @audiosnag:  Well take out those fighting gloves 'cause I despise the  annoying rage against  the machine and that lousy god awful Zach de la Rocha voice .... and I hate it even more because I was forced to listen to it all the time  , thanks brother for that >:( Kid Rock these days???? I thought we were rid of him at the same year he came about "

Ohhh thats it...thats IT. I know six different forms of fisticuffs and can kill a yak from 30 yards with a toaster. You're in for a proper thrashing sir. "

Yeah, well I can kill a yak from 200 yards away, with MIND BULLETS! That's telekinesis holmes.  "

How bout the power of flight? That do anything for ya? "

My advice? Dont listen to the radio for nothing more then talk shows, the few good ones left. Also ACDC is horrible, if i heard their boat sunk while partying with Guns & Roses I wouldn't even shrug at the news. 

Music started going downhill after Courtney murdered Kurt

i think we're forgetting just how awesome Kid Rock was, i mean he gave us this song, which gave us this:
 
 I'm the J-O-E to the C hoe
Call me Joe C...got more game than Coleco (shouts to the nerds)
I'm a freak hoe call me sick
Three foot nine with a ten foot dick
 
  

" @audiosnag said:

" @RollingZeppelin said:

" @audiosnag said:

" @Aetheldod said:

" @audiosnag:  Well take out those fighting gloves 'cause I despise the  annoying rage against  the machine and that lousy god awful Zach de la Rocha voice .... and I hate it even more because I was forced to listen to it all the time  , thanks brother for that >:( Kid Rock these days???? I thought we were rid of him at the same year he came about "

Ohhh thats it...thats IT. I know six different forms of fisticuffs and can kill a yak from 30 yards with a toaster. You're in for a proper thrashing sir. "

Yeah, well I can kill a yak from 200 yards away, with MIND BULLETS! That's telekinesis holmes.  "

How bout the power of flight? That do anything for ya? "

How 'bout the power...to move you. *cue sexy guitar lick* "

This blog should be titled:  "What's wrong with radio today?"
 
Music's cool. There's good stuff within whatever genre you're into.

And that good sir is why I never listen to the radio. Ever. Get a car with a CD player or just get an MP3 player and carry it with you everywhere and crawl into your own little musical world when shit like this happens. 

Get off the internet, grandpa!

Rage against the machine is just horrible.
 
Also I didn't read your entire thing because the formatting is horrrribleeeeeee. Please invest in an enter key and a style guide or highschool english courses.

Whenever someone says something along the lines of "What's wrong with music these days?" my go-to response is always, always "You're just not looking hard enough."

I was going to testify that RotM is great when your in high school and they stopped when you graduate, but I can't fight anyone with a porcupine tree avatar D:

" @Aetheldod:  Whoa uh..wait a minute whats this about guns?  I'm out! *runs like squirrel* "

"As for music today, there's plenty of good music you just have to explore a bit. Going by what a radio station feeds you isn't a good indicator. "

I like how you complained about the Kid Rock song that is SPECIFICALLY a mash-up of Werewolves of London and Sweet Home Alabama. 
 
Nothing is wrong with music these days. Take a look at The Arcade Fire. Take a look at The Black Keys. Then there's Muse. Weezer. The Foo Fighters. PLENTY of rock groups out there. And I know you hate rap, but Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy? Fucking amazing. 
 
Then there's Cee-Lo Green's The Lady Killer, which is a work in and of itself in making classic motown relevant again. There's plenty of great music out there, you just have to look for it.

" Look, to all the people ranting about how I dislike all this stuff: Deal with it. Just because our musical views are different doesn't mean you need to comment and start fussing about it. So calm down. "

First of all, you have the fact that the crap from previous eras gets forgotten, leaving only the great stuff behind. Those songs on classic rock stations are obviously cherry-picked as the best and most indicative of an entire era; it's not a random sampling of all the music available at the time. Modern rock or pop stations, on the other hand, have to play whatever's come out in the past six months or so.

So there is a filter applied to the old stuff. Even most of the music in Mozart's day was bullshit. And because it was bullshit, nobody felt the need to keep copies. And what was preserved isn't played today. Because it's bullshit. So it's easy to look back at Mozart's era (or the 1960s, or whatever) and assume that because only the classics survive in our memory, everything made back then was a classic.

The other problem is we assume that what gets remembered over time is whatever was the most popular. Not true.

For instance, what survives from the Vietnam era (thanks mostly to Vietnam movies) are songs like the badass protest song "Fortunate Son" by Creedence Clearwater Revival and "Gimme Shelter" by the Rolling Stones. Both were released in 1969, after the war started going bad.

Now look at the Billboard year-end singles charts from 1946 to today. The top song in 1969? "Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies. Let us quote the entire lyrics of that song:

Sugar, ah honey honey
You are my candy girl
And you've got me wanting you.
Honey, ah sugar sugar
You are my candy girl
And you've got me wanting you.
I just can't believe the loveliness of loving you
(I just can't believe it's true)
I just can't believe the one to love this feeling to.
(I just can't believe it's true)
Ah sugar, ah honey honey
You are my candy girl
And you've got me wanting you.
Ah honey, ah sugar sugar
You are my candy girl
And you've got me wanting you.
When I kissed you, girl, I knew how sweet a kiss could be
(I know how sweet a kiss can be)
Like the summer sunshine pour your sweetness over me
(Pour your sweetness over me)
Sugar, pour a little sugar on it honey,
Pour a little sugar on it baby
I'm gonna make your life so sweet, yeah yeah yeah
Pour a little sugar on it oh yeah
Pour a little sugar on it honey,
Pour a little sugar on it baby
I'm gonna make your life so sweet, yeah yeah yeah
Pour a little sugar on it honey,
Ah sugar, ah honey honey
You are my candy girl
And you've got me wanting you.
Oh honey, honey, sugar sugar ..
You are my candy girl .

"Fortunate Son" got no higher than No. 14 on the charts. "Gimme Shelter"? It was never released as a single at all.

Go ahead, look down the list. There is some great music on there, but it's mixed in with a lot of stuff you've probably never even heard of. And do you know what you don't see on there? Queen, Led Zeppelin and a lot of other great musicians. Groups that are well-remembered now, when classic rock radio stations wouldn't be caught dead playing some of the shit that outsold them. Even Elvis and The Beatles are only on there twice, tying for the most No. 1 year-end singles with none other than George Michael.

And that's not even considering that, thanks to the Internet, we have far more access to all kinds of niche music genres and independent artists that we'd have never heard in the past.

And as for the critics, you have to keep in mind that there will always, always be critics who hate whatever the latest trend is. Rock music as a whole was blasted pretty harshly when it first got popular. Melody Maker called it "one of the most terrifying things to have ever happened to popular music." The Daily Mail decided to up the ante by mixing in some good old-fashioned racism: "[Rock music] is deplorable. It is tribal. And it is from America. It follows ragtime, blues, jazz, hot cha-cha and the boogie-woogie, which surely originated in the jungle. We sometimes wonder whether this is the negro's revenge."

Hell, even The Beatles weren't safe. The Daily Telegraph said that they were "something Hitler might find useful."

"I hate this. Discuss." 
"I disagree." 
"Deal with it. Discuss."

" no one is more authentic than kid rock... and I think it might be what you like, because in my opinion music recently has been incredible, of course I listen to Indie singer/ songwriters, folk and alternative... but those are what I like. "

yes, music is horrible. all there is now is really just rap, hip hop, r N b, horrible music. the radio is horrible because they go to what is popular. when i feel like listening to the radio i only listen to pretty much two radio stations. one of them is pretty good because they didn't go computerized, yet. a lot of radio stations now go computer. one local radio station has ryan secrest for like 3 hours, he is live in cali. 
 
i also agree with five finger death punch. i think they are going softer to what they use to be. i like their first CD that came out, the way of the fist. it is a lot heavier compared to war is the answer. there awesome good songs on there but it's lighter. 
 
i would listen to ramstien more if they sang in english. i know it's a german band but it would be cool. their music is a lot different compared to  american music. they put heavy metal and techno is some parts of their song.