The Lincoln Log

What does mainstream music have in common, besides artists who lack talent and originality? Major record labels and million-dollar recording equipment that can make any regular, off-key nobody sound like Prince. As technology advances, it’s getting easier and easier for the major music industry to warp voices and make any and every off-key note sound perfect, thus, transforming any mediocre “musician” into a one-hit wonder. Add some “bling” to that artist, an entourage, and a meaningless radio hit and you’ve got yourself another insipid “artist” that was made famous overnight with one hit, who then goes off the charts in another night.

Any song can appeal to the masses when it’s repeated over and over, everywhere you go, and gets drilled into your mind. A song doesn’t necessarily have to sound good to be enjoyed; the impressionistic young minds of teenagers will eventually mold into what the popular idea holds. What you’re listening to on that radio, well, 99 percent of their songs are mechanical, distorted voices that are more the talent of the machine than the talent of the artist. While other unconventional and less popular bands strive to make music that not only sounds good, but also has depth to it, generic mainstream bands with little talent debut on Billboard’s Top 100 after coming out of the factory that we call the record industry. That hardly seems fair.

Sure, some mainstream bands started out as less popular underground artists; many of them changed their style to better fit the industry’s mold. Becoming the next five piece band from the middle of nowhere to move to Los Angeles and ride someone else’s fame doesn’t make a great band. It doesn’t even give credibility to the music scene.

Taking a widely successful genre of music and adding your name to it doesn’t mean you’ve given the genre any justice. Many mainstream bands just ruin the name of previously unconventional genres by distorting what these bands had originally intended their music to sound like. I can think of at least ten bands in the mainstream “scene” within a moment, who have adopted electronica as their genre, and butcher it beyond recognition. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but is it really flattering for bands trying to make it when a Top 20 band comes and takes their style, completely wrecks it, and tries to market it as the real thing? I would hardly call that flattery.

Bands on independent labels are discouraged from trying to reach their full potential because they are limited to the public’s opinions. Concert events like the Vans Warped Tour advertise that they are trying to find new, local, underground bands that have potential, when really all they’re doing is finding bands that sound exactly like the ones that are headlining their tour. How many Screamo bands does this world need? It hardly seems fair that bands with equal or more talent are ignored for ones that sound just like everyone else out there.

Many people argue that mainstream bands come up with original lyrics, as well as music, but how is using the same chords, and drilling just a few stanzas of words into my head original? I can hardly find any depth or originality in a song that presents itself with so vapidly.

Songs made for sheer profit further the decay of music scenes that were once there for the fun of making music, playing gigs, and meeting fans. Bands tend to forget their backgrounds, and more than that, they forget what true music is. So the next time you’re at a record store picking up the latest album from a cookie-cutter band, remember that you’re just contributing to their pseudo original success, and to the overrated record industries that have created them, not to the original talent of the artist.