The Sound of True Music

Music is one domain I can claim to know some serious stuff about. Having listened to various artists from almost all genres, I can speak about any song without having to bluff about my intelligence.

But my friend disagrees with certain judgements of mine. According to him, anything that has a good sound and/or good lyrics can be defined as a good song. While I agree with his statement from a music enthusiast’s perspective, my thoughts vary when I hear the same music from the ears of a musician.

Being somebody who worships bands and rock/metal music, I hate two things about popular music: One, the list contains tracks from artists who make songs just to make money and haven’t, actually, undergone such experiences as depicted by their songs in real life. Two, the music provided for most of these tracks comes not from a musical instrument, but a computer.

Having developed a strong love for playing musical instruments over so many years, when I hear pop musicians singing in their digitally enhanced voices on music tracks either made on computer or played by somebody who the artist hardly acknowledges, I feel an immense dislike for the song. Needless to say, I don’t particularly like songs by David Guetta and Avicii, or by the MTV pop culture people like Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber.

While I appreciate every song’s tune or lyrics or the vocals, I don’t like digital effects. The occasional Skrillex song is fine, but somehow, general electronic music hasn’t really been a genre I’ve predominantly favoured. Somehow, the same tune being played on the guitar sends tingles down my spine, symbolic to represent the goodness of the tune, but an electronic version causes no reaction. Even though the software has been made by humans, I still don’t feel the emotional connection songs have the power to make if the song is of electronic genre.

MTV pop culture is something I do not appreciate for the aforementioned reason of not acknowledging the other artists contributing to the song as much as the vocalist. What about the bands of those artists such as Adam Lambert and Demi Lovato who create an equally important part of the song as their singing – the music? Why don’t they ever become part of the artist’s name? What is so wrong in being part of a band as a musician, keeping the band image of everybody together and not just one person stealing away the glory?

Also, most of these pop culture artists do not write their own songs – they get other people to write songs and another bunch to compose and then sing a tailor-made track with no artistic input from the vocalist whatsoever, which is kind of an irony because when to song is launched, the vocalist’s name appears in the column for ‘Artist’.

Legally, these “artists” own the tracks but actually, there is no work of these “artists” in making the song. I appreciate their God-gifted talent of singing, but unless you haven’t experienced what the song talks about, you somehow cannot fully capture the essence of singing that song.

I admire certain artists whose songs are their own works (to only a certain extent, but still) such as Adele, Jeff Buckley, Colbie Caillat, Alicia Keys, Jason Mraz.

But honestly, I still love them old rock and roll bands the best. For only they qualify all my four conditions of good music: One, the music doesn’t come from a computer. Two, the band is regarded as a single entity, with each member given equal respect (if not fame :P). Three, the songs are based on real life incidents from their lives. And four, a good sound and/or good lyrics. When these four things combine, it reminds you of all those good old times of fun.