This is a rant that has been a long time coming. For too long I've been silent about this scourge haunting our radiowaves but now, it's time to speak out against it.
Once upon a time, music had some actual subtlety and musicianship to it. Legends like JS Bach and Mozart dedicated their life to creating the most perfect, intricate music. Whether it be a 6 voice figure or "the magic flute", a true craft went into it. Classical music went through many eras all of which produced excellent and unique music.
Meanwhile in other parts of the world, they had their own classical music going on. Places like India and the middle east produced improvisational music that could go on for quite awhile, but once again the musicianship here was very high quality, producing a very meditative and trancelike experience.
Then, there was blues and jazz in the USA. While not as instrumentally structured as classical music, this stuff had a certain improvisational quality that still required a lot of talent. Artists like Robert Johnson, Coltrane, and Miles Davis put out music with a swing and attitude like no other, without sacrificing instrumental talent or lyrical thoughtfulness.
Then from blues came rock music. I won't lie some of the early "rock n roll" was pretty simple, but soon this genre came into its own and we got some of the most catchy and cool music in American history. Bob Dylan, The Who, Cream, The Beatles, you name it. Rock produced music that was expertly crafted to feel awesome. Like the previous music mentioned here, there was still quite a lot of talent involved.
The rock genre went on to dominate the 20th century. It went in many direction, mixing with jazz/classical and incorporating unconventional effects like reverb and echo among others. It also used unconventional instruments like the organ or synthesizer to add layers. Rock borrowed influence from music all over the world, which also expanded the possibilities. All these changes created genres like psychedelic, prog, and jazz fusion among others.
Rock peaked in the 70s. With all of the different influences and bands, the possibilities at this time were endless. But like all good things, something had to make it end. Enter: punk rock. I guess, people got sick of music that required talent and decided to instead let their negative emotions be the instrument instead. So a couple cavemen called the "sex pistols" produced the most mindless rock album to date at the time. Everything rock had built up to was reduced to 3 chords played poorly and angry yelling/whining. They were massively popular. Many bands followed in their footsteps, which shared similar success.
The Sex Pistols and and similar bands exposed a very unfortunate thing about human and their preferences; negative emotions and angst sells far better than talent and complexity. This principle would go on to be exploited endlessly but before it really was used music had one last hurrah called the 1980s. I must admit the punk influence was used cleverly at this time in both the post-punk movement and in heavy metal bands like Metallica, so I'll give credit where it's due.
Another positive thing to come from punk since I must give it some credit, is it helped to spawn heavy metal. Something about punk's aggressive attitude did allow metal artists to take influence and usher in the classic era of heavy metal of which bands like Iron Maiden, Motley Crue, Dio, Judas Priest, Motorhead, and others were part of. Unfortunately, this great initial wave of metal would later give way to much less interesting music.
Unfortunately for music as a whole and especially rock music, the 1980s were so relentlessly melodic and catchy that the public got sick of melody. This allowed the second horseman of the musical apocalypse to storm in, Grunge. Once again credit where due, grunge did produce some decent music and I must admit I do like some songs from those bands. But overall, the legacy was grunge was it took the melody and guitar solo talent out of rock music and replaced it with teenage angst. Another interesting development in the 80s/90s was the emergence of hip hop which would go on to take over the world later, but actually i enjoy a lot of the early hip hop so I won't shit talk it.
After grunge it only went downhill from there for rock and metal music. Like I said before, angst sells. So we got the nu metal and the metalcore and black metal and death metal, and so on. We also got the "pop" punk rock like green day. And because people especially teenagers gravitate towards negativity instead of talent/intellect, it was all very popular. Eventually the rock music of old which had so much talent in it completely died and was replaced by this wretched angsty music that's really only good if you want to beat your head with a frying pan to it. The rock/metal music of the 2000s because of this, was vastly inferior to the classic era.
However, some good things came out of the 90s/2000s. Rap hadn't gone downhill yet (that's another story) so we got some pretty great rap album in these decades that were very advanced in terms of poetry and the beats were very cool. Honestly I'd even say that the later "trap" music was still better than the crap coming from rock/metal in the 2000s/2010s.
Sadly, even rap fell victim to the alt/punk menace. In the 2010s the SoundCloud rap movement merged the talentless angst of alt with the hedonistic party fervor of trap, creating some of the most truly mindless angsty garbage of all time; from the opiate addicted lil peep to the mentally ill thug xxtentacion. Of course, SoundCloud rap was a massive hit among the ever-growing community of mentally unstable teens and maturity-stunted adults, which made up the majority of the music consuming population.
Punk/alt would go on to mix with and destroy several other genres, generating millions of angsty mentally unstable fans along the way. As it stands, the majority of rock/metal fans would prefer to listen to this crap than the far more talented rock music in the 70s, let alone classical and jazz music. But I guess it's called edgy for a reason, because it always has the edge over other things even if it's actually junk. People just want to feed their anger and angst or have some kind of rush from shock value than listen to a well crafted, talented composition. It's
It's kind of ironic, because this angsty shit is labeled as "counter cultural". But to me, at this point in the game, there is nothing more subversive than being appreciating things that have more to them than mindless novelty and shock value.
I will end this with a disclaimer so nobody misunderstands or twists my words. It isn't that I'd think there's zero value in punk/alt or that some of the influences in it can never be used in a way that's enjoyable, or even that all fans of these genres are stupid or inferior; but I am observing a trend where neuroticism, angst, negative emotions, and other things that probably shouldn't be encouraged seems to be dangerously popular, and so I think something should be said about it because I see that these things are part of why the culture is so hostile and polarized and toxic. A site like SC and hostile Internet behavior in general with all of the horrible things people here and on other toxic sites have done can only happen in a mass traumatized culture that is consumed by negativity and I think people could benefit from expanding their horizons and try to appreciate stuff that isn't just shock value or angst.
Anyway, rant over.
My grandiose delusions are better than yours.
