[Nuje]

I come from a musical background. A classical music background. He's most definitely got a point in his conclusion.

I was listening to Alice Cooper on Q a while back, and he was touching on people who send him music. He said he wants none of it, because of constant accusation of plaigarism that exists today, he said that he doesn't want to inadvertently steal a good musician's riff.

As far as ripoffs, there are so many..."What I Got" is "Lady Madonna". "Why Don't you Get a Job" is "Ob La Di, Ob La Da". The "This is What You Get" part of "Karma Police" is ripped from "Sexy Sadie"....and this is just using the Beatles as a source band off the top of my head. "Don't look Back in Anger" by Oasis uses "Imagine"'s intro, and a very minor tweak of "Pachelbel's Canon in D" for the chorus' chord progression. Some of the "ripoffs" are even very good songs in their own right (I'm a huge fan of that last one). Then there's Nickelback!

They rip themselves off! "How You Remind Me" was recycled into "Someday" (and if you google that, they have each song playing in mono out of one speaker simultaneously available. They're in a different key though, so make sure you find a version that's transposed, as it sounds even more scarily similar). Now, I am fairly sure that Nickelback didn't sit there and say:

How you remind me was HUGE for us!!!! We need something that big again....let's tune our guitars a semitone up, and change the words, modify the chords a bit, and tweak the melody just a tad!!!!

....I just think that they're crap songwriters and have very limited creativity. Also, if I'm correct, Kroeger produces music as well, including bands like Theory of a Deadman, and Default. He's managed to make them sound like him too (note "Hero" by Chad Kroger and...someone from some other band?? has a very similar chorus to "Make Up your Mind" by Theory of a Deadman....just a slow progression upwards (on the minor scale).

[Total Music Nerd] To get technical about it, Hero has the minor submediant going to the minor leading note, going to the tonic, whereas Make up your Mind starts at the tonic, but progresses to the mediant, then the subdominant. [/Total Music Nerd]

Cue them up on youtube, and stop "Hero" right before the words "Hero can save us" and stop MUYM on the chord before "We'll wake up", then hit play on each one for a few seconds.

Small variations, but it doesn't help that anything that is remotely related to Kroeger and Nickelback, seems to have the EXACT same guitar sound.

....so now my point. I certainly think that music's gotten worse over the years. While it's partially the listening audience's fault, I think that they're the smaller equation in all of this. The biggest problem is a lack of proper musicians. Myself, I have a good command over any keyboard instrument, and a decent command of my own voice. I might be able to write music, but I certainly would make a crap lyricist.

Record companies, and producers who manufacture stars, and entire bands, do a good job to feed the masses. I still firmly believe, though, that whenever something that's actually really good comes along, it will be inifintely more successful than anything that Simon Cowell can assemble with the equivalent of musical lego (and a pretty pitiful collection of it).

EDIT - Did once again, what I did in another music related thread...didn't finish the whole thing through before commenting on it, just edited the first paragraph there.