[rogermexico]

I don’t know that the following are unpopular so much as they’re cranky and long-winded. I started thinking about my opinions and had too much free time today. The tl;dr version is: the music industry is stupid. But that’s not unpopular or groundbreaking or anything. Please note that I am completely ignorant of modern electronic music and don’t have opinions on it at all.

• Taylor Swift is better than most rock music from the last ten years because at least “Shake it Off” is fun, unlike anything by, say, Imagine Dragons. (I realize Imagine Dragons is an easy target but you get the point.)
• Streaming and outright stealing music has doomed us to a world where terrible bands like Fun and Imagine Dragons dominate “rock music” because the only source of income left to the recording industry as a whole is Nissan ads. If other words, if you download free music, Imagine Dragons is your fault.
• Conversely, we live in a weird time where the only artists actually capable of selling huge amounts of songs and records –Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift – are more experimental and sonically adventurous than any rock artists. I'm talking a lot about rock music because I want it to be good and I'm let down that it often isn't.
• Modern rock music and modern country music are essentially the same. They all sound kind of like U2 and sometimes there is rapping. Lyrically they’re more or less identical – a song on X929 is more likely to be in the first person and angsty whereas a song on Sun Country in High River is more likely to be in the third person and positive. Country songs are more likely to use “whiskey” and “’skirt” as an end rhyme. Although come to think of it though, so does Nicklelback.
• Speaking of which: Did you know that numerous country hits are written by a song writing team that includes Chad Kroeger from Nicklelback and Richard Marx? Yes, that Richard Marx. I do not make this stuff up.
• Radiohead, specifically OK Computer, was the single worst thing to happen to rock and roll music – narrowly edging out U2 (their entire career) and the Metallica Black Album. Everything boring, bland & stupid about rock music for the last twenty years –pretentiousness, drabness, glomming on to the stupid aspects of new technology - goes back to emulation of these three artists.
• Madonna is more interesting & subversive than Nirvana, at least musically. Nirvana was a really good band but the leap from “Like a Prayer” to “Heart Shaped Box” isn’t as substantial as the one from “Angel of the Morning” to “Like a Virgin”.
• Nirvana is mostly interesting for briefly proving and then utterly disproving Greg Ginn’s ideas about economics.
• The saddest thing about Nirvana (and Greg Ginn’s ideas about economics) is that while the idea that everyone who wanted to could be in their own band was inspiring, in practical terms since about 1996 (the busting of the (very) brief alternative rock radio bubble), only wealthy, attractive young people with trust funds who don’t need a regular income have been able to afford the hidden overhead costs of having their music heard by more than 1000 people over the course of their entire careers. The bands who “get buzz” at SXSW do so by investing tens of thousands of dollars in promotion & showcases. Depending on how much money they invest they can turn into Fun or Imagine Dragons.
• (For the record, I think that everyone who wants to should be in their own band, I just think they should have a very, very realistic upfront understanding of what exactly they’re getting themselves into.)
• These problems are exacerbated in Canada by the size of our population compared to the scarcity of and distances between live venues, and the cost to drive a van between them. As such we will never have an actually healthy music scene that isn’t totally dominated by trust-fund dilettantes and deformed by reliance on government grants and the unbelievable stupidity and conservatism of the Canadian music industry (who tend to be at least three years too late to every trend at best and would generally rather try and reissue the Chilliwack catalogue than have a new idea.) The year that Gord Downie released his first solo record, he received ALL of the funding from FACTOR for the ENTIRE YEAR.
• Speaking of conservatism in Canadian music, CBC Radio 2 has an outsized ability to determine which 4 or 5 new artists will get play in an industry can really only support 4 or 5 artists to the point of possibly making a living. Unfortunately their tastes are slightly less interesting than drying paint. I like the Weakerthans. I hate living in a country dominated by duller, subpar, more handsome versions of the Weakerthans.