Today in my world music class, we were talking about the Grammys (yeah) and a guy raised his hand and said this: 

• “This just reminds me so much of this picture that I saw on facebook the other day. It was a picture with lyrics from a band from the 60s [which he never identified] next to lyrics from Justin Bieber’s song “Baby” and it just makes you think - what happened to music?” 

As much as I don’t like when people bring up things from the internet that have been popular for months and months prior, I dislike more when people compare today’s music with music from previous decades in an attempt to show that we are approaching musical idiocracy. It’s as if we’ve completely forgotten about Please Please Me and the Monkees (both of which I love, but are considered by most to be quite elementary.)

If we’re comparing solely popular music, there may be an argument for the case against the modern. Maybe. Possibly. But I still disagree with that sentiment. For example, compare:

• Your eyes are so pretty/And the clothes you wear, they’re so fine/Won’t you come round to my place/Just wanna use up a little of your time/Baby, baby, baby/Baby, baby, baby/Baby, baby, baby/Won’t you be my girl? - Baby, Baby, The Vibrators (Pure Mania, 1977)
• And I was like baby, baby, baby, oh/Like baby, baby, baby, no/Like baby, baby, baby, oh/thought you’d always be mine - Baby, Justin Bieber, 2011

One set of these lyrics is from a fantastic song off of the debut album of a lovely British punk band, and the other belongs to Justin Bieber. Granted, the lyrics are far from insightful and classifying the Vibrators as punk may be met with disagreement from some punk purists. The point is that lyrics are only one part of the equation. 

REGARDLESS, it seems to me that the people who lament the demise of music are lazy fuckheads. It is akin to someone ogling pictures of fashion from the 20s, 50s, 60s, 80s, etc. on the internet, going to the sale section of JCPenny and from there deeming all 21st century fashion to be a desolate wasteland of creativity and design. Why/how people believe that one can simply turn on the television or the radio and be met with quality tunes is a mystery to me, and that is coming from a radio disc jokey.

It doesn’t matter if you were born in the 20s, the 60s, or the 90s. To find quality music, you have to want it. And if you truly love music, you will make the effort to find the tightest jams, the phatest beats, the deepest cuts - whatever your preference.

And for those smartasses out there who claim to be making the effort - scouring the music blogs, going to shows and whatnot - and still coming up with nothing of quality, Mama Cass said it best, “Make your own kind of music.” 

tl;dr: listen to this song. Pete Dougherty knows what I’m talkin’ bout. And yes, I’m aware that a rant is useless to anyone other than the person it is coming out of. As my friend Ben would say, “Have you tried bitching about it? I heard bitching about it helps.”