A Melodious Rant on Real Music – Siona Ahuja

Some blatant words and butthurt comments by Siona Ahuja.

Disclaimer- if you’re a teenage pop lover, back away before you get super offended.

Maybe it’s the thrill of hearing Keira Knightley’s crude voice from Begin Again streaming in the background at 1.00 in the morning that prompted me to write this. Perhaps it’s something that I have wanted to disclose for a long time.

I’m a very opinionated person when it comes to music. I’m even more opinionated when it comes to bands. Mildly cringe-y bands and singers (see: One Direction, 5SOS, Nicki Minaj) are spouting globally faster than the polar ice caps in Antarctica are melting.

Sure, their songs are groovy, but has someone ever dissected them? Futile, incessant lyrics along with autotuned, generic voices and a good-looking set of men or women (or men and women) wearing bare minimum clothing are all they are composed of.

I’m not trying to be a pompous music ‘critic’ or say that whenever these songs play, I scrunch up my nose or scowl. I guiltily indulge myself in listening to songs with words that go, “We’re like na, na, na. Then we’re like yeah, yeah, yeah“, written by 17-year-olds that have bad haircuts.

I do, once in a blue moon.

But then, rationality takes control of my mind and my music taste turns back into its genuine, snotty self.

A GIF from ‘Begin Again’.

I’m more of a search-all-music-engines-to-find-undervalued-artists-and-listen-to-them-obsessively kind of person. I do get the fact that we’re teenagers and that these are the songs that appeal to about eighty percent of us, but isn’t music supposed to be transitional and tranquillizing? (And trust me, these adjectives will never make it to the list of me describing the aforementioned!) Bands like CAS offering ambient pop (unabashedly my favourite band like, ever) or Alt-J, with the indie rock genre, having tangible lyrics, godlike instruments and splendid voices are not thoroughly recognized, and it is time for us to change that.

Then again, everyone’s choices differ. Nonetheless, I am also agitated by the fact that it is not only the listeners’ faults. Millions of people out there are making ‘music’ by slapping their sticks on drums and screaming their lungs off with lyrics – or as I like to call it, commentary – written just 10 minutes back in their garages.

There is absolutely no assortment regarding today’s mainstream music.

See the US’s Billboard Top 100? It’s overflowing with lacklustre songs made by mediocre artists. And if the fact that these artists will be ‘legendary historical musicians’ for the posterity (including your beloved children and grandchildren) does not appal you already, there’s something really wrong with you.

Real music is a dying a rapid and agonizing death. It’s about time we do something about it before it gets too late, folks.

  I like this!