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Music, the metaphorical apocalypse of unobservant teenagers

James B | 30.08.2005 23:30

In High Fidelity I believe it to be accurately stated that adults may take extreme precautions to what children may view at the cinemas or on the internet. However they do not take the same care in the child' music tastes, yes the child may have slightly less volatile physical urges than other children but may listen to the most heart-breaking, sad and ultimately soul destroying music known to mankind. Will the parents care? No, because it's only words to most people, but to others it's a personal message being transmitted directly to the listeners' brains giving them an entirely new interpretation of the world they live in.
This is why certain music should be sliced off mid-root before it can take

Music, music is a wonderful thing. It can inspire endless quantities of human emotions which infuse the appropriate listener's mind with a feeling of euphoria, which many people can think of as their "Passport" to another world or reality.
The emotions the music evokes however are wildly variously different and can range from the most poignant feelings of well-being or elation to extreme anger or rage.
We, the listeners when alone, choose the music we allow to enter our ears and reverberate through our ear-drums. This music is specifically chosen by us for a certain reason. It may not be a certain song but a certain playlist that we desire. However we still choose the music that we listen to.

In the case of younger people, music isn't as much obtained independently as it is thrust upon them.
If you haven't been asleep for the past few years then you won't find the fact that the norm musical tastes of younger people now tend to be breaking away from the norm exceptionally strange.
Yes it's true, no longer are these the days of bands such as Take that and Boyzone. They are too "commercial" these days for most young people. So to distance themselves from these "commercial bands" they have broken away from pop to form a new pop, and ultimately a new norm musical taste for todays young people as you shall come to see.
It isn't exactly uncommon to see a young child of around 8 wearing a hoody sporting a "Slipknot" symbol these days.
However now as these facts have been digested by those who have not been asleep the past few years, a new kind of pop has emerged for those children who want to not like music that Take that provided, this new type of pop is being sold to all young people interested in the latest music.
This new pop consists of bands like My Chemical Romance and Funeral For A Friend. You may have noticed that these bands have suddenly been commercialised, it's for todays young people who want to be different but are actually all nearly inadvertantly listening to the same thing. This is because these certain bands make music that are easily accessible to people of a young age with "pretty" guitar noises and fairy elegant soaring vocals with real meaning to them. But it's the meaning of these songs, for me, are the problem with these bands.
For example, just look at the name Funeral For A Friend it hardly instills happiness. These bands are being fed to young people who through no fault of their own are swallowing it. This new pop which has become the new norm musical taste for young people is filled with sorrowful heart-wrenching songs that leave oneself thorougly depressed and in need of some good old Eels music. But to younger people, there is no such band as eels, they don't exist as long as they don't occupy top of the tops so they have nothing to resort to when feeling depressed but some more depressing My Chemical Romance. Growing up with this kind of music blaring out, intoxicating all orifices, leaves more than a mark. It leaves a sense of over-whelming lack lustre in regards to life and the world. These bands are almost selling the slogan "Life?...What's the point? There's too much sadness" which is no view for a healthy youngster to take.

What I can't believe is that fantastic down to earth bands like The Rakes, The Fall, Artic Monkeys, Pavement, Flaming Lips and Bearsuit for example, go down as completely inaccessible bands to children due to the lack of promotion in the eyes of younger generations. When the music they actually make is full of happiness, hope and luck. Exactly the ideal mentality of a youngster.
But instead they are being forced songs of love and heartbreak, being shown videos of Funerals of loved ones and car crashes of best friends.

End the tyranny that is over-emotional music, that is being aimed at children who can't handle this excessive pain and angst yet.

James B
- e-mail: single-servingfriend@hotmail.co.uk

Comments

Hide the following 8 comments

Really interesting

31.08.2005 08:00


Man, I listened to Joy Division when I was 15 and didn't smile for the next two years.

a


Interesting subject finally raised

31.08.2005 11:28

A well made article, absorbing and enthusiastic. Do you work for a magazine by any chance?
lol a music critic if i ever saw one?

I'm just guessing, but a breath of fresh air from the usual articles on this website

well done and good point well made

Elth


Interesting...

31.08.2005 23:23

but personally I think it's the other way round. No, kids don't really like their boybands and girlbands anymore, and many are turning to 'depressing' bands that seem to be equally as manufactured and phoney. But I don't think that it's any grand conspiracy. Kids - just like the majority of people in western society - feel vaguely hopeless. When you are a teenager you have loads of crazy hormones going round, so you actually feel more intensely what many adults learn to ignore. So many kids like bands like Funeral For A Friend and My Chemical Romance, and the profit-crazy record companies are happy to churn them out. But the point is they are already feeling that pain, and that is why they can relate to the songs. If they were happy-go-lucky types they wouldn't even give it a second listen.

Personally, I wouldn't have made it through the mid nineties without Smashing Pumpkins and Radiohead, because they told me I was not alone. Sadly, loneliness is exactly what many people feel in our atomised society.

Ad Nauseum


Turn it in

01.09.2005 13:20

So what if middle class kids are listening to shite music, manufactured, 'depressing' or otherwise.

Until they are organising around or through this music to repress, coerce or otherwise impinge on the freedom and happiness of other people, I don't care. The music industry is, has been and always will be cynical and souless as long as it operates in a capitalist paradigm, so what.

If your kids aren't truly alternative enough for you, that's your problem not theirs.
I'm assuming you're an old punk, who still believes that it really was different then and you really were rebelling, get a grip.

Happy hardcore, pills and weed, thats the way to go.

Rudeboy


They shalt reak havoc

01.09.2005 17:44

You will care when a new generation of emo is spawned, all shall fear the sorrowful pallid ones.

They will effect every living person within a 50 metre radius with "Life is for the not living" tattoed across their tight t-shirted chests spouting philosophic garbage.

Sammy


Positive feedback! Thankyou

01.09.2005 20:55

I am the author of this spectacular, exceptional written up slice of observation that I have taken part in of late.
I happen to not be an ageing punk, but a 16 year old.
I just felt sick of all the kids who have this sort of music thrust upon them when it's so awful.

James B


On second thoughts

02.09.2005 15:26

Having re-read your article I have to admit that it does read more the piece of a mildly indoctrinated happy clappy Chritian yout' than an old punk. Apologies.

Rudeboy


More of these!

03.09.2005 18:38

The usual clap trap contaminating this once pure webiste was for one moment eluded as i scanned down the newswire to find this little gem.

lol very funny and sarcastic in the right places, a nice relief

Ashogi