Being the father of two teenage daughters, I get to do daily school runs when I’m not travelling for business. On the way to and back from school, the girls like to listen to FM radio. They also use my Spotify and YouTube accounts at home, so I do get exposed to the music they like to listen to. To say the least, I do get quite frustrated with the average mediocrity of the songs I’m hearing on mainstream radios or recommended playlists every day!
Lack of original harmonic and melodic content, programmed beats that would offend most drummers’ ears, “on the grid” quantized tracks that don’t groove, overuse of autotune on vocal performances, poor arranging, orchestration and/or lyrical content, these are a few of the things that define most of today’s songs playing on the radio. Not surprising though, as we have been able to witness how things went downhill over the years since the mid eighties, and one has come to almost passively accept it somehow. The one thing I had not seen coming and that really got me thinking about speaking up is the K-Pop genre.
I certainly did not expect to see the 90s boys/girls band forgotten genre to be imported back into the Asian manga/cosplay culture, and to be so efficiently marketed through social media to the world’s largest population ! Such big budget musical and video productions for the most uninteresting songs (at least musically, since I can’t appreciate Korean lyrics…)! I never would have guessed my daughters would end up being BTS and BlackPink fans ! So now, each time they tell me they enjoy a song by Genesis, Rush, Prince, Stevie Wonder or Manhattan Transfer, it feels like a little victory !
Technology has undoubtedly transformed the music industry as my generation knew it growing up. Internet, mp3s, social media & streaming services & algorithms have definitely changed the way people consume music. Likewise, personal computers, drum machines, synths & samplers, MIDI, DAWs, virtual instruments & plug-ins have transformed the way music is being produced. This technological revolution in music bears the greatest potential to lift up the quantity and quality of music production and extends the range and diversity of music made available to people.
Yet, the recording industry often chooses to use the same funneling process that led to its demise in the 2000s, by pushing disposable music at an ever low cost through internet platforms such as Spotify, iTunes or YouTube. with lower recording budgets, lower promotional & distribution costs, but an extended reach to ever larger audiences…and by paying songwriters and performers less for their work !
Spotity, iTunes, Deezer, YouTube and other music platforms are incredible libraries where you can dive in and discover so much old and new music. A dream come true for music fans like myself who grew up spending their pocket money on vinyls and CDs, and recording friends’ albums on cassettes! But in our modern world of distraction and short attention span, spending hours in a virtual record store and actually listening to music with intent and focus has become almost impossible as competition for attention from other sources such as video games, Instagram, Snapchat or TikTok has proven very efficient across all generations.
On the other hand, YouTube has become such an incredible learning tool for musicians around the world, that there are probably more virtuosos on the planet today than ever before. Jaw-dropping instrumental performances of all sorts are released daily on Instagram, Facebook or YouTube, and it is great to see this technological revolution bringing up new talents to the public in a very direct way, without them having to go through the filter of the traditional music industry.
There is an incredible amount of excellent educational/informational material available out there, placing most of the focus on instrumental & vocal performance, gear, production, mixing & mastering techniques or music theory, rather than on composition, arrangement or song writing, which is where things should start.
This is the reason why I want to make SongRighteous primarily a space for the discussion of songwriting, focusing on how to listen to songs and to learn the way in which great songs were written, arranged and produced. The aim of SongRighteous is to inspire new generations of talented musicians to create and write better songs for all eager listeners that want to be inspired by music as an art form rather than just consume it like just another meaningless distraction.