Heart and music

For me, music and emotion go hand in hand. They have to, if music is to mean anything at all. I have similar sentiments about the music of today as my cousin Patrick. To read his thoughts go on over to his blog here. A brief summary however: in my opinion, the quality of music, in both sound and lyrics, has plummeted in our decade.

I look around and see the downfall of music identifiable in many forms. The Disney Channel, always hungry for more money, now forces any teenish actors they have to produce record after record. The tweens seem responsible for a great deal of the downfall of which I speak. But you can hardly blame them. How exactly are we to expect that an eleven year old has good taste in music? How can we even expect them to tell the difference between overplayed and overdone crap produced by people merely because they are expected to produce it and great music? I wish I could say that when I was eleven I had great taste in music so I could pretend to be above it all, but I didn't. Honestly, I listened to maybe four different bands. ABBA, some country band I don't remember the name of, Brandi Carlile, and the Dixie Chicks.

ABBA is still one of my all-time favorites, and anyone who disses Brandi will have hell to pay with me around. And Brandi, now there's an example of someone who ties her heart in with her music. Her second "real" CD wasn't wonderful in my opinion; I disliked the fact that she leaned more towards country than she had before and she was doing a LOT of her wailing stuff, which to me is best in moderation. What I truly enjoy about Brandi is listening to her evolution. I have tracks upon tracks on my iPod of her very early songs, ones that have never been released to the general public. I listen to them and the poetry in them gives me chills.

I think that shows like American Idol are also partially responsible for the downfall of mainstream music. Music has to come from the heart and soul. Your voice is such a personal thing that it has to be. I listen to a friend of mine play the piano and you can feel the earth quiet around her. I wish that in all this ranting I had a solution to this tragic fact of life, but I really don't. I want musicians to be passionate again. I want them to make music because they want to rather than doing it because it earns them tons of money.

There are artists out there still doing what they're doing because they love it. And there are artists out there who I refer to as "cookie-cutter" who do what they do out of love as well. We just need to find that right mix of love and talent again. Or, if not talent, at least get some decent poetry going, right? Lyrics should move people. I listen to songs that are made up of lousy verses with a phrase repeated eight times for the "chorus" and I want to cry. One line does not a chorus make.

Heart and music,

You gotta have heart and music.

-T.A.D.