The Most un-excellent things

Everyone knows that one of the more successful niches of the recorded music sales industry in the last 5 years is the teen jaugernaut genre. From High School Musical to Demi Lovato to yes of course the two reigning champs Ms. Hanna Montana and the brothers Jonas. It is undeniable that the sheer magnitude of marketing power of the Disney Channel, Disney radio and internet have been able to reap unbelievable sales of discs and files.

Having a 12 year old daughter, I find myself in the whirlwind of this media blitz and frenzy in almost every 24 hour news cycle. this has led to a few very interesting conversations with the young fan that she is. Does she really like the songs? What is is about it she likes? Does she think they are writing the songs? Does she care?

Now I am totally into the guilty pleasure of great mindless pop music every so often. Simply great pop is an art form unto itself and was probably most recently perfected by the likes of the Back Street Boys for one. But something about the shiny, perfect sounds coming out of the TV, Radio and Computer in the new teen scene is starting to wear thin for me. I appreciate that is has more melody than a lot of Top 40 songs which are mostly beats these days. But it just isn't a real musical meal. As XTC wrote in "Funk Pop A Roll" - "Every thing you eat is a waste, but swallowing is easy when it has no taste". And that was 26 years AGO!

For one, the productions are uniformly the same. Kind of pop/rock with guitars and drums and enough vocal pitch fixing to be modern. Lyrically, what can a 16 year old credibly sing about other than school, and crushes and TV and parents. So you get all of that over and over. When they try to reach to far and do a "change the world" type song it just comes off as a television commercial written for them which they cannot really put forth with any real conviction.

I guess that's the point. This kids are primarily actors. That is what they are doing ACTING like they think a cool pop star should. It has no depth, no reality. Just like the millions of hours of sitcom shtick they do on TV. This is what our children are taking in by the hours. And most of them WANT to be musicians when they grow up.

Shouldn't we expose them to more hours of real musical art? The next Joan Baez, Jonatha Brooke and Amy Mann aren't going to come out of that cookie cutter, plastic pretend music world. Play your children music that matters. They will respond and hopefully keep the dream of the power of great music to change society alive.