Hello cadets, I know things have slowed quite a bit around here but alas, even I get struck by a lack of motivation. Recently I’ve been listening to a lot of new types of music (to me, at least) and I’ve noticed something slightly disturbing over the years. Pop music is so extremely cookie cutter that I don’t even notice the track has changed until I look at my playlist quite a bit later. Another trend I have noticed is what I like to call “false advertisement,” which I will explain further. That being said I would like to preface this with the fact that while I tend to prefer bands such as My Chemical Romance and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, I do enjoy pop music from time to time but I’m picky. This article will not be a rant alone so please bear with me.
To start out we will look at the concert scene first as that is where I had my first problem with the pop world. As you all know a majority of pop singers from Britney to Madonna and even Cher lip sync on stage. In a way it makes sense as they are typically dancing and it is nigh impossible to sing well while dancing. My beef with this is the fact that I can go see a band like Flogging Molly for $30 or less, no seating arrangement, and hear actual live music and catch an entertaining show (David King has an impressive jig). If I wanted to go see Ke$ha right now it would be between $45 and $64 depending on where I want to sit. Now I have paid high prices for a show like Muse but I can’t even fathom paying more than $25 for an auto-tuned lip syncer strutting around on stage, the price doesn’t match the quality. The same goes for a majority of the singers of the pop world, they filter and edit their songs so much in the studio that there would be no way to perform these songs live and make people feel okay with the price for those tickets.
Another thing I would like to point out is Milli Vanilli. Everyone old enough to remember knows they were caught when their track started skipping during a performance which revealed that they were lip syncing but that was in the 80’s when people acted like it was a dirty secret. Since then we had known that many performers did the same thing and as long as they were the original singers no one minded. Flash forward to Ashley Simpson. Same issue where the track did something very wonky and she was caught, all of a sudden people were outraged. The thing that baffled me was that people were outraged, by now it was brought to light that most pop princesses and boy bands lip synced in their live shows, so why was it suddenly a big issue? I feel that it was just a chance for the complainers to get on their soap boxes for no reason but I digress, I personally think lip syncing is a horrible trend that needs to go out of style yesterday.
Now the good news, there are a lot of artists that are dropping auto-tune and the prerecorded tracks and doing live shows the right way. I want to give kudos to Lady Gaga for actually singing at her shows and managing dance routines that don’t make her voice too jumpy, hopefully the trend will catch soon. Also bands such as Onerepublic do not lip sync, and they even write their own songs so I consider it an added bonus for them (nothing against those who can’t, it’s like that sometimes). I like that many artists have started to follow this trend and if they have the gall to charge $350 a ticket I would like to hear them sing, not the processed track they pretend to sing to.
Next is the auto-tune monster. If there is one thing I have begun to detest of averything in the music world it is excessive use of auto-tune. I understand using it as an editing tool but it is the sugar of the music world pyramid, to be used sparingly. I am going to pick on Ke$ha again and point out her voice has quite a bit of auto-tune added. Let’s not forget T-Pain, who is a genius because he is able to sell his records extremely well for an overly electronic voice that he makes fun of in the Budweiser commercials. Auto-tune has brought people like Paris Hilton into the music world, for better or worse, showing that anyone with access to this machine can make a song. A majority of rock and country artists refuse to touch this thing and even protest it’s use but at times it’s powers can be used for good, one such instance is the Bed Intruder Song that launched Antoine Dodson’s internet fame in 2010.
The subject of Auto-tune also brings to light another quite interesting aspect that is mostly confined to Japan currently called Vocaloid. Vocaloid is a computer program that generates a Japanese voice characterized by either male or female of different pitches and tones. This program can actually make a pop song without the use of an actual singer (aside from the voice samplings taken from voice actors to create the pitch). There have been tons of tracks released including original songs and cover songs. Each ‘voice’ is given a name and animated character (most popular known voice is Hatsune Miku) and there are concerts where the created tracks are played and sync up to an animation of the corresponding characters.
One person did think that this was just a trend over there but I would like to point out two examples of the separate elements. First is the Gorillaz, who sang live but behind a screen while their animated personas were on stage. Another example is T-Pain, whose electronic voice and obvious use of auto-tune on and off stage still draws in crowds. Whether we realize it or not these trends are pretty global in the pop world but that doesn’t mean the genre is lost, there is hope. Former lip syncers such as Christina Aguilara are now singing without the backing track or auto-tune. Also there are many talented artists who get by without excessive use of any of the aforementioned techniques so I challenge them to step it up because the pop world is being revolutionized and the same old same old is not cutting it anymore. This is War Kitten signing off and challenging you to shake things up, unless it’s a bee’s nest in which case back away slowly.
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