Category: entertainment

It's way too early on Sunday morning.  Baby DJ is only making the gentle moans that go on for about a half hour before he actually wants to wake up.  The girls have not burst in the room yet.  And the wife is not due back from her overnight shift for another hour.  By all rights I should be sleeping, but damnit my body is trained.  With one bleary eye opened, my hand fumbles around the large box that has served as my wannabe nightstand for over a year.  I find the clicker and I am surfing.  I am very  familiar with what is on at 6:44 Sunday morning, but I go through the motions anyway.  After going through every channel once or twice, my threshold for entertainment has sunk to the point that a music video seems appealing. I quickly realize that I am in the scoundrel zone.

I have no idea what the song is.
...or the "artist".

It sounds catchy though.  I have never heard it before, and yet it is so familiar that it finds its way into the trite category along with anything by Kanye West or Justin Timberlake.  The reason, of course, is that you have guys with expensive shoes and an ear for music that stops abruptly at the end of a purse string making creative decisions at somewhere along the line.  And teenagers drive this market.  Don't tell me the channel is aimed at that market.  I know that.  Everything is aimed at that market, and that is the problem.  I can hear myself sigh as I realize there will probably never be a new song that is ever produced by the bazillion dollar pop industry that is to my tastes.  Oh, there will be catchy tunes.  They are good at that.  But the content of the lyrics and the message of the songs will always be drivel.  It's new to teenagers.  It was new to me when I was a teenager.

I think that is why adults are drawn to the music of their generation.  We remember the music of our youth because it was tailored by the New York suits for us.  They needed us to like it because we were the youth demographic that made them money on advertising.  And everything since then is the same crap repackaged and tailored for someone else.  It looks like our suit.  It has the same sleeves and cut.  But it is made for minds and sensibilities that have not heard it all before.  What I am saying is that all pop music is aimed at that market, not for artistic reasons.  Not because that is the natural way of things.  Not because the youth are the best at producing the highest quality music or demand it.  But because that is what execs want.  And they only want it because the advertisers do. 

blecccccchhhhhhhhhhhh