Sonntag, 15. Jan 2006, 14:16

For the most part, the music that was released in 2005 was not anything to jump over the moon about. There were very few album that really were any good:

I liked Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine although I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't as gritty and bitter and slighty crazy as When the Pawn…

Metric released their follow up to 2003's Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? with the fabulous Live It Out. By far my favorite of '05.

Madonna's Confessions on a Dancefloor wasn't even as good as I thought it would be. I went out and bought that album for $15….I paid $15 for one song "Hung Up".

Franz Ferdinand's You Could Have It So Much Bettter…With Franz Ferdinand was alright…A bit louder than their first one…comparing the two to one another, I still think I like the first one a bit more…although "Evil and a Heathen" is excellent.

So what's wrong with music these days? Talking to a friend of mine last night about the state of music and her theory is that all the stuff that is being put out now is really geared towards the teen/teenie-bopper generation. I think deep down, one can see it. I find myself missing really good, honest songwriting and really emotionally raw vocals. Like I've mentioned in previous posts, I love the likes of Alanis Morissette, Tori Amos, Sheryl Crow, Fiona Apple, Bjork as begun to strike a chord, Melissa Etheridge…I mean, all these women can write and sing and you can tell they put their all into it. I'm sick of the cookie-cutter shit that everyone feels the need to rant and rave about….I'll take something deep and obscure well before I'll listen to power-pop or anything else with a distinctive bubble-gum flavour.

As of late, Sarah McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy (released in '93) has been on heavy rotation around these parts. With Sarah you can't really go wrong…she can make you sing along happily (or feel like a jackass because as much as your try to hit her high notes, you know you never will) or she can reduce you to tears in a matter of seconds. "Possession", "Good Enough", "Elsewhere", "Ice", "Plenty", "Ice Cream", "Fear"….okay okay…the whole album is phenomenal.

So that's my mood on the whole music situation right now. I'll probably be focusing my attention on the singer/songwriters as opposed to the vast majority of the "chart toppers".

One more note to make, for a while now we have heard talk of the music industry being in some rough shape. The industry likes to blame this on illegal downloading and what-not, however my friend made an interesting point last night…its not entirely just a matter of illegal downloads but perhaps one of the main problems is that the music being put out right is just plain crap…garbage. I think I agree…my album buying will more likely than not be some of the "older" (when I say older, I mean mid-90's) stuff.

Question(s) of the day:

How do you feel about the quality of music these days?

Is there anything out there worth listening to anymore?