Have you ever felt like things in general were better back in the day? That things were more original and classy? This column will make comparisons of today’s world and earlier generations. Of course there are several topics to choose from, but the topic of today is music.
I know what your thinking. Let the old folks like the old music and let us be modern, but just hear me out. I’m talking about Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Louis Armstrong, Judy Garland and Billy Holliday, all legends of music (with no autotune). Now they had meaning behind their lyrics. Their songs were the epitome of class. They had the brains to come up with lyrics that didn’t involve a curse every other word. They had imagination to come up with songs that take you back to a time of character and poise, a time where gentlemen acted like gentlemen. They respected women, especially in their lyrics. They take you back to a time where women acted like ladies. To a time where everything was simpler.
Music today is not nearly as original and won’t be able to stand the test of time like the classics have. In 20-30 years, nobody will remember Nicki Minaj’s gibberish rap or Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe”. My seven-year-old cousin could come up with some of the lyrics conjured up nowadays. Rihanna’s “We Found Love” has just about the simplest lyrics I have ever heard. I think I could’ve come up with those lyrics in about five minutes. I saw on a poster that Rihanna was being compared to the Electric Light Orchestra. Rihanna had five writers and four editors working on her songs, while ELO has one, the incomparable Jeff Lynn (who incidentally just released a remastered version album called Mr. Blue Sky. So I guess even having more people writing your music for you doesn’t make it possible to have better lyrics or music as the originals. That just shows you how much more passionate and invested they were in their music. They didn’t have multi-million dollar payoffs then, but what they did have was a passion for their craft that makes them relevant decades later.
Don’t get me wrong. There are some great musicians out there today, but they’re pretty rare to find these days. There aren’t many singers you can compare to the greats of earlier eras. You can watch movies of this era and still hear Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” going on in the background. You see, that’s the type of music worth making, the kind that will never get old, whether you are 16 or 61, no matter how many times you listen to it.
