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Tuesday, 08 April 2008 |
Voicing my opinion
I’m generally not the type of person to insist that everything was better “back in the day.” Actually, that backwards way of thinking is a notion I deplore and a model of logic that is most commonly muttered by those longing for the “traditional” times of the 1950’s when women loved being housewives and children hated having sex.
But, I must admit, there is a recent popular culture trend that has me longing for the past.
When he invented the vocoder in 1935, Homer Dudley had no idea that it would lead to the sorriest gimmick ever used by “artists” to drill songs into the heads of gullible, club-hopping teenagers.
Thus, I’m awarding the first Worst (Posthumous) Person of the Week to Mr. Dudley. For what was
once a device used by military officers in World War II to encrypt secretive information and to make
prank phone calls to the Brits, has now become a staple in the R&B world, diverting attention from the
fact that the performer can’t hit a note or create lyrics above a delinquent 6th-grader’s level.
Of course this really isn’t Homer Dudley’s fault. Vocoders weren’t introduced to the music world until
the 1970’s when they enchanted the ears of millions with the spacey, mechanized cries from
experimental artists.
And I concede that perhaps there was a certain mystique about the vocoder that was aptly used in
films and “Mr. Roboto.”
But there’s no defending the monster that the vocoder has transformed into today.
I hesitate to even mention the artists cashing in on this hackneyed façade of pitch-correction in fear of
somehow sparking more interest in their music.
But now, artists who were once well respected are following suit and dumbing down their audiences by
telling them which way to lean and snap behind a device that ensures no talent is necessary.
Somehow, the consumers of this musical product – who are pervasive in every sense – have been
distracted by the atmospheric, robotic groans of T-Pain and Akon and seem completely oblivious to the
lyrical content that is on display.
Now, I’m completely against lyrical censorship, but I’m speaking to the fact that the lyrical content in
pop music is shallower and more unimaginative than it has ever been before.
One vocoder-laced hit from last year was a little tune by the lyrical craftsman Akon that goes by the
name of “I Want to F&%$ You” (I should also say that I find it absolutely hilarious that the radio version
of the song replaces the explicit lyric with “Love.” I mean, it’s the same thing, right?).
Or what about the recent, made-for-nightclub hit by Lil’ Wayne? Never shy about conforming or
monotonous lyrical content, Wayne’s latest hip-swayer is riddled with vocoder effects and regurgitates
the line “Shorty wanna f*@%, Bottles in the club” about 30 times throughout the number. If you’re lucky
enough to have not heard the song, trust me when I say it’s really not the type of song that will produce
an emotional connection. That is, unless the listener is a 13-year-old boy who thinks that all girls want
to have sex with him.
And that’s the main argument by the club-goers who perpetuate this style of music. They say,
“Sometimes you don’t want to think about what you are listening to, and you just want to dance.”
Okay. But there has to be a large group of artists that can do that with (A) their own voices, (B) slightly
more subtle lyrics – even if they must remain dumb, and (C) the usage of at least a quarter of the 88
keys on the piano. Have we only challenged producers to the point where Lil’ Wayne can create a
melody on a Mattell keyboard in five minutes that will be on the radio for five months and earn him $5
million?
I think there was once a time when music was evaluated on musicianship and/or songwriting merit. By throwing those critical aspects out of the window, our standards atrophy away as we succumb to what the DJ, or better yet MTV, thinks we will like.
Maybe I hold music a little more sacred than the next guy, but I’d say that it’s about time we increased
our standards and challenged our ears.
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