trahn

I love music and I believe I need music in my life to an certain extent. Depending on what I listen to I feel relaxed, happy, sad or sometimes I just don’t feel anything. Some music is best to listen to in your car, some music is great to dance all night long to and some music makes you want to sing along really loud. I listen to different genres and would like to believe my taste is quite good but I know a lot of people would disagree with what I think is brilliant.

At the moment I mainly listen to Hip-Hop and there’s something about it that makes me feel good. It might be the rhythm or maybe the lyrics that I can relate to or maybe a chemical reaction when I here certain wavelengths of sound. It’s hard to analyze why I like it and it’s hard to explain. One thing is for sure thou, I can easily tell good Hip-Hop from shit Hip-Hop but then once again it’s down to individual preference.

Worth mentioning here is that the Hip-Hop I’m listening to is not the commercial kind, like 50 Cent, Eminem or P Diddy for that matter. I listen to groups like Soul Position, Roots Manuva, Herbaliser, Blue Scholars, Jurassic 5, Dilated People, Blackalicious and Ugly Duckling to mention a few. These might not be the most well know for the average MTV viewer or radio listener but more for those how appreciate Hip-Hop on another level as I’d like to say. By no means am I trying to say that I’m better than anyone but someone who really appreciates rock might say that one band is for the hardcore rock fans where something else is more commercially liable and for the masses.
I don’t mind rock/pop or whatever genre or subgenre you might want to call it. Hard rock and metal is nothing for me but I can listen to it without nay emotions whatsoever, back in the days I even had some Iron Maiden albums that I listened to with great pleasure. Further back I enjoyed artists like E-type whom I greatly despise nowadays.

I accept most things here in life and I fully respect peoples opinions as long as they can base them on something and explain why they like or dislike something. I don’t expect everyone to care as much as I do about music or like the same things as I do and many people just listen for the sake of it more than caring about what they are actually listening to.

There is however one thing that gets on my nerves more than anything else. The thing I’m talking about is commercial shit music. I can take the fact that something I like is shared among millions of people and played throughout radio and TV, I like Red Hot Chilli Peppers and I believe they produce great music and a lot of people would probably agree. Their songs are played on the radio and TV and is quite commercial but nowhere near as often as some music. When something is played twice every hour on the same radio channel something is wrong. When something is obviously shit and you don’t hear a single person saying that they like a specific track and you hear it more or less everywhere you go you know something is terribly wrong. When you go out to a club and you hear the same track 6 times in one night you know you’ve reached the point of no return and that the suffering can begin. This was the case for the ever so popular track “Boten Anna” by Basshunter, played throughout the whole of Sweden for more or less the whole summer. Most of the time I can accept something for what it is but this track is so shit that I just couldn’t deal with it and I would verbally attack anyone who said anything good about it. I don’t know anyone that likes this track so I can’t understand why it became so popular. I know that the music industry pumps out loads of money into certain releases every year to make them the hit of the summer and I must admit they’ve done a good job and I’m sure Mr. Basshunter laughs as he goes off to the bank to collect his share. I do wonder if he likes the music he produces or if it’s just a way to earn some easy money. Who can forget Dr. Bombay and his shenanigans without wondering if he took himself serious. Same thing with Günter and the Sunshine girls. It’s hardly a fact of producing music so great that everyone is amazed of its greatness and therefore supports it fully. Why is Sweden the source of all evil when it comes to producing shit music. Is it a part of our nature to know how to take something that is shit and then milk as much money as possible out of it. Swedish producers are behind a lot of things such as Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears and I respect them for their knowledge of making something that appeals to so many even thou I don’t like it.

It upsets me that people don’t know better when it comes to things like this and when the only response to why they like it is that it’s catchy, I can’t do anything except cry out in shear despair.

Of course this is a collection of the worst music on the market and that’s bad in its own way due to the lack of knowledge and good taste among the public that supports it. What annoys me even further is when there is something that I like that gets so commercial that they ruin my whole experience and I grow to hate the track that I first liked. An example of this is the track Crazy by Gnarls Barkley. I heard this track way before it came out to the masses and I really enjoyed it as it is a catchy and well produced track. However things took and turn for the worse a couple of weeks later. Wherever I went I heard this track and I started to get more and more annoyed. After a month of hearing it constantly more or less every day I started to really hate it and all that just because they had to push it out to the masses.

Why do they have to ruin everything by overexposing anything with the slightest potential to earn them money. It shouldn’t have to be like this.

I’ve now made a point out of not supporting commercial music and instead go for the underground alternative and smaller artists that doesn’t get the same kind of attention. I like being original and listen to music that not that many people have heard of. I find it gives me something to feel good about and I’ll gladly share it with the people I know and others that are interested.

For me it’s about enjoying good music when you hear it. But please stop the madness of the commercial mumbo-jumbo around it all. Enough is enough.

There is another side of this discussion as well and that’s the side of enjoying shit music just because it is so shit that you can’t do anything but laugh. Examples of this kind of music is more or less anything from the early and mid nineties. Why not enjoy and laugh at Sunchyme with Dario G or Ninja Rap with Vanilla Ice, both of them preferably with the respective video. Or why not enjoy the glory of Germany with 666 and Scooter, which will leave you with deep emotional scars as you go as mad as the next artist I’m about to suggest you listen to. It’s no other than Dr. Bombays Scottish alter ego Dr. MacDoo or why not his Mexican protégé Carlito. If this doesn’t make you mad as a hatter nothing will. If you really want to push your luck you should try to find "Who the Fuck Is James Brown” by Traumatic Stress.