Things About Music That Piss Me Off

OK, there are just a few things that piss me off about music and things related to it in general. A few of these actually came from Blender's "50 Worst Things To Happen To Music," but I added my own comments on those few things.

-The fact that I am the only one of my friends who knew about Fall Out Boy BEFORE "Sugar We're Goin' Down" came out. Then all of the sudden, EVERYBODY likes them. (Credit this to a Google search about my last name, tada, we come up with Pete, enter Fall Out Boy.)

-As long as you have the ability to squeak out any given note, you can get a record deal. What happened to the days when you had to have TALENT to get a deal? Are the record companies scraping the bottom of the barrel these days? (It seems so.)

-Britney Spears is still alive.

-Anyone who's in a band thinks that they're hot shit BECAUSE of that, and that's the only thing they talk about - my band, my band, my band. This doesn't include ALL people who are in bands, just the ones who somehow think that it makes them super-fucking-awesome, and this also sets aside any of my friends/acquaintances who are in bands - Doug, Chad, Amy, Ben, Roy - you're all exempt from that piece.

-Mariah Carey was not only ALLOWED to cover a Def Leppard song, but also allowed to chop the balls completely off of it. For the record, hitting a C7 (albeit well-done indeed) doesn't make it a great song, and getting Dave Navarro to play guitar on it doesn't bring it's balls back. ("Bringin' On The Heartbreak," FYI.)

-If you listen to any Top 40 station, you will hear the same song 15,000 times within a one-hour period. Oh you silly Top 40 stations, you have a wonderful way of making even the best songs tiresome after a while.

-The fact that nobody likes Nickelback anymore. They're good, and no, they weren't just trying to cash in on Dimebag's death with "Side Of A Bullet." They actually knew the guy.

-The fact that nobody appreciates rap anymore. I'm not talking about the "bling 'n bitches" rap, I'm talking about socially-concious and "this is the real world" rap. Open your eyes (and your ears). Common, Talib Kweli, Kanye West (among others) - there's some good stuff out there, you just have to look for it.

-Fake lesbians. I love Melissa Etheridge - real deal and she makes good music. t.A.T.u. on the other hand...not so much. (Although "All The Things She said" was, yes, catchy...but still...)

-Tribute albums. If you don't want your music to be violated and imitated in the most nausea-inducing manner - don't die.

-American Idol, The X Factor, etc. As if music wasn't manufactured enough. 'Nuff said.

-Self-pitying rock music. Don't get me wrong, I love me some crybaby music when I'm feeling down or pissed off about something. A few bands are excused from this because their music is just that good. But, for the most part, the whining and crying about how much your life sucks is just getting old.

-People blaming music for suicide. We've heard it too many times. A kid killed himself while listening to "Suicide Solution" by Ozzy Osbourne. A kid killed himself while listening to a recording of himself singing "Outside" by Staind. Some kid killed him/herself while listening to "Hold On" by Good Charlotte. But guess what. It wasn't Ozzy's fault a kid killed himself. It wasn't Staind's fault a kid killed himself. It wasn't GC's fault a kid killed themselves. It's the kid's fault. So lay off.

-MTV. Back in the day, MTV, or so I've heard, kicked ass. (I wasn't around when MTV first came out, hence, "so I've heard.") It was pretty much nothing but music, which was great. It was a first. Then they realized that they were so big, so powerful, and had such a fanbase that they didn't even need to play music anymore - enter Cribs, Real World, The Hills, True Life; exit all music, all the time. Video really did kill the radio star.

-The age of 27 - an age where too many were taken before their time. Robert Johnson, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison - and of course, Kurt Cobain.

-Late 1990s crappy pop music. OK, 10-year-old little girls need SOMETHING to listen to when they get their heart broken for the first time, and there WAS a time when I did listen to this shit. But you know the "formula" - get together five semi-good-looking guys, train them to do repeated pelvic thrusts in front of pre-pubescent girls and sing quite possibly the worst love songs imagineable and tada, the shittiest music imagineable on the planet.

-The whistle register. Holy shit, how much more screaming do I have to endure? I'm not talking about a singer who maybe ONCE on every album throws in a super-high note. That's OK, and I like it...and I'm not gonna lie, I like to use it too. I'm talking about - yeah, you guessed it, MARIAH CAREY. OK, I'll give this to the woman - she's got a voice. But try to listen to "Bliss" (she repeatedly sings the phrase "On and on and on and on and on..." in notes ranging from about F6 to B6) or "Emotions" (where she attacks you with a SHITLOAD of C, D, and E7s) and trust me, you WILL get a headache, and you will get it QUICK.

-While we're on the topic of the whistle register - Georgia Brown. This woman has two major offenses to her name in my book. 1) Trying to claim a G10 when any idiot knows the average human can't hear the 10th octave, so that's pretty much impossible to prove (I don't care what Guiness says), and 2) bad hair-dye jobs with the roots showing. Being able to sing a whole song in whistle without detuning doesn't make you a great singer. In fact, that flaming red hair with the roots showing is offense enough for me to not like you. Do they not have root touch-ups in Brazil? But back to the topic at hand. Yes, you are a nice whistler, but anything you sing below C6 pretty much sounds like shit. I'm not even kidding. Shakira was once told she sounds like a goat - but Georgia definitely takes that cake.

-Whitney Houston's crack addiction. Seriously, crack destroyed one of the best vocalists I ever heard. Not to mention that she sang the National Anthem better than anyone ever has and probably ever will.

-OK, this one appeared on Blender's list, but I REALLY did have it in mind BEFORE I read the list: THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER. Don't get me wrong, I'm patriotic, I love my country, all that jazz - and I truly only have ONE beef with our National Anthem - IT'S SO DAMN HARD TO SING. To sing "The Star-Spangled Banner," one must have a vocal range of at least 2 to 2.5 octaves. The average person who doesn't sing (and no, singing along to Britney Spears in the car DOES NOT count) typically only has a range of about 1.5 to 2 octaves. Hence, if you're not Whitney Houston, Brian McKnight, Myles Kennedy, Christina Aguilera, or Mariah Carey, you're most likely going to SUCK BALLS at singing this song. So you know, hats off to the 1931 U.S. Congress for picking out a song that roughly 90% of the American public isn't able to sing for shit.