My Daughter’s Taste in Music STINKS!!!
As I mentioned just a couple of entries ago I am a BIG music fan. I love listening to music. I also like singing, but no one likes listening to ME sing so I don’t do that very much. But I do LOVE listening to music. I do have a preference when it comes to what I want to listen to. That preference does not include the majority of what is being played in top 40 stations nowadays. Most of that stuff all sounds the same with less than catchy hooks and lame lyrics that rely on profanities and not so subversive implications to get people to want to listen to them. These are not new gimmicks in the music industry, but it seems we are currently in that cycle where crap is selling over quality.
So, the solution is to just listen to something else, right? Well, that would be ALL too obvious now wouldn’t it be. What hasn’t been taken into account here is that I have an 11 year old who is easily influenced by what is being played on pop radio. Her friends listen to it, so by default she must also, and vice versa. ALL she wants to listen to is this junk. And when I change the station because I can’t stand listening to a fifth lame song in a row, she gets upset and tells me that it’s MY music that is lame. I know what you are thinking. I’m just getting old. All kids and parents go through this. Maybe, but the truth is that I listen to a lot modern music, and some of it is actually good… just not on the top 40 stations. Some of the best songs out there never get there. The pop they’re playing stinks, the hip hop they’re playing stinks, and the rock they’re playing stinks. Cookie cutter stuff doesn’t do it for me sorry. And when something good does come out I will listen. I happen to enjoy artists like Lady Gaga and Pink and even (I can’t believe I’m saying this) Justin Timberlake (who may be the closest we get to a Michael Jackson in quite some time), but most other acts flat out stink. And I try to explain this to my daughter and I try to teach her what good music really is, but for the most part she won’t listen… not until she hears a contemporary artist attempt to recreate an “oldie”.
A couple of years back I was trying to introduce Natalia to Heart and some of their songs (the old ones, not the “80’s sell-out songs). She liked “Crazy on You” because I made it fun to sing… we made a little game of it to see who would sing the “craaaaazy” part funnier, and she dug this. But she wouldn’t have anything to do with songs like “Magic Man” or “Barracuda”. She kept repeating how lame they were… until the day she saw them play it on American Idol… with Fergie. Now all of a sudden, literally one day to the next, she LOVED Barracuda, because now it had street cred. FERGIE HAD SUNG IT.
Oh American Idol did this for a number of songs actually. She saw David Cook sing “Hungry Like the Wolf”, and it instantly became one of her favorite songs. She didn’t like it before, and after one “Cook take” she loved it. Not that she’s ever heard David Cook ever sing it again. The only version she knows now is the one I have in my “Rio” CD. And Bohemian Rhapsody became one of her favorite songs because she saw THAT on idol. She has it on her iPod. Now she likes Queen, and all because of American Idol. THEY told her it was a good song… what does dear old dad know after all?
A few months back she got the American Idol game for the Wii and she asked me to play with her. Well, I wasn’t going to sing just any lame song so I went through every song in the small library it had to see what I’d be willing to lend my (god-awful) pipes to. I found some jewels in there… Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence”, REM’s “Losing My Religion”, and The White Stripe’s “Seven Nation Army” to name but three. Next thing I knew I had a little fan of those three songs on my hands. I used to not be able to get Natalia to listen to “Seven Nation” long enough for the drums to enter. Now if she just hears the intro (thanks to it being circulated on our local rock station a lot recently) she won’t let me change the station. Truly, the power of marketing.
What gives me hope that maybe my kids will truly appreciate the music I grew up on is another video game though. Whoever came up with the idea of creating this game deserves a huge bear hug from me and every other rocker I know. This game of course is “Guitar Hero”. This game and all its competitors and variations (including but not exclusive too “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero: World Tour”) has opened the eyes and ears of today’s youth to some of the greatest music ever made, but that they would have otherwise dismissed as for old people. It’s interesting to listen to kids talking about these bands that they’d otherwise not know because they could “play” their songs to perfection on Guitar Hero. Then they go and search for more songs from the band to listen to since they enjoy the songs they learned (usually through illegal downloads, but anything that they DO but is still more than would have been purchased otherwise). I hear my high school students talking about these bands all of the time, whereas five years ago , many similar students didn’t even know these bands existed. And this has trickled down to the young’uns too.
Last November my daughter celebrated her 11th birthday by inviting some of her friends over. One of them decided to show up with Guitar Hero. Suffice it to say that there was someone playing the game at all times during the party. Every once in a while I’d suggest something to be played, and lo and behold they always recognized the song I referred to, regardless of whether I was referring to the Rolling Stones, or the Who, Aerosmith, or even a more recent band like Rage Against the Machine (this one 11 year old could play “Bulls on Parade” almost to perfection… did I mention the 11 year old was a SHE?… playing Rage? SWEET) I’m not sure that I want all these kids to come out as Hard Rockers, but I do want them to listen to and appreciate the great music put out back then. They need to know (and through brainwashing if necessary) who the Beatles, and Led Zeppelin, and Elvis are. AND U2, and the Police, and bands like Dave Matthew’s Band, and Collective Soul, the latter two of which radio never fell in love with, but who are still creating some pretty darn good music. And if they choose they could continue listening to current artists who DO make good music like Timbaland, and Black Eyed Peas, so that they could have some diversity to what they listen to.
I still have trouble getting my daughter to appreciate a lot of the music I listen to. But at least now I know I have an ally. I haven’t gotten Guitar Hero for our house yet because I know that I’LL probably be on it much more than I should (and because I think my son stuck some foreign object into the console and it can no longer read games meaning I need a new Wii… but that’s another story). And yes, she is only 11 and her taste in music will probably mature, but I must say, I’m thankful for the help. Still, I can’t help but wonder when they’ll come out with a game that has a turntable in place of a guitar, where the kids will be “scratching” along to their favorite hip hop songs. I’ll be OK with this ONLY if they decide to bring back the classics from that genre to like Afrika Bambaata, and Planet Patrol, and Run DMC, and (cleaned up) NWA. But that would be interesting wouldn’t it. And what about a keyboard game for the New Wavers… and a Disco Ball for a disco game, and a banjo themed game for country music and…………..