College Times

Issue date: 1/10/08 Section: Daily Buzz

Media Credit: Courtesy Roadrunner Records

Looking at Billboard's chart of the top-selling albums of 2007, one thought immediately jumps to mind: I think I'm in the wrong line of work. Daughtry? Akon? Fergie? Seriously???

I realize that music writers have a reputation for being elitists, and for the most part, it's well deserved. It takes a certain level of snobbery and egotism to assume that people might actually want to read your opinions about something as subjective as music. I'm also the first to admit that my musical taste follows a distinctly different path than the mainstream. I certainly didn't expect to see the bands I love (Ween, Clutch, Atmosphere) to break any sales records, but I guess I always thought that even in music, there existed some basic level of listenability where even the most casual music consumer and the most hoity-toity music snob could find some common ground.

In other words, we all might not always agree on what's great or even good, but shouldn't we be able to come to some kind of consensus on what sucks beyond all compare? When an "American Idol" castoff who sounds like a watered-down version of Nickelback (No. 6 on the Billboard chart, for the record) sells more albums in a year than any other artist in any genre, I can't help feeling like I'm fighting an unwinnable battle. When a song like "My Humps" that literally sounds like it was written by a 12-year-old becomes a breakaway hit, my disdain for the song is overshadowed only by my confusion as to what everyone else finds so appealing about it.

What makes it even more frustrating is that this has not always been the case. For a very brief period of time in the 1990s, I found myself in the admittedly unusual position of actually liking a great deal of popular music. For a while there, when bands like Nirvana, Soundgarden and the Smashing Pumpkins were among the most popular and commercially successful bands of the moment, it seemed like, all of a sudden, everyone else "got it." I imagine if I had been alive in the late '60s, when The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Creedence Clearwater Revival were ruling the charts, I'd have felt the same way.

I don't know. Maybe writing and recording great music is only profitable every 20 or 30 years. Maybe I am just a closed-minded, elitist snob. Whatever the case, I feel like trying to write about music right now is looking more and more like a lost cause. With the rise of Daughtry and Hinder and the unfathomable continued success of Nickelback, mainstream rock is as bland and unthreatening as it's ever been. Rap music has devolved into 15-second ringtones, thanks to Akon, Mims and Souljah Boy. The country charts are dominated by formulaic pap like Rascal Flatts, Keith Urban and Carrie Underwood. Even heavy metal, my favorite genre of music since junior high, is dominated by a bunch of screamo/metalcore bands who all sound essentially the same in an attempt to replicate the moderate success of Killswitch Engage.

Maybe I need to go through a classical music phase. Or perhaps I should check out some jazz. But I don't think my editor is going to let me write about Igor Stravinsky or Miles Davis in a college paper. Maybe I should just start writing about something else, like movies. But we've already got a couple guys for that. Maybe I'll just start reviewing all the porn sites that are sure to appear in the comments section below this blog.

I wonder if my editor would approve that.

College kids love porn, right?

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