What Happened to Music? Installment 1

For centuries, music has been providing people with happiness, understanding, and solace via the sung word. It has been, and continues to be, the height of human achievement.

Of course, there are always exceptions to that rule.

Within the past few years, popular music has continued to get less and less intelligent and satisfying. To be frank, current music kinda sucks. Every once in a while, I’ll upload a blog post comparing a modern popular song and a song that was considered popular at least a decade ago. These posts will be titled...(drumroll, please)…”What Happened to Music?” First up, Round Here by Counting Crows vs. Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke. (I figured the first installment of this blog series should feature my all-time favorite song!)

Let’s look at some of the songs’ lyrics:

ROUND HERE

"Step out the front door like a ghost/ into the fog where no one notices/ the contrast of white on white/ And in between the moon and you/ the angels get a better view/ of the crumbling difference between wrong and right"

BLURRED LINES

"But you're a good girl/ The way you grab me/ Must wanna get nasty/ Go ahead, get at me"

OK, just to put things in perspective, the above lyrics are some of the tamest in all of Blurred Lines. That song is so ridiculously sexist and misogynistic that it literally pained me to read through the rest of the lyrics. But anyway, lets compare the two songs. Round Here may not be everyone's cup of tea, but you have to admit--it's a heck of a lot better than Blurred Lines. Robin Thicke sings a grand total of about four notes in that entire song, and the instrumentation in the background cycles about two chords. Round Here, by contrast, untilizes seven to eight chords, and lead singer Adam Duritz sings through a large amount of notes.

So...Round Here uses more advanced musical techniques and isn't offensive to women, unlike Blurred Lines? Looks like we have a clear winner!

Congratulations, Round Here! Maybe next time, Blurred Lines.