You can't always get what you want

It’s hard to survive an entire day free of Rebecca Black; she’s like herpes or glitter—entirely impossible to get rid of. Either her anthem is being blasted on College Walk, the newest late-night host’s spoof of her is appearing on my newsfeed, or she’s on my computer after I feverishly pull up her video on YouTube. (I’ll admit it, “Friday” is as addictive as crack.) Rebecca Black has become such a phenomenon, most would say, because her song is so truly, terribly dreadful. The reality is, though, that her song is just the fourth horseman of the apocalypse, signaling that the end of music is nigh (the first three were American Idol, Auto-Tune, and Ke$ha).

Music these days has become a joke. Talent doesn’t even come into question anymore. Not only do few pop artists write their own songs—most people would be surprised to realize that just about every hit of the past decade was written by about five different “producers”—they’re incapable of singing, let alone playing an instrument. While some artists use digital innovation in music for good, such as Radiohead and James Murphy (RIP LCD Soundsystem), the majority of the mainstream music industry is using advancing technology only to enhance voices and make sure that no pop star will ever have to take singing lessons again.

A recent quote by the writer of “Friday”—the creepy, inexplicably placed rapper in his 30s rhyming about school buses in the music video—perfectly sums up my argument: “People talk so much about how silly or stupid the lyrics are, but pop songs, they’re meant to be catchy and to tell things in a stupid way.” Tell me why we treat Rebecca Black and her thoughtful index of the chronology of the week as a joke, but Ke$ha—who for whatever reason feels the urge to kick people to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger (I would stake my entire record collection on the fact that Ke$ha can’t name one song off “Sticky Fingers”)— is a full-fledged pop star.

Not only that, but as the mastermind behind “Friday” rightfully claims, mainstream music has become unbelievably simple. I give up on listening to lyrics now, because they usually make me cry­—not because of their poignant vignettes on love, but because they’re usually atrociously stupid. The structure of music, too, has dumbed down. For example, some people point to Taylor Swift as the savior of pop—she writes her own music and is a talented musician, too! In reality, just about every one of her songs uses a lengthy catalogue of about 10 different chords rearranged in different orders. In other words, someone who has been taking guitar lessons for about two months could write songs as complicated as T-Swift’s.

I don’t blame people for enjoying catchy songs, it just makes me sad that utterly untalented people, such as Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, and, yes, Rebecca Black, effortlessly achieve such monumental heights of fame when the success of the most exciting breakout artists of the past few years, such as Mumford & Sons, Titus Andronicus, and the Avett Brothers, is inconsequential. This is one of the reasons I was so excited when the Bacchanal lineup was announced. Of course, I love Snoop Dogg as much as the next suburban, white Jewish boy obsessed with rap, but Das Racist excited me more. They represent a new wave of artists who use a deconstructionalist approach with music, or, as New York Magazine describes, are “sawing the legs out from under hip-hop as they celebrate it.” In other words, they devote an entire song to a combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, and then name-drop Edward Saïd in the next. They have come to terms with the absurdity of the state of modern music, and, instead of throwing in the towel, they embrace it in an entirely creative and original way. I’m still praying that “Friday” was just a deconstructionalist prank played on all of us.

The author is a Columbia College first-year. He is a Spectator associate editorial page editor.