I Wish I Could Kill the Radio Star
by Adam Kotsko
- Janet Jackson is a talented vocalist and dancer, the survivor of a
terrible childhood, and an attractive woman, but when I hear that
stupid song that says, "Maybe we'll meet in a bar / He'll drive a
funky car," I want to choke her to death.
- Obviously it is a problem when one man is writing for practically
all the bands on the radio, such as the one man who wrote for
Backstreet Boys, N'Sync, and Britney Spears. The real problem,
however, is when those people start writing for themselves. The best
example of this is Destiny's Child. When they first came out, I had
to admit that if there was such a thing as good R&B, they were it.
"Say My Name" was a great song, and "Jumpin' Jumpin'," though
certainly repetitive, was also incredibly cool. Then they ruined it
by starting to write for themselves: "Survivor" is repetitive without
the coolness, and "Booty-liscious" is clearly ridiculous. What makes
me really hate them (and myself) is that "Booty-liscious" has actually
grown on me.
- And now to make fun of some white people: Even though people claim
that that radio song about the boyfriend who's "too stoned" and "don't
know anything about" his girlfriend is not actually by Blink 182, I
refuse to believe it.
- If I hear Staind's song "It's been awhile," complete with the
obnoxious censorship, one more time, I will hang myself.
- This song highlights the problem of radio censorship. I'm not
going to rehearse the tired arguments that "everyone knows what
they're saying," though the editing sometimes seems to be purposefully
bad. The fact is that past elementary school, it is increasingly
impossible for anyone to avoid hearing swear words. If parents don't
want their kids to listen to music with swear words in it, then they
should take some kind of responsibility for what the kids listen to.
As it stands, the legal prohibition against swear words leads to a
greater fascination with them: kids delight in figuring out "what
they're saying," and when they go out and buy the uncensored version,
the tracks with swear words will become a special treasure. Perhaps
the best thing that can happen is for kids to consider swear words
some kind of ridiculous joke, so that they will never think of them as
a way of seriously expressing themselves.
- There are no good radio stations that consistently come in in
Genesee County. This is yet another reason why no one would ever want
to live there.
- There should be two kinds of radio stations: those for short-term
listeners and those for all-day listeners. Currently, all of them
seem to be designed with the short-term listener in mind, repeating
the same small set of popular songs every hour or so. Not only is
this torturous for the all-day listener, but it is a terrible abuse of
the music. No song, no matter how good, can stand up to the pressure
of being repeated every day, let alone eight times in a single work
day. The fact that music is so abused by the radio shows us to what
degree the music industry is in fact an industry, whose only goal is
to bully us into buying their products.
- The problem with TRL is that its time slot guarantees not only
that prepubescent girls will dominate the voting (which might not be
all that bad), but that they will inevitably be exposed to only a
small set of songs. MTV would be smarter to place a music program
that plays a good variety of new and old videos at the crucial
right-after-school slot, and then put TRL later in the evening, when
everyone has had more time to reflect on what has been played. Of
course, since MTV has decided that actual music videos are best left
to a "2" channel, this will never happen. The lack of videos on MTV
shows to what degree the music industry is indifferent to music.
- Someone needs to revive the festering corpse of modern rock
music. No, Incubus does not cut it.
- The following groups need to be brutally murdered before they can
record a new album:
- Kid Rock
- Limp Bizkit
- Blessid Union of Souls
- Fuel
- Creed
- Creed
- Creed
- Kid Rock
- Kid Rock
- Creed
- Creed
- Kid Rock
- I would be happy if every "classic rock" station in the world
suddenly burned down. It's like the "short-term listener" format
without as many opportunities for variety.
- In this world of bad music, only Beck can save us.
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