Modern rock horrifies me.
The lyrics echo the words I’ve already heard or never wanted to hear. The music itself reeks of missing talent and rehashed riffs and drum rolls. The vocalists have traded sex and drug-fueled attitude and charisma for sensitivity and attention whoring.
These artists give birth control a bad name. I can’t think of a better time to expose their stupidity and inefficacy. These losers can’t do anything right.
Coldplay
I can’t believe awards and credit are being wasted on such a lethargically whiny band like Coldplay. Even worse, the people who listen to this atrocity often refer to it as rock, which is not true. But it wouldn’t matter what you called the music: it sucks.
First, Coldplay just borrows elements from past bands like U2 and Radiohead. The only thing that they don’t have in common with these bands is the dorky piano playing that saturates every empty hit.
I hate it when a person says, “I love that piano line.” I hope you do since the band runs every piano line it writes into the ground, especially in two of the more popular songs, “Trouble” and “Clocks.” There’s nothing extraordinary about any of the instrumentalists, particularly guitarist Jonny Buckland, who practically swipes all his playing from The Edge.
And these lyrics-no, lyrics wouldn’t be an accurate description. These poorly written sentences make children look like poets from the Victorian Period. I read lyrics from the various albums on a Web site, and they basically said three things: “I’m sorry for making mistakes,” “I love you more than anything” and “Oh.” In fact, over 20 of the band’s 37 songs off three albums have “Oh” as a lyric. How contemplative.
And when the lyrics break from the muttering and crybaby material, they still fail. On “Politik” from Coldplay’s second album, the opening stanza is “Look at earth from outer space/Everyone must find a place/Give me time and give me space/Give me real, don’t give me fake.” The last line is something a 5-year-old would say. Nothing says “I couldn’t think of anything better” like “Don’t give me fake.”
Here’s some more simplistic drivel that anybody could write (“Speed of Sound” from the newest album, X & Z): “How long do I have to climb/Up on the side of this mountain of mine.” Wow, that’s original. I’ve never heard a mountain analogy before. But wait, there’s more: “A sign that I couldn’t read/Or a light that I couldn’t see/Some things you have to believe/But others are puzzles, puzzling me.” You don’t say? A puzzle puzzles you? That’s puzzling. He also throws in an “Oh, oh, oh” near the end, and I nearly fainted from the stark inventiveness.
However, the worst part about these struggling musicians is the weeping and thoughtful singer, Chris Martin. The primary problem with Martin is that he doesn’t sing, rather than talk slowly with an undulating high voice that could kill cancer.
Not only does Martin sport extra chromosomes, but a girly demeanor shines in his overly sensitive and manure lyrics, and his voice is the musical equivalent of syphilis.
I’m sure some hip music lover would argue, “You don’t like his voice because he’s British.” That has nothing to do with it. I like some British singers: Robert Plant, John Lennon, etc. There’s a difference between accents and incest. Something tells me that Martin’s parents were very close, which is inspiring since divorces happen every day.
John Mayer
I’ll put Mayer’s life in perspective.
Mayer was that boy in high school who didn’t have the confidence or the deodorant to get a girl. Depressed and sensitive, he would sit by himself and play his guitar all day long, probably without lessons.
Even though his playing spoke volumes about ghastly guitar talent, there were a few girls who liked him because, “Look, he can play the guitar! Oh my God, I could never do that. Let’s talk to him.”
This is basically what Mayer still goes through, only this time it’s clueless girls and guys who a) know nothing about guitar playing, b) think that if you can write, play and sing then you must be good, c) don’t realize anything about music theory or history or d) can’t stop running into walls.
Obviously, when Mayer would cry because his parents hated him (and with good reason), he listened to Dave Matthews and copied anything he could without being totally plagiaristic.
And to make his disastrous songs even more loathsome, he chooses to sing in a way that takes away any chance he has of impressing God. Mayer is going to greet Satan with his tear-stained guitar case.
Nobody cares about your high school, Mayer. Nobody cares if your imaginary girlfriend has a body that is a wonderland. Nobody cares that you took a shower last week and told your grandmother about it. Nobody cares if you can be more than what your body portends.
Nobody who’s smart about music, that is.
I would rip Jack Johnson and a couple of other songwriters apart, but they’re essentially John Mayer wannabes.
Green Day
What happened? I actually liked a couple of Green Day’s older albums, Dookie and Nimrod. Then they follow the anti-Bush crowd and create a rock opera with American Idiot.
First, the rock opera remains overdone. Dating back to The Who’s Tommy and later with Pink Floyd’s The Wall, the rock opera usually deals with a male character who tries to deal with the world. Green Day takes ideas from both of the aforementioned albums and places them in a modern setting.
For instance, St. Jimmy, a character in Green Day’s opera, is a caricature first seen as a tall man with a long golden beard in Tommy. In Pink Floyd’s opera, the main character asks for drugs to become “comfortably numb.” Green Day pulls this idea and has its hero ask for Novocaine.
Furthermore, American Idiot ends the same: the protagonist is neither saved from his angst nor defeated.
Second, people bashed Bush for a while before this album came out. Green Day’s hatred for him is neither inventive nor inspiring.
Finally, why is a punk band doing all this melodramatic pap in the first place? Green Day’s music keeps getting weaker and weaker, becoming more like their ignorant counterparts such as Blink 182 and other undesirable miscreants.
Just look at some of the new lyrics: “She’s an extraordinary girl/In an ordinary world/And she can’t seem to get away.” When I listen to this song, I pull out my pompoms and then have pillow fights with myself.
Or what about these words from “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” which inspire us to muse upon our crumbling society: “I walk a lonely road/The only one that I have ever known/Don’t know where it goes/But it’s home to me and I walk alone.”
Just in case you didn’t get the message the first time, singer Billie Joe Armstrong repeats “I walk alone” many more times, and it finally dawned on me: he’s lonely and upset about America’s current state of affairs. I cried for a while.
Well, that’s all I can muster. My advice: stop listening to them. Your parents probably listen to better music (see info box for more lackluster rock music).