There were so many versions of femininity to choose from. Nowadays, the only means of dealing with femininity seems to be deconstruction — undermining it in two different ways. Now you only have the usual virgin-whore split between Adele’s lack of sexuality (and other females who emulate her) and the hyper-sexuality, performative artifice, spectacle and deconstruction of femininity represented by Lady Gaga and pretty much everybody else. If you don’t like deconstructing femininity, if you like being a woman, your only option is the affected faux-soul of Adele, which is no less artificial and doesn’t include sexuality at all.

There’s also too much artifice in everything. Adele’s carefully constructed retro-soul vibe is no less artificial than Lady Gaga’s in-your-face artifice. It’s sad when the supposed “authenticity” is as artificial as the artifice.

As for the lyrical content of today’s female “singers”, there is none to speak of.

Only a monopolist could study a business and ruin it by giving away products….

I remember back when these songs came out I was initially reluctant (as a guy) to give them a try. Alanis and Sheryl seemed really bitchy and whiny, and the whole Lilith thing seemed so weirdly feminist to my male ego. But I was won over by how serious and intelligent and somber and thought provoking these songs were… and great musically too. It marked a real departure for me from my rock/based taste, over to something different. I never bought into the grunge aesthetic, and was kind-of adrift in the early 90s as a result. By the mid 90s I would discover jazz from the 50s and 60s… but before that happened I got really excited by the female singer song writers of the earlier/mid 90s.

I honestly can’t even find a pulse in myself for the music coming out today… not that I even know what it is. I watch American Idol at times and they have performers singing the top hits of today… and it is all so lame that I can’t believe myself. I hear the brain-dead auto-tuned hip hop in the gym where I work out… and I almost lose my mind. I see the Black Eyed Peas croaking through some robot song, and I am embarassed for them.  And so on.

I actually found a band I like recently…. a band called MGMT. Their music really appeals to me.. But to be honest, I think they sound like The Cars.. so maybe that is why I like them. Bands like The Strokes and The White Stripes are similarly rooted in past styles of guitar rock and punk. I find them interesting to listen to.. but they sound derivative in a way… as if their genre has already been done before, only better.

I grew up on 70s rock, and punk, and new wave… which means I’m officially old. Therefore, my criticisms are naturally dismissed as being the pointless negativity of older people. But if the older listener criticizing new music is typical… so is the young dismissing the old for simply being old.

Being older means you have lived through musical styles over time. And lets’ face it… the formats of popular music have been fundamentally the same since the 1960s. For example… 37 years before before 1975 was 1938. In 1938 there was dixieland jazz and big bands and be-bop jazz on 52nd street. Rock music wasn’t even dreamed of then. Now consider that 37 years since 1975 brings us to today.

So, here’s the question… is the structure of pop music of 1975 really that much different than today? People still listen to 70s bands like Zepellin and Pink Floyd and the Ramones and Sex Pistols… and those songs don’t seem too old fashioned and historical. Even the young of today do not view led zeppelin with the same kind of historical distance that I would have viewed Duke Ellington when I was a kid in the 70s.

In a sense, the landscape of popular culture is just stuck. It’s a total post-modern malaise. Nothing new is happening. Styles and influences are being recycled… sexuality and technology is being amped up, but that is not the same as innovation. It’s depressing to consider. And being older means you are able to consider such things. Being older means you are  actually in a position to judge based on what you know. The young judge not based on what they know… but on what they “only know”… which is whatever is foisted up by the music industry for their consumption in whatever tiny sliver of time represents their teenage emergence as a music consumer. And so on.

I love it when I’m right.

“Enough about you, let’s talk about life for awhile”