By Charlie Pohlson, Staff Writer
Music! What do you think when you think of that word? Do you think of relevant music artists like Drake or Ariana Grande? Or are you an old soul who thinks of music before your time? Either way, something that we can all agree on is that music has definitely changed; not only in the style of music, but in the way that artists are portrayed. They have less freedom of expression than they did 10 years ago.
Think of artists like Katy Perry or Taylor Swift. Their style of music and way that they put themselves out into the world was drastically different than it is today. And because it’s so drastically different, they’re hated. Their songs and reputations are put on the line.
Music is boring nowadays, it’s lifeless! It’s all the same beat over different rap lyrics. Just look at Drake. He’s a relatively new artist, but he has almost 200 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 already, compared to older artists like Madonna (with 57 songs) and Mariah Carey (with 48 songs). Although his music is repetitive, with similar messages and identical sounding songs, he has gained tons of success. He has a hand in changing the music we listen to now.
Another big change is the number of featured artists. Drake may have almost 200 songs, but most of them aren’t his songs, he’s just featured in them. Which brings us to another problem; when pop artists feature an unnecessary rap artists in their songs, only for a strive for relevance. For example, you’re listening to a song, it’s really good, but suddenly, the next verse is rap, and it totally doesn’t fit the song. Why do artists do that? While hip-hop is collaborative, it should be in reason, and at least fit the song. It certainly should not be just so a song can gain more attention. What happened to focusing on making good music?
Either way, there needs to be a change in the style of popular music. It’s just not fun anymore. You can’t do anything with it. Artists need to explore more vast ranges of music, like they used to, because the same thing over and over again is just plain stale.