Have I Changed My Tune?

American Idol... You either love it or hate it, it seems. I've always fallen into the latter category, I guess. I mean, you get a bunch of amateurish singers, throw them up on stage singing usually horrible songs, sprinkle in a guest star or two and before you know it, someone named Kelly, or Reuben, or Fantasia is all over the airwaves and Mtv and all that, becoming household names and selling records...

I can remember posting on this subject before a year or so ago, and saying something about the fact that American Idol has cheapened the music business... and I still agree. However, I don't think, like so many others, that it is ruining the music business. I mean, there always has and always will be fake music... marginally-talented (or sometimes very talented) singers singing horrible music they didn't write fluffed up with fancy production, publicity out the yang... They just make rock music more important, if anything... well, "real" rock music, anyway. There is plenty of "fake" rock music, too - and by "fake rock," I'm referring to the prepackaged junk that people like "the Matrix" are responsible for, covered in the same flash and schmaltz that pop music is... but all that "fake" stuff has nothing to do with the music I write, or the music my friends sit and write for their bands...

So let American Idol go on churning out the corporate pop spooge year after year after year. Music will always come back to what is real.

Listening to: The Cult - "The Cult" (1994)