Now, I know I'm getting older, and what might have appealed to me 15 years ago would never appeal to me now. I suppose that's the way people are: they basically only like what they grew up with. But really, what's out there today bears absolutely NO resemblance to what I grew up with in the 70's. Not only are we bombarded with rap music on the radio, but it's also in most TV sitcoms and commercials these days. When rap music first started to catch on in the mid to late 1980's, I figured it would just be a novelty, and only last for a few years before it died out. I'm sorry to say that I was wrong, dead wrong. Everywhere you go these days, SOMEONE seems to be rapping. I just don't get it. My idea of music is a song that has a good rhythm, good lyrics, and decent sounding instruments. The only thing I hear from rap music is headache inducing drums, someone scratching a record, and some person shouting some political statement (although most of the time I have trouble deciphering what it is they're saying). Why does every rap song have to have a message of some sort anyway? Now, I grew up with politically charged music back in the late 60's and early 70's, and I can certainly understand the meaning behind most of those songs. There was, after all, a disgusting war going on in Vietnam, as well as many civil rights movements. Those songs made at least SOME sense. What I hear in rap songs (when I can understand them) nothing more than people talking trash about some "chick", or how "bad" they are, etc. Is it the shock value of some of the words they say which makes these songs so popular? If that's the case, I can understand that. But if the song is popular because of the meaning of what these people are saying, that's something that I'll never understand.

Ya know, I'm not just picking on rap music either. Some of the hard rock that's out there today is just as much garbage as rap. There are a few exceptions, but for the most part the hard rock out there now is nothing more than noise.

Finally, we come to country music. A lot of country music wouldn't be all that bad if these artists could find something interesting to sing about. I really don't care about someone's wife and kids leaving, or how good they are at fishing, or how many beers they drank while standing next to the jukebox after a hard day's work where they lost their job and thinking about the girl of their dreams standing behind the bar wearing tight jeans and boots. Sheeesh!! I actually like some country music, as long as it's intelligently written, and doesn't include some hokey story.

Has the music industry finally run out of ideas? That seems quite likely to me. Or perhaps it's become a way to get rich quick by writing a "song" about anything.

Ehh, perhaps I'm just getting old.....